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Chapter 2 – The Decision
The house was quiet, save for the ticking of the kitchen clock. Nail and Elizabeth sat across from each other at the dining table, the remains of tea cooling between them. In the guest room down the hall, the child slept, oblivious to the storm of decisions being weighed on his behalf.
Nail rubbed his temple. "Liz… if what that letter said is even half true…"
Elizabeth met his gaze, her voice calm but firm. "Then we protect him. That's all there is to it."
"You saw how the letter burned," Nail muttered. "That wasn't paper. That wasn't anything I've ever—"
"I don't care if it was from another world, another universe," Elizabeth cut in. "He's a child. Someone left him here for us to find. That can't be an accident."
Nail leaned back, exhaling. "So… we keep him."
"We keep him," she agreed.
---
Minutes later, they stood at the doorway to the girls' shared bedroom. Saki was on her bed with a book, while Gami sat cross-legged on the floor, deeply involved in dismantling what looked suspiciously like the toaster.
Both looked up.
"Girls," Nail began, "we have something important to tell you."
Saki closed her book, suspicious. Gami shoved the toaster behind her.
"That baby I brought home… his name is Wong Lu. Your mother and I have decided—we're going to raise him as our own. Which means," he added pointedly, "he's your younger brother now."
The sisters exchanged a look.
"A brother?" Saki asked slowly. "I thought we were an all-girls house."
Gami frowned. "Do brothers borrow your stuff without asking?"
Elizabeth's lips twitched. "He's a baby. He doesn't even know what 'stuff' is yet."
Saki tilted her head. "I don't know… I'm not sure I'm ready for a brother."
Gami shrugged. "We could train him. Like a pet."
"Not a pet," Nail said quickly.
After a moment of silent calculation between them, both girls sighed and said in unison, "Fine."
Elizabeth smiled. "Then it's settled."
---
Two weeks later, the Waterson family discovered something no parenting manual could have prepared them for.
It began one morning when Elizabeth came into the guest room with a bottle in hand—and dropped it.
The crib was empty.
Instead, sitting calmly on the edge of the bed, was a boy. His hair was dark, his eyes unreadable. His knees swung slightly over the side of the mattress, as though he had been waiting for someone.
The boy looked about nine years old.
Elizabeth froze. "W… Wong Lu?"
The boy tilted his head. "Yes, Mother."
She stared. Mother? He couldn't even speak two weeks ago!
Moments later, the entire family was gathered in the hallway.
Nail kept repeating, "This isn't normal, this isn't normal—" while Saki whispered to Gami, "We skipped the cute toddler phase! I wanted to teach him how to ride a bike!"
Gami's eyes gleamed. "Nine years old means we can play tag."
Elizabeth just rubbed her temples. "We'll… adjust."
---
And so, they did what any bewildered but determined family would do—they enrolled him in school.
Wong Lu, now inexplicably the same height as his sisters, was placed in their grade. It was easier to explain that he was a long-lost cousin than to try to describe… whatever had actually happened.
From the very first day, the twisted comedy of the situation began to unfold.
Wong Lu treated teachers like political officials from a rival kingdom. He spoke with strange, formal courtesy, unnerving half the staff. At lunch, he dismantled the "mystery meat" on his tray with the precision of a scientist dissecting an alien organism, then calmly asked the cafeteria worker if she had "any food not poisoned by modern inefficiency."
Saki buried her face in her hands. "He's going to get us expelled."
Gami, however, grinned. "This is going to be fun."
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Chapter 3 – The First Glitch
The third period had just begun when the trouble started.
Mr. Harper, the math teacher, stood at the whiteboard with chalk dust on his sleeves and the enthusiasm of a man who had just brewed his third cup of coffee. "Alright, class," he said. "Let's see who's awake today. Wong Lu—" he pointed with the chalk, "—what's the square root of nine hundred?"
The room quieted.
Wong Lu blinked once. "Square root…?"
"Yes," Mr. Harper said. "You do remember what a square root is, don't you?"
Wong Lu tilted his head slightly, as if sifting through the deepest archives of existence. "I… recall…"
That's when it began.
---
At first, it was subtle—a faint flicker in the fluorescent lights. But then the chalkboard shivered. The numbers written on it began to slither, rearranging themselves into spirals and fractals.
Within seconds, the whiteboard's surface dissolved into a vast, starless void, the kind of infinite space that swallows sound.
The numbers "2 + 2" detached themselves from the corner and began waltzing across the room like ballroom dancers. A floating "π" spun past Gami's head.
Outside the school, the ground rumbled. Across the planet, equations unraveled from textbooks, rose into the air, and began debating each other in nonsensical voices. Centuries of mathematical truth twisted—bank accounts crashed, engineering blueprints reshaped themselves into recipes for banana bread, and for reasons no one could explain, 2 + 2 now equaled 71.
By the time scientists tried to react, they were too busy arguing over whether "square root" was now a kind of soup.
---
Saki clutched her desk. "Gami… do you see this?"
"Yes," Gami said in awe. "Math just committed suicide."
Mr. Harper was staring at the deep-space void where his whiteboard used to be. "W-Wong Lu… what did you do?"
"I am… trying to remember," Wong Lu said calmly. "But each time I attempt it, the world becomes… less consistent."
Saki slapped her forehead. "We have to make him stop thinking about the question!"
"Why?" Gami asked.
"Because if he remembers, reality fixes itself. If he keeps thinking about it, we're going to live in a world where calculators develop personalities!"
---
They tried everything—changing the subject, shoving snacks in his mouth, even telling him outrageous lies about penguins. But Wong Lu simply sat there, staring into nothing, the gears in his mind turning in ways that made the desks hum.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Wong Lu blinked and said, "I no longer care about the question."
Just like that, the whiteboard snapped back into place. The numbers froze. Across the world, equations sighed with relief and returned to their rightful places.
---
That evening at home, Saki and Gami wasted no time telling their parents what had happened.
Nail listened with his hands on his head, Elizabeth with her arms folded tightly.
"…So that's why," Saki concluded breathlessly, "the clouds were shaped like weird math problems when we walked home."
Elizabeth groaned. "I knew it. I knew that wasn't normal."
Nail muttered, "First week of school, and he nearly rewrites the laws of the universe because of a math question…"
They didn't know it yet, but the modern world had just received its first taste of Wong Lu's presence. And somewhere in the unseen folds of reality, other things—things that watched the balance of all timelines—had noticed too.
This wasn't the end.
It was barely the beginning.
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