Maybe I had fallen into a certain routine, but for the past week or so; I, Aika, Mao, and Natsuki had been gathering at Aika's apartment so we could plan out our trip to Akihabara. Why Natsuki of all people is coming with us is... well...

"No way! You guys are going to Tokyo?"

"Well... yeah, but it's not just for goofing off, stuff... things we have to do- Akihabara- yes." A weak attempt at concealing the truth, to be sure, but a valiant one for what it's worth.

"Ehhhh...? So then... you wouldn't mind if I came along, right, Aika?"

"I have no objections."

Not helping!

"Ugh... there's no helping it." I leaned towards Aika. "What're you thinking bringing along Natsuki on this trip? How did this seem like a good idea; we've got enough to deal with as it is! Plus... I don't wanna wrap him up in all of this too..."

"With Natsuki with us, the less suspicious we are. I suspect the enemy already knows of Nakamura's betrayal, having Natsuki with us may act as a deterrent."

"What're you two whispering about?" Natsuki curiously interjected in on our conversation.

"O-oh, it's nothing."

Without a doubt, I had my qualms about bringing Natsuki along with us, I mean... he is my friend, after all. I do not want to lose him. If he gets any more caught up in our business, I do not know what will happen to him when me and Aika return to the past. When we... finally go... will I... ever see him again? The one and only friend I have had my entire life. When we return to the future, things will have changed... Will Natsuki even know who I am? Will he have ever even existed?

The day of the trip was finally upon us. And with that, I had taken all the money I had been saving up for over a year for this special occasion.

And by special occasion, I mean going round Akihabara in search of someone who can decrypt a useless password off of a useless computer, so that means I have no fucking money left!

“QUESTION!” I raise my hand in complete frustration.

“Oh, Yuuki. What is it you want to ask?” Aika, in her usual condescending attitude, allowed me to speak.

“What am I gonna do for money? You’re stealing all of mine and I have no way of getting home! We’re getting the train there and back, aren’t we? If we don’t have enough money to get back, we’ll have to stay the night wandering the streets and that really isn’t my idea of fun…”

Wait. - Hold on a second…

“Aika, don’t you drive a car?”

“Yes, what of it?”

“What of it? Well for one, we wouldn’t have to destroy my wallet with the journey.”

“Hmmm… you certainly bring up a good point, I’ll be sure to take that into consideration.”

What kind of consideration would you be taking that into, I wonder…? The kind where it enters one ear and leaves the other, maybe?

“Wait, you drive a car?!” Both Mao and Natsuki said in unison

“I am not spending any more money… we use your car to get there and back.”

“Fine, fine… we’ll use my car then. Oh- that’s right, I forgot to mention, I own a car.”

“There are SO many things wrong with that… where’d you even learn how to drive a car at your age? And you knew, Hayashida?”

“Yeah, she mentioned it a little while ago”

A little while ago, huh…?

If I remember correctly, it was around last month when we broke into that broadcasting station, the same one they used to make me see that ‘other world’ Aika was talking about.

Mao Nakamura plunged her fist to the table. “It’s settled then, we’re taking Aika’s car!”

My wallet has been saved! Eh… but not by much…

I felt kinda relieved we were taking Aika’s car instead of getting on the train, to be completely honest. Knowing me, I wouldn’t be surprised if I got lost when arriving at the train station, or I would do something extraordinarily stupid, like forgetting my rail pass. This may sound like I’m talking from experience, but in reality, it’s because I’ve never experienced things like getting on a train. I wouldn’t have the slightest clue what to do when I got there. It’s a little embarrassing really, this lack of basic real-world experience could come back to bite me one of these days…

Natsuki looked really excited to be going on this trip, he had a glimmer in his eyes that reminded me of back then. It made me feel all nostalgic, I think... At the very least, I was very glad to see it again, this time with new people I had made friends with.

The sun gazed at us from under the horizon as we set off into the blazing August heat. We were a ways off before we even reached Tokyo. Me and Aika were in the front, Mao and Natsuki in the back.

“Oi, Aika! y' mind turning up the AC? I feel like I’m about to die of heatstroke back here!!”

“Not possible, have to save as much fuel as possible. Open up a window.”

“Oi… do you think I haven’t tried that? But your goddamn window won’t open!”

“Oh, is that so? Unfortunate.”

“WHAT? Then open yours!”

“I can’t, it distracts me whilst driving.”

“Please… I’m begging you… it’s been over an hour now… I can’t reach the water because it’s in the trunk…”

Aika sighed, rolling down her window. Mao’s eyes began to well up in joy as she angled her head towards the right side of Aika’s chair.

“So, how long left do we have to go?” I asked. I really wanted to get there as soon as possible. Buses, trains, and airplanes I can handle, but cars… their tightly packed spaces – claustrophobia encapsulated. To be frank, cars made me feel extraordinarily ill.

“I’m not quite sure, actually. But if I had to estimate, I would say around 5 or 6 more hours.”

6 hours, huh…? Guess there’s no helping it, what to do to pass the time, I wonder?

We didn’t bring anything with us to entertain ourselves with. You see, we didn’t exactly come on this trip as a holiday. Far from it. What we came here to do was to find out what’s on that laptop. Speaking of which, Aika made sure that the laptop was with us. Constantly looking to and fro making sure it was still in her sight. I suppose you could call this another one of Aika’s quirks, an almost terrifying case of disposophobia.

I could hear Natsuki and Mao talking about something in the back seat. It was too early in the morning to be gossiping anyway, so I tried my best to fall back asleep. I could see Aika had her eyes focused entirely on the road, perhaps she was a nervous driver? Reminded me of an old lady driving… ahaha…

I fell into a slumber. But I didn’t have any bad dreams, only nice ones.

That was until I was rudely awoken by a sudden urge.

“Aika… ca- can you stop the car for a second…?” She pulled over by the side of the motorway.

A sudden urge brought about by a headache.

“Oi, you feeling alright, Yuuki? You don’t look too great if I’m being honest… is it carsickness?” Natsuki, always as considerate.

“Yeah… yeah, I’m fine. You might be right; I think it is carsickness.”

At least I hoped it was that. Given the circumstances it did seem the most likely, though… the other explanation cannot be ruled out.

Natsuki put an arm round me. “Heh heh… thanks for that, man.”

“No problemo!”

Natsuki tendered to my needs, Aika snickered at me from afar. Typical…

We got back on the road; a great journey was ahead of us all. We knew it was many miles off, but we remained steadfast in our resolve... I know this may seem a little too dramatic for a car journey, but trust me, you would’ve thought differently if you had been there, trust me on that one. Witnessing Aika and Mao argue back and forth with each other for six hours straight was, to put it bluntly, hell on earth. All the while Natsuki seemed to be enjoying it a bit too much.

“AIKA! Do you even realize how close your seat is to me? I’m getting knee cramp!!” Mao protested.

“I’m surprised you’re even able to touch the pedals considering how short yo-”

Aika proceeded to ram her seat further into Mao’s legs. “Oh, my bad.”

“AARGH! Bitch! I-I can’t believe you! You… are paying for that when we get out… I promise you that…”

“Oops, seems as if I mistakenly went backward instead of forwards, forgive me.”

“Yeah? Well maybe if you weren’t such an idiot you would know you’re front from your back…”

Throughout the rest of our journey, we didn’t encounter that many hiccups. Of course, Aika being Aika, forgot to top up her tank before we left, meaning we were stranded in the middle of an outstretching motorway that went on for miles.

“Aika… you are a complete ditz…”

Most of our issues had been resolved. It was 1 in the afternoon.

“We made it…!” I grasped my fists and punched to the air, releasing a well-deserved sigh of relief that we made it here in one piece. Aika is a surprisingly good driver. Her cool-tempered manner and somewhat reliable social skills probably paid a part in getting us here safely. She couldn’t have been driving for that long, right? Or…

I was reminded about the nature of Aika. This girl who was immortal, how old is she really?

“What if she’s thousands of years old… the amount of knowledge and wisdom she would’ve acquired within that time, the amount of lived experiences she might have had. It wouldn’t surprise me considering how confident she is in doing things like driving.”

It dawned on me how different me and Aika are. She, the more responsible and “mature” type. “Mature” with massive quotation marks. And me, the sheltered type who has barely any real-world experience.

Mao spoke up, “So, what are we gonna be doing, now that we're here?”

“Well, the only things that are within Akihabara are really only based entirely within electronics, so I would say it wouldn’t be that far of a stretch to assume there’s a place we can go to that might be able to help us crack a simple computer password.”

Simple… huh…? Well, I guess on the surface it might seem that way, but this is government property. They could’ve encrypted it with all kinds of countermeasures to ensure some rando can’t simply take it to a shop and ask a guy to crack its password…

“The documents that we found at th-.” I put my hand over Aika’s mouth

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” I tried my best to stifle her and my voice.

“Oh, that’s right.” You’re now just getting it??!!

Natsuki and Mao looked at us both with worrying smiles.

“This isn’t what it looks like.”

“A lover’s quarrel, huh?”

“Wrong.”

“Yuuki and Nakamura will attempt to find any shops willing to take in the laptop, me and Natsuki shall… let’s say help out with recon.”

“Recon?” Natsuki enquired.

“Yes, think of it as a game.”

“A game… what type of game?”

“A game in which we perform recon upon Yuuki and Nakamura.”

“That’s cool and all, but that doesn’t really answer my que-.”

“Enough chitter-chatter, we have some scouting to do. Now then, let us make haste!”

Like that we set off on our little adventure around the bustling streets of Akihabara. In weather like this, it’s hard not to notice every minute detail, anything to take your mind off the heat, I suppose.

“Hey, Hayashida.”

“Huh… yeah?”

“Who is Aika?”

“What do you mean exactly?”

“Don’t play dumb, how did she know about you? About the entire operation?”

“Huh…?” What was this girl saying? I thought she would’ve already known. Wasn’t Aika at the centre of whatever was going on within the organization Mao was a part of?

“Come on, stop playing around, you don’t know? She’s what your organization was after at one point, her immortality.”

“Stop making a fool of me, Hayashida…”

“Hah?” I was baffled, it seemed like she genuinely didn’t know about Aika’s true nature. This doesn’t make sense; you think they’d tell her something so important.

“Wasn’t it your mission to observe me? Why do you think they were doing that? Some random high school kid no less. Did you not think for a second why they were doing that?”

“I never asked, I just did. That is the way it should be.”

“But don’t you regret that now?”

“Perhaps… in retrospect. However, if I were to be duped once again, I would still follow the chain of command.”

“But… why?”

“Because if you don’t, everything becomes blurred. Things become up to interpretation. Rules, law. Disregarding these things would also mean the people who are ranked below me would follow suit.”

“But they are threatening this planet with what they’re experimenting with. You know that right? You should know first-hand the potential destructivity of what they’re doing.”

“Still, I mustn’t.”

“Yet here you are disobeying their orders…”

“Yes, well I’m not given much of a choice now, am I? My life will always come first, the rule of law second.”

We continued to walk through the deafening crowds, the place we were walking to would be densely populated with people, especially at this time of day. However, we thought we might not be far off in finding a shop to help us crack the laptop's password, but getting from point A to point B with so many people about would prove to be a challenge.

“Look at that.” She pointed towards a shop not too far away. A computer repairs shop that also retrieved forgotten passwords. Like that, our search had ended. We entered the shop with bated breath.

“It’s entirely possible that the laptop we stole from the broadcast station could be so protected that we would need some supercomputer to crack the code. Or… my worst fear, that this entire trip was pointless, that even if we do manage to crack the password, nothing of significance would be on it.”

“Excuse me.”

The guy at the makeshift desk in front of us sported a plain black t-shirt with ripped jeans, and a ponytail, his hair was so long actually that even with the ponytail, it came all the way down to his waist.

“You two – pay together?”

Broken… and straight to the point.

“Uhh yeah… wait- no!” His accent and lack of communication ability caught me off guard. Yep, I was sorely reminded that I was the one with the bill attached to me.

“Ok then. What service?”

Nakamura interjected. “Listen, we – want – password – cracked – okay?”

“Nakamura… he’s trying his best, ok?! Lay off him!”

“Ohhhhh…” He paused for a moment and went into what appeared to be the backroom. A couple of seconds later, he returned.

“Ok, laptop? Computer?”

“Laptop.”

“Ok, hand me.” I took the laptop out of the bag and passed it over the desk to him. He told us to come through with him.

“So how long will this take then?” Nakamura asked, she seemed genuinely curious.

“8 character, 5 – 6 hour. 9 character, 5 day or more. 10 or more character… a lot more.”

When we entered the backroom, what we saw were many, many rectangle looking things that were all kept within one big rectangle. Wires leading from one place to another. The dominating red, white and blue stripes converged on my eyes.

“This is what would be cracking the password?”

It looked kinda like a server farm, something that I read in a magazine once that said that it could store tons and tons of data. Except this was a lot smaller than the pictures in the magazine which led me to believe this, in fact, wasn’t a server farm. Then, what was it exactly?

From there, he said that we were extremely lucky it was an 8-character password. He said that we could come and collect it at around closing time which was at 8 o’clock.

We called Aika and told her that we had given the computer in. I asked her where we could meet up and she said:

“Meet us at these coordinates…” Eh…? Is she serious? However, Mao was…

“Understood.”

Eh? Eh? Eh? Eh? Eh?

Eeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhh?? Is she for real? Wait, why am I surprised? Of course she knows a random assortment of numbers and what they mean!

“Yuuki, what’s with that stare?”

“Oh… nothing in particular…” What a nutcase she is!

As the streets started to settle down in numbers, Mao’s blonde hair stud out even more. It was like she was some sort of Goddess. I read in a history book during school that having blonde hair and blue eyes meant that you were “special”, whatever that meant. Along with that, history books stated a lot about the end of World War 2, which reminds me… I completely botched my history test… *sigh* the little amount of things I do remember from the tiny amounts of studying I had done was that, around 60 years ago, on May 2nd, Russia finally surrendered to Germany at the stairs of the Reichstag.

This created somewhat of a domino effect all around the west and the east. A significant morale boost amongst the axis, and a significant morale decrease among the allies. This, and various other things spelt the downfall of the allies, which was spearheaded by three men, Benito Mussolini, Emperor Hirohito, and one more man by the name of Adolf Hitler. History books called them all “great men”.

On the day of Tuesday, 19th December 1944, the Axis powers won, leaving Europe in a state of disarray. Like that, the two major superpowers, America and Russia, came to an abrupt, but sudden end. A distant memory of its former glory was all that remained in today's modern age of 2002.

Rumours of a bomb, a bomb so massive that it could wipe out an entire city had been circulating around the end of WW2, but no such thing was ever observed. Discussions on message boards about this subject were still talked about ad nauseam to this very day. This was, at least, until thread discussions on the matter were heavily regulated and restricted by moderators. Nobody knew why exactly they were doing this. But deep down, everyone knew why.

People were still looking. She seemed displeased. Very displeased.

“Why are people like this…”

“Is something wrong?”

“Y’know, Yuuki, you were the only one who didn’t comment on my hair and eyes. I was a little surprised, but it also made me happy… that maybe you weren’t like the rest of them.”

“Like the rest of who?”

“I-it doesn’t matter… don’t worry about it, forget I said anything.” It made her happy that I didn’t notice her hair? Is she self-conscious about it or something? No matter, I won’t press her on the issue.

We turned a corner, as soon as we did, we saw Aika and Natsuki standing there before us.

“Well, hello there Yuuki.” Aika said as straightforwardly as ever.

“Y-yo… you, what did you two do whilst we were doing rounders for you around Akihabara?!”

Natsuki had a cherry coloured, blushed-up face, maybe it was because of the heat, but I couldn’t help but notice that he was carrying the sum of 5 different bags, presumably all belonging to Aika.

“You two enjoyed your shopping spree, I take it…?”

“Yep! And Yamaguchi let me carry her bags!” I was right on the money then… Natsuki, you damned masochist…

“The guy said that it would take at least 5 hours to crack the password, apparently we got lucky with it only being an 8-character password.”

“Then my hunch was correct then…”

“Your hunch?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Sure…” Aika… are you supposing that nothing will be on the laptop? Honestly, I’m not even sure myself anymore. It is seeming like that laptop might just be a personal one that one of the people in that Broadcast Station brought along with them. Regardless… we must see this through to the end, we must see what is on that laptop. Don’t get your hopes down now.

“What do we do in the meantime, then?” I really wanted to do something… today was a hassle for several reasons. I felt like I was gonna have a stroke wandering these streets, I could’ve sworn the soles of my shoes were actually melting in the sun.

It was at this moment that Natsuki interjected, “The beach… The beach! Of course, it’s so simple. Where’s the best beach that’s also near Tokyo?”

“I think that, in my opinion at least… it is in Zushi. But the beach, huh? Never even thought about that when going to Tokyo.” Mao affirmed.

“How long of a journey is that exactly?”

“Ehehe… 2 hours, it seems… if we factor in traffic.”

“2 hou-!?” I shouted before being cut off by Aika.

“Let’s go.”

A long pause occurred when she proclaimed as such.

“Wait, are you serious?”

“I don’t see why not, the guy said 5 or more hours, right? We get there in 2 hours, stay for one, then another 2-hour trip back, most likely less than that if traffic settles down.”

I think it was a subconscious agreement that we all had, to go to the beach, that is. It’s like we all synchronized with each other and just said, “Well, this is what we’re doing, I suppose.” And everyone would just follow along.

What was even weirder was that this was the first time I ever felt something like this.

We came to a crossing, the four of us stood side by side, waiting for the traffics lights to sound. The crowd around us grew even less in numbers as the day was drawing to an end. We crossed the road. The sun wasn’t as mean as it once was this morning, but its presence could still be felt.

We walked to the carpark where we had left Aika’s car. The day seemed to have gone by quickly. The sun, however, still seemed to rear its ugly head over the horizon. That’s right, the day is yet to be over.

Summer, the time of year I hate the most. Mostly because of how hot it is. Winter, however – I absolutely love. Cold mornings where you can see your own breath. Early twilights, meaning by the time I had gotten home, it had already gone dark, perfect for moonlight binge drinking and watching television. The juxtaposition between the cold outside and the warm inside is quite nice.

Summer still has its merits however, if only it lasted for a few days instead of a few months, a little treat for you amongst the coldest of days. But unfortunately, that’s just not how the seasons work.

“Then what are we waiting for guys? The beach is waiting for us!” Natsuki shouted.

“Natsuki,” Natsuki raised his ear to Aika.

“Can you stop with the cliched lines, please?”

“B-b-b-bu-”

“Yeah, I kinda agree with Aika on this one, buddy.”

“Not you too, Yuuki!”

“Come on, Aika! Get the keys in the ignition already!”

A short little side-journey awaited us, and so to the beach we went. I placed my head against the window, looking at people going about their day. Some had families, others had friends with them. All of these accumulated experiences, I wondered how exactly they were able to keep such an abundance of relationships. I couldn’t imagine starting a family. For nearly all of my life I’ve only had my mother and Natsuki, the only two people I have properly interacted with. Teachers and classmates come and go, (not like I talked to any of them to begin with, no…)

An hour or so later, I saw it, the beach. Very little, if anyone even, was on that beach. That was very strange for this time of year. Many people would gather at this beach especially on summer weekends.

Many, many beach umbrellas would cover the length of the entire beach, making the sand barely visible, one could say that the beach itself was transformed. Facing the ocean, to the left of you, you could see the curve of the beach, as well as the large hills that were covered in trees.

“Alright then, we’ll park here.” We made our way to the beach. Not a single body was on that beach, we had the entire beach to ourselves. Natsuki rushed to the sea, not having the foresight that all of us didn’t have any swimwear. We were basically just spitballing it.

“Oh, what the hell!” Mao jumped into the fray, chasing after Natsuki.

“You’re not going to join in?”

“I’d prefer to watch the two little idiots have their fun while it lasts.”

“Not much of the social type, then?”

“You should know already by now, Yuuki.”

“Of course. My bad, it seems I’d forgotten.” Barefooted, we touched the sand. It still being very warm. I could see the visible irritation in Aika’s face.

“Sure you don’t wanna wear shoes?”

“This is fine… totally fine…”

“Yeah… I’m not buying that one…” Aika slightly laughed, almost like she was trying to hold it in, but couldn’t help it.

“Y’know, I wouldn’t even have thought I’d be doing something like this, actually having fun at the beach. It seemed so foreign to me, but actually experiencing it, taking the first step into this sand, it made me realise –

realise that this is happiness in the making. I don’t truly know what nostalgia is, but maybe with this, I’ll find out.”

Aika gave me a solemn look, like she wanted to tell me something, but that face shortly turned into a smile.

“Thank you, Yuuki.”

“Eh? For what?”

“For today, I had fun. The car ride here, the shopping, and now the beach. All of these are invaluable memories, with different people, all with a common goal.”

I looked up to the sky, “Yeah, you’re right.”

A common goal…

I could see Mao and Natsuki kicking water at each other in the distance.

Soaking wet… Aika isn’t gonna like that when we get back to the car, I can just imagine her face…

I faced the ocean, the ocean faced back at me. Just over the horizon was a great sun. So big, it consumed my vision. The light reflecting off the sea, it gave the water a more defined surface.

“Aika, is this a send-off?”

“What do you mean?”

“Our last time… to be with everyone, I mean.”

“Yuuki…”

“I don’t know if we’ll be able to do this again, not for a while, anyway. Not until our mission is accomplished.”

We both looked upon a sea, the horizon, however, we could not see over. Swimming over the horizon would be a difficult task.

Ha… what am I thinking…

Aika grabbed my hand. I looked at her, however, she just stared off into the sun, I followed after, we both stared at its sheer size, its sheer mass. I never thought I would find myself appreciating the sun.

It appeared that these days of blissful ignorance were slowly drawing to an end.