Sumisu-hakase had given her mnemonics training. Without that, she'd probably be going out of her mind. With it, she was too busy writing to be overwhelmed. What had William Clark-sensei said?
Boys, be ambitious. Be ambitious not for money, not for selfish aggrandizement,not for the
evanescent thing which men call fame. Be ambitious for the attainment of all that a man can be.
Well, it applied to girls, too. And Nico Yazawa was nothing if not ambitious. Thank Kannon-sama and Buddha she'd had pocket money enough to buy a tablet and pens. Her first duty was to herself, but eventually, she got around to writing what she'd put in the time capsule.
The very first thing had been explained by Maki after Nico messaged her, a few years after they'd parted ways. Mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes had made her father more susceptible to breast, prostate, pancreatic and stomachcancers. And patients with advanced-stage breast cancer often demonstrate pancreatic metastases.
So, first of all, few Japanese men would dream they could have breast cancer. And maybe he would have developed pancreatic cancer anyway, but maybe the breast cancer advanced and that was one of the places it spread. Either way, there wouldn't be screening for BRCA genes for about 14 years, and he had less than a year to catch everything, or at least atypical hyperplasia before it became breast cancer. Dig it out, and prescribe medication.
All she had going for her was a secret: her grandfather had died of cancer that started in the breast area.
Well, not all she had going for her: in an amazing coincidence, Nozomi had once told her she saw Nico in one of the primary schools she moved around in. She'd thought Nico was a few years younger than her, even then. So, if her entreaties failed, she planned to enlist Nozomi and say she'd had a prophetic dream.
It had been a hard decision to come back this far - twenty-three years. Cotaro might never be born, less than a year from now. Her father's medical insurance and government insurance didn't cover screening for "atypical hyperplasia," and probably at first maybe even not for medication to prevent cancer. Faced with extra expenses, her parents might well decide to wait on having a fourth child. But Nico decided whenever a fourth child came along, if one did, she'd love them just as much as she loved Cotaro. And at least they'd grow up with two parents. Cotaro had had absolutely no memories of his father whatsoever.
The pain she felt was probably karma for playing God. She was not, after all, considering all the "Cotaros" that would never be born as she changed history and fate.
Dismissing her dark thoughts as unhelpful, she went on to list, methodically, stocks, sporting events, etc. Only the most upcoming lottery numbers. The Touhouko quake was eight years away, and she was going to save Rin Nitta's little cousin, Kaoru Ayabito, come what may.
Which segued nicely into the things she was going to write down. Higashinihon daishinsai. "Tōden Fukushima dai ichi genpatsu jiko" or, more properly, Fukushima genpatsu no meltdown. The Covid pandemic. China continuing to outpace every other country. Russia sending a punishing mission into Ukraine. Come to think of it, the Americans would have their terrible terrorist attack next year. Then some Americans would use that as an excuse to wage wars all over the world - Nico's mother said that just made everyone less safe. Well, there was little a first- or second-grader could do about all that. Maybe warn anyone she knew was flying to New York City, that fall, not to go? Have a kids' protest against the Americans invading Iraq? It might give her a reputation as an activist, and that would probably impress Maki-chan.
No matter how she looked at it, a few years of being "Prophet Girl" were in her future, if she wanted to really change anything. So, meeting and hopefully befriending Nozomi was a top priority. Then, she would declare she'd seen the winning numbers for Mini Lotto, Lotto 6, and even Lotto 7, and give them correctly to her parents. Then, they'd either play the numbers she gave for the next drawings, or at least listen to her in picking stocks on the Nikkei 225, and later, in the American and British markets.