"What do you want?" Makise Kurisu couldn't understand.
But Okabe Rintaro had no intention of explaining. He just grabbed her shoulder and turned her around.
"You, come with me."
"What? Wait—"
"Woohoo, it's Assistant!"
"I knew she wouldn't just disappear so easily!"
"Seeing the laundry bag, I should've known we'd run into her, though I actually thought we'd meet at the laundry mat itself."
"By the way, Moeka's message... it's too long, too much of a landmine vibe, it's going to explode."
"Suddenly I feel like if I put my hand on Assistant's forehead, she wouldn't be able to reach me. Strange, Assistant doesn't even look that short."
"Let go of my Assistant, Okabe Rintaro! You're abducting a civilian! Come with me to the police station!"
Soon, the sound of car horns and the clamor of people turned into noise, and Makise Kurisu complained with great dissatisfaction.
"Honestly, now that you've done that, doesn't my shoulder look really strange?"
Saying this, Makise Kurisu couldn't help but adjust her clothes.
'Let's do our best for each other.'
Looking at the reply from the other end of the text message, Okabe Rintaro, standing nearby, frowned.
"'I have almost no information here.' What a useless guy!" Reading Kiryu Moeka's reply aloud, Okabe Rintaro glared fiercely at Makise Kurisu beside him.
"Why are you glaring at me?" Makise Kurisu felt completely bewildered.
Putting away his phone, Okabe Rintaro said,
"Don't mind it, it's not because of you."
"If you're looking for trouble, I'd rather you stop." With her arms crossed, Makise Kurisu leaned against the iron fence behind her.
"Still sulking? Mayuri is worried you might be sulking, you know." Saying this, Okabe Rintaro adopted a lecturing tone: "You're old enough, don't act like a child."
Makise Kurisu's face instantly darkened.
"You, of all people, have no right to say that to me," she said through gritted teeth.
Her gaze drifted outwards, and as she looked at the neatly arranged vending machines across the street, she said,
"Leaving that aside, what do you want to say?"
Even though it was a chance encounter, he forcibly dragged her over, ignoring her refusal. What did he want to say?
"It's simple. Stop sulking all the time and come back to the Laboratory to work, Christina." Humph-humphing, Okabe Rintaro gave his answer.
"...At least be consistent with what you call me." Makise Kurisu was almost beyond complaining.
"Listen properly, The Zombie!"
"Who isn't listening properly?"
Makise Kurisu let out a long sigh.
"Why am I involved in this? I really want to beat up my past self for being so curious at that time."
"Beep-beep—" Suddenly, Okabe Rintaro's phone vibrated again.
Taking out his phone, his expression turned unpleasant: "Again?"
"Harassment messages?" Makise Kurisu was a little surprised.
Come to think of it, when she first met him, he seemed to be replying to messages then too.
"It's really too lacking in common sense," Okabe Rintaro casually remarked, then his expression suddenly changed: "Could it be that that woman is also a spy for the Organization?"
"Organization? What's that?"
Faced with Makise Kurisu's question, Okabe Rintaro merely turned his head away: "The Organization is the Organization. It's a secret Organization that secretly manipulates the world, transcends borders, and is political—"
"That just sounds like a conspiracy theory, how tiresome—" Makise Kurisu's evaluation was cut short as she suddenly stopped speaking, as if realizing something.
"What's wrong?"
"No, nothing." Makise Kurisu pretended to be calm.
But Okabe Rintaro didn't seem to let up, looking directly at her.
Faced with his intense gaze, Makise Kurisu finally couldn't hold back: "It's really nothing. If you keep pressing me, I'm going to hit you."
"Hmph." Okabe Rintaro snorted lightly: "Looking for trouble? Follow me."
"After I finish washing my clothes, I'll assign you a task."
Saying this, Okabe Rintaro walked straight ahead.
"Huh? Do you think I'd shamelessly follow you... to wash clothes?" Makise Kurisu was about to retort, but then she suddenly remembered that her clothes were still piled in the bag.
Maybe she should just follow him and take a look.
"Don't blame Okabe Rintaro, I accidentally messed up the clothes."
"No, you're just going to go crazy like this without seeing the ID when you're sending bullet comments, right?"
"Okabe Rintaro, tsk."
"Who are you calling a child?"
"Lol, 'You, of all people, have no right to say that.' The chuunibyou who hasn't outgrown his middle school phase even in university is more like a child, isn't he?"
"Christina, Assistant, Genius Perverted Girl, Zombie... four nicknames now, are there more?"
"Yes, Organization Spy and Ghost."
"I feel like Okabe has some psychological trauma now. Last time, when he pretended to make a call about the Organization, Assistant just took the phone to look. This time, he doesn't even dare to look Assistant in the eye when explaining."
"Isn't that just because of shyness?!"
"These two really have the same rhythm. They get anxious together, they get flustered together. Except one is a chuunibyou, and the other is a pure genius Scientist."
"Can't deal."
"As expected, after all that, we still ended up at the laundry mat."
"No—"
"Eh, it's actually in a place like this." Looking up at the sign in front of her, Makise Kurisu couldn't help but exclaim.
"Isn't there one in the hotel?"
"Because it's a high-class hotel, there isn't one." Makise Kurisu sighed: "That being said, it's not my style to hand all my dirty clothes to a laundry service."
"You have me to thank for this, you know." Okabe Rintaro said, walking into the laundry mat: "...No changes?"
The spinning washing machines were as they always were.
"Isn't that obvious? Don't think something will happen just by casually spinning around." Makise Kurisu said casually, also walking into the laundry mat.
Her gaze swept around, checking the differences between here and America.
"The answer is often hidden in what is considered obvious," Okabe Rintaro said, uttering seemingly profound words: "Ultimately, by connecting a microwave oven and a phone, you can create a Time Machine—"
"That's not a Time Machine!" Makise Kurisu retorted without hesitation.
Okabe Rintaro: "?"
Makise Kurisu's expression suddenly turned very ugly.
She gritted her teeth and said, "Something must be wrong. Time Machines only exist in the world of pseudoscience."
The clothes tumbled back and forth in the washing machine, and Makise Kurisu's words were incredibly firm.
"I will never join the research of such a thing."