"Mai? Hey, Mai? Maaaiiii?" Simon's voice repeatedly sounded through the phone, but her mind was preoccupied with trying to make heads or tails of their estrangement. "This damn village, how is it possible for the reception to still suck so much after all these years?! Mai, if you can hear me, I'll hang up and try reaching you again later."
"No wait, I can hear you just fine." Mai quickly lifted the phone back up to her ear. In the brief moment she had taken to gather her thoughts, she had thought of the time they had spent together. They had practically grown up together and they had shared the good times and the bad. Even now in the 'present' when she had been rejected by Chris, he had tried to cheer her up.
Thinking about his sweet smile, and his little pomeranian cute face, she felt a warm feeling in her chest.
"Hey Simon, I… I just wanted to say sorry. Sorry for not contacting you this whole time. I don't even know what I was thinking, especially since I've always considered you like my little brother" She said confidently.
"Stop being so soppy." Simon replied, with a shift in his tone. Mai didn't need to see him to be able to tell that he must feel quite touched hearing her say that, especially so suddenly after all that time. "These things just happen when people grow up."
"Maybe, but they shouldn't have happened to us." Mai argued. "So, eh… it's a bit embarrassing, but it's been such a long time, I don't even remember why we stopped talking. Did we get into a fight or something?"
"No, not really. After you started going out with Chris. For some reason you started talking less and less with me. At first I thought you two were just in your honeymoon stage, but since you seemed happy, I just left you be."
"We still talked from time to time, but after you left the village you stopped altogether. I did try contacting you during the first year. You know on things like Christmas, your birthday, or when things happened to me. However, I think it was like seven years ago when I didn't even see so much as a Happy Birthday SMS from you, I thought you didn't want to have anything to do with me."
Trying to think things through in her mind, Mai was trying to gather a timeline of what had happened in those ten years. According to what she had just heard, a year from the present she somehow ended up with Chris.
'A whole year after he rejected me, I wonder what happened during that time?' And there was the perfect person to ask.
"I-I really don't know what to say. I won't try to make excuses, it sounds like I've been horrible to you Simon. I hope you can someday forgive me. If you don't mind, how about the two of us meeting up to catch up over the past some time? You know, talk about the good old school days. I haven't forgotten how fun it was to talk with you." She requested, aware that she was being a bit pushy and that played up the emotional part. However, not all of it was just a play, Mai really did feel terrible about Future Mei's behavior towards Future Simon.
"Sure, I guess. I still live in the village where I work now, so I won't be able to come until the weekend." Simon replied. "I would be happy to see you again, but it's impossible for me to come over now."
That would mean she could talk to him in three days from now. Unfortunately, Mai didn't even know how she got here in the first place. So far, every day she had slept she had come here, so maybe it would be the same in a couple of days. Assuming time passed at the same ratio of course.
For all she knew one day in her present might be one week in the future.
"Yeah that sounds good, just pop over whenever you can on the weekend, so we can catch up. I'm looking forward to talk to you after all this time."
Even if she couldn't come back, she thought it would be nice for Future Mai and Future Simon to start talking again. Perhaps it would even be for the better, so he would not ask her what Future Her had been doing in that nine year gap.
"Sure, just tell me your address first. The city is not exactly as small as our village and I doubt people will help me find you if I just ask." Simon jested, just like the Simon Mai knew would normally do.
'That's right, he's neve been here before. What the hell is my address?'
"Sure, give me one second!" She hurriedly started to look around the room to see if she could find anything that would have her address on it. Not knowing the layout of the room or where anything was packed, she could only do one thing.
"I'm sorry Future Me, after you had just finished packing everything away.'' Mai frantically went around the room pulling out draw after draw, until she could find something with her address on it.
Sadly, it appeared that in the future they had completely gotten rid of mail, and everything was digital so her idea of trying to find a letter with the address didn't exactly go well. Soon she had gone to the trash can, however not wanting to let Simon wait, she just tipped it onto the floor.
'The Future Me can clean this up, right?'
There was food, papers and even more which had spread across the whole of the small kitchen floor. That's when her eyes looked towards the door, where she could see empty cardboard packages. They were deliveries that were sure to have her address on them.
Picking up one of the parcels, her heart beat started to settle as she finally found her address.
'I feel like I've just defeated the demon lord or something, and all I was doing was looking for my stupid address.' She thought as she huffed and puffed and gave the address out to Simon.
Only after this ordeal did it hit her, that she could have just used her phone and checked her current location. Heck, she could have easily just sent it directly to Simon. She looked over to the mess she had created and silently apologised for not having thought of that sooner.
"Thanks Mai, I'll be there on the weekend. Get some rest, I'm sure there must be a lot on your mind about what happened to Chris. It was a bad way to go, and I'm sure you're worried."
"Worried?" She replied back.
"Yeah, I mean I would be if my partner was murdered. Of course you would be scared. Oh, sorry I probably shouldn't have brought it up. Anyway, I'll be with you on the weekend. Say, and I don't want to be mean or burden you or anything, but have you considered moving back to the village? Maybe not forever, but perhaps at least for a while to clear your head? I'm sure there are a lot of people who would be happy to see you again. I know, I would be."
With that, the call had finally ended, and Mai had been delivered another shock.
'Murdered, but why would someone want to murder Chris? I mean, he's so….' She stumbled for a second on what to say about him. She felt that she should say something nice about him, after all he had been her husband, but the words wouldn't flow out from her mouth.
It was at this point that Mai came to a realisation. Chris had not been 'her' husband, but Future Mai's husband. When she had first seen him in school she had already felt butterflies in her stomach, and the way he had been so nice to her, it was love at first sight. As she got to know him better and talk to him, she began to have a crush.
However, they would apparently only become an item one year from her present. It made her all the more aware that the current her… did not really know much about her crush.
What was the real Chris like? She didn't know… much less what had become of him during the next decade.
Thinking about it all, the whole situation was depressing to say the least and looking at the state the room was in after her little panic, she decided to push back those thoughts and concentrate on something else first.
' Arghh! I can't leave it like this. I can't be that bad of a person even if it is to myself. I don't even know how to get back in the first place.' She thought as she started to clean up the place once again.
Mai spent her time neatly putting back everything to the same state it had been as when she had first 'arrived'. Next was the hard part, the kitchen floor.
As she attempted cleaning the mess, she found a piece of paper. It stood out to her because it was a letter that had her name handwritten on it. Not many people were sending out handwritten letters, not even in her day, so it would be even stranger to find one ten years later.
Of course, she couldn't help but read what the letter had to say and was surprised to recognise Chris' handwriting.
"I'm worried that Mai might get involved in the mess I made. I'm thinking of leaving her, she shouldn't be involved and she doesn't know I've been hiding this secret from her. It was a mistake to bring her into my life. She was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I was probably the worst thing that ever happened to her.
The top half of the paper was soaked in an unknown liquid and was unreadable, however the bottom half was clear. As she got to the last few words, the handwriting had gotten scruffier. She could tell that Chris had struggled to write this, and she knew one thing for sure - he deeply cared about her.
'Chris, who killed you and why?' She wondered as she wiped the tears from her face, and the green light on her necklace started to light up once again.