Ichijō Mirai stared fixedly out the window.
He closed his eyes, eased the incredulity, and opened them again.
He closed his eyes again, doubled his disbelief, and opened them.
Outside the window there was still a bustling but downtrodden traffic, pedestrians with their cell phones and flip phones, vehicles clumsy and rough, like a whimpering pig.
If you take a picture, you don't even need to adjust the filter, just shake your hand and blur it a bit, and it's a respectful screenshot of a 1990s TV show.
Ichijō Mirai: "..."
How on earth did the world that still uses big brother flip phones come up with game pods?
"
Ichijō Mirai didn't understand, but he was shocked.
Shocked, he lifts his high-tech wristwatch to check, realizes that the screen only shows the time, not the date, and flips open the silver and white box to check the paperwork.
Good news: the document is labeled with the date.
Bad news: but not fully labeled.
The date on the document is only the month and the number, not the year.
Ichijō Mirai continued: "..."
He quickly rummages around the room, trying to rummage around to find a calendar, to no avail, so he thinks for a few seconds and reaches for the books on the shelves.
There were a lot of books on the shelves, almost all of them works of deduction, with the majority of the shelves lined up with Agatha's works, as well as Sherlock Holmes, and the rest by the likes of Quinn and Chesterton.
It was obviously in Neon, but the only book that counted as a Neon author was a Japanese dictionary.
Ichijō Mirai scanned through it, pulling out the Japanese dictionary and quickly flipping through it to find the information on the publication date, his eyes fixed on it.
Good news: the year finally appeared!
Bad news: nineteen seventy-something years.
Ichijō Mirai, his eyes fixed on the year 197_, shoved the dictionary back in and resumed his search for other books with publication dates.
And once again, he found several books with years beginning with Ichijō, none of which began with II.
"..." Ichijō Mirai returned to the bathroom, confirmed that the game pod he saw was not an illusion of his own, and returned to his desk, looking out the window once more, "No?"
No, sir, could a game cabin be developed in the era of clamshell computers at the end of the 20th century? Partial subjects are not so partial.
Ichijō Mirai doesn't get it and continues to be greatly shocked.
He opened the door and walked out of the bedroom which shocked him. He saw a wooden staircase that was of similar technological level to the street outside the window but was quite clean.
There was the fluffy sweetness of dessert and the aroma of coffee coming from the first floor, lingering throughout the house, as well as some low sounds of conversation and clattering of cutlery.
Ichijō Mirai stands at the second-floor railing and looks down, vaguely spying a few moments of the dessert store scene downstairs.
He recalls Ishida Eiko's chef's uniform and the flour on her hands, and confirms the aunt's identity: the owner of the dessert store, who is also the chef.
The staircase is long, with a turning platform in the middle, and the creaking of the wood with each step highlights the staircase as an aged old man.
Ichijō Mirai counts the steps down, pauses when he reaches the platform, and counts up again, a little wistfully, "The footsteps in the morning don't sound from the first floor, but from the platform."
In the morning, not long after he opened his eyes, he heard the sound of angry footsteps coming from downstairs, it was Ishida Eiko's.
Because of the anger, the footsteps were heavy, so heavy that even someone with a few hearing problems could roughly determine how many steps the stairs were.
However, Ishida Eiko's steps only matched half of the number of steps in the staircase, which meant that she was at the platform when she took the first step in anger.
Judging this, Ichijō Mirai thoughtfully took another step down, off the platform, and stepped on the lower half of the stairs.
The wooden stairs creaked.
He revised his judgment to be more precise: before taking the first step angrily, Ishida Eiko stayed on the platform, not moving for at least a minute.
Because in the minute or two between 'opening his eyes and waking up' and 'hearing heavy footsteps', Ichijō Mirai did not hear the creak of the wooden stairs.
"Strange," Ichijō Mirai continued walking down, "the fear of me can be explained by 'ordinary people have an instinctive awe of a guy who can owe thirty million dollars', but before entering the door and asking me to get up, they stopped in the middle of the stairs for at least a minute?"
Very strange.
He walked to the first floor and got a good look at the layout.
The first floor appeared to be a normal dessert store, decorated in a mostly clean and cute style, with large expanses of glass replacing the walls, allowing the warm morning sun to pour in.
There were already some people sitting in the dessert store one after another, mostly young women.
The door to the back kitchen by the stairs is open, and Ishida Eiko, wearing thick gloves, takes a large tray of bread out of the baking oven.
When she heard the creaking of the stairs, she subconsciously sniffed at the sound, and the moment she saw Ichijō Mirai, the naturally relaxed expression on her face instantly tightened up, and then slowly hardened into a softer expression, "Mirai, what are you doing down here?"
She was still scared.
Without even putting down the huge skillet, she just held it right in front of Ichijō Mirai and spoke to him.
It was a reaction of panic similar to the one you get when you're home alone, only to realize coldly from the telltale signs that someone else is present in the house.
Ichijō Mirai, familiar with this instinctive reaction of panic, did not answer at first.
He surveyed the change in Ishida Eiko's expression and assessed it for a few seconds before breaking into a smile, "Aunt, you're afraid of me."
Ishida Eiko shivered, the skillet shook in her hands, and then reacted by stopping her stance and turning to put the skillet down, "What? Haha, you kid, don't joke."
"There isn't enough flour, your aunt has gone to fetch it, she'll be back later."
She turned back again, took out a piece of dessert, and worked without looking back as if she was busy, emphasizing in a hasty manner, "I'll be back later."
"By the way, why are you out so soon, is something wrong, your aunt is still out there, I just happened to ask him to do it."
There was already some babbling going on.
Ichijō Mirai walked over to her, "The game is updating."
He took the dessert from Ishida Eiko, "Going out? No, it's better if I go."
"What table is this from?"
The plate in her hand was taken away, Ishida Eiko subconsciously reached out, paused in the air again, and finally retracted, "Table 17."
"Don't think too much of it," she rasped, "After all, you owe thirty million dollars..."
"And, and the sleeping pills..."
She sighed, "Auntie is afraid that you won't be able to handle it and hurt yourself."
"I haven't seen you a few times, I don't really have any feelings for you, but you look so much like your mother, I'm really afraid that if you have another accident, how am I going to explain to your mother?"
"Well," Ichijō Mirai said noncommittally, not voicing his opinion on this reason for fearing himself, "Table 17, right? I'm going."
He walked to the kitchen door and turned back, "By the way, Auntie, what time is it?"
"Give me the full name of the year, month, and day."
Seeing him turn back, Ishida Eiko's half-relieved breath lifted urgently, "What?"
She said in a rush, "
"Today is Niiname-no-Matsuri, November 23, 1994."