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Chapter 73: Juro Kurabe 7
Music: Head In The Clouds (Rikako Watanabe)
Let’s go home.
Consider Q-ta Shiba
(Shiba-kun’s not actually human. And not only that… He’s been manipulating my memories. It seems his goal is to turn me back into Juro Izumi.)
Consider Visitor from Another World
(Fuyusaka-san and I were the only ones who made it… We escaped to Sumire Bridge, 16 years into the past. These must be Shiba-kun’s memories… Or rather… the other Juro Izumi’s.)
You’re meeting up at the same place again?
Pretty much, yeah. See ya!
Bye!
Tomi leaves.
Miwako leaves as well. There’s now nothing left for us to do…
…But talk to the man of the hour.
What? Why the long face? Have another nightmare or somethin’?
Knock it off. I’m not stupid. I know I’m the only one who can see you.
Hmm… So it wasn’t fully wiped.
I guess mind-hacking has its limits.
Use Q-ta Shiba on Kyuta Shiba
48Q. QTA_CBA. I already told you. I’m an artificial personality.
That doesn’t mean anything to me.
……
I’m not watching it.
Use Juro Izumi on Kyuta Shiba
Why did you give me Juro Izumi’s memories? Are you trying to turn me back into him?
You were never meant to be this way in the first place.
We can’t have you causing a scene here. Your memory needs to be wiped clean.
Music: STAGNATION (Yoshimi Kudo)
And with that, Shiba disappears into nothing.
All we can do now is leave, I suppose.
And we immediately bump into Nenji!
Are you looking for someone, Ogata-kun?
Sure am. Tomi Kisaragi.
Unfortunately, we do not.
Can’t expect you to know.
Running won’t change a thing.
Music: Who D-Unit (Yoshimi Kudo)
Fuyusaka-san’s absent. What about Yakushiji?
We’ve got some new Thought Cloud options just for this. Let’s see…
Consider Megumi Yakushiji
(Is she really on my side? She wants to change me back into Juro Izumi. Can I trust her…?)
Consider Q-ta Shiba
(Shiba-kun’s not actually human. And not only that… He’s been manipulating my memories. It seems his goal is to turn me back into Juro Izumi. I wish this was all just a dream.)
They added a new line onto the end here for some reason.
Consider Iori Fuyusaka
(Fuyusaka-san’s out today. But I feel like… She might know something about all this.)
Consider Shu Amiguchi
(Maybe I could ask Amiguchi-kun. On the other hand… It’s getting late. He’s probably gone home already…)
Consider Ryoko Shinonome
(Shinonome-senpai… She knows about Juro Izumi for sure. I should go talk to her. Hopefully she’s at the nurse’s office.)
Please wake up.
Ngh…
I’m Juro Kurabe.
Kurabe…
Please help me.
What happened?
Use Q-ta Shiba on Ryoko Shinonome
Juro, Ryoko doesn’t know who that is.
He’s been messing with my memories… And replacing them with Juro Izumi’s.
Music: Cognitive Dissonance (Rikako Watanabe)
Izumi-kun’s…? That’s… odd. According to Morimura… His memories were lost for good.
Ms. Morimura? Our teacher? What does she have to do with this? I’m talking about Shiba-kun.
…Who is Shiba-kun?
Kyuta Shiba. He called himself “personality 48Q.” I’m the only one who can see him.
……
In any other game I’d be worried that Ryoko thinks Juro is out of his gourd right now.
I’m sorry… I don’t know anything about that.
Well… If Izumi-kun’s memories were transplanted into you… Does that mean you know about his past?
I saw it all in the form of dreams and movies.
What happened in them?
What were your dreams like?
Use Shootout Dream on Ryoko Shinonome
…Fuyusaka-san and I went back to the past. We bombed the facility that was said to be the source of it all… But the police caught us, and we ended up in a shootout.
With Iori Fuyusaka…? This is all news to me…
Use Terrible Dream on Ryoko Shinonome
I went around killing students, one by one. I wouldn’t let any of them get away. Among the dead… I saw people I knew… Like Fuyusaka-san… And Yakushiji.
Izumi-kun did that? It can’t be… There’s no way he would do such a thing.
Use Visitor from Another World on Ryoko Shinonome
Shiba-kun gives me memories on video tape.
Video tape…?
Somehow this is still the most insane part of this whole thing.
Fuyusaka-san told me they’re all real events from the future.
Like what?
I made it back.
So we’re back to these names, eh?
Music: Power Of Destruction (Mitsuhiro Kaneda)
I arrived right in the middle of the invasion. Barely made it back in one piece. I don’t think the world had much of a chance.
Is that a flier from a movie theater?
Logs indicate it shut down sometime in the Heisei era. But at the time I visited, it was right there in Tsutsuji Ward.
And Sector 3 is in 2025. That’s another 40-year gap.
This machine only lets us travel to specific time periods… All of which are under attack by the invaders.
Why are they showing up in the past?
I have no idea…
We have no record of such an invasion occurring back then. If that’s the case, it’s inconsistent with history as we know it.
You’re right. It was just last year that we were invaded… The year 2104. That was the first and only time. If there were a kaiju attack prior to that, we would have known about it.
We must be dealing with a time paradox.
It could have caused reality to split into parallel universes.
I like how the characters are equally dumbfounded about this as I am and are throwing out equally harebrained theories. “I dunno, maybe the kaiju broke spacetime?”
We know that kaiju technology allows for time travel. It’s not hard to believe that would impact the future in some way.
While this device does appear to be a time machine… It may be premature to make such assumptions.
An earthquake…
A big one.
Something feels weird about it…
It’s reached zero.
Don’t tell me… This shaking is…
It’s time.
The very Earth’s crust is crumbling. This is an unprecedented disaster…
Several areas now report an elevation of below sea level… Is it sinking into the ocean?
At this rate, we’ll be going down too.
So this is what the countdown was for… It may not be possible to survive this. We have no choice… We must seek refuge in the past!
What?
Are you serious? If we do that… we might not ever come back.
And if we stay here, we die.
When it’s all set, I’ll join you. Please, get to the device.
All right. If you’re setting our destination coordinates… Let me suggest Sumire Bridge. Amidst the destruction I saw earlier, that bridge was still standing.
It’s not letting me select any sectors. I don’t understand… my commands aren’t working. I need to find a time it’ll let us travel to. Stay in the device.
Just hurry, okay?
I don’t know what year that is… But it’s the only destination we can access right now.
Music: A Cruel Thesis (Yoshimi Kudo)
…I can’t. It’s not letting me set a timer. I’ll need to operate it manually. Go on without me!
Music: Staring Into The Void (Yoshimi Kudo)
We’re in 2089 now. We traveled 16 years back in time.
I see… So that’s why. Look over there.
No wonder Century Tower isn’t there. It wasn’t built until 2100. It’ll be over ten years from now before it goes up again…
……
Let’s go. Tsukasa-kun… isn’t coming back.
Even the Shikishima State Building is missing…
You agree with me… Right?
……
Even your own mother wouldn’t recognize you. Our citizen ID won’t be valid here, either. We can’t purchase anything or use public services. The city may look familiar… But this is the world of 16 years ago. To us… it might as well be a foreign country. But we can’t go back. We have no choice but to figure something out.
The invasion’s going to happen again in 15 years. We need to warn everyone about it.
Will they even believe us?
All we can do is try. And if they don’t… We’ll take matters into our own hands. No one else knows what’s coming. It has to be us.
It should still be buried underground. If we can find it, then…
I get it now… We can save Okino-kun. All we need to do is travel through time again…
I can’t say it’s impossible. But if we’re ever going to do that… We need to make it through today. Let’s find ourselves some food and a place to sleep.
You’re right.
Shall we?
*nod*
Wait… was that the version of that scene that Juro mentioned to Iori? The one that’s inconsistent with the version of that scene we already saw, where Shu was there instead of Juro?
…Oh, my head hurts.
Living in society’s shadows.
Ryoko quickly backs away from Juro.
Juro approaches again, and Ryoko takes another step back.
Music: Ennui Vibes (Yoshimi Kudo)
It’s not one of your lost memories. If it involved rewinding time 16 years with Morimura… Then it must have been… him.
Who?
He’s gone back in time over and over again.
A time traveler? That’s crazy…
Dude, you brought up time travel with the flashback just now!
The memories you’ve been seeing are his.
But… his name is Juro Izumi. Does that mean he’s me from the future?
…No. It’s a different Juro Izumi.
Oh come ON!
One who came from a lost world…
Juro, personal space. Jeez.
I was told he’s incredibly dangerous…
My dreams are memories of a lost world? And Shiba-kun… is that world’s Juro Izumi?
That man has nothing but his consciousness left. He transferred himself into an android and fled.
His… consciousness?
Looks like Senpai isn’t feeling so good.
Man…
Stop this!
Oh, c’mon. Ryoko Shinonome’s a freakin’ weirdo.
Another lock, this time from Yuki’s story.
This latest chapter really threw a few wrinkles into this game’s conception of time travel, so we’re going to replace a pretty old mystery involving the discrepancy with the damage to the pillar in the Kurabe household with a broader mystery involving the myriad time travel shenanigans that are afoot, primarily: why are there no records of the kaiju invading the earlier time periods? Clearly there’s some manner of split in the timestream, but why?