It is a lovely sunny morning.
The gentle wind is blowing to my face.
I can smell the distant forest.
Right now I am sitting on a roof of a school. There is a tall fence in front of me. Through it, I can see the backyard.
There are many children walking there. And many of them have hair of different colors. Some of them are green, some blue, some red and some white... Yeah, it's a totally unrealistic picture.
'Just like in anime...'
The school that I am in right now is situated atop a hill, so get here, you have to ascend a steep road.
I have come here earlier than everyone else.
Because of that, I have nothing to do now than to kill time.
Well.
Let's get on with it already.
What exactly am I doing here? Before this scenery fitting to be on the first page of a manga... You know, the colorful one.
To answer that question, I have to go back to a week or so.
Once upon a time, I was just wandering the street in the morning. Sun was low, and there weren't many people around.
Suddenly, I saw a strange thing lying before my feet.
It was a magazine.
A colorful magazine with large letters and a picture of a clown in a baseball suit printed on the cover.
Feeling interested, I picked it up. Then, I felt surprised.
This strange thing turned out to be a weekly manga magazine. Just like ShΕnen J*mp. Even the name of it was similar.
It was titled ShΕnen BOOM!
Now, to make things clear, I haven't read a lot of manga in my life.
I remember watching some anime as a kid, and that's it.
Either way, I tried reading the magazine and then⦠Then I found the first strange thing about it.
There was nothing inside of it.
Only forty completely blank pages.
On some of them, there were small letters: 'To be continued' printed on the lower-left corner.
I took the magazine home.
On the evening of the very same day, I suddenly remembered about it.
I decided to look through it again. The second inspection revealed one more strange thing. The magazine had a publication timestamp.
12.04.2021
I checked the current date using my phone.
03.04.2021 (I'm not American, by the way)
Yep.
Turns out, the magazine was from the future.
Just what is going on here?
Either way, there was nothing else that I could do. I placed the magazine on that shelf of my table where all useless things go to.
However, on the very next day, strange things began to happen...
I received a call early in the morning. The voice from the phone told me that I've 'won a lottery, a million dollars and a trip to a tropical paradise'β¦
I hate tropical climate and all of that sounded like some obvious fraud, so I politely refused.
The person on the phone insisted.
I hung up.
Then, at noon, a courier came to my house. He told me that he had come to 'deliver my tickets'. I refused to take them. He just stood there in front of my door for a minute or so and only then left. After that, I found a blue ticket laying next to my door. I threw it in a dumpster.
But it wasn't over yet.
Several days after I got a message from my landlord. He was driving me off.
Well, I thought, time to search for a new house. First thing first, I had to check my bank account.
It was blocked.
Feeling terrified, I made a call to the bank. They told me that there had been a problem on their side and that they will fix everything as soon as possible, in a month or so⦠And then, while I was trying to think of the right word to curse them, my printer suddenly started working...
It printed a blue ticket.
I froze.
And for a good reason.
My printer couldn't print in color.
Even a very skeptical person will start having doubts were he to be punched by a ghost.
I felt pressed by reality itself to accept that ticket.
Several days after, when I was gathering my stuff in preparation for the flight, once again I stumbled upon that magazine.
I looked at it and froze.
The clown on the cover was smiling. There was a red line drawn below his cap.
Did he have that smile before? I couldn't remember, and neither could I stop shivering.
I took the magazine with me.
The destination of my flight was a country that I have never heard of before. It was named Aozora. This country was to Japan akin to what Taiwan had been to China in my previous world. I was sure that just several days before, this country didn't exist.
What exactly was that place? I didn't know. I felt like I was placed into a hellish nightmare.
I was picked up at the airport by car. I was so worried at that time that I could barely look at the city passing by in the window. It was a large, shiny Megalopolis. Just like Tokyo.
And just like in Tokyo, all advertisements were written in Japanese.
For some reason, I could read them all, even though I had never studied that language.
I was placed in a hotel and told that I will get a room in a dorm on the first day of school.
It was tomorrow.
12 of April.
And yes, the first day of 'school'. I had to go to school for some reason. Because I was an exchange student or something. Even my age in my passport has changed. I became a 15 years old boy.
I had a sleepless nightβ¦
Early in the morning, at 5.30, following instructions written on the note I was left with, I left my hotel and walked to a bus stop.
Everything around me was passing by without attracting my attention. In the window of the bus, I could see little private houses passing one after another, showing off their trimmed lawns. Seems like that school of mine was located in the suburbs.
The bus dropped me at the foot of a large hill. It has been tiring to ascend it, and that is why I'm feeling so exhausted right now. What's more, after that I had to go to the roof of the school.
I hoped that wind and sky would help me clear my mind...
So.
I'm tired, I had a sleepless night, and despite all of that, I felt wide awake.
My heart was beating like crazy in my chest.
I did try reading the magazine right at 00.00 on the 12th. Yet, I only saw the same blank pages.
Horrible frustration washed over me back then.
However, in the morning while I was standing at the bus stop I noticed a bookstall nearby.
There were magazines quite like that one of mine behind the display. But what attracted my attention was a sign:
'Opening at 7.00'
I suddenly had a wild guess.
It was crazy, and yet I felt that there was some logic to it.
Anyway, I had no other choice.
Once again I looked at the blue of the sky.
Then I checked the time on my phone.
6.59β¦
7.
I took a deep breath.
And opened the magazine on the first pageβ¦