July 25th, Friday.
The afternoon sun streamed through the cinema windows.
Shiga Taka found his seat, sat down, and looked around. "It's so empty," he muttered.
Beside him was his college classmate, Shiozawa Makoto, a fellow anime enthusiast. He'd easily invited her out—partly because her name was the same as the protagonist's, just with a different surname.
Makoto also surveyed the room. "It is a bit sparse. Maybe the marketing was weak?"
"Probably," Shiga Taka nodded. "When I bought tickets, I noticed the animation had very few screenings."
"Can't be helped. Even though it's an lsp anime, the studio's strength is TV animation. Lin Zhiyan only did the character design—he didn't even write the script. As for Mamoru Hosoda, he's fine with Digimon movies, but I have doubts about his ability to handle a romance with time travel. The quality might be questionable," Makoto analyzed.
"That's true," Shiga Taka agreed.
They chatted for a while longer until the movie started. Then, they fell silent and focused on the screen.
"If today... if today were just an ordinary day, none of this would have happened. But... I forgot. Today is my unluckiest day."
"Even though I thought it wouldn't happen, I'm going to die. I'm going to die today. If I'd known, I would have woken up early, not slept in, not been late, not failed at making tempura, and not been bumped into by that idiot boy."
"I remember today... it was supposed to be a 'nice day'."
"Aunt! Witch Aunt! I'm alive, right? Nothing's wrong, is it?"
"This is a time jump."
"A time jump?"
"You were about to be run over by a train, weren't you? You flew off your bicycle, but when you came to, you found yourself back in the recent past."
"That's right."
"This is a time jump. Time is irreversible; it can't flow backward. So, Makoto, you yourself traveled back in time."
The story begins simply, focusing on the "unlucky" incidents that befall the protagonist, Konno Makoto. During one such incident, she discovers a walnut-shaped object with twinkling red lights in the science lab. Just then, a figure suddenly appears, startling her. She trips and falls, her right hand landing on the object, granting her the ability to time leap.
Of course, she doesn't realize she has this power at first. It's only later, while cycling home, that her brakes fail on a steep slope. She hurtles down the hill, straight toward an oncoming train.
She should have died, but in the blink of an eye, she finds herself back before the crash.
Afterward, she seeks out her aunt, Yoshiyama Kazuko, the novel's actual protagonist. Kazuko works at an art museum, restoring a painting, and having experienced something similar herself, she calmly explains the situation to Makoto.
Upon learning about her time-leaping ability, Makoto returns home and begins experimenting. She soon discovers that by running and leaping, she can trigger the time leap and return to the past.
After mastering her ability, the protagonist began using it to avoid unfortunate events and gain small advantages, such as preparing for mock exams in advance or extending her karaoke sessions by a few extra hours.
This marked only the first stage of the story, but the second stage soon followed.
The protagonist had two close male friends who often hung out together: Mamiya Chiaki and Tsuda Kousuke.
A junior student confessed to Kousuke, who politely rejected her. This would have been a minor incident, but one evening, while Chiaki was cycling home with the protagonist, he suddenly confessed his feelings to her.
Unsure of her own feelings for Chiaki and fearing she would ruin their friendship, the protagonist repeatedly used her time-jumping ability to avoid his confession.
When she realized she couldn't avoid it as long as she went home with Chiaki, she became increasingly troubled. In the end, she decided to avoid him altogether, denying him any opportunity to confess.
Later, she discovered another problem: while she could avoid misfortunes by jumping through time, someone always got injured as a result.
For instance, her best friend, Hayakawa Yuri, was secretly in love with Chiaki, and a junior who liked Kosuke approached her to discuss the matter.
Another issue was that her time-jumping ability had a limited number of uses.
The protagonist repeatedly used her time-jumping ability. When only one use remained, she successfully helped the junior and her friend Kosuke grow closer.
Then, as she turned her attention to finding the figure she'd encountered in the science lab, she suddenly received an email from Kosuke. He said the junior had confessed to him and asked to borrow her bicycle to take the injured junior to the hospital.
Remembering her own previous bicycle accident, the protagonist panicked. When her calls to Kosuke went unanswered, she ran out of school searching for them, heading toward the slope at the train crossing.
At the exact time of her original accident, no accident occurred, which brought her a secret sense of relief. Just then, she received a call from Chiaki, who told her Kosuke was at his house.
After a brief conversation, Chiaki suddenly asked, "Have you... been time-jumping all along?"
The question startled her, and she instinctively used her last remaining time jump.
Just as she'd finally dodged Chiaki's question, she suddenly saw Kosuke riding her bicycle, giving her a wave as he sped past with a junior student in tow. He then shot down the slope at full speed.
The protagonist froze for a moment before turning around and desperately shouting, desperately chasing, but ultimately failing to prevent the tragedy.
"Stop! Stop! Stop... Stop!"
She fell repeatedly, her body bruised and battered, and cried out, wishing time would stop.
And time did stop—not because she had activated her last time-leap ability, but because Chiaki had activated his own.
Chiaki revealed that he had traveled from the future to see a specific painting at the art museum, the one her Witch Aunt was restoring.
The walnut-like object he had dropped in the science lab earlier was his power source for time travel, and he hadn't expected her to use it.
His last charge had just been used up, leaving him unable to return to the future. Moreover, because he had revealed his origins and time-travel abilities to her, he was about to disappear.
After a final farewell, Chiaki vanished without a trace.
Rumors ran rampant in the classroom, with everyone speculating about different things. Hayakawa Yuri, who had a secret crush on Chiaki, cried her eyes out.
The protagonist was also heartbroken. After a brief conversation with Kosuke, she rushed to the rooftop alone and sobbed uncontrollably.
That night, back at home, the protagonist was withdrawn when she suddenly realized she had another chance to time jump.
It turned out that when Chiaki had used his time jump ability to save Kosuke and the underclassman, he had returned to a point before her last use of the ability. In this timeline, she had never actually used her time jump.
Realizing this, the protagonist burst out of her house in the middle of the night.
"Run... Ah!"
She shouted as she leaped off a downhill slope, accompanied by the beautiful insert song "The Unchanging Thing," pushing the story toward its climax.
Using this final time jump, the protagonist prevented Kosuke from asking to borrow her bicycle and then found Chiaki.
In the end, Chiaki didn't disappear. Instead, he returned to the future.
However, before they parted, as the protagonist was sobbing uncontrollably, Chiaki suddenly ran back, leaned close, and whispered in her ear, "I'll wait for you in the future."
The protagonist froze for a moment, stopped crying, and replied, "Okay, I'm coming right away. I'll run there."
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