It was the “summer elopement” that would never be.
The next day, Shiori and I used our newfound momentum to pack our bare necessities, leave our houses, and hop onto our bikes with the intention of never going back.
“Where should we go?”
“Mmm… Anywhere’s fine, as long as I’m with you, Koyomi-kun.”
An exchange so cliché, we may as well have been reciting lines from a movie, but I loved it all the same.
At midday, our spirits were high. We walked around town having a blast. The moment I enjoyed most was when we went to the home furnishings section of a big department store and talked about what we’d buy if we got a house together. At the time, I was genuinely thinking only of our future, just the two of us—most likely to escape the reality of how I knew, deep down, this elopement was destined to end.
Once the sun started to set, we began to brainstorm where to spend the night. To prioritize safety, we chose a park close to the corner store and the police station. Then we laid a tarp under a spot with a roof to make a simplified bed. However…
“Good evening, you two. Got a minute?” A policeman on patrol walked up to us. “Do you live around here? Is your mom or dad with you?”
“No, uh… We came here for fun…”
“I see. Well, it’s getting dark out, so you’d better head home now.”
“Okay, we will. Let’s go, Shiori.”
“Uh, okay.”
So we folded up our tarp, grabbed our stuff, got back on our bikes, and left the park.
As it turned out, when junior high schoolers stayed at a park past dark, the cops took notice. Every time a patrolman flagged us down, we told him we were going home, then got on our bikes and headed farther out of town. Ultimately, we settled for the night inside an abandoned air-raid tunnel four kilometers from the nearest train station. Here we could be sure that no one would find us, and with walls and a ceiling, we were mostly safe from the elements. It was scary for a different reason—but as long as we were together, I was sure we’d be okay.
What wasn’t okay was…well, everything else.
In the pitch-black tunnel, we lay side by side on the tarp, each of us huddled up under thin summer blankets we brought from home. It was nice and cool in there, much more pleasant than outside. Technically, we did have a light source—a battery-operated lantern—but we couldn’t use it without attracting moths, so instead we stayed in total darkness, holding hands and discussing our next move.
“…This is impossible, huh?”
“Yeah…”
By that point, both of us had come to our senses.
“I brought all my money, but if we sleep at internet cafes every night, it’ll be gone quick. But we can’t sleep outside forever…and we gotta buy food… Honestly, I’m not sure I can even make it through tonight.”
“Yeah… Plus, I want to take baths and have clean clothes…”
It wasn’t like Shiori and I hadn’t known it would be this hard from the outset—we simply chose to pretend we hadn’t. We were both deep in denial.
“When we wake up tomorrow, wanna take a train somewhere far away? We could look for live-in jobs or something,” I suggested.
“That could work. Or what if we look for an abandoned railway? Maybe we could find an unused train car and turn it into a house.”
“Ooh, that sounds fun! Like something in a manga!” Alas, my hopeful smile quickly clouded over. “…Man, there’s no way a couple of junior high students could remodel a train car or get live-in jobs in real life.”
“If only we were in high school, at least…”
“We could wait two more years and try again.”
“But we’ll be siblings by that point…”
Once we were siblings, we really could never get married. Right now was our only chance to run away. But realistically speaking, junior high schoolers couldn’t make it on their own.
“If only Mom never got divorced,” Shiori muttered. “That way we’d never have to be brother and sister, because she’d never want to marry your dad.”
“Same here. I wish my dad never got divorced either.”
All we could do now was cry over spilled milk. We had no optimism left. Was our only option to go home like good little children, congratulate our parents, and live the rest of our lives as brother and sister?
“If only my mom—”
Just then, Shiori stopped short. There in the silence, I couldn’t even hear her breathing. Was she holding her breath? What had gotten into her all of a sudden?
Could the cops have tracked us all the way here? Was there a stray dog or something? Whatever it was, I could tell it was serious. Gripping her hand tightly, I shifted my position so I could jump up at a moment’s notice.
“What’s wrong, Shiori?”
“…I’ve got it.” Her hand squeezed mine back.
“Got what?”
“A way out for us.”
Her statement was abruptly and completely out of left field. A way out? Where could we possibly go to escape being siblings so we could get married?
“What is it?” I asked.
Now that my eyes had adapted to the darkness, I could see the outline of her figure. She leaned in quickly, her body heat suddenly inches from mine. Now I was grateful for the dark concealing my panic.
“A parallel world,” she whispered breathily.
“…What?”
“A parallel world, Koyomi-kun! Remember when you went to a world where Yuno was still alive? There’s gotta be a world where our parents never got divorced. If we go there, we won’t have to be siblings!”
Her words seeped into my brain, and it truly felt like a veil had been lifted.
“That’s it… That’s it, Shiori! How did we not think of it sooner?!”
“I know, right?! You already did it once, so I just know we can do it again!”
If we both went to a world where our parents were all still together, the two of us could get married like normal. It was the perfect solution!
“Well then, guess we gotta go to the lab. I wonder what happened to that machine.”
“Last I heard, it’s still unfinished, but… I mean, you already used it to parallel shift, like…four years ago now, wasn’t it?”
Four years felt like an eternity. That incident was what brought Shiori into my life.
“Right. At the time, your mom said it was both unfinished and not even powered on. But I swear I shifted to a world where Yuno was alive.”
“Maybe the machine is finished, but Mom just doesn’t realize it yet.”
“Either that, or maybe only kids can use it? You see that kind of thing in manga and stuff,” I remarked, conveniently forgetting that just moments earlier, I’d acknowledged that real life never worked out like it did in manga.
“Wait, so… Do we still count as kids, or…?”
“I don’t know, I was just spitballing. Maybe I’m wrong, but…I mean, we’re not adults, so we gotta count as kids.”
“Right… If we were adults, we wouldn’t be having these problems.”
Indeed, if we were all grown up, we wouldn’t be camping out in an abandoned tunnel. We’d be free to live on our own, away from our parents.
“Well, if we’re gonna do this, we better act fast,” I said offhandedly.
Shiori looked up like it was precisely what she’d been waiting for. “Wanna go now?”
“Now?”
“Yeah! You know the lab tends to stay open pretty late! And it’s only eight, so I bet they’re open! It’ll be easier to sneak in with hardly anybody around!” she blurted out, all at once. It reminded me of the day we met—the day she dragged me off on our first adventure.
“Right… Yeah, you’re right! Let’s go!”
Together, we packed up all our things, jumped on our bikes, and set off to the laboratory. Once again, though there was no evidence that we would succeed, we charged forward purely on the thrill of our seemingly revolutionary plan. Small details be damned. This prospective parallel world, propped up on our biased theories, was our sole hope.
A world where Shiori and I could be happy together…