Chapter 47: Hoshihara Ai
“Hoshihara Sensei, Keio University has already agreed, so we can cooperate with their laboratory there.”
At the office doorway, a girl wearing a white lab coat entered the office holding a printed document.
Hoshihara Ai was still scribbling on a notebook. She lifted her head and looked at the girl entering the office.
“So fast? Alright then, get ready because we might need to go to Keio University for an exchange period.” Hoshihara Ai said.
“We’ll just follow Hoshihara Sensei~” The girl placed the printed document on the office desk.
She then asked, “By the way, is the laboratory equipment at Keio University better than at Todai University?”
Hoshihara Ai nodded and said, “Todai University is national/public, so procuring equipment isn’t that convenient. Some matters require layer upon layer of approvals, which is too inefficient.”
“That’s true. The new equipment our laboratory applied for last school year still hasn’t arrived.” The girl nodded and said, “But, Sensei, if you cooperate with another school like this, won’t the department have objections…”
“Don’t worry about that.” Hoshihara Ai waved her hand and said, “I’ll bear all that pressure. It won’t affect you. If the department blames us, you all come back first, and I’ll stay there alone.”
“Does Sensei think highly of this project?” The girl thought for a moment and said, “Actually, I’m still not fully understanding it…”
“If I say this is Nobel Prize-level research, would you believe it?”
“I…” The girl hesitated for a moment, then nodded anyway. “I believe it.”
“Heh, none of those old men in our department believe it.” Hoshihara Ai smiled and said.
“By the way, Keio University’s efficiency is too high, and they approved quite generously on funding.” The girl said.
“I just used some connections. In this regard, private schools’ connections are much more useful than national/public ones.” Hoshihara Ai looked at the various events neatly recorded in her notebook and said, “For me, this project is more important than anything. Since it’s hard to get approved at Todai University, I’ll just find other ways…”
She paused and said, “If it really doesn’t work, I’ll just jump ship to Keio University.”
Hearing her own teacher directly say something like jumping ship, the girl was slightly shocked.
Although there were no particularly strict rules prohibiting university professors from jumping ship, such cases were rare.
Even if there were, it was usually jumping from an ordinary school to a top university, which the original school’s leadership could understand, and it even counted as expanding the original school’s network resources.
But jumping from the pinnacle of academia to Keio University, and her being such a young professor in her early twenties, would absolutely be a hard slap to the school leadership’s faces.
They had promoted her as a genius female scholar, the youngest physics professor, and it hadn’t even been a few years.
But she didn’t care about any of that.
As for mentioning the Nobel Prize, it was really just something she said to the few students she supervised. Although she did feel that if this research produced results, it would indeed be Nobel Prize-level, but that was almost impossible.
The real reason she was doing this was more because of that person…
The girl who had just entered had already left the office. Hoshihara Ai’s pen tip slid over the notebook, connecting two numbers.
【2025————2015】
Below these two numbers, she wrote the same name.
【Sakamoto Ken————Sakamoto Ken」
With a flick of her wrist, the pen spun around her thumb once and was steadily gripped again.
The first time she learned this name was a month ago.
That day, she pulled an all-nighter in the laboratory until noon the next day.
After organizing the experiment data, she collapsed at the office desk and fell asleep.
Then, she had a very long dream.
In the dream, it seemed like many years passed, and she was together with a man named Sakamoto Ken.
Initially, the two met by chance on the road.
She came out of the laboratory in the middle of the night. Data processing kept going wrong, she felt depressed, so she thought of going to an izakaya for some grilled skewers and a few drinks.
As a result, she accidentally drank too much.
When she came out, she was dizzy and unsteady, leaning on the roadside wanting to sleep.
It was winter then. She hadn’t worn much when leaving the heated laboratory. If she just passed out on the roadside, she might freeze into an ice block.
Then, he came over, greeted her, asked if she had family or anything. In that dream, everything felt especially real—the drunken sensation too. Plus, she now had a special hazy feeling about that dream, and couldn’t remember many things clearly.
In any case, she seemed to grab that man and pester him to take her home.
Along the way, they chatted about something, but she couldn’t remember.
After arriving home, she looked at this man who had escorted her back. For some reason, his face particularly hit her aesthetic. Combined with the physical contact from him supporting her all the way and her drunken haze, she directly pounced on him…
She didn’t do anything particularly excessive, just kissed him hard.
She never imagined that the her in the dream would give away her first kiss just like that.
They didn’t go further that day. The man left quickly, but she had deeply remembered him. For several days after, she waited on the same road and finally saw him appear again.
In short, time and again, the two ended up together.
Later she learned he was a manga artist who drew shonen manga titled 《Young Lady, Sniper Rifle, and Pantyhose!》.
But she didn’t read shonen manga. The only thing she liked was science fiction novels. After all, she studied physics and would write some herself. During university, she even published a work and joined the SFWJ, the science fiction writers club.
However, her interest in research outweighed writing, so she didn’t continue after that book.
Her relationship with Sakamoto Ken started off pretty smooth.
The two often dated, drank together, had sex together**. Drunken states felt the most comfortable, with an extra sense of letting loose.
But later, she discovered that this man named Sakamoto Ken wasn’t only involved with her…
From here, things changed. The three of them teamed up and cornered Sakamoto Ken on a rooftop.
It was a sunny afternoon with brilliant sunlight when, in extreme anger, she drew the knife she had prepared long ago…
Looking at him lying in a pool of blood, his body twitching from nerve reflexes. After a few minutes, he completely stopped moving.
Her mood shifted from anger to fear, then regret, feeling cold all over.
At this point, the dream dissolved like a bubble.
That was the general process, but there were many details in between.
This notebook in Hoshihara Ai’s hand recorded all the details of this dream that she could recall.
One blurry illustration after another pieced together, allowing her to find some comparatively clear evidence.
So, over this past month, Hoshihara Ai had been investigating in reality, searching for traces of him.
