“So it is ‘yesterday’ after all. I thought I was just experiencing a very realistic deja-vu!” Hayato says, after reporting to us that he also noticed that everything happening in his classroom was not only heavily slowed down, but also familiar.

“The real question is, WHY were we sent back in time… As if this whole weeb shenanigans weren’t enough…” This dire situation and lack of clear answers start driving me crazy. I can feel frustration slowly embracing my mind. Whenever I think I might be onto something, the reality seems to be trolling me and saying ‘But wait! There’s more.’ Plus, why the hell is this happening just when I told myself I’d chill out about all this otaku stuff? If it were to happen to me like literally few months ago, I’d probably be the happiest person on this planet. But now it just feels like the universe is laughing its ass off watching me fail at growing out of my old habits. I guess I truly am destined to be the ultimate weeb…

 The three of us continued to walk down the school corridors looking for any clues, but to no avail. Since the homeroom classes were currently taking place, it felt like we were all alone in a building lost in a spacetime limbo. In order to monitor the distorted time flow, we decided to use stopwatches on our smartphones, as there was not a single person other than us to act as a reference. The clock was still ticking, however it was only a matter of, hehe, time, before it’d freeze completely. 

Hayato, who was walking with hands behind his head and whistling carelessly finally spoke up, presumably feeling uncomfortable about the silence that overtook our group.

“But I still don’t get why it’s ‘yesterday’ again…”

“Maybe since we didn’t stick to the script we were given sort of a ‘second chance’?” Saki comes up with a probable theory that causes a surge of inspiration in my brain. “You know, to reflect on our mistakes… or something”

“Heee, that’d be nice. But I’d rather reflect on those the actual next day though~”

“We didn’t clear the chapter.”

“Hm, what were you saying just now, Hiro?”

“We didn’t clear the first chapter.” I repeat in an overly dramatic tone. “ We didn’t follow the flow of the cliche rom-com story, so we were sent back to our last ‘checkpoint’ and we will continue to be sent back again and again, until we get it right. Until we recreate the ‘first chapter’ perfectly.” The otaku powers hidden inside me surfaced and allowed me to unleash my true potential. The words were flowing out of my mind without me realizing. I felt powerful. Like a ‘being’ gifted with ultimate knowledge and intuition… or, to put it simply, I’ve watched way too much anime not to figure it out. I hate and love myself at the same time. “Something, or someone must be observing us and judging our actions. If it, or they decide we strayed too much from the default script, we’ll be sent back to do the whole thing again. So the only way for us to proceed is…”

“To follow the script…” They say simultaneously.

“Exaclty.”

“So the time acting weird is like a warning that we’re doing something wrong?” Hayato asks.

“Most likely. It started to accelerate after Gotou-san ran away. Today, it seemed like it slowed down when Toyokawa-sensei realized Gotou-san was absent.”

“It sounds possible, but… Didn’t it calm down yesterday when we…hugged?”

“Fufufu, good job, Hero~” I choose to ignore Hayato's remark completely and focus on what’s important.

“It did. It wasn’t really a scene taken directly from such a script, but it was a heartwarming one that sometimes acts as a resolution to the story’s segment, so you could say we earned some bonus points, but it definitely wasn't enough to make up for the fatal blunder on the rooftop. Hence it’s ‘yesterday’.” 

“Hm, so I guess we’ll have to rely on our Hero to guide us through this story!”

“It’s not like I’m an expert.” Yes, I am. Let’s just not be so straight-forward about it for now. “But yea, I have the most experience out of the three of us in this kind of stuff, so I guess, I’m looking forward to working with you…?

“Yoroshiku onegaishimaaaasu~” In reality, Hayato is the one nailing his role best. This man was literally born to be the Trap™

“I hope you’ll go easy on us. We don’t really know this setting too well.” Saki said calmly while smiling softly. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll guide us through all this.” I fake my confidence and answer back with a smile. I grabbed Saki’s hand briefly to remind her once again that I’m here for her. Considering the time’s almost stopped, I figured it shouldn’t cause any more serious problems. Hayato smiled suggestively, but didn't ruin the mood and stayed silent.

Eventually, we started roaming the school again. To no surprise, the time still was acting abnormally. We didn’t do anything that’d count as ‘cliche’ and thus, repair the time after all.

“Hm…”

“What is it, Saki?” I noticed that Saki was unsure and wanted to ask about something.

“I was just thinking… You mentioned that something or someone probably is judging how we do, right?”

“I guess so, but that was just a wild guess on my part.”

“Wouldn’t Gotou-san be the first suspect in that case?” Hayato joins the conversation after being unnaturally quiet.

“That’s what I was thinking before too, but come to think of it, she’s most likely the one responsible for ‘today’s’ anomaly. I’m pretty sure we did everything correctly up to this point. But she, on the other hand, not only didn’t show up at school, but also didn’t bump into me in the morning. We didn’t think much about it, since we thought it was the morning of the next day, not ‘yesterday’ again.” When I woke up ‘today’ I started to look around in a similar fashion to yesterday, so it’s not my fault for not showing up at the place at which we were supposed to collide. “To sum up, ‘today’ she is surely the culprit of the time anomaly.”

“So that most likely means that she’s not involved in what happened to us.” Saki concluded. “But there isn’t any other trace, is there?”

“I can’t think of anyone else suspicious. Hayato, and you?”

“Nope, sorry… Hey guys, look, the time’s almost completely stopped!” Hayato looked down in a resigned manner and decided to check his stopwatch again.

“You’re right! Maybe we did something wrong after all…” Saki was starting to get concerned, but I quickly reassured her.

“It’s not that. Gotou-san’s simply isn’t fixing her mistakes. She’s most likely at home not realizing anything is wrong. Or she is aware of the time being slowed down, but she has no clue why it’s happening orwhat to do. That’s why we need to find and interrogate her. If she in fact is in the same situation as we are, we need to make her cooperate.”

“I wanted to visit her after classes, but at this pace, I don’t think the classes will ever end…” Saki was referring to her plan of asking Toyokawa-sensei for Gotou-san's address, so she could ‘lend her today’s notes’.

“For now, there isn’t really anything else we can do other than continue searching…” I was already getting sick of this futile hunt for clues, and it could surely be felt in my voice. I have to calm down. I was nominated the ‘leader’, so I can’t let my pupils down.

Heavy atmosphere spread throughout our group. After around 15 minutes (according to our time perception) we had already searched the entire school building and found nothing that would catch our attention. We decided to head out to the school grounds and continue there. According to our stopwatches, we had all the time in the world. And speaking of which…

“Oh, I think the time stopped completely…” Fatigued Saki noticed after checking her smartphone.

“But look on the bright side! We don’t have to hurry and could even go and visit the entire city if we wanted to!” Hayato, being the incurable optimist, said in high spirits. 

“So it stopped completely, huh… Wait. Wait wait wait wait. No way!” I suddenly get creepily excited as I notice that in the middle of this dire situation, all three of us can finally do what any otaku has always dreamed about.

“What do you mean?”

“Yea, do you want to go visit the city so bad~? And I took you for a complete hikikomori!”

“...” I don’t say a word and instead strike a mysterious pose as I turn my back to them. 

“What are you doing, Hi-”

“Ho? Is that so? Instead of running away, you’re just standing there… menacingly?” Hayato gets what I meant.

“HO HO!” I put my hand over my face and look back at them over my shoulder. I felt a cluster of imaginary ゴ characters appearing all around me and the colour scheme of my surroundings change. My bizarre actions and the dialogue between me and Hayato was enough for Saki to get the hang of what we were up to at last.

“You guys ready?” I confirm we’re all in the same boat.

“I was ready since you showed me this in elementary school.”

“Let’s do it, Hiro!”

I smile sinisterly. Then, quietly count down from three to one, and…

 

“ZA WAARUDO! TOMAREE TOKI YO!” 

 

We all shout the line we always wanted to say in perfect synch while striking the most absurd custom J*Jo poses as we bask in our degeneracy and infantility. That was absolutely the best feeling ever. And to get to do it with my lovely girlfriend and a dear friend… A tear of nostalgic joy appeared in my eye at the thought of how beautiful, yet how fleeting that moment and the entire human life is…

“...”

“...”

“...”

All three of us suddenly froze. Not because we were LARPing a referenced J*Jo scene. Nor because of the realization how cringy we are - That we knew from the start and embraced it pridefully. The reason being, someone was staring at us.

From the outdoor passage connecting the two school buildings (how is this thing even called?) we saw a young girl crouching on the ground around 20 meters away with her eyes glued to us. An orange-furred cat that was most likely about to be petted by her that very moment was sitting in front of her. She was wearing the same uniform as Saki and Hayato, but her ribbon was yellow instead of red. She must’ve been a first-year student at our school, although she appeared even more juvenile than that. 

Her gaze was emotionless. I felt as if the pair of her deep-pink, almost red eyes was piercing the deepest parts of my soul, while evoking a strangely familiar sensation. A vibrant, yet ice-cold aura was surrounding her entire character. Her short, pale, lightly hued purple hair was swaying back and forth in sync with her uniform skirt… And that was the thing that concerned us. Since parts of ‘her’ were moving normally, that meant...

“She isn’t affected by the time anomaly…” I murmur to myself, but Saki and Hayato heard it anyway.

“But why isn’t she blinking? That’s kinda creepy…”

“ What do we do, Hiro?” 

All of us were still standing in our poses from before, making us look like complete morons. We did our best not to move, just as if we were hunting a deer or something and didn’t want to startle it.

Then, all of a sudden, to our surprise, the girl stood up and dashed in a direction opposite to us. We’d be terrible hunters.

“Hey, wait!” I shout instinctively, but she doesn’t heed and continues to run. “That may be our chance, let’s go!”

“Leave that to me~”

“W-wait, I shouldn’t be running until my ankle-”

I was too focused on chasing after the girl to pay attention to what Hayato and Saki said. Ultimately, all three of us went after her.

“You think she’s got something to do with all this, Hero?”

“How would I know? But she’s the only one other than us who’s not slowed down. We finally found a hint of a trace. Plus did you notice that thing on her shoulder?

“What thing? No, I don’t think so.”

“It was the student council armband. Keep up with her, guys!” I explain to Hayato quickly while still chasing the mysterious underclassman who was most likely also the member of the almighty anime student council. If anyone had any information on what was happening, it would be them.

Saki was still slightly behind us, due to her later start, but for someone with an ankle injury, she surely kept the pace.

The girl was running away through the school grounds and was giving even Hayato a hard time catching up to her. When he managed to get fairly close, she made a sharp turn and soon disappeared behind a wall of one of the school buildings. Judging from the outside, it must’ve been the school gym. We bust into the building one after another and continue the chase. We managed to close the distance to a few meters, but she was still slipping away skillfully using her knowledge of the school’s topography to her advantage.

Eventually, after making another agile maneuver, she entered a locker room and didn’t bother to close the door behind her, inviting us to a further chase. I ran in there after her without hesitation.

“Hiro, wait, this is…!” Saki shouted from the back, but it was too late for me to react.

“...Huh?”

As we enter the locker room, we find the suspect making her way out through the window while looking at us with the same doll-like expression and not saying a single word. I took a look around the room and instantly understood why Saki was trying to stop me.

“Hiro, wait, this is a girls’ locker room!” Not only that, but for some reason there were also students still in the middle of changing clothes. Girls in underwear dominated my field of view. Beautiful scenery, straight out of a weeb’s fantasy as far as the eye could see. Plus, all of them were, of course, frozen in time. You’d be lying if you said you never imagined yourself in this kind of situation. More than ten girls were standing still, some of them stopped in the middle of taking their uniform shirts off, others unzipping their skirts and some already stretching before the PE lesson they were supposedly about to attend. I can’t help, but bask in the greatness.

“So this is the girls’ locker room, huh?” Hayato also was in awe at the glorious sight.

“I know right? I never expected I’d get to experience what it’s like…”

“Stunning.”

“You bet.”

“Absolutely marvelous. Like we were on a different planet.”

“The forbidden land…”

“...” 

“...”

Although she didn’t say a thing, I suddenly felt Saki’s razor-sharp gaze. Yea, you can absolutely tell that I’m still anything but experienced in all this relationship stuff.

“S-Saki… Sorry, I just, uh, got carried away… It’s quite an unusual situation for a guy, y-you know?”  

“...” Crap. I might’ve fucked up pretty badly. “D-don’t worry! Boys will be boys after all, right…?” I can tell that she’s trying her best not to burst with anger. Her closed eyes are twitching in annoyance. I’ll have to properly apologize for that afterwards. Now, we have more important matters to take care of-

“Huh, what was that? You saw that too?” With a corner of my eye I saw a light purple flash by the window, exactly where the girl was just a second ago. Now however, she was gone. The window was still wide open.

“I wasn’t looking, sowryy~ But I think I saw something very light and purple behind the window…”

“Okay, whatever, come on, we can’t let her run awa-” I couldn’t finish my order because of a sudden sensation of sharp pain on my face. It felt like I was punched so hard that I lost my consciousness for a split second. “What was th-”

“What do you think you’re doing here, perv?!”

“Huh?!”

“Get the fuck outta here, you asshole!”

“What?!” Before I can fully comprehend what just happened I get surrounded by all the girls that were completely frozen a second ago as a flurry of punches is unleashed upon my face…