Chapter 70: Fighting The Intruders Together
In an old apartment in Adachi Ward.
Sakamoto Ken sat at the desk, his G-pen hovering above the manuscript paper, not falling for a long time.
Natsume Mio had already gone to work at the convenience store, but that sudden hug just now, the warm softness behind it, gave him a sensation completely different from the familiarity of taking everything for granted like an old married couple from the previous life.
“Forget it, I won’t draw anymore…”
His mind was a bit chaotic, so Sakamoto Ken put down the pen and decided to rest for a while.
He pulled a magazine from the bookshelf; it was this week’s《Weekly Shonen JUMP》.
Besides the section where his own《Chainsaw Man》 was published, he really hadn’t carefully looked at the other content in this issue.
He lay on his back on the tatami, held up the manga book, and flipped through it page by page.
Sunlight shone in from the open window; it wasn’t hot, but the light was still a bit glaring.
As he flipped, his eyelids grew heavy.
Sakamoto Ken yawned and simply placed the magazine in his hand directly over his face to block the sunlight.
He planned to take a short nap like this.
……
At this time, on the other side of Tokyo Metropolis, Hoshihara Ai was at home.
She had just flipped through the works on the call for submissions page again, but didn’t see his pen name.
Since Sakamoto Ken had directly announced the news during the Friday live broadcast, he probably wouldn’t use a pseudonym to participate in the call for submissions.
This meant that the short manga he mentioned still wasn’t finished.
Since she had agreed to serve as a judge, Hoshihara Ai still seriously reviewed several works.
This call for submissions was divided into two tracks: “reality” and “fantasy”; she didn’t know yet which one he would choose, so Hoshihara Ai looked at both.
However, the judging process was very tedious; after all, the quality of the vast majority of works was very poor, and even the occasional ones that could be read through completely failed to meet her standards for a good work.
So far, she had judged more than a dozen works, and the highest score given was only 6.5 out of 10.
As my lover from the future spacetime, I look forward to your work surprising me.
She closed the somewhat boring call for submissions page and instead opened several papers.
《Superconformal Field Theory and Supergravity in the Large N Limit》, 《Building Spacetime with Quantum Entanglement》, 《Wormholes Connecting Entangled Black Holes》…
These were all directions of topics she was currently researching, though her proposed hypotheses went even further.
So she applied to the department, but was rejected by those old men on the grounds that it was too ethereal.
But now, these pure theories seemed to have found a real-life case on her.
She picked up the pen on the desk and wrote a word on the paper.
「Rebirth」
After thinking about it, she still drew a question mark after this word.
Rebirth or time travel, which often appears in novels and manga—what is its essence?
Hoshihara Ai believed that it was just a transmission of information.
Memories from the future, or rather memories from another world, as a stream of information, crossed the barriers of time and space in some form and were delivered to the brain of a specific individual in another spacetime.
The brain received and decoded this stream of information, and thus, “rebirth” occurred.
Hoshihara Ai drew a suggested schematic on the paper: layered time dimensions, then an arrow drawing an information flow piercing through.
But the real world was obviously far more complex than the purely theoretical environment in novels.
She drew several outward diverging branches on the arrow representing the information flow.
In the process of information transmission across spacetime, there would inevitably be massive attenuation and distortion.
This was why her memories of that “future” were incomplete and blurry.
But there was one extremely crucial characteristic here.
Hoshihara Ai heavily wrote that name at the head of the information flow.
「Sakamoto Ken」
She circled the name with a circle, representing that the information inside the circle was less affected by loss.
All memories unrelated to him were as blurry as if mosaiced, and even the faces of the other two women who had intimate relationships with him and ultimately joined hands to kill him—she couldn’t remember them at all.
Only everything about Sakamoto Ken—whether his appearance, voice, or every sensation during intimate contact with him—was exceptionally clear.
This showed that he was the core of this information.
However, for now, it was all just speculation.
To reach a conclusion, she still needed to design a practical experiment; experimental data would be the most objective and accurate.
But how to design this experiment?
The cooperation with Keio University had already been submitted, and soon she could lead the team to their laboratory to spearhead this project.
Those old men at Todai were somewhat stubborn, even directly saying she was writing science fiction novels rather than doing scientific research.
At private schools, many things were easier to handle.
After sitting at the desk for a whole morning, a series of brainstorming sessions made her feel a bit hungry.
Hoshihara Ai stood up and went to the kitchen.
She took a rice ball bought from the convenience store out of the refrigerator, tore open the packaging, and simply heated it in the microwave oven.
With a “ding,” she took out the warm rice ball and sat on the high stool by the kitchen counter, eating it in small bites.
She had high standards for alcohol, but none for food—as long as it filled her stomach.
After the simple lunch, Hoshihara Ai sat back at the desk, looking at the lines and text on the paper, trying to sort out a clearer thread.
But her thoughts were like a tangled mess; the more she tried to untangle them, the tighter they got.
She paced irritably around the room, her bare feet stepping silently on the floor.
Unknowingly, sleepiness crept in.
Hoshihara Ai yawned and decided to take a short nap.
She didn’t go back to the bedroom, but walked to the huge floor-to-ceiling window in the living room and lazily sank into the lounge chair by the window.
All the other windows in the apartment had sheer curtains drawn, except this one.
Because the apartment was on a high floor of a tower, this large window overlooked an open cityscape with no obstructions, so there were no privacy concerns.
Here, she could enjoy sunbathing freely anytime, anywhere.
Spring sunlight shone in, and with the constant-temperature air conditioner in the room, this warmth was just right.
The light fell on her smooth skin, plating it with a soft ivory sheen, fair and lustrous.
She rested her long legs on the front edge of the lounge chair; the warm sensation enveloped her whole body, and Hoshihara Ai comfortably let out a soft hum, her body relaxing.
“Hey Siri, wake me up in half an hour.”
“Okay, I’ve set an alarm for you in half an hour.”
Hoshihara Ai had a talent: at any time, any place, even in any position, as long as she wanted to sleep, she could fall asleep within minutes.
In those memories, there was once a minor argument with him; even while being rocked back and forth by him, she could fall asleep directly.
Then she ignored everything, let him do whatever, completely uncooperative…
After setting the alarm, Hoshihara Ai closed her eyes.
