The next morning, reality felt thin. Tetsuya had spent the night staring at his ceiling, his mind replaying the conversation with Mari. He walked into the classroom a ghost.
He found Riku and Yuria already waiting for him by his desk, their expressions a study in contrast. Yuria looked at him with profound worry. Riku was leaning back in his chair, arms crossed, his face a mask of clinical concern.
"You look terrible, Tetsuya. Lack of sleep can induce mild hallucinatory states, you know."
Mari has just come to the class. Her eyes found Tetsuya's, then flickered to the two friends flanking him. A silent sigh that said everything.
"You told them..."
Mari didn't waste any words. She walked over to the small group.
"Riku-kun. Yuria-chan. Look at the clock on the wall."
Her voice was quiet.
Instinctively, all three of them obeyed. The white-faced clock above the blackboard was ticking with mundane reliability.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Then at 7:58:34, the ticking continued, but the motion reversed.
With a smooth fluidity that defied all mechanical possibility — the second hand began to sweep counter-clockwise. Yuria's breath caught in her throat, a horrified gasp. The morning chaos of the classroom didn't stop — a girl nearby giggled at something on her phone. But for the three of them, the universe had just broken its most fundamental rule.
Riku stared, his empirical mind scrambling for an explanation.
"A faulty mechanism?"
He whipped out his phone, his thumb flying to the home screen. The digital clock displayed on his lock screen, a system synced with international time servers, read 7:58:25... 7:58:24... 7:58:23... The numbers were rolling backward in perfect sync with the wall clock.
A small choked sound escaped Riku's throat. His face went pale, the look of a mathematician who had just proven that 2 + 2 = 5.
The clock's backwards journey stopped precisely at 7:55:00. The red second hand paused for a beat, then resumed its familiar, clockwise march. Tick. Tock. Time was flowing forward again.
The whole event had taken place inside the bustling, noisy reality of their classroom — a miracle hidden in plain sight.
"I just gave the whole universe... an extra three and a half minutes."
Mari said.
Tetsuya's world was atomizing. He had just witnessed the truly unthinkable. Time had just flowed backward. But not in the way it did in movies with shattered glass reassembling and people walking backward. The other students were still moving forward, still laughing, still oblivious. The very fabric of causality had been bent — yet the effects continued as if nothing had happened.
Riku — the staunch empiricist — looked like a man who had just seen the undeniable proof of ghosts. His eyes darted from the clock, to Mari, to his phone, then back to the clock. His face was devoid of color, his jaw slack.
"A violation of..."
He trailed off, his scientific lexicon failing him in the face of such a horrifying impossible.
Yuria meanwhile had pressed a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide with a mixture of awe and profound fear. Her spiritual framework, while accepting of miracles — still operated on a divine will that intervened in a comprehensible manner.
...
The morning hours crawled by, a blur of meaningless information. Finally the bell for lunch break rang, a jarring sound in the heavy silence that had settled between the four of them.
Mari gathered her bento box, her movements quiet and deliberate. She looked at Tetsuya, then at Riku, then Yuria, her usual bright cheerfulness replaced by a muted seriousness. Her fingers fiddled with the strap of her bag.
"Let's... let's still eat together today."
She said, her voice soft, almost hesitant.
"There's... still a lot to talk about. A lot for you all to... ask."
No one moved. No one spoke of going anywhere else. The three of them simply nodded. They had nowhere else to go. Their reality now resided with the girl who was both human and everything.
...
Mari finally set her chopsticks down, looking at the three of them with eyes that held an unsettling blend of vastness and human vulnerability. Her usual gentle smile was absent, replaced by an earnest expression.
"I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I'm... different. That I'm some cold, distant entity. That the Mari you knew was a lie."
She shook her head slowly, a faint sadness flickering in her eyes.
"But that's not true. Not at all."
Her gaze was now filled with a profound depth of understanding.
"I'm still Mari. I was always Mari. Everything you knew about me, everything we shared... all of it was real."
She paused, looking directly at Tetsuya, then at Riku, then at Yuria, her eyes meeting each of theirs with an undeniable sincerity.
"And I completely understand how you feel right now. The confusion, fear... The sense of... of being lied to."
A small imperceptible sigh escaped her.
"Because I'm human. I understands. And that understanding... it's not some detached, cosmic comprehension. It's the messy human kind of understanding."
Her voice dropped to a near whisper, imbued with a quiet genuine plea.
"Please don't look at me like I'm a stranger. I'm still just... Mari."
The silence that followed Mari's quiet confession was heavy with unspoken questions. Tetsuya finally found his voice, a raw edge to his tone.
"But... why then?"
He stammered, gesturing wildly with his chopsticks, scattering a few grains of rice.
"Why even show us? Why not just... deny it? I would have wanted to believe Riku's 'inattentional blindness'!"
Mari's gaze settled on him — and the sadness in her eyes deepened, becoming almost unbearable. It wasn't the detached sadness of a deity, but the vulnerable pain of a human being.
"I thought you would understand, Tetsu. Of all people, I thought you would."
She said, her voice laced with a genuine ache.
"We've spent so many hours, you and I. Debating. Exploring. You, with your need for absolute truths. And me... I've always stressed the fundamental unknowability of the universe, haven't I? The limits of human comprehension."
She paused — a tear welled in the corner of her eye.
"You always seemed to agree with me then. To accept that there were things simply beyond understanding. But now that it's... right in front of you. That it's me."
Her voice trembled.
Her gaze locked on his, filled with a heartbreaking blend of disappointment and profound love.
"It hurts, Tetsu. That you can't accept this."
Yuria finally spoke. Her voice resonated with a quiet conviction, born from years of unwavering faith. She reached across the table and gently covered Mari's other hand, her touch offering silent solace.
"Mari-chan..."
Yuria began, her eyes filled with a compassionate understanding that bypassed all logic.
"I believe you."
She looked from Mari to Tetsuya, her gaze unwavering. Her voice rose, quoting words that had guided her through countless uncertainties.
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight."
She looked back at Mari, a soft accepting smile on her face.
"It's scary, yes. But if this is who you are, then... then I will trust. My heart feels that you are good. And that's enough for me."
Riku was still reeling, but his empirical mind was already trying to find a new heading. He pushed his glasses up his nose, his voice still a bit shaky but striving for its usual detached academic tone.
"Well... I mean..."
He began, clearing his throat.
"Anomalies, right? Science is full of anomalies! It's just... a really, really big anomaly. It just means our current models are... incomplete."
He gestured vaguely at Mari, his forced intellectual bravado barely masking the lingering terror in his eyes. He wasn't accepting it so much as attempting to categorize it into a framework, however inadequate. He was already searching for the next equation.
Tetsuya's mind slowly began to shift. The absolute truth he craved was not one he could grasp. But love... love didn't always require full comprehension. He loved her for her mind, for the very unknowability she represented before all this. Now that unknowability had simply expanded to cosmic proportions.
A slow, weary sigh escaped him.
"Alright... alright, Mari. I accept it."
He said, the word a reluctant surrender, yet also a new beginning.
"But... Even before this, you were the most confusing person I knew. So... I guess this just means I have a lot more to learn about my girlfriend."
Mari's eyes widened slightly, then the profound sadness in them slowly began to recede, replaced by a fragile sense of relief. A small genuine smile touched her lips. It was the smile he knew. The smile he loved.
"Thank you, Tetsu."
She whispered, her voice soft with a newfound serenity.