Monday, January 22, 2007,7:29 AM
Traveler ch. 2
2

As slowly as she could, Yossi opened her eyes and bring a hand to her head. It was killing her. It was as if someone were crushing a hammer against it. The most horrible pain in the world.

“I’m gonna kill that girl…”

That’s it. The girl. She was the main reason of her headache and she would have to give Yossi some answers. That’s if she could find her, because probably the stalker had run away already. How did she dare to follow her, to step in the place where she work and hear a private conversation? What reminds Yossi…

Ishikawa?

The Morning Musume leader looked around trying to find her friend, but there wasn’t any signal of Rika near. All that she saw was a devastated area of destroyed buildings that Mother Nature had claimed as hers. The climbing plants had taken the ruins of what seemed had been a big city, now reduced to sand and a few cracked walls. The silence flooding the air gave the whole scenery a smell of death and loneliness that Hitomi hadn’t felt before.

“What happened here?” asked out loud.

“An earthquake? Probably some natural disaster…”

Yossi turned her head and found someone familiar. Too bad it wasn’t Ishikawa.

“Answers. Now” said Yoshizawa with a menacing tone in her voice and taking the younger’s arm in a rage “What the hell you’ve done?”

“I didn’t do anything! It was you who pressed the damn button!

The stalker get rid of Yossi and made some steps backwards, but she didn’t run. That gave Hitomi a better view of the girl and could watch her thoroughly. It’s true that the younger was a bit scruffy and messy, like if she had just returned from a war but there was something… something in her eyes, in the way she was looking at Yossi… it was bold, there was no fear. Unexpectedly, that made the older girl to relax a little.

“You’re name?”

“Kaoru”

“Ok, Kaoru…” repeated Yossi “I just want to know what happened. You know where this place is?”

“Yes…, and no”

Hitomi gave her a glare. It was a warning before she’d exhaust her patience again.

“Basically, we are at the same place where we were before you activated the Traveler”

“I still don’t get it”

The girl sighed and seated at one of the near stones. It was going to be difficult to explain the whole thing.

“Same place, same time, different world”

Well, maybe not so difficult but shocking.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this. You shouldn’t even be here”

“You said different…”

“World, yes”

“That’s ridiculous”

“Then, can you explain me how we get to this place?”

Yossi kept silence and looked around her again. There wasn’t a good explanation for what happened. One minute they were at the studio and in a blink they appeared in that desert city. If there was a logical reason for that she wasn’t smart enough to know it.

“Who are you?” asked Hitomi totally defeated before collapsing in her knees.

The girl kneeled in front of Yossi and lowered her head as signal of respect.

“My name is Kaoru… Ishikawa Kaoru. I’m nineteen years old and I’m doing research for a school work. I’m studying the resemblance and differences between parallel dimensions and if there’s something that keeps them joined. Because of that, I picked a subject, Yoshizawa Hitomi, and studied her life through the different worlds. I’ve been at four, five worlds if we count this…”

“You said Ishikawa…” thought Yossi out loud interrupting Kaoru’s words “…and you called Rika-chan ‘mama’…”

“Ishikawa Rika was my mother”

“How? You’re almost the same age…”

“I’m not from that time”

The younger spent the following two hours explaining everything. The Traveler, the machine that she was wearing in her wrist, it was a similar to a time machine but with the restriction that she’s just able to choose one date if she wanted to use the dimension travel feature. Kaoru told Yossi that her mother talked so much about her that, someway, she felt the need to find her and learn more.

“There’s a way to go back to my world?”

“I don’t think so” answered Kaoru apologizing “The Traveler’s preset to visit ten worlds before returning to the original. Maybe then, Konno-san will be able to bring you back”

“Kon-Kon?”

“She’s the one who created the Traveler”

Yoshizawa stroked her hair, trying to process all the new information. Different worlds? A time traveler? It was like a bad sci-fi movie. She never liked sci-fi movies...

“Then, press that button as many times as necessary to go back to your world to see Kon-Kon”

The taller took the girl’s wrist and was going to press the button, but before she could do it, Kaoru step back protecting the machine with her hand.

“I can’t return yet!”

“Why? You’ve been at four worlds already, right? That’s enough to your work…”

“It’s not enough. I couldn’t study you at the previous three worlds”

“Why?”

Something inside her head told Hitomi that she shouldn’t had asked that.

“Because you’re dead”

Labels:

 
posted by Unknown
Permalink ¤