OTHER HONOKA

The most important thing I can tell you is that none of this matters, and nothing will help you.

I am from a different time. A wholly separate timeline. And yet the same things are coming to pass. We are all rushing towards a bloody death. Perhaps again, only I will remain. I do not know if I can die in a traditional way.

Time is written like music, Maki once told me. With its varying rhythms and speeds. It's not exact, but it follows a pattern, and one has to finesse the pattern to move through it, deliberately or otherwise. Someone like me, now eternally out of step with the rest of the world, can only sing off-key, not a part of the music. Time is an art. Time travel is an art. It requires a composer's mind to perceive its shape, and a dancer's body to move through it. as if seconds and moments were notes itself. The mechanics of time travel are not a strict equation, and to try and follow a formula, or to treat time as if it were a mathematics problem would result in even greater disaster, if one even got that far. It requires a very specific kind of mind, to move through time. So no, I can't tell you how to use the machine, and you should not try. I am the end result, a hermit out of time, and I am the second most informed mind on time travel.

Maki never made a great leap into another world, the way I did. We never wanted to. Maki would move forward and back, like me, but she didn't crack and splinter the way I do now. She could control it, easily. Time was an essence in her body and with the deliberate motions of a dancer, she could hold herself wherever she wanted. She was a part of existence itself, in its flow.

Time is broken for me. My body does not sync with the rest of the world. Each movement is a strain, each word deliberate. My body has aged, and de-aged, and cracked under itself and sprung back together. I go forward, and I go back. I saw you coming, I saw your death, I saw a million tiny changes and none of them matter at all. And I cannot touch another without the wild essence splintering both of us.

I hold time in my body, as Maki initially held it. My Maki. When she held time, she held it as its master. I hold time now as its prisoner, my body our mutual cage.

What do you want to know? I spoke to my current self, the self in time, at a coffee shop in New York. Like you, she had come seeking answers. There was only so much I could tell her. I could see the glimmer dying in her eyes, the more I spoke, the more I described the way the world fell apart. It was naïve of me to approach her at all, and worse to speak with her again. I don't know what's happening in Japan, but I can tell by your presence here that things have become urgent.

Of course I speak with a gun pointed to my head.

I was not a scientist in my past life. I only stood by and watched, when my fiancé discovered how to create a time machine. My only grand ambition was to be an idol. I achieved that; muse got to heights unthinkable for school idols. We were beyond idols, at that point, we were superstars. And all the while, Maki – my Maki, needed more. Maki wasn't embroiled in conspiracy, the way the other Umi and Eli were. Maki was the conspiracy. And through her, I became the conspiracy. I became this.

What can I tell you? What happened? Our lives were ultimately controlled and determined by faceless authorities. We lived for them and died for them. Eli, the spy, died for a cause she didn't believe in, Umi, the agent, died to keep Eli from getting what she wanted. Maki died to become herself, to become real. And ultimately we all died because Maki and I had touched something we were never meant to touch. We died because we'd found something that gave us far too much power."

Honoka took a breath. She rarely spoke unless she was ordering takeout or singing to herself. She looked at her hands. No glowing. Honoka didn't feel time fraying around her. She knew it was primarily touch activated, but she'd made slips through time out of emotional distress before, as well.

Umi looked towards her partner. Mary Farrell. Honoka knew who she was - she knew about most of the agents circling her - but she didn't know Mary from her previous life. Even Dia and You had made a brief appearance.

"What do we need to know?" Umi said. Her voice was low. "I really don't think she knows how to use the machine. If we could even find it."

"We need something." Mary whispered. "We need a story. An answer."

"Will your boss believe this answer? Your career will be over."

Honoka remembered when she'd been caught with Maki, making out on camera, and Umi had said the same words, your career will be over. How very like Umi, Honoka thought. Even like her Umi, the Umi from a wholly separate world. This Umi was the same person. Honoka recognized the brown wool sweater. This Umi spoke with the same tone, had the same posture, even smelled the same. (Umi wore a clean perfume, it smelled like shampoo and raspberries and flowers and came in a pink bottle with rubber daisies on the top. Kotori had gotten the perfume for Umi on her 17th birthday.)

Her Other Self had been so distraught, with what happened with Umi and Kotori. Ready to do anything to get them back, to make things the way they were, to undo this mistake. Honoka sighed and let her gaze rest on This Umi. Beautiful, sheltered Umi. Why her? Honoka felt a surge of resentment she couldn't entirely place. Everyone but her was a child. But it was strangely gratifying to know her Other Self had eventually gotten back to Maki.

"Honoka?"

Honoka looked up at Mary's pleasant, neutral face. "We need something. Honoka. Please. Just tell us the truth. The full truth. Start from the beginning."

Honoka laughed without humor, more of a smirk with sound. "There's a lot of beginnings. I need some water. Don't touch anything."

"We have similar pasts. We were school idols. We went to Otonokizaka. We won Love Live. Eli has always been a reluctant spy, even when we were in high school. Nozomi was always psychic, although she was stronger in my time. She knew. She knew she was going to die that day. She'd told me she didn't want Eli to die alone. I think I've spoken to Nozomi in dreams, in this timeline, although I could not tell you which Nozomi. Each time I wake up, soaked in sweat, with the feeling Nozomi had told me something very important, and I can't recall it."

"Umi was a spy as well, although she had began her career later. It was well after we went major that she was recruited. I was less personally involved. It was more due to our group's influence. Eli was much of the same: a beautiful young girl who has access to the daughters of influential doctors and school headmasters."

"And Maki… Maki was more headstrong, in my time. Maki had something to prove. She'd been shyer, when we first met, and carried a deep need to rise above something. Everything."

Umi frowned. "What about the rest of us?"

"It would be bittersweet, to say, and not relevant. Nico was involved with a woman named Mari. Mari had something of a manager. I don't know what Nico is doing now. I can't compare."

"What about me?" Mary said.

Umi turned to look at her, surprised. Honoka was taken back as well, she hadn't expected Mary to ask such a personal question.

"There was a woman, similar to you. Umi had another partner. Sarah? But I never knew you. I've never seen you before, not even in passing."

Honoka took another deep breath. Maybe that meant something. That things could change. Did it mean there was hope for the future, or simply that fate had become too strong and was now bending in other people who had no business being there? Honoka looked at Mary again. She was not familiar, not even in a vague mystical way. Mary held no strings to anyone. This was simply her job.

There was a flicker.

Honoka's stomach cramped into a tight fist, and her vision spun. Her hands trembled, glistening green. I need to tell you something, Honoka. She knows. Her body ached. Someone had torn something, ripped at the seams of time a little.

Outside the McDonald's arches lit up, flashing off and on like a warning. The air was choking, as if Honoka were underwater. Mary and Umi looked blank, lost, spellbound. Honoka shook her head, and waited.

"What's wrong?" Mary said, suddenly coming to herself. "You… I…" She looked down. "I… was somewhere else, for a moment."

"That's right." Honoka could feel time around her, pulsing, quickening. Not now, she thought. "One of you probably touched me. What did you see?"

"Outside. A sidewalk. Smoke."

"Umi?"

Umi looked pale. "Uh. Please continue."

Honoka breathed in. "There's a lot. There's so much. Years and years of this."

"We know." Mary said. "We have at least tonight."

"One of you touches me. I stay relatively still, but you can easily get sent back or forward a whole day. You should probably plan for at least tomorrow." Why was Honoka helping them? She supposed she had nothing better to do.

"We'd gone major after high school but we weren't really famous yet. We hadn't really made it, the way we would. We were popular but not international, We weren't headlining music festivals. We were touring on breaks, everyone still had a day job, or was considering college. And Maki was still supposed to be a surgeon."

"A meteor had crashed, in the woods of our town, the first year Maki was in college with me. We'd been stargazing. Talking about our lives as idols. And then I saw fire falling from the sky, and we'd discovered a glowing green rock from space. The first time we held it, we saw a million things. I saw a massive concert, I saw the world open up for us. Music festivals. Serious tours. Celebrity skin care lines. I even saw this room. The meteor that allowed us to slip through time. It sounds like magic. Maybe it is. Maybe I'm still asleep in my college dorm and this entire process has been a dream. I'd applied to that college on a whim, and I suppose Maki had a full ride or something. Whims. Our lives were forever altered because I'd gotten a brochure and there was no application fee at that college."

"I hadn't understood why Maki needed to create a time machine, in the past. When I was young I thought we had everything. But Maki had been told her whole life that she was meant to be a surgeon, a doctor, not an entertainer. Even as we were touring around the world, her father would still speak dismissively towards her, telling her she needed to cut the idol crap and come home. And this drove Maki further and further into her need for recognition. We all had it, we were idols, after all, but Maki's need for distinction was different. And - Maki was gifted, maybe in the way Nozomi is gifted."

"Gifted?"

"Like I said - it would take a very special person to actually move through time with ease. It's not a skill set anyone would train for. Maybe it fell for a reason, to Maki. Maybe she was meant to have it, we were meant to become outrageously famous, and we both were meant to die on that beach."

Umi made a face, at the mention of the beach. Honoka wondered if she'd had the dreams, the way she was certain the others did. Umi didn't seem sensitive to her unconscious mind, or haunted by the Self frozen on the Other Side. Honoka was even haunted by her own, active Self.

"The power had fallen quite literally into Maki's hands, my hands. I believe if we'd never discovered the meteor, we may have just been normal idols. We would have had our hits and aged out by 25, maybe. But we were already good - already amazing - and the meteor's power gave us an edge, an advantage. We used the power so frivolously, at first. Auditions, pitches, once even a show we'd messed up. None of you knew, of course, except for Nozomi, and likely Eli. Eli was after all, a spy. I'm sure she took note that we occasionally slipped away to our old college town together, and held strange substances in special locked boxes."

"Ultimately, the trail of time skips, jumps, and anomalies was what attracted the attention of people interested in this power. You've seen the anomalies in New York. And they've only gotten worse, months after I've left. People lose time, strange things are seen, moments are repeated. Perhaps the cracks widen."

"Was it the meteor, that gave you this power?" Mary said. "Did you have to hold the meteor to use it?"

Honoka shook her head. "The meteor had a certain aura it gave off. We would go to it, to hold it… within ourselves. Like heat from a bonfire. The meteor had some wild… ability, energy that allowed the user to move through time. A glowing green power, that fills up the user's negative spaces, potentials, possibilities. We couldn't have made a new timeline with just the meteor. It required an apparatus to direct the energy."

The sky was dark. Out the window, across the parking lot, was a big box store Honoka had never been in, the single lit D of the McDonald's, smog from the factory. No trees. In a mile, there would be corn. There was no moon that night. Honoka wondered if she could convince either of them to go to the gas station and pick her up something. She hadn't left the house in a few weeks. She felt as if her condition was getting worse. There was a rumor going around about The Green Woman, a woman who only appeared at night and had a malevolent green aura to her. She got her convenience food delivered now.

"Hey." She sat flat on the floor, feeling her neck ache. "I'm hungry. Can you guys get me something from 7-11?

Umi snorted, and both Honoka and Mary glared at her.

"Of course." Mary said. "Do you want anything in particular?"

Honoka recited her usual, along with some added items for the sheer novelty of it. Her trips to the gas station were as quick as possible, and rarely browsed for the fun of it. "And some CBD, too. And ibuprofen."

"Got it." Mary gave her a winning smile and walked out.

Umi immediately huffed after the door closed. She laid back, closer than Honoka liked anyone to be. Honoka saw a few fuzzy outlines of time, shifting near her - Umi apologizing, Umi yelling at her, Umi asking so many questions.

Her dark hair fanned on the carpet and was lit with a light green cast. "So you're telling me I had another partner? I had a partner? I've worked entirely alone until Mary."

Honoka gave her a long look. Umi with the same sweater she'd had in the other timeline. She knew this Umi didn't know anything, really.

"You shouldn't get so close. You might get sent ahead or behind again. I don't have any control over it if I'm in direct contact with someone."

Umi didn't move. Her amber eyes seemed so raw, young. Honoka's Other Self had eyes like that. What made eyes look so young like that? Honoka sighed. Time flashed in her mind: Umi grabbed her hand and went back a whole day, in one scenario. In another Umi was crying. The last time Honoka had really talked to someone, outside of a dream, at least, she'd caused a major time rift. Honoka still felt bad about Dia.

"I need to tell you something, Honoka. Er. Other Honoka."

"Honoka is fine."

"I don't know who else to tell."

"I know you and Kotori were… involved with my other self, if that's what you're going to tell me. I don't need to hear the details." Her Other Self had given her very few details.

"No, it's not that." Umi turned away, and looked up at the water-stained ceiling. "I… slept with Eli. Kotori doesn't know. She didn't know. She knows now."

The McDonald's "M" started to flicker outside.

"Oh?"

"Did it happen… in the other timeline?"

"Probably." Honoka did not remember if Umi did or not. "This was several years ago."

Umi reached her hand forward, suddenly.

The feeling of something shifting, breaking, ran through Honoka. She looked down, her hands were faintly glowing. Shadows on the walls moved. The wallpaper took on a green quality. A spasm went through her, as if her insides were being ripped. She tried to empty her mind. Endless blank. Nothing. Honoka saw a few things, nothing of interest. A car ride. A gas station. They'd been to New York. The pain throbbed. She was the pain.

Umi was still on the floor, when it passed.

"I figured it would be you. How long have I been out?"

"Twenty minutes. Mary isn't back yet." Umi's voice was timid. "But she texted me that the

fryer is broken and being fixed."

"Is that code? Should we be concerned?"

"I don't know."

"Are the Russians coming after all?"

"Honoka, I'm… sorry. About that. I didn't realize how much pain that would cause you."

Honoka didn't know what to say, other than I told you so. "Thanks."

"I was so angry with you, you know. Well. Not you. Other you. Maybe I was angry with

you too. That you both had gotten involved in something so crazy. You for getting her in, and her for doing it."

"Wasn't that your job? To watch Honoka? To watch me?" Honoka had a sliver of ice in her voice, that she didn't expect to come out so soon. "To survey her for such dangerous things? That's why you did it, right, slept with her?" She could feel her Other Self's angst, guilt, remorse. "She thinks it's her fault."

Umi sat up. "I never wanted this job! I wanted to be a normal girl with normal friends!

"No one made you take this job! All you had to do was play music and have fun and be a normal girl!"

"We were never normal, were we? How could I be? I always had to watch over you."

Honoka stood up, creaking as she got up off the floor. She looked down at Umi. Umi, slender and graceful in her cross-timeline sweater with the same haircut and the same smell. Her face hadn't changed, even when they'd gotten to the end. Were things always like this? Was that how Umi really felt about her? After Honoka had fingered her in the backseat of how many ubers? She grimaced. Honoka never told me that, she thought. My Other Self wouldn't share that sort of thing.

Honoka felt the strangest prickling in her head. A bubbling she'd once felt a long time ago, and a raw tender gash, reopened. (A gash she'd thought had been scabbed over for years.)

"So that's how you feel, huh?" Honoka said. Her body tensed. "Like you were looking

after me? You didn't do a very good job, you know. In either timeline."

Umi scowled. "Look – "

There was a strange awareness, in Honoka's mind, that cringed at Umi's presence, cringed at everything. That just wanted everything to be okay. If Umi would just - not be like that. Honoka had felt this before, in dreams, in odd moments of synchronization, but never so actively before. She wondered if she'd ripped time so much that she'd managed to briefly merge with her Other Self.

"Look, what?"

"I did my best, okay? I was trying to keep you out of trouble."

The McDonald's sign was flashing again. Honoka felt dizzy with anger. Umi was literally dragging trouble to her right now. Honoka's other awareness was punctured, bleeding. She felt a small part of herself cry. What else was happening? Honoka only got the barest glimpses. Peppermint tea, dim green lights, papers. Calculations. Honoka immediately sensed that her Other Self didn't want her to know what she was doing.

Shit.

Honoka looked at Umi again. Umi's opinion mattered so much, to her other self. The disapproving father to Kotori's gooey maternal instincts. This was unbearable, to look at Umi and have some part of her want Umi's approval. She slept with Eli, she thought to her Other Self, hoping she would hear, Eli with her psychic girlfriend. Umi is really not someone you should accept criticism from. (Umi was the first one to die, too, but she managed to shield that thought.)

"We don't have time for this." Honoka managed to say. "We need to find Mary."

Umi blinked. "What?'

"I need to know what my travel options are given my condition. Not that it'll do any of you any good. But I might be able to save at least one person."

Author's note:

Umi is wearing daisy eau so fresh

comments always appreciated!