Chapter Text
"I need to do this."
"Do this?" Yelled a voice behind her. "You can't be serious."
A man's silhouette stared at her with bewildered eyes. Disbelieving. Perhaps due to the arrogance of those words, claimed so coldly and directly, or perhaps due to the determined tone of her voice, almost as absurd. On the other hand, she couldn't feel the slightest hesitation on facing him back.
"Well, sorry for disappointing you, I guess?"
"How do you..." The words failed him. His large hands tousled his hair anxiously. "Kid, I have no idea where you're going with this..." He went on. "Listen... Nothing you do can bring him back, you should know that already."
The room hadn't been this quiet since the moment she stepped into the fifth mystery's boundaries. Actuallly, neither of them could remember the last time they had a conversation longer than two sentences at least, so the silence shouldn't feel so deafening. But it did, and the feeling was terrible.
The girl walked through the library without much ceremony, ignoring the taller man's call completely. The heavy bag clutched in her hand swung with each step, tapping against her leg sometimes. Her white shoes were almost noiseless against the red marble floor. The man couldn't say he knew her very well, but he certainly never seen her like this before.
She headed to the shelf of black books, reaching at first glance for the one labeled "Yugi Amane."
"Maybe I can't bring him back. But if I can stop what happened...! If I can get there in time...! If I can save him..." She said, squeezing the book tighter in her small hands. "that's enough for me."
Yashiro Nene took a deep breath, glancing back at her old teacher, the current number 5 of the seven mysteries, Tsuchigomori.
The room fell silent again.
(. . .)
"Ya~shiro."
And just like that, she felt the ground against her back.
Nene opened her eyes, startled, her vision adjusting to the orange brightness of the place. She felt sore all over from the fall, and, moments later, her throat burned terribly with the strange need to breathe.
Breathe?
She quickly got up, almost choking. Out of despair, she brought one hand to her neck and the other slightly in front of her mouth, feeling the air enter and exit unevenly but naturally.
She was alive.
Alive.
How long had she been out? Seconds? Minutes? Dear God, if it had been hours, how many people had passed by her and witnessed that totally pathetic scene?
Nene sat on the floor, leaning against the wall of that huge hallway she knew so well. She took a moment to finally look around.The classroom doors were in the same place she remembered, and didn't seem to have changed much. But the walls looked newer, and the strong smell of fresh paint spread throughout the room. Standing up, she looked through the nearest window at the surroundings of the lower floor, noticing a familiar entrance gate and, next to it, a flowerbed and a garden.
Nene sighed in relief. She was at Kamome School, no doubt about it.
It was almost comforting to realize that the place hadn't changed as much as she thought. She vaguely remembered the smell of grass filling the hallways in spring, the overwhelming heat of summer days, the way she would shrink and resist going to class upon noticing any sign of snow falling from the cloudy sky. Times that Nene kept dearly in her memory, and that helped her regain control of herself.
Nene reached into her bag, pulling out a small notepad with reminders and notes. She took a pen, crossing out the first sentence at the top of the list.
Check if I'm at school. Checked.
The air was cold inside, but the afternoon sun hitting her skin through the window somehow made the place instantly warm. The hallway remained empty, and even after looking both ways, there was no sign of students or teachers nearby. Walking a little further, she noticed a big clock on the center of the secretary's office.
6:15 PM.
"Shoot. That's too late. I think everybody already left."
And then it hit her:
"Wait... Why it's not cold?"
The temperature was pleasant, neither too hot nor too cold. It wasn't cold. Why wasn't it cold?
What season period was she in, and why wasn't it winter?
Walking a little further, confirming the differences between the past and the present inside the building, she passed by a bulletin board hanging on the wall. It contained only information about exams, club notices, and cleaning schedules, nothing more. But something caught her attention at the top of the list.
A date: 04/29/1969.
End of April. Right after spring break. That explained why the weather was the way it was and the absence of snow above the bare branches of the trees. The students probably had just returned from their 2-week vacation. Her thoughts were so scrambled that she almost couldn't process her real situation at that moment. Apparently, she arrived almost 7 months before the end of November 1969.
7 months...
Nene reviewed her notes in desperation.
1969! End of November!
Nene's original plan was to go to the past, specifically at the end of November 1969. Maybe a little earlier... It could be better to refine her strategy that still seemed somewhat improvised.
"This can't be..." Nene thought, running her fingers through her hair.
1969! End of November!
1969! End of April! (It got a bit messed up, but stay focused!!) Checked.
Taking a deep breath, Nene tried to retrace her steps. She was in the past in 1969, at Kamome School, before the incident. But something went wrong, and for some reason, the boundary sent her 7 months earlier than planned, in April of that same year.
Anxiety resurfaced, flooding all the nervous signals of her body, but Nene couldn't give up. Not now that she had come this far after making that decision.
Reading and rereading the list she made, she knew very well what her next step would be.
Without looking back, Yashiro Nene ran to the school's exit.
"Save Yugi Amane"