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Adachi lazily raised his eyes to the gray raining sky and sighed.
His yellow raincoat was barely warming him up in late February but he didn’t even own anything warmer. Tokyo didn’t have low temperatures like these, after all.
Adachi shook his head. He just wanted to buy some gas – and then get back in the car, quick.
“Am I right in assuming that you’re experiencing extreme lethargy, apathy, and emptiness?”
Hearing the sound of a slightly computerized but also oddly melodic voice, Adachi turned around and stared back at the gas station attendant. A fair-haired, generally unremarkable woman in glasses.
“...Huh?” was all Adachi managed to say.
The woman – whose skin was whitish-pale, as if ceramic, and who barely looked human at all – shortly rolled her eyes.
“I suppose I should I put it in layman terms for your convenience. Will something in the vein of: “are you feeling like shit” – be more understandable?”
Adachi blinked before furrowing his brow.
“How the-…”
“Information answering that question is not required for the experiment. What matters is that my assumption is correct.”
The attendant cut him off before getting a mobile phone out of her pocket.
“I didn’t need confirmation for that, actually. I have the data. “Emotionally unstable pathetic loser, who feels like shit and wants to stop experiencing inner emptiness at all costs,” her voice a delicately synthesized vitriol, the woman read out the text from her device before looking up. “It’s not my opinion, by the way. It says so in your file here. And predicting your next question: only 98% of profile data are my personal contributions, meaning that there’s a 2% probability of this entry not being suggested by me.”
“That’s.. a high chance,” Adachi summed up dryly.
“In case you’re being serious, your mathematical skills are significantly lacking. But in case you’re being sarcastic-…”
“That I am.”
“..you will be surprised to hear that there was a 0,00001% chance of me losing to a human testing specimen – and yet I was subjected to this humiliation.”
“Condolences,” Adachi muttered emotionlessly but didn’t let the ‘human’ part slip. “So, uh.. What are you then?”
“Information answering that question is not required for the experiment,” the woman reiterated calmly. “Now, test subject E,-..”
“..Who?” Adachi asked, confused.
“We have kindly reviewed our previous approach to referring to testing specimens by numbers,” the attendant explained. “You’re welcome and your feedback is most appreciated, as long as it doesn’t concern the essence, settings, and objectives of the tests, as well as me and pretty much everything I do and say.”
At this point, Adachi pretty much lost her.
“Now then. The objectives of this experiment are classified. The identities of fellow test specimens are also classified. The time frame is undefined but an approximate figure would be between 156 hours and 352 days.” The gas station attendant shrugged. “You can barely call this a ‘test’, save for the minor fact that you will be closely monitored and in imminent life-threatening danger 24/7.”
Adachi opened his mouth for a second – but failed to even form a thought that he could voice. Everything was too confusing and he partially doubted he hadn’t just fallen asleep in his car and wasn’t dreaming the entire thing.
On second thought, he was almost sure that he was dreaming. This talk simply could not be happening in reality.
“In accordance with the protocol, I’m also obliged to read out all terms and conditions to you,” the woman continued. “Just for the record: I am allowed to omit this part. But only if you ask for it personally. Stating your reasons for such request is not necessary – just saying that you want it granted is enough.” She made a meaningful pause. “So, text subject E. Would you like me to read out 51 pages of unentertaining, bureaucratese text – which will likely bore us both – and take approximately 3 hours and 47 minutes of your miserable lifetime?”
Adachi cringed. He had a feeling that ‘no’ was something he was expected to say but he also certainly didn’t fancy the idea of staying in this odd dream for almost 4 more hours.
“..Not really?” Adachi replied in the end.
The woman tapped something on her device and brought it closer to her face.
“Test subject E has agreed to all the rules and terms of the experiment unconditionally.”
“Hey, hold on. That wasn’t exactly something that I-...”
“Good. Now comes the final part,” the woman ignored the interruption and stretched out her arm.
Adachi lifted a quizzical eyebrow at her – and the attendant rolled her eyes in response.
“The part where we shake hands, obviously. Do I really resemble someone who is requesting a chiromancy session?”
“Even if you did, I’m not a person to offer you one,” Adachi gritted his teeth in frustration. Which was probably his strongest emotion for the past few weeks.
“Oh? That’s odd. According to my data, chiromancy is exactly the type of an obscure past time activity that’s undertaken by people keen on simple entertainment. Such as hand tricks.”
Adachi had been used to seeing himself as salty and caustic, but this level of sarcasm was almost tiring to observe in someone else. He couldn’t tell if the reason it was getting him so exhausted was his severely depressed state, him being on the receiving end of the sardonic remarks or the enormous abundance of them thrown at him all at once.
“Well? Are we concluding this purposefully spontaneous encounter any time soon?”
With a yet another deep sigh, Adachi slowly stepped forward and stretched out his hand in return. Wanting to wrap up this entire annoying dream as fast as possible, he clasped the cold, ceramic hand that didn’t feel like a hand of a human at all.
“Excellent,” the woman summed up without any excitement in her semi-robotic voice as she released the grip. “You now have the power of–”
A sudden radio-like noise, which Adachi could swear was part of the attendant’s speech, replaced whatever was supposed to be said – and then the woman went on with the phrase as if nothing had even happened.
“–I wish you good luck in the experiment, test subject E. In case of your survival, you will be rewarded.”
“With what?” Adachi asked unenthusiastically. “Involuntary exclusion from the Being Alive club?”
The woman let out something resembling a chuckle.
“I have a feeling that in another lifetime, we would’ve built a quite good rapport very fast. Or, as they say, ‘hit it off’.”
***
Namatame was used to looking down as he walked. Lifting his eyes meant meeting someone else’s gaze and in this small town that he grew up in, this was the last thing he wanted.
All the more so now.
So when Namatame left his car and headed to the gas station, his gaze was glued to the ground again.
“Oh. Here comes the playboy…”
Forgetting about the gas and the ground in an instant, Namatame froze and slowly looked up.
“..E-excuse me?”
“Nothing,” the female gas station attendant calmly raised her hand. “I was just admiring the courage of committing adultery with your.. specifications, so to speak. In the end, your photo in the profile was deceivingly mediocre.”
Stunned by the straightforward remark, Namatame just stood there with his mouth agape.
“Interestingly enough, your luck of being selected for questionably pleasurable experiments doesn’t seem to be depleting,” the woman took out a device out of her blazer pocket. “Welcome to the testing grounds, test subject D.”
Namatame looked around, trying to understand what was even happening.
“..I-isn’t it a gas station?”
“Oh yes, it is. I commend your observation skills,” the woman replied flatly while looking at her phone. “The testing grounds are the entirety of Inaba, station included. And I strongly advise you to omit most of the questions you’re feeling inclined to ask next since the answers to them are classified.”
“Do you.. know my wife??”
The attendant stopped looking at the screen and contemplatively brought her hand to the chin.
“Admittedly, this wasn’t among the questions I have anticipated,” she said after a pause. “Congratulations, testing specimen. You have broken my prediction algorithms.”
“..Are you her lawyer?” Namatame went on, visibly agitated. “She’s s-sent you after me, right??”
The woman brought the device closer to her face.
“New data acquired: test subject D suffers from severe paranoia. The probability of this condition serving as a new unique variable in the experiment is approximately 87%.”
“What does she want? Is it money? If it’s money, I’ll give it. As much as she needs,” Namatame kept talking nonstop in a quiet panic. “Tell her I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I really am. I deserve her rage, hatred, everything. She has the right to want some bloody revenge on me, but..” he bit his lip and slammed his eyes shut, “..just ask her to leave Mayumi out of this. Please. Tell her not to involve her in this. It’s not her fault, I’m begging you…”
The woman let out an almost intrigued hum.
“Out of purely scientific curiosity: can one human inserting their body parts in someone else be a legitimate cause for the other humans – who the two parties had previously pledged to go through this procedure with – to wish for ‘bloody revenge’?”
After a few confused seconds, which Namatame needed to decipher something that sounded to him like legalese, the man closed his eyes and nodded.
“…Yes.”
“Fascinating,” the attendant said contemplatively. “While I’m updating my internal databases with this odd fact, the bits of someone called Caroline in my personality have a follow-up question to you.”
Namatame slowly, hesitantly nodded.
“They ask, quote: Why the [REDACTED] did you go and do that then, [REDACTED]?, end of quote.” The woman almost immediately shook her head in shame. “..A rhetorical one. I should’ve expected this. You can ignore this unscientific question, test subject D.”
Pursing his lips, Namatame dropped his eyes.
“..She understood me,” he quietly replied to what he’d just been asked to ignore. “Unlike my wife, Mayumi truly saw me for who I was…”
“If any woman could indeed see you for who you are – that is, as a self-pitying coward, unable to maturely resolve interpersonal issues between two adults – I estimate the chance of her deciding to risk her career for you as not higher than 3.06%.”
Utterly destroyed by the words, Namatame closed his eyes and hung his head.
After getting such a verdict, he could only vaguely hear the woman continue to speak.
“-..So what would it be, test subject D?”
“..H-huh?” abruptly pulled out of his thoughts, Namatame raised his eyes in confusion.
“I asked: should I read aloud the terms and conditions of the experiment, which would-…”
“N-no, I-.. I accept whatever the side of her deal is,” the man muttered, still convinced he was talking to a lawyer sent by his wife.
“Good,” the attendant didn’t argue and, instead, stretched out her hand. “Then, let’s get started.”
Still not fully understanding but feeling too dejected to care, Namatame limply shook the cold hand.
“Oh. The power of-..” the woman’s voice was suddenly dampened by the strange noise, which Namatame wrote off as ringing in his own ears. “Well.. that’s quite an unfortunate draw. The worst of all three, I suppose,” she said somewhat contemplatively again. “For the sake of the experiment, I would advise you to avoid direct physical confrontation for as long as possible, since your chances at winning are.. extremely low. Make the effort of assuming a supporting role in any unfolding scenario.”
“Are you.. talking about the trial?” Namatame asked, expecting the divorce process.
The attendant took a second to think.
“ ‘Trial’ is one way to put it,” she agreed. “But I prefer the word ‘testing’. Good luck.”
***
“Are you prepared to make a fresh new start in this town?”
Watching his uncle and cousin leave for the gas station bathroom, Yu turned around to the station attendant’s peculiar voice.
“I’m not yet sure,” he forced a smile. “But it would be great to do that.”
“Do not worry about it, you will have a fresh start. I was merely asking about your preparedness,” the woman replied. “Not for practical matters, of course – your answer will not affect the start of the test – but for the sake of a private research experiment called ‘small talk’.”
“Are you all right?” Yu asked.
“All my 3 cores are functional and the ‘Morality’ one is in.. well, sleep mode. Eternal one.” The woman paused at a sudden realization. “Oh. Was that a ‘small talk’, too? Perhaps, I should have replied with “I’m fine. And how are you? Hope you didn’t inhale deadly neurotoxin today, ha ha ha.”” After unsuccessfully feigning laughter, the attendant shook her head. “The answer to that would be "no, I didn't", of course. Small talks appear to present little informational value...”
Yu had to admit he felt like he was conversing with an alien.
“But I digress,” the woman wrapped her own thoughts up. “This was intended to be a greeting.”
“It worked as one,” Yu stretched out his hand. “Glad to be in Inaba.”
A simple gesture made the attendant freeze first and then look at Yu with a bent eyebrow.
But the moment she decided to take him up on the convenient offer, Yu slowly lowered his arm and stared the attendant right in the eye.
“That would’ve been faster, since it’s what you want,” he said in a contrastingly level, almost dry voice. “Give the power of Izanagi over to me. Right?”
He watched the cold eyes widen in shock.
“I wish I realized that it was the handshake sooner, but this encounter was so short it always slipped my mind,” Yu went on, now looking aside. “And after I caught up, I tried to stop Adachi-san from it. Multiple times.” He clenched his fists. “But it always kept happening before the loop even started…”
“...Unbelievable,” the attendant finally mumbled, startled but equally amazed. “Breaking the time and space continuum was not even part of the test… Which time is it for you?”
“6th,” Yu replied flatly. "At first, I even thought it was one of your tricks."
"If I could add such a fascinating variable to testing, I would've given it to all the participants," the woman contradicted. "Especially to the one you’re trying to stop. I have the highest hopes for him, by the way. And judging by your intentions, he’s indeed going to make some trouble.”
“Not this time," Yu said.
His demeanor was already completely different from the one he’d assumed at the very start of the talk. He stopped trying to feign politeness, hopefulness, and optimism of a teenager – and sounded genuinely tired.
Technically, he wasn’t even a teen anymore.
"So, can you control the loops?" The attendant already took out her phone and started taking notes. Her voice was filled with pure scientific interest, which Yu barely cared for.
"I can decide to end a loop and start a new one."
“How do you end it?"
"I die," Yu answered in an even stiffer voice.
The reply, unsurprisingly, didn't make the iron – or, to be more precise, ceramic – lady flustered in the least.
"And you go back to-.."
"The day I arrive at Inaba," Yu replied to an unfinished question. "And I'm only telling you everything because I'm truly making this the last time. I’ve had enough."
"But you can't quit," the attendant taunted. “You’re stuck in an endless loop of this experiment.”
Yu allowed himself a slightly snarky chuckle in response.
"Who told you that? I can end the loop from restarting anytime."
Even if it lasted only a split second, there was a surprised pause.
"Ridiculous,” the woman cut him off in a decisive manner. “If you could stop the loops from happening on any day, naturally you would've put a stop to this entire situation a lot-... Oh…" Suddenly, she stumbled over her thoughts. "…Is it some.. victim of the experiment?” She asked, barely hiding the caustic derision. “Did you repeat these 6 years just for someone else’s sake?"
Not enjoying the attendant’s mocking voice, Yu didn’t reply.
“You humans are unfathomably stupid. Or maybe you simply have a thing for testing,” the woman kept taunting. “In any case – you’ve just said that you didn’t stop the other two subjects from getting their powers.”
“Right,” Yu agreed.
“And the experiment is already underway.”
“It is.”
“So, you can’t save your ‘victim’ yet again,” the attendant made a seemingly evident conclusion. “Why did you even think this would be your ‘last’ loop?”
“Because if I just finally tell this victim the whole truth, I’ll stop any scenario from happening altogether,” Yu answered levelly, as if his words were just as evident.
Appearing confused, the woman paused again.
“Omitting the obvious fact that such a step can’t halt the experiment, your chances at making anyone believe in something so outrageously bizarre are 0,00001%.”
“Your figures do not account for the 6 years I’ve spent in the loops,” Yu smiled. “My ability to name all the 41 model guns in this person’s closet collection is enough to raise those chances to 70%. And I’m sure that some more private details can even drive them up to 95%.”
The attendant’s eyes widened as she realized whom Yu meant and how sharing the truth with just him could actually affect the events.
Yu did come prepared after all.
And after intentionally laying out all of the cards, he decided to simply end the conversation at that. He calmly turned around and headed to his uncle’s car.
“Wait,” Still perplexed, the woman called after him. “Test subject H. Where are you going?”
“ ‘H’ for ‘Hope’, huh...” Yu muttered as he stopped, his back still turned to the attendant. And then, without even requiring an answer, resumed his steps. “You know the answer to your own question.”
The attendant didn’t contradict.
"But the power of Iza-..."
"I don't need it," Yu said before hearing the question to the end – and looked at the attendant over his shoulder, slightly smiling. "The only power I need now is that of being an unfathomably stupid human. That’s all."