That afternoon he called up Madoka and apologized over the phone. Madoka blew it all off and instead set up a date for next weekend. Toshi really wanted to find an excuse to blow her off instead, but felt way too guilty about the whole thing. When he hung up, he spent the rest of the evening working on his sound equipment. He had a bunch of sound mixing programs from when he was Honey Whitefox and he actually remembered how to use all of it. It was one of the few memories left over from the previous Toshi, so new Toshi strived to preserve those skills. He didn’t know how to make new song, so he wound up trying to recreate songs from his old world. He was rather good at it and had created quite a library over the past few months.

You'd be surprised just what you can do with standardized music generation. Need a base guitar? No problem. Put in the notes it's supposed to play and you get a, if not actually good, at least reasonable version, base guitar playing fairly well. Getting the program to imitate say Seventh Son, or End of The Line, well, that's rather hit or miss. Oddly enough, New Toshi's otherworldly memories of songs he heard combined with old Toshi's skill at understanding the breakdown of a song combined rather nicely. He enjoyed his little collection of music from another world. He made sure not to share it with anyone, of course. He would be careful when recording vocals for the songs to make sure he did it when nobody was home. Of course, he didn't remember all the words exactly, so he put his own spin on things. Still, it was better than nothing.

He got an email alert in the middle of a remix and paused to read it. The shell company was gathering too much attention lately. It wouldn’t help to keep putting everything off. It'd be only a matter of time before someone in authority started 'requesting' an interview. If not from the actual government, but from people who would find Toshi to be a threat and want to apply pressure from the government upon him.

~Sigh. One more problem I have to deal with.~

He responded to the email and arranged to interview this world’s version of himself. He had been putting this off, but hey, the weekend was already ruined by this stupid date, let's have an interview as well. He hoped his counterpart was doing well. He would hate to find out his mirror self was doing poorly. He'd feel rather guilty and want to help himself out. Hiring someone out of pity is just a bad idea. So is hiring relatives. Although, was he a relative? Did Toshi have any obligation to help... himself? Not really, but he was at least honest enough with himself to know that he would anyways. He had developed this deep seated sense of guilt that he suspected was a left over fragment of old Toshi. He wasn't sure if it was a good or bad thing. He certainly was a kinder person now then he used to be in either life. Was he greater than the sum of his parts? Philosophical questions like this were rarely anything good to think about. They only served to stress Toshi. When he got stressed, his thoughts turned to Naora.

Impulsively he sent her a text

Toshi: Thinking of you.

Naora: Still a bit sore. ;)

Toshi: Not that. Just… thinking of you.

There was a good ten minutes with no response. Just about when Toshi gave up she replied.

Naora: I think about you all the time. Heard about Madoka. What happened?

Toshi: I don’t know what happened. I didn’t mean to hurt her. I just hit the ball as hard as I could and...

Naora: And you knocked her ass out. Couldn’t have happened to a more arrogant cunt.

Toshi: She’s not that bad.

Naora: Did she guilt you into dating her?

Toshi stared at his phone. He contemplated lying as he wrote several different replies he all deleted.

Toshi: I wouldn’t say ‘guilt’. But… yes. We’re going on a date.

Naora: She’s not the one for you.

Toshi: Yeah. I don’t think we’re made for each other. But I have to go through with it.

Naroa: Wait for me.

Toshi blinked. He stared at the text and for a moment his heart jumped up into his throat. However, immediately after it followed:

Naora: BRB. AFK.

Toshi snorted and laughed at himself for jumping to conclusions, ~She just needed to do something.~

Elsewhere, lying on her bed and clutching her chest, Naora was having a heart attack when she realized what she had typed. She quickly typed out BRB and AFK to make it look like she just needed to pause the conversation, ~I can’t ask him to wait. I can’t. Oh god he’s so better off without me. What am I thinking?~ Her breathing slowed as she got control of herself. She stared at the phone as he replied.

Toshi: I’ll wait for you.

Both of them looked at that line and thought about what it was intended to mean.

Both also thought about what they wished it could have meant.