The world had fractured. The casual chatter around me, the mundane details of everyday life, felt like a cruel, twisted joke. Route 17. Construction site. Truck. Class 1-A. Transfer student. The fragmented whispers hammered at my skull, each word a spike of ice. My heart, which moments ago had swelled with a newfound, genuine joy, had constricted into a terrified knot, hammering against my ribs.
No. It couldn't be her. It can't.
I pushed through the murmuring students, their faces a blur of indistinct concern, a horrifying need for confirmation propelling me forward. My legs felt heavy, as if trudging through thick mud. I reached the faculty office bulletin board, where a small, grim-faced crowd was already gathered. Whispers hung heavy in the air, thick with unspoken tragedy.
And there it was. Not a name, not yet, but a stark, official notice tacked to the corkboard. Vague enough for plausible deniability, specific enough to confirm every chilling whisper: "URGENT PUBLIC ADVISORY: Serious traffic incident involving a student from our school reported on Route 17... authorities are on scene..." I heard a teacher's hushed voice near me, laced with genuine sorrow. "...critical condition... female student... it's a tragedy..."
The pieces slammed together with a sickening, horrifying finality. Route 17. Female. Student. Class 1-A. Transfer student. Airi. It was Airi. My perfect world, built on infinite do-overs, collapsed into a pile of shattered pixels. The cold dread from the night before, when E.R.I.S first showed me its terrifying power, returned, sharp and absolute, but now laced with a raw, agonizing fear.
My phone, clutched in my pocket, vibrated again. A sudden, sharp notification. I pulled it out, my hand shaking so violently the screen blurred. The E.R.I.S notification glowed, stark and almost taunting:
'The Slider Cooldown has reset!'
My eyes widened. The 'every 3 days' rule. The rule that had locked me into 5-minute increments for what felt like an eternity. It meant I could finally change the slider duration. A terrifying, desperate hope sparked within me, hot and urgent, cutting through the icy dread. This is what it was for. This wasn't about free chocolate or pop quizzes. This was the ultimate cheat. I will save her.
My mind raced, a whirlwind of fear and fierce determination. I had to go back. Back to yesterday afternoon, before this dreadful tomorrow could exist. Back to before this future.
I tapped the E.R.I.S icon. The interface, usually so simple, now felt momentous, a gateway to a desperate gamble. The slider, previously locked at '5 Minutes', was now movable. My thumb, driven by a wild surge of adrenaline, dragged it across the screen. It whirred, the numbers rapidly increasing: 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours... all the way to the maximum available duration. '24 Hours'.
I slammed my thumb onto the 'CONFIRM' button.
A deep, guttural WHUMMMM vibrated through the air, shaking the very floor beneath my feet. The fluorescent lights in the hallway flickered violently, stretching and warping like melting plastic. The murmuring students around me turned into blurry streaks of color, their hushed conversations reversing into garbled, monstrous sounds, then stretching into a profound, oppressive silence. A powerful sensation of being pulled through a straw at impossible speed, a full-body wrench, twisted my perception. It wasn't just a subtle shimmer; it was an agonizing tear in the fabric of reality.
Then, with a sharp, abrupt snap, everything solidified. The fluorescent lights were steady. The hallway was bustling with yesterday's morning chatter. I was standing in the exact same spot near the faculty office bulletin board where I had just been. The clock on the wall read the same time it had been 24 hours ago: 8:00 AM. The memory of the news, the accident, the chilling whispers, the gnawing fear—it was all razor-sharp in my mind. But for everyone else, it never happened.
A surge of raw, desperate energy coursed through me. I had hours. Hours to figure this out. I couldn't just stand there. My immediate priority: data. I knew the details from the future I'd just erased: Route 17, approximately 3:45 PM, a truck losing control, Airi involved. Now, I needed to understand why and how to prevent it.
Ignoring the first bell, ignoring Tanaka's confused shout from down the hall, I spun and moved with a purpose no one understood. I found the nearest empty computer lab, slipping inside. My fingers, still trembling slightly, flew across the keyboard. Local news archives. Traffic cam feeds. Police incident logs – anything I could brute-force my way into from today's date (which for me, was tomorrow's date in this looped reality). I wasn't looking for a report of the accident that hadn't happened yet, but for predictive data: roadwork schedules, historical traffic patterns for that specific time, recent weather anomalies, anything that could pinpoint a vulnerability or a cause for a truck losing control. The internet was a labyrinth, but it was my labyrinth.
Hours blurred. Lunch period came and went, the scent of the cafeteria wafting faintly down the hall, but I barely noticed. My eyes were glued to the screen, my mind a frantic, desperate machine. I finally pieced together enough: a specific construction site, an upcoming lane closure tomorrow afternoon at precisely the time she would be walking home. It wasn't a confirmed accident, but a potential hazard. The details were chillingly precise, confirming the nightmare I already carried in my mind.
The pressure mounted with every tick of the clock. I felt a paranoid urgency, watching for Airi on the school's internal feeds, knowing she was unknowingly moving closer to her scheduled demise. I considered approaching her directly, but what would I say? "Hey, Airi, don't take Route 17 at 3:45 PM tomorrow, a truck's going to hit you"? She'd think I was insane. I needed a plan.
Finally, the school day began to wind down. Airi's final class ended. I met her just as she was about to leave with Stella, forcing a confident smile, trying to sound casual, despite the frantic hammering of my heart and the sheer weight of what I knew.
"Hey, Airi, Stella! Don't take Route 17 tomorrow," I said, a strained urgency in my voice, but tempered by what I hoped was convincing concern. "My, uh, my phone's traffic app just flagged it. Major congestion and an accident risk due to new lane closures near the construction site. It's much faster to cut through the park and take the Number 5 bus, trust me." I quickly pulled up my burner phone, displaying a hastily coded script I'd thrown together during my frantic research – a simulated traffic app, showing Route 17 as a solid, angry red line for tomorrow afternoon.
Airi, easily convinced by my apparent concern and "digital problem-solving" expertise, nodded. "Oh! Really? Thank you, Kaito-kun! I hate getting stuck in traffic." Stella, though slightly skeptical, shrugged. "Sounds good to me, if it's faster."
I watched them walk off towards the park, a triumphant, albeit shaky, sigh of relief escaping me. I did it. I changed fate. I saved her.
The rest of the evening was an agonizing blur of waiting. A gnawing unease forced me to constantly check online news, refreshing pages, scanning headlines. The hours crawled by, each one stretching my nerves taut.
Then, that evening, I saw it. A small, local news report, barely visible amidst the national headlines. Not about Route 17.
"Tragic Accident: Teenager Struck in City Park. Details Emerging."
My breath hitched. The location: the very park I had suggested. The victim: a female student. From Class 1-A. Airi.
A faint, almost imperceptible glitching sound, like a skipped record or a sputtering circuit, seemed to emanate from the very air around me. It was so subtle, I could have dismissed it as my imagination, but it was there.
My phone slipped from my numb fingers, clattering to the floor. "No… No, no, no!" I whispered, my voice raw, broken, disbelieving. My triumph turned to ash. I collapsed onto my bed, staring at the ceiling, utterly defeated. I had changed the path, but the destination remained the same. Fate found another way.
The casual power of E.R.I.S, my ultimate cheat code, now felt like a cruel, twisted joke. The comedy of my life vanished, replaced by a cold, inescapable horror. But beneath the horror, a different emotion began to simmer. This wasn't an impossible wall. This was a system with a bug. I just hadn't found the right patch yet. I had miscalculated. I had lacked enough data.
Next time, I vowed, my eyes burning with a desperate, chilling resolve, I'll know more. I'll find the loophole. There has to be one.