[FFML] [orig] Pandora's Paradox Chapter 3: Stable Time Loop

[Abdiel]

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Pandora's Paradox
An Anime-Inspired Original Story
By Abdiel
http://www.fictionpress.com/s/3185673/


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Chapter 3: Stable Time Loop

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They were at the precipice of 1999. By Pandora's calculations (and she
couldn't believe that her own father would make her calculate it), they
had to find her mother before April 1999 (Maybe she had a premature
childbirth? Her father from the future never told her). If it wasn't
Mamiko, then it had to be someone else.

Pandora wasn't sure. For all she knew, she'd cease to exist after that
deadline. As expected, like a student who procrastinated until midterms
to study, Junpei was all over the place. He wracked his brain on what to
do. He considered getting the numbers of his former crushes in case they
were Pandora's mother.

He even considered taking a second chance with Inoue the Cashier, of all
people. Yes, the one he handed a potted plant to... Aunt Reiko and Aunt
Minami had a laughing fit over that. Speaking of the rest of the Endo
Family, the two couldn't make it to Shibuya on Christmas 1998. They were
too busy to visit.

Pandora herself had a special little project she wanted to complete that
didn't concern making sure she was born, for once. She couldn't possibly
match the hope diamond necklace that Junpei gave to her last Christmas,
albeit it being fake. Then again, she _knew_ what he wanted.

"We haven't been seeing each other lately, Dora-chan," said Junpei a
week before Christmas. "I'm sorry if I've been busy. Maybe you want to
go grab a bite to eat tomorrow?"

"Nah, I'm kind of busy myself, Junpei-kun. Maybe on Christmas Eve?"

"A-A-Are you avoiding me?"

She gave her fa.... Junpei a friendly punch to the shoulder. "Of course,
not. We'll still see each other on Christmas, okay? Don't be so
oversensitive!"

"I-I-I'm not oversensitive!" the man who was more-or-less at a steady
90-kilo (200-pound) weight despite the increase of holiday munchies
said.

Maybe she _was_ avoiding him. A little bit, anyway. She still remembered
that incestuous kiss they shared back in autumn. Junpei promised that
his older self would probably send back the time machine... the
"Pandora's Box"... as soon as she completed her mission of not-so-
immaculate conception, and to be quite frank, she wished it was true.

She never once wanted to see her father _that way_. It was all kinds of
wrong, after all. Then again, it was hard for her to picture the old man
who raised her and the young man before her who gave her a lovely
necklace and her first kiss as the same man.

Or maybe she was just sick in the head.


===


At any rate, around Christmas Eve...

"I didn't know what to give you this Christmas, so... here."

"You gave me a wad of cash?" queried Pandora. They were again home
alone. Even the kanrinrin had somewhere to go on December 24.

"Er, Merry Christmas?" he said sheepishly. And then she hugged him.

"You remembered! This is the exact Christmas present I got when I was
seven, you lazy, good-for-nothing bastard!" She was joking when she
said that. Probably.

"It's kind of hard to top the hope diamond thing. For a fake, I'm still
making down payments for that. Don't you dare lose that necklace, all
right?"

"Fine, fine," she tried to say in an offhand manner while her cheeks
burned. "Now open my present!"

"Oh, look. I'll get to open Pandora's Box!"

She socked his face for real for that remark.

With a bleeding nose, he proceeded to open the present anyway, and then
said in a low whisper as he held his gift, "You bought me Final Fantasy
VII?"

"Well, yeah. I noticed that you still haven't gotten it for your game
collection while I was cleaning up even though in the future, you
wouldn't shut up about it," Pandora said as she scratched her head. "So
I figured it must be because I've been here all year that you never had
the chance to buy it or play it. Consider it as my makeup present."

She was then overwhelmed by the suffocating weight of her bear-like
father as he embraced her and went on top of her.

"Junpei-kun, you're heavy."

"You're the best daughter I'd ever had!"

"I'm the only daughter you've ever had, you stupid old man." She
chuckled.

"Daddy loves you a lot, you know that?"

"And I love you too, Junpei-kun."

For some reason, that broke the spell of the father-daughter bonding
moment they were in. "What's the matter?" she asked.

Junpei pulled at his collar. "When we're alone, you can call me Daddy,
you know."

Her heart skipped a beat. Why was that? "Yeah. Of course. Daddy." The
heartbeat skip soon turned into a stabbing pain that rendered her on
all fours.

"Honey? Sweetheart? What's the matter? YUKARI-SAN, CALL THE...!"

As soon as he turned his attention back to his suffering daughter, she
was gone. There was nothing left but her clothes, her hair accessories,
her underwear, and her imitation hope diamond necklace.

"N-No." He thrashed around, grabbing hold of clothing his daughter wore
before she disappeared altogether.

"No, i-i-it's too soon. The deadline was in A-April. THE DEADLINE WAS IN
APRIL!"

He buried his face into his hands while holding Pandora's blouse and
skirt. Every year, she made it a point to wear her clothes from the
future as her special attire for the holidays, even though they were
nothing more than a school uniform ensemble.

"I-I-I should've tried harder. With Mamiko. Or anyone. Please. Don't
make her leave me. I need her. I need Pandora. I want her back. Please.
Please."

It occurred to him that this might be his future self's way of taking
Pandora back to the future, and her presence was all a warning for him
to shape up his life. But he wasn't sure. Maybe he fucked up. Maybe she
was gone forever.

He didn't want this. He didn't ask for this.

"DORA-CHAN!"

"JUNPEI-KUN!"

In a flash, after the scariest two minutes of his life, Pandora was back
in his arms, holding him tightly. Never letting go.

"Don't let go. Don't let go. I want you to stay with me like this for as
long as possible."

"Junpei-kun! Junpei-kun!"

Pandora said his name over and over as she sobbed onto Endo's chest.

"I was so scared. I could think, I was conscious, but I couldn't speak,
hear, or see. I was so scared, Junpei-kun...!"

They heard the tumblers of the door knob move and the front door open,
and the two turned and wiped the tears in their eyes to face who was out
there.

"I came as fast as I...!"

Yukari Shimamoto went blue as soon as she saw the state that Junpei and
Pandora were in. Even though it wasn't her birthday till the New Year,
Pandora was already in her birthday suit.

From underneath her, a large bulge on Junpei's pants was itching to get
out. The future girl's future clothes were strewn all over the floor
too.

'Not again,' was what the two guessed Yukari was thinking right about
that moment.

As Yukari wordlessly shut the door (locked it up, in fact) the two
started chorusing, "It's all a misunderstanding!" but the words died in
their mouths.

Even after what had happened, they still stayed that way for the rest of
Christmas Eve, with Junpei stroking Pandora's hair while she herself
took the futon and covered them both up with it without bothering to put
her clothes on.


===


For the rest of 1999, Junpei went ahead full-force to win over Mamiko's
affections for two reasons. One, Mamiko was graduating by the end of
March, and she was soon going to be part of the Japanese workforce. Two,
last Christmas was the closest Pandora had ever been to being erased.

They were lucky that Mamiko ended up delaying her graduation by one year
in order to transfer to Tokyo Denki University after spending a year at
Tokyo University. Why did she leave Tokyo's top university to enter
another university that, while also good, wasn't as great as Toudai? No
one knew. Only she did.

Incidentally, someone had spread across campus that January 1 was
actually Pandora's birthday, so Mamiko herself cordially invited the
future girl and, indirectly, Junpei to the Ikezawa New Year's Eve Party
at their penthouse suite in the Nishi-Shinjuku District.

Even though Pandora had her reservations, Junpei was adamant that they
should attend the party, if only so she'd get a better New Year's
celebration than the usual "Stay at their drab apartment then go visit
the nearest temple," rut they were in.

To his surprise (and delight), Mamiko wasn't giving him the cold
shoulder anymore. Sort of. She was talking to him at the party itself,
at least. The usual insults. But it was better than her outright
ignoring him.

Meanwhile, Pandora had been stuck in the past for roughly three years.
Meaning she wasn't a naive fifteen year old anymore. She was a naive
eighteen year old instead.

For Pandora's part, she was still torn. As she suspected, her father
didn't realize that any girl he'd end up with, he was practically giving
a death sentence.

She hoped that it wasn't going to be the case and her mother would
survive (so that her stupid father wouldn't end up going out with that
bitch of a lab assistant).

Speaking of labs, after the party and around the time 1999 finally
arrived, Junpei met some new, kooky friends at the Ikezawa New Year's
Eve celebration. In between keeping his programming work and attending
his classes in Tokyo Denki U, Endo found the time to join a club that,
sure enough, involved laboratory work.

Junpei himself didn't do any experiments, but he was responsible for
encoding the results and creating programs and simulations for these
supposed eggheads. Actual, sciencey stuff, to be true.

Pandora only wished he'd spent more time actually fulfilling his destiny
as a time machine inventor instead of gallivanting around last year,
trying to woo a tsundere bitch who kept giving him mixed signals and
whatnot.


===


On February 14, 1999, Pandora tried her hand at making Junpei some
homemade chocolate. Because making chocolate was cheaper than buying a
box of Ferrero, she told herself.

She didn't have classes for the day and Inoue promised to fill in her
shift, so she had the whole day to slave away in the kitchen.

Hours later, Yukari thought there was a fire in their apartment and
promptly called the fire department.

A thousand apologies afterwards, and Pandora ended up with something
she'd barely call safe for dogs to eat.

Wait, even if her chocolates were delicious, they would still be unsafe
for dogs to eat because chocolate was poisonous to dogs. Never mind.

To her surprise, Junpei was in jolly spirits as he entered their smoky
apartment. Even after she said sorry for the mess, her father remained
unfazed, hugging her, and kissing her on the lips.

As she froze there like a statue from shock, Junpei explained, "I got a
bunch of chocolate from Mamiko-san at the university just a while ago!
It was as if the gods themselves are making up for all the chocolate-
less Valentines I went through from grade school to high school! She was
so... What did you call that term again? Tsubaki? Tsurushi? Tsundara?"

"Tsundere," she automatically corrected, still not moving an inch from
the spot where Junpei kissed her.

"Oh yeah, right! That's what future people call it, right? Tsundere? She
was so tsundere! She even said, 'Just because I gave you this chocolate
doesn't mean I like you or anything.' Isn't she adorable?"

"Yeah, charming," the unmoving Pandora said, doubling as a Grecian
marble statue. Or Galatea before she was brought to life.

"And you know what the best part is? It's the same expensive chocolate
you bought me last Valentine's Day! Ferrero, wasn't it?"

That was around the time that Pandora slumped down in defeat. That
manipulative bitch had done it again. The future girl didn't know if it
was on purpose or not, but there you go. She "checkmated" her on
Valentine's Day chocolate-giving without even trying.

"Oh, you even made me chocolates too! What a wonderful daughter Mamiko
and I are about to make!"

"Junpei-kun, _ew_! Don't talk about my... conception like that!" Pandora
blanched in revulsion, then said, "No, don't eat those! Those are no
good!"

Junpei's face changed into several different colors before he shook his
head as if to clear it. "Damn. What did you put in these pieces of...?"

Before he could finish his sentence, he took a look at the kitchen and
the trashcan full of burnt chocolate. With a determined look, he began
scarfing down the chocolate left on the plate.

"I told you, those are no good!" protested Pandora.

"Nonsense, everything my daughter makes is good! Besides, they didn't
use to call me 'Iron Stomach Junpei' for nothing."

"No, nobody called you that, Junpei-kun. They all called you E-E-E-Endo-
kun at your reunion!" reminded Pandora, but the portly college student
nevertheless finished the whole plate.

They had to call 119 later and rush Junpei to the hospital for food
poisoning.

When Junpei didn't come to school the next day, Mamiko herself wondered
if Endo was half-canine and he was poisoned by the chocolates that she
gave him.


===


They were dating. Mamiko and Junpei were dating. No, the fact that
Mamiko allowed Junpei to compensate the Ferrero with white chocolates at
roughly the same cost (so there were multiple boxes of them) on White
Day, March 24, wasn't an indication that they were dating. The fact that
they were dating served as proof that they were dating.

The rotund man in love was the thinnest he'd ever been as an adult at 86
kilos (190 pounds). It helped that Mamiko herself was also vegetarian
(or "vegan", as Pandora claimed future vegetarians called themselves),
so they mostly ate plants instead of animals during their dates.

Actual, honest-to-goodness, no-schemes, no-pretending, no-twin-swapping
dates.

Meanwhile, the lab tests Junpei was conducting with Tokyo Denki U's
Science Club was also a big help in him gaining prominence and fame in
the university despite barely passing its entrance exams.

So Pandora should be happy now, right? She fulfilled her future father's
request to make sure that she existed. Junpei wasn't the same man he
used to be back in 1996. He wasn't half as awkward as he was when he was
still being bullied by his sempai (who were now part of the workforce as
salarymen).

Meanwhile, Yukari Shimamoto herself had been attending omiai or arranged
marriage meetings at the insistence of her parents. This saddened the
otaku residents of the dorm (of which Junpei was a part of) because
their living reference to some old anime or manga was about to disappear
from their midst or some nonsense.

Pandora had no idea. "Maison Ikkoku" was literally before her time.

As for Inoue, she continued to be like Lunch from Dragon Ball: A sweet
and demure cashier who, after her shift, turned into a chain-smoking,
foul-mouthed delinquent girl with a pigsty for an apartment. Also, she
was Pandora's ever-reliable best friend from the past, before the future
girl was even born.

Pandora hadn't been able to see Junpei for quite a while. Well, they
technically "saw" each other at school, yes, and certainly during the
morning, but more and more, he was slowly drifting apart from her.

He had to attend to his duties to the Science Club, to his freelance
work, to his dates with Mamiko, and so forth that he hadn't really been
there for her.

Even then, Pandora doubted that her father would be able to "do the
deed" with Mamiko (the thought made her cringe before, but as the
deadline for her "conception" loomed, she was able to get over it). He
just wasn't that sort of guy.

Hell, even though she was his daughter, he didn't do a damn thing when
she was naked and on top of him last Christmas. Not that she wanted him
to, but...

Under normal circumstances, it'd probably take years for Junpei to get
laid with Mamiko, and that was with Mamiko taking the lead. Even under
these "abnormal" circumstances, it was still Mamiko who set the pace for
their relationship.

And sure enough, around graduation time for the college seniors, Pandora
discovered that she was right. Junpei wasn't the one who initiated
contact regarding sex, but it was Mamiko herself who broached the
subject... through emailing him via mobile phone, no less.

Yes, the Nineties had finally caught up with the Information Age, such
that everyone had these newfangled "cellular phones" at their disposal
nowadays instead of Pocket Bell beepers.

The first few cell phone models Pandora saw made her laugh, because they
were as huge as shoes. In any case, Mamiko had a "booty call" (That was
what they called it in the Nineties, right?) with Junpei, telling him to
visit her at a reserved room at a love motel in Kabukicho on April 1st.

As soon as Junpei got that (lascivious) email during the senior
graduation ceremony, he jumped around as though he'd just won the
lottery.

He then grabbed hold of Pandora by the hips, swung her around until
they were both dizzy, then kissed her on the lips while the rest of the
milling attendees clapped and took pictures.

"J-Junpei-kun, please! Y-You have a girlfriend!" stuttered Pandora in a
manner that would've made Endo squeal in delight had he been paying
attention to her, her head dizzy by either the fact that they were
whirling around in circles or because of their kiss (it was mostly
because they were whirling around in circles, though).

Junpei's eyes lighted up like twin flashlights as he smiled in such a
way that made Pandora's heart ache. "You're right. You're absolutely
right. I have a girlfriend. WOHOO! I have a _girlfriend_!"

Nevertheless, Pandora couldn't help but feel that the other shoe was
about to drop. April 1 was, after all, April Fools Day, and Junpei
should really, _really_ know better than to trust Mamiko Ikezawa after
all the shit she made him go through.


===


"I'm sorry. I blew it. Don't come looking for me," was the message
Pandora got in the middle of the night of April 1, 1999 from Junpei
while she was waiting for him to call her on her brand-new cell phone.

She knew it. She goddamn knew it. The other shoe finally dropped. That
bitch. 'If she hurt Junpei-kun in any way...!'

Pandora put on her freshly laundered school girl uniform (the only
remnant of her life back in the future of nineteen years from now... no,
wait, _sixteen years_ from now... which, ironically, seemed to her like
an eternity ago instead of something to look forward to) while wearing
her imitation hope diamond necklace and pocketing the cell phone she
paid for using the wad of money she got from Junpei last Christmas Eve.

The Christmas Eve where he... and she... Dammit.

She didn't have time for such thoughts. The good news was that, as she
took the train straight to seedy Kabukicho, the adrenalin in her veins
sending her on high alert, she hadn't disappeared from existence just
yet. What was the timeline waiting for before it corrected itself and
erased her completely like the last time? A dramatic moment?

Maybe she still had a chance. It was the first day of April. There was,
what? Twenty-nine days left? Plenty of time.

She then felt the closest a teenage girl could get to experiencing a hot
flash, which had her end up on the floor. Several bystanders tried to
help her up, but through the haze of her mind, she heard the train
announce her stop, so she made a dash for it.

Did it really have to happen on April 1? Fuck.

While Junpei was in the shower preparing for his hotel meeting with
Mamiko, Pandora took hold of his cell phone and sent the saved message
from Mamiko to herself. That was how she discovered the address and the
room number of their rendezvous.

Thankfully, the love hotel help desk wasn't being a bother when she
claimed she was a prostitute ordered for "extra service" on Room 1002.
They gave her an extra keycard, and off she went to the tenth floor.

She ran. She panted. She cried. She did many things before ending up in
Junpei and... Mamiko's hotel room. She knocked softly. There was no
answer. She knocked hard. She got a soft, "Go away. This is reserved
until tomorrow." She almost kicked the door down, but then remembered
she had the keycard.

The room was pitch-black save for the spectacular view of the Vegas-
like Neon City known as Kabukicho, while Junpei sat on the bed looking
for all intents and purposes like a down-and-out Buddha statue.

"H-Hey."

Junpei looked up, his eyes bugged out, and then he turned away.

"I got your text message. What happened?"

"T-Text...?" he mumbled before he cleared his throat, wiped his face
with a tissue, and confirmed what Pandora already suspected. "She dumped
me."

"Oh. Condolences."

The girl sat beside the sniveling stout man. She remembered his musk the
first time she met him. He didn't smell half as bad as before. The
antiperspirant, men's cologne, and continuous nagging for him to bathe
regularly helped a lot. Being around him was like owning a pet, almost.
A pet bear, perhaps.

"I missed you."

"What are you talking about? We see each other every day."

"Yeah, but we barely talk."

"Sorry. I've been busy."

"It's okay."

"You don't suppose a random drunk stranger would suddenly burst into the
room and have her way with me, do you?" was his lame attempt at a joke
before he buried his face into the pillows and wept. All Pandora could
do was pat him on the back.

"What happened?"

"Nothing. I'll try again tomorrow."

"What if there's no tomorrow?"

"There's always a tomorrow! You've been trying so hard to survive while
making my pathetic existence worth something. This is the least that I
could do for you."

"Did you tell her this before she dumped you?"

"N-No."

"What did she tell you, then?"

"She wanted me to choose."

She gulped. "Choose what...?" She already knew the answer to her own
question, but she wanted to hear it from Junpei himself.

He laughed nervously. "I-It's so silly. Some of the upperclassmen took a
photo of you and me kissing, and she misunderstood, so she made me
choose between you and her."

"And she dumped you because...?"

"...Because she misunderstood! Tomorrow morning, sometime in April, this
is going to happen, okay? You'll be conceived... born... and everything
is going to be all right!"

She ruffled Junpei's hair. "You're doing this all for me, right? I can
never be grateful enough for everything that you've done for me."

"I haven't even done anything yet."

"No, you've done plenty already."

Pandora felt something tighten around her chest, like a vise. Dammit,
not now. Why'd she come here for? She didn't want him to see her like
this. She didn't want this poor man to suffer even more by seeing his
failure come full circle with her disappearing into the ether forever.

"No! NO! NO! Please, NO!" Junpei grabbed hold of Pandora's trembling
body, her skin pale and blue. "I'll do anything! Absolutely anything!
Just please, spare her life!" he bargained to the non-sentient timeline
that chose now out of all times to appear and take this special person
away from him.

Pandora grabbed the fat man by the neck, gripped his collar tight, and
lifted her face to his in order to press their lips together. She then
opened his mouth with her tongue and breathed through his mouth, as
though she was suffocating and he was her only source of air.

And then the hurting stopped.

"You've been wondering why I never called you Daddy anymore, right? This
is the reason why, Junpei-kun."

He was quite heavy, to say the least, with his entire weight on top of
her, squashing her frame.

"Pandora."

She kissed him again as tears streamed her eyes. She trembled; all self-
control on Junpei's part went out of the window as he slavered his
tongue all over her body while she undid her clothes.

As he held her tightly, she cried, "I don't want to disappear. I don't
want to disappear, Junpei-kun! I don't want to...!"


===


A few hours later...

Pandora came out of the hotel room, her clothes disheveled, her
trembling legs bruised, and her crotch hurting like hell. She didn't
once complain to Junpei, though.

He went through enough. Also, she didn't want him to stop in the middle
of things. The aftermath felt terrible but it was more the journey than
the destination, really.

Meanwhile, Junpei was back there, spent like a bottle rocket that
released its load, snoring like a lion.

This situation was all kinds of fucked up.

Since when did she become McKenzie Philips? The things they did. The in-
room "toys" they used. The hours they spent wordlessly pleasing each
other, as though Y2K really was going to happen and come next year, it
was the end of the world as they knew it.

She couldn't think straight. Did she make a mistake? Of course, she did.
It was more like she intentionally made a mistake. Intentionally handed
over a blank page for her grade-school test like a petulant child who
didn't get what she wanted.

What was it that she wanted anyway?

Her father. She wanted her father. The father that took care of her and
spoiled her for eight years before he and his lab assistant altogether
left her to his sister's care. Three years ago was supposed to be her
happy reunion with him. She was even willing to live with that bitch of
a lab assistant who never once acknowledged her existence.

Then came Junpei. At first, to her, he was merely a younger version of
her father, with no beard. Then she realized he was a filthy loser who
couldn't interact romantically with women to save his life and was
bullied by his seniors from a nearby college he didn't even go to.

They had the same name, but they acted different. Junpei was her father,
yet he somehow ended up like some man who reminded her of her father
instead of _being_ her father. If that made sense.

Then things started to get weird. He bought her jewelry. She always
caught him staring at her ass with a conflicted look on his face.
They started becoming more touchy-feely in ways no family members should
ever behave.

The Westermarck Effect or Reverse Sexual Imprinting was supposed to be
in effect when people lived in close domestic proximity to each other,
right? Where the hell was the Westermarck Effect when this happened?

Oh right, it only occurred during the first few years of a person's
life. Even though Junpei was her future father, _this_ Junpei was
different from the person she called Daddy, the bastard who left her
stranded in the past.

Why did she have to fall in love with the Nineties Junpei, of all the
people in the past?

It was rather simple, really. He was there when she was afraid and
alone, left to her own devices in an alien world without so much as a
history book or newspaper archive to tell her about the things that
happened before she was even born.

He made her feel safe and at home. He helped her make new friends and
meet all sorts of people. She was always there for him whenever he
failed in his romantic relationships, and she was happy whenever he was
happy.

She had done something forbidden... unforgivable... but she couldn't
help it. She'd been ensnared along with Junpei, who ended up an
unwitting Genji Hikaru set up by fate itself.

It wouldn't matter in the long run, though. She'd disappear like she
never existed, and perhaps as the timeline corrected itself, even her
memory would fade so that Junpei wouldn't have to suffer from the
remnants of their shared past.

'I don't want to go,' she thought. In only three years, Nineties Japan
had become her new home away from home, and she only needed to wait a
little longer to meet up with herself... if only she'd been born.

But Pandora never disappeared. Instead, the last person she wanted to
see at the moment strode right in front of her. "You...!"

Mamiko Ikezawa smirked. "Did you have a fun time with your daddy?"

Pandora grabbed Mamiko by the collar of her trench coat, pushed her back
against the wall, then lifted her up in the air. "You bitch. Three
times, you've made a fool of Junpei-kun. Go near him again and I'll toss
you into a laundry chute with the rest of the soiled clothes."

Unfazed, Mamiko's smirk turned into a sneer. "I don't like being in
second place."

"...W-What? Explain yourself!" Pandora spat.

"What's there to explain? I don't like playing second fiddle to my oh-
so-perfect sister, so I dropped out of Tokyo U. I hate third place even
more, which was why I messed with your daddy's head. I'm sure you've
already figured that out," said Mamiko.

"Then why the hell did you trick Junpei-kun again? He was never in your
league, but once more, you just had to raise his hopes up so that you
can dash them into bits, like usual!"

"Are you really that clueless?" Mamiko clawed at the side of Pandora's
face, which made the latter bleed and throw the Ikezawa Twin to the
ground on her posterior.

As Mamiko got up while favoring her hips, she said, "I'm not going to
play second fiddle to you either."

Pandora took sharp intakes of air as she got a handkerchief and covered
the area that Mamiko scratched with her fingernails.

Instead of going to the elevator (which required her to go through the
livid Pandora), Mamiko opted to take the fire exit even though she was
wearing high heels.


===


Things just kept getting worse and worse. Although they used condoms for
the most part during their first time doing it on April 1, Junpei had
no idea how to put one on (as expected of a virgin), so there might have
been more than a few times wherein... slippage happened.

This was of course a realization in hindsight.

Junpei elected to never mention what had happened in that Kabukicho
hotel on the night of April Fools Day 1999 ever again for as long as he
lived, which resulted in him regularly greeting the irate Pandora with a
plastered smile that made him look like a plasticized mascot statue from
a fast food restaurant: Kentucky Friend Knucklehead's own Colonel
Shithead.

The dumbass.

This period of outright denial went on all throughout April. It was
during the second month since the incident... on May 1999, about nine
weeks... when Pandora realized she wasn't having her periods anymore and
she was feeling nauseated all the time.

She also hadn't disappeared yet.

She tried denying it the first time she came upon the realization. She
cried nonstop, drunk gallons of fruit juice from the convenience store
so that she could have enough urine to use for her pregnancy test
(which she checked for the thousandth time), and she refused to talk to
Junpei about what was bothering her no matter how many times he asked.

The dumbass.

There was no denying it. Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine
that she was going to be her own mother.

And sister.  And daughter. She was a whole family in one.

Never in her wildest dreams did she for a second think that she was
going to give birth to her own self, even after it became clear that her
stupid old man... who, come to think of it, was also probably her stupid
lover... sent her back in time for that exact purpose.

This was kind of like what happened in the first Back to the Future
movie, wasn't it? Marty McFly got sent back in time, he messed up the
first meeting between his parents, and he ended up making his own mother
fall in love with him like some sort of Florence Nightingale romance (he
was hit by a Rolls Royce instead of his father, George McFly).

She didn't realize it the first time, but hindsight truly was twenty-
twenty. Her situation wasn't that of Marty McFly but more of Lorraine
Banes, Marty's mother. What if Marty impregnated his own mother? What if
the child that came out of his mother was him? What if that child grew
up to be Marty McFly and traveled back in time in order to become the
stable time loop version of Oedipus Rex?

Pandora groaned. 'Great, more Greek story allusions. Just what I needed
during this lifetime, with a name like mine.'

The worst part about it was the fact that she kind of _owed_ Mamiko for
successfully hooking her up with her father.

Jeez, she and Junpei should be on America's Jerry Springer Show.

Wait, there was one last thing that was bothering her at the back of her
mind.

Oh right. Her "mother" died giving birth to her, as though her entire
purpose was to give birth to her. Well, she was her own mother.
Therefore, she was going to die giving birth to herself.

To think, she was naive enough to believe that incest with the younger
version of her father was the greatest of her worries instead of the
least of them.

She didn't realize that the rabbit hole she fell through had no bottom.

Becoming a time-traveling fatherfucker wasn't all sorts of fucked up;
_dying_ to give birth to herself and being stuck in a self-perpetuating
time loop wherein the only purpose of her existence was to ensure her
existence was all sorts of fucked up.


===


The last nine million pregnancy tests confirmed it. Pandora was
pregnant... three months pregnant... with Pandora. She was Pandora's
Matryoshka Doll.

It was around June 1999... on Junpei's twenty-fourth birthday, no
less... that the nauseated, bloated, and altogether cranky Pandora
dropped the bombshell.

The problem with her bombshell, though, was that like a "Pandora's
Matryoshka Doll", it came in multiple stages.

She started with the simplest and most obvious confession. "Happy
birthday, Junpei-kun," she greeted her father and lover, bracing herself
for impact.

Junpei breathed a sigh of relief. His daughter was finally talking to
him at long last. "Hey, Pandora. Dora-chan. A-About what happened on
April Fools..."

Ugh. Get with the program, Junpei. That was so three months ago. So she
just came out with it. "I don't have a birthday present for you, but I'm
pregnant with your kid."

Junpei's resulting spit-take was indescribable.

That was the First Stage Matryoshka Doll; the one which wasn't opened up
yet, but it still blindsided poor Junpei Endo enough to get him to sit
down on his beanbag chair and place his jaw (his chin had definition now
that he had lost so much weight) on his hands.

He asked, "B-But what does that mean? How...? You're pregnant with your
sister, basically! I'm a horrible man and I should turn myself in to the
cops!"

"Um, about that... that's not all."

"There's _more_? It's not enough that you're pregnant, I'm the father,
and your my daughter?"

And here was the Second Stage Matryoshka Doll; the revelation of one
more doll inside the doll. "I kind of figured out what your future self
meant when he said my existence depended upon you getting laid."

Junpei stared blankly at Pandora, slack-jawed.

Oh, how cute. He still didn't get it. Look at his clueless face. The
dumbass.

"What? But the only person I've ever had sex with was... No. No. Don't
do this to Daddy. Nonono."

Pandora closed her eyes and nodded. "I'm afraid so. I'm not only
pregnant with my sister, as you claimed, I'm also pregnant with myself.
I'm both my own daughter and mother."

Boom. The (still hefty) Junpei slipped off his beanbag chair, totally
flabbergasted. "All those months I've been humiliating myself to get
dates and find your mother, and then I... you... we... ended up..."

"Yeah, all you needed to do was fuck your daughter, apparently," she
said with the bluntness of a baseball bat.

"W-Watch you mouth, young lady!" he said by reflex, and then mumbled an
apology, the color draining from his face. "Wait. Wait. Wait. Um, so the
only way to keep you from not existing anymore is incest?"

Pandora coughed primly. "I'm not saying we've become advocates of incest
all of a sudden. It just so happened that the only way for me to exist
was to have sex with my father and become my own mother. Also, I'm well
aware that we've become a cautionary tale about time travel as well."

"You seem to be taking this quite well."

"Remember last month when I cried my eyes out and I wouldn't tell you
why?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I dried out my tear ducts."

"I kind of want to dry out my tear ducts right now." Then Junpei blabbed
without thinking, "So if you're your own mother, then when you're born,
you're basically going to come out of yourself?"

The two of them stared at each other for the longest time trying to
digest Junpei's statement before they went into a fit of hysterics.

"W-Why would you say that? That's terrible!" Pandora snorted. This was
the first thing she'd been able to laugh about in weeks.

"I-I don't know what came over me. Why are we laughing?" Junpei asked in
return.

"Nervous laughter is one of the ways we humans deal with horrifying
situations." Pandora cleared her throat. The Final Stage of the
Matryoshka Doll involved having to examine all the pieces and realizing
just how many dolls there were in one doll in the first place.

"I also mentioned that my mother died giving birth to me, didn't I?"
mentioned Pandora as casually as possible.

The remnants of Junpei's giggles died then and there. "T-Then there has
to be a way around it. We have money. We've saved quite a lot. If not
for college, I could've already bought our own house. We'll get the
best doctors around too. I'm going to save the both of _you_, okay?"

"It's not that simple."

"How can it not be that simple?"

"We can't fight fate. I was sent back here by my father... you... so
that I could exist. And the only way for me to exist is for me to die."

"Then let's have an abortion! You have that choice! Save yourself!" came
another unthinking remark from Junpei.

"Will you listen to yourself? I can't have an abortion. The baby is
_me_. If I have an abortion, I'll be killing myself, and _we'll_ both
cease to exist. There's no way out."

Junpei slumped to the floor and punched it hard. "Why? Why'd you have to
die? I shouldn't have... back in the hotel... I shouldn't have..."

"No. No, you _should've_. If you hadn't, I wouldn't be here." Pandora
took a deep breath as she held Junpei by his chubby cheeks and jerked
his head towards hers so that they'd be facing each other.

"I don't care about the incest or you being my father and my lover at
the same time. I don't care about giving birth to myself. I don't even
care about dying anymore. These two years we've been together has been
the best time of my life. Even if I have to sin and make mistakes to get
here, I don't regret a thing. If the only way for me to exist is through
a Grandfather Paradox or even a Mother Paradox, then so be it."

"Paradox, huh? So it's Pandora's Paradox?" Junpei quipped.

Pandora nodded, impressed. "Yeah. It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?"

Junpei swore, "I won't give up till the bitter end."

"I know. I love you so much, Junpei-kun."

"I love everything about you, Dora-chan. I won't let you die or cease to
exist. Not again. Not after what we've been through."

They kissed, his index finger playing with the imitation hope diamond
necklace he gave her a few Christmases ago.

"Hope is the one gift that remains in Pandora's Box to this day, after
all."


===


December 31, 1999; Friday; New Year's Eve...

It was almost the start of the new millennium, people where expecting
the whole world to have a global blackout as soon as the clock ticked
0:00. The millennium bug would crash all the legacy computers, and
there'd be widespread panic, chaos, confusion, and anarchy.

Too bad Junpei couldn't make a wager about the overhyped Y2K problem
like with the similarly overhyped Mike Tyson bite fight more than two
years prior.

Because of the millennium craze, there were more than a few "planned"
millennium babies here and there. Yes, their parents actually made it a
point to conceive during April so that by December to January, the
babies would start arriving, on cue, on New Year's Day.

Junpei anticipated this trend and, thusly, spent a lot of money in order
to avoid having his wife get shipped in line while the maternity ward
was filled with overeager parents who want on-the-dot millennium babies.

The only thing that kept him from spending all the acquired wealth he
got from... of course... the Mike Tyson Bite Fight was Pandora
reassuring him that everything was going to be all right.

He also wanted to make bets, wagers, or take advantage of upcoming
trends for the sake of having enough money to deal with the recession.

As such, he had Pandora write down all the future events she could
remember before she forgot them altogether after three years of spending
time in the Nineties: Facebook this and Napster that, mostly.

Once 2000 came along, he should be able to start "predicting" the
future more accurately, because the new millennium was the time when
young Pandora was most cognizant of her memories.

How he wished Pandora would have her mother along with her to see her
grow up, even if she was herself.

Junpei was never a religious man, but for that instant, he prayed.
'Please let her live. Please let her be there for herself. Please let us
change time.'

There was no way he'd have her live all this time only for her to die.
She was only, what? Eighteen, nearly nineteen years of age? She still
had her whole life ahead of her, dammit.

Was this what their poor baby... the younger version of Pandora... have
to look forward to? Dying at a maternity ward after being impregnated by
her father in order to ensure her own survival and continued existence?
She was born to die, like some sort of fucked up chicken-and-egg
dilemma? Bullshit.

The New Year was upon them. The sounds of fireworks were growing in
tempo. He remembered when he first met Pandora in New Year's Eve 1996.
The fireworks went off as soon as she jumped at him and embraced him.

There were fireworks going off his head back then too. It was the first
time a girl approached him with no revulsion in her features whatsoever.

The adrenalin rush Junpei felt made him even more nervous. The fireworks
that used to fill him with joy now sounded like the crackling guns of a
firing squad.

Why would he think that? He should stop thinking negatively. He should
hold on to hope the same way the mythological Pandora did.

He heard the countdown on the hospital cafeteria by the staff that was
on break. They were watching the proceedings on a television set.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

He heard a cry at the maternity ward. He wasn't sure if that was
Pandora: One-second old Pandora right beside her eighteen... no,
nineteen-year-old mother because they shared an on-the-dot birthday on
twelve midnight.

He was all smiles until he saw the nurse.

"I'm so sorry, Mister Endo..."

One should not fight fate.


===


Wednesday evening; October 21, 2015; Wednesday; fifteen years later...

"How were you able to make the nurse back then to do that?" the forty-
year-old Junpei Endo... who, after graduating from Tokyo Denki
University, ended up getting a degree at Caltech... asked as he
reminisced about old times while peering through his retro-style, lens-
based binoculars.

"Money talks, I guess," Junpei's blonde, shades-wearing lab assistant
Galatea Haniwa answered.

"I hired them to _take care_ of you," said the multi-degree mechanical
engineer and programmer as well as one of the inventors of an honest-to-
goodness functioning time machine.

"And for a little extra cash, they were willing to pull a practical joke
on you at my request," said Junpei's fellow Tokyo Denki University
Graduate who also garnered a degree, this time from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.

"What kind of hospital would do that?" asked Endo.

"The awesome kind that allows you to forge death certificates too,"
answered Galatea. "Remember how many hospitals we went through? There's
a reason why I picked that particular one."

"Was it owned by the yakuza?" the bearded Junpei demanded in incredulous
alarm.

His blonde and curly lab assistant lowered her head, dropped her shades
to the bridge of her nose, stared at him, and smiled. "What can I say?
Inoue-san knows a lot of people."

Junpei shivered and shook his head. "I can't believe I tried dating her
once."

Mari Inoue, the convenience store cashier, was now the matriarch of a
yakuza family. She had three daughters and one son who, to the eternal
chagrin of her Japanese mafia husband, was the most feminine of all
their children.

"Oh, look, look, here comes Pandora!" the "big-boned", 174 centimeters
(5'6"), and 108-kilo (240-pound) Endo (he was forty years old and his
deteriorating metabolism made him gain back all the weight he'd lost)
announced as he motioned for his lab assistant to hide.

And there she was... hopeful, naive, and demure fifteen-year-old
Pandora Endo who was "named" after her late mother (or at least that
was what the couple told her) and whose 163 centimeters (5'4") and 51
kilos (112 pounds) body belied a frame of pure muscle trained in all
sorts of wrestling disciplines.

Junpei took off his spectacles and wiped the tears from his eyes. They
do grow up so fast. Pandora looked so excited over the prospect of
meeting her Daddy Dearest after their seven-year separation back in
2008, when he left her under the care of her Aunt Minami and Uncle Seiji
as well as her cousins.

The engineering and programming genius who came up with the "flux
capacitor" algorithm used to do the complex equations required to make
time travel possible felt a disturbing mixture of fatherly pride and
romantic nostalgia upon seeing a more innocent version of his lover...
his second and, in retrospect, true love of his life... enter "Pandora's
Box" with the letter that, like a good girl, she didn't open until
today.

He turned over and looked at his thirty-four-year-old assistant, hunched
over in a lab coat and skin tight dress, her dyed blonde hair shimmering
in the light of the multicolored display that was the time machine named
after both mother and daughter. The light formed a perfect silhouette of
her body, particularly her spectacular...

"Junpei, you're staring at my ass again," said Galatea without looking.
"Pay attention. Whether or not I'll continue to exist will depend on the
next few moments."

"O-Of course, Dear."

As Pandora hesitated to enter the pod, Junpei had the crazy temptation
to run towards her, grab hold of her, and tell her not to go. It had
been seven long years since the couple made it a point to avoid being
around the poor (at the time) eight-year-old girl.

It had been particularly hard for the lab assistant to pretend not to
care about Pandora while following the harsh "script" she'd been given
to the letter from a different perspective.

Galatea had to recreate from memory and painful childhood experiences
the things that she, as Pandora, went through, in order for her younger
self to get to this point.

They needed a Pandora who longed for his father, so Junpei spoiled her
as she was growing up, which was easy enough for him. They needed a
Pandora who was searching for a mother figure and would befriend Inoue
and the apartment manager for that very reason, so Galatea faked her own
death by childbirth, changed her name, and posed as the sexy lab
assistant of Pandora's father whom she hated.

As tempted as Galatea was to break from the script handed to her by the
machinations of fate and destiny in order to sit her younger self down
and explain the whole situation to her, she couldn't. She knew. She
knew that if she... or the "bitchy" lab assistant... had been kind to
herself, she wouldn't have been so attached to her father.

Every little thing they did, every little trauma that the little girl
experienced as she was growing up, was required in order for her to
continue existing. Every slap, every disciplinary action, every shouting
match involving screams of "Go to your room!" and "You're not my
mother!", and every tear shed was all for the sake of their continued
mutual survival.

She couldn't risk it. She was afraid to risk it. So she persevered. She
grit her teeth and bore through the pain of hurting herself as a little
girl.

As Galatea remembered the past, so did Pandora. They both hated that
slutty lab assistant, although for Galatea's case, it was for a whole
different reason altogether.

They had to be cruel to be kind.

Back in 2008, when they had to leave behind the tomboyish rascal (of
course she was a tomboy; what else would one expect to happen a young
girl they trained in wrestling?), the person who took it the hardest was
(naturally) Junpei.

He wasn't the one who had to force himself for eight years to act like
he hated the young tyke. Galatea had to act like a kidnapper around the
time they had to leave her younger self by putting a chloroform-soaked
handkerchief over her beloved's face, hauling his fat ass into their
van, and driving the rest of the way to the airport where they had a
one-way ticket to Switzerland in order to continue their research with
CERN in regards to time travel.

It was also... tough explaining things to Junpei's sister, Minami, and
her husband, Seiji. But they had to, because it would be tougher to
explain later rather than sooner why they were missing a niece after
October 21, 2015.

They hadn't told the whole family yet, so it was going to be one helluva
Christmas that 2015.

Junpei, in a fit of irrationality and fatherly sentiment, got up and
almost caught Pandora's attention had his... "girlfriend" Galatea not
intercepted him and brought him back down with a full nelson; not an
easy task because he was now as big as he ever was, returning to his
full, sumo-like size back in 1996, when he was a mere freeter.

It was also hard trying to keep an idiotic, sentimental, and overweight
father from greeting his precious little princess after losing her for
seven years.

The dumbass.

"Are you out of your god-forsaken mind? If she sees us, then it'll be
all over for me! Remember what we're here for!" hissed the "slutty" lab
assistant. She also half-suspected that he did it on purpose so that
he'd intentionally end up in a full nelson.

Wordlessly, the tear-and-snot-filled visage of Junpei Endo reached out
for his daughter while his lover kept him from moving any further.

"I know. I know," cooed Galatea. "Hang on for a little longer, okay?"
She herself once thought her father was a bastard for sending her back
and leaving her stranded in the past, unaware that it was a necessary
evil.

They froze as Pandora peered directly as their direction a few yards
away, into the demolished remnants of an old apartment building. When
she turned her attention back to the time machine, the couple relaxed.

With a resolute sigh, Pandora put her father's letter inside her pocket,
pushed her thumb on the door, waited for it to open, got inside, and let
out a small yelp as the door slid shut from behind her.

Afterwards, time and space warped around Pandora's Box until it
disappeared into the ether altogether.

It was all over.

The two parents slumped back from behind the slab of rock they were
hiding... which was actually part of the old dormitory that housed the
very apartment they used to stay at. Yukari Uemura (nee Shimamoto)
pooled her family's resources with her husband, salaryman (and sempai to
Junpei) Keiichi Uemura, in order to open a liquor store and bar in
Downtown Shinjuku.

"Did you really have to choose 2015? It could've been any other date!"
said a panting Galatea after she caught her breath. She had to wait a
couple of more minutes before Junpei himself recovered (she had him in a
kind-of chokehold, after all).

"I'm sorry, Dora-chan. It had to be that date. It was a date from one of
my favorite movies growing up. It's my 'lucky charm' date."

"Dora-chan...?" Galatea froze and then smiled tearfully. She took off
her shades, moved towards her boyfriend, and kissed him on the lips.
"You haven't called me that in over fifteen years."

Junpei chuckled as he stroked his beard. "I can't help it. The two of
you would've been confused if I called you both Dora-chan."

After "Dora-chan" punched him on the face and turned away, Junpei put
his hand on his lab assistant's (and life partner's) shoulder and gently
rubbed it while nursing his bleeding nose. "You're the only Dora-chan
here now."

"What now?" Galatea... actually, Pandora... asked Junpei, her icy
demeanor of fifteen years past melting now that a boulder... nay, the
world... had been seemingly lifted off of her shoulders. 'Oh great,
another Greek Myth reference.'

Unconsciously, Pandora fiddled with the imitation hope diamond necklace
Junpei gave her many years ago (he once offered to replace it with a
necklace made of actual diamonds, but she refused), which made him grin
like an idiot.

"We now wait for the time machine to return."

As if on cue, the time machine went back to the future... now the
present... of 2015. It was set to go forward in time as soon as January
1, 1996 happened, so it probably disappeared from the past around the
time when the fifteen-year-old Pandora Endo jumped into the arms of
twenty-one-year-old Junpei Endo.

The forty-year-old, curtain-bearded Junpei Endo took a cigarette out
from a pack of them hidden inside his lab coat pocket and lighted it.
"Now we have one more thing to do."

The pair then went to their van and each picked up a sledgehammer from
the assortment of wrecking tools they brought with them.

"Are you sure about this?" asked Pandora. "It's a time machine. It's one
of the most important discoveries of the twenty-first century."

Junpei shrugged. "The only reason why I built that infernal contraption
was to make sure that you exist. I don't need to see Back to the Future
or even the Time Machine to know how this invention could be abused. If
there's some other mad scientist out there who wants to play god and
create our generation's version of the atomic bomb, be my guest. I don't
want any part of it."

The two proceeded to smash and dismantle the time machine they used to
bring Pandora's younger self back to the past. It took them hours to
unload and assemble the damn thing for little Pandora to see in the
first place, and it similarly took hours for them to junk it, which made
the out-of-breath Junpei consider going the "Back to the Future Part
III" route of putting it in front of a train and letting the locomotive
smash it to bits.

Junpei and Pandora collapsed into a boneless heap after the dirty deed
was done. The time-traveling woman asked, "Is it better this way? I
mean, we worked for CERN for years. They're going to build another one
sooner or later."

"Then we'll stop them for as long as we could," said Junpei in between
pants. Pandora blushed like a schoolgirl as her boyfriend stared at her
heaving chest, his beady eyes moving up and down like ping-pong balls.

"I wonder how it started. If I gave birth to myself, then how did I
exist? I'm like the chicken and the egg."

"It's best that we don't think about it too hard. Even after getting my
degree, I sill have no idea how that came about."

"You know, I'm still kind of disappointed we smashed that time machine
apart. Even Doc Brown ended up creating another one anyway so that he'd
continue having adventures through time."

"I know I'm one to talk, but I want the past to remain unchangeable, the
future to remain a mystery, and the present to remain a gift." Junpei
licked his lips and he fumbled through his lab coat's pocket.

He then asked, "What's your favorite foreign movie when you were growing
up? I know it isn't Back to the Future. You admitted to hating that film
because of how many times I've shown it to you as a young girl."

"Is this a trick question?" Pandora asked as her breathing went back to
normal. "I like most of the Pixar films. The early ones, during their
golden age."

Junpei nodded as he hid something behind his back. "Good, good. Around
the early 2000s, Pixar films were required viewing for young toddlers
your age. So what did Mister Incredible tell Elastigirl in the climax of
the Incredibles?"

"Um... You are my greatest adventure, and I almost missed it?" said the
uncertain Pandora.

"Exactly." Junpei presented Pandora with one more box to open. Inside
was a diamond ring. "You are my greatest adventure. Pandora, will you
marry me?"


===


On January 1, 2000; Thursday; New Year's Day...

On the bed right beside him, her face covered with a simple white cloth,
was his wife. Just as she predicted, her mother died giving birth to
her, so she died giving birth to herself.

It couldn't be helped. Living meant there were no do-overs, especially
events that involved stable time loops. Pandora... the younger one...
grabbed hold of his finger and smiled a gummy smile as he held her in
his arms. She was so tiny.

He was no Genji Hikaru. He had no ability to take one look at the baby
and think, "Hmmm. She'll make a fine wife for me someday." But it was
heartbreaking how Pandora "inherited" her mother's eyes. They were
practically twin copies of herself, at that.

"This is you. I'm Daddy. This is... was Mommy. This is your future."

The tears wouldn't stop falling. Then the baby took hold of the cloth
covering Mommy's face and revealed a blinking, breathing, and nineteen-
year-old Pandora Endo.

"PANDORA?"

The older Pandora giggled weakly as she berated her infant self, "Bad
me... Bad me... It was... going to be... a surprise..."

It was a good thing that the slack-jawed, bug-eyed Junpei still had
control of his motor functions, or else he would've tossed the baby out
the window in shock (and destroyed the time loop they were trying to
establish in the first place).

"W-W-Why would you do that?" he half-whispered, half-growled as he
handed Pandora to... Pandora.

"Because I just gave birth and I don't think after all the effort you
took to save my life that you'll just kill me here and now," the older
Pandora rasped while she... played with herself. In a wholesome way.

Fifteen years later, he would realize in hindsight that the practical
joke that Pandora pulled back in the hospital was small revenge for the
paradoxical-scale practical joke he pulled on her in 2015.

"You're a horrible mother." Junpei harrumphed.

"I know, and this baby is going to grow up just like me." Pandora cooed
at the child that was her. "Happy birthday to us, Dora-chan."


===


Next: The freeter and the time traveler.

Please go back to Chapter 1.

If the inspiration for this story isn't clear enough (you know, aside
from Back to the Future and Terminator), I'll give you a hint.

Random. Cosplayer. Wife.

Okay, fine. It's Steins;Gate. If you haven't watched the anime or played
the VN, look it up.

Would you believe that this only took me barely two days to complete
(barring editing) on New Year's Eve 2012? And yes, it's not really an
original story per se (Simpsons... I mean, Futurama... did it), but it
was still fun to write.

Adieu,
Abdiel
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