Synopsis
Kaoru Nishikawa is sixteen. She’s always had a strange sense of déjà vu, as if every step she takes is at risk of echo. She never talks about these moments, not even with her closest friend Shin. But it haunts her—is something wrong with her memory, or is fate playing tricks? Late one quiet evening, Kaoru is drawn to a locked basement in the school’s oldest wing. Dust in the air, old books stacked like towers; tucked into shadow, a broken metal pocketwatch gleams. She picks it up. Time seems to breathe in and out around her until she’s dizzy.
She drops the watch—and the world melts away. When her feet float back down, everything’s changed. Kaoru is still at the school, but something’s off. Cars in the lot shine silver and boxy, music drifting from windows hums eighties’ pop, and students stare at her uniform in confusion. She’s gone back to 1986.
Panic sets in. She runs, almost crashes down the stairs, heart jackhammering. Then she collides with a familiar face she shouldn’t know—her mother, Reika, as a teenager. Reika looks at her and frowns. ‘What club are you from? You new here?’ Kaoru stares at her mother’s young face. Do you think you’d be able to talk to your own parents if you met them as teens?
Not daring to tell the truth, Kaoru takes up lodging as an ‘exchange student.’ All week, she keeps looking for the broken watch but never finds it again. As she tries to fit in, Shin’s voice won’t leave her mind, echoing from her own time, but the basement gives her nothing. Time is wrong. Does she really belong anywhere anymore? She wonders—can she avoid changing anything while she searches for the key home?
A rumor spreads: some kids have spotted a ghost in the old science lab. Kaoru knows it must be her. Desperate, she sneaks around at night, and bumps into Shinsuke Tachibana—a quiet, clever boy who’s already suspicious of her retro clothes and strange way of talking. He joins her, not out of trust but out of fear she might be stuck like a stray spirit. He slips an old newspaper into her hands. “Tomorrow there’s going to be a fire here, isn’t there? This is from the library—you were looking at it this morning,” he whispers. Kaoru’s cold hands tremble. The date is a match. Her mother’s old class records show several kids vanished in that fire. Her future mother’s name is on the list. If she’s here… is her own existence at risk now?
She and Shinsuke only have until sunrise to warn students and stop that blaze. The next ten pages are all rush and heartbeats. Kaoru pleads with Reika to skip science club for a silly ghost rumor, while Shinsuke sabotages the breaker. At the last second, the would-be arsonist is caught, the fire put out before it starts. Kaoru and Reika hide behind old lab benches, breaths shallow. ‘Thanks,’ Reika says simply—she has no clue she’s talking to her future child. ‘You’re so serious. Don’t you think memories are better if they aren’t perfect?’ Kaoru looks down at her hands, knowing this night will never leave her memory—or her mother’s.
The dawn’s light washes through the old basement as Kaoru finds the watch again. This time, Shinsuke stands at the top of the steps. “If you’re brave, maybe you’ll visit again. Or you really were just a dream,” he says. Kaoru clicks the watch. The world blurs blue, green, white, then silence. When she opens her eyes, she’s staring at Shin, who’s shaking her awake in the empty classroom. ‘You talked in your sleep,’ he says. ‘It sounded like you were arguing with your mom.’ Kaoru grips the old pocketwatch. ‘Maybe I was talking to her, for real,’ she says, half-laughing, half-crying. Reality feels thinner now, like colored glass. Only she may know what changed between then and now.
A single note remains in her bag, scrawled in old ink: ‘Don’t forget, your story’s not written yet.’
