Silence enveloped the room. Each person began to ponder their thoughts. After leaving Kaoru to rest, Asuka, Yukikaze, and the others walked out of the room, feeling a mix of emotions. As they made their way down the quiet hallway, Yukikaze broke the silence with a question that seemed to linger in her mind as well.
"Who exactly is Kaoru?" Yukikaze asked, her voice steady, though it clearly reflected deep curiosity.
Asuka paused for a moment, staring straight ahead before finally responding. "I'm not sure myself," she said, her tone uncertain. She continued with a slightly awkward smile. "Our first meeting was anything but normal."
Yukikaze raised an eyebrow, showing further interest. "Not normal? What do you mean?"
Asuka looked down, recalling the moment. "At the time, I was on a mission to eliminate a Ghoul that had been released by an evil organization. The Ghoul had escaped into the streets and was wreaking havoc. Before I could act, Kaoru had already taken care of everything." Asuka went quiet for a second, as if remembering that extraordinary scene. "I was so curious about him that I ended up following him."
Yukikaze stared at Asuka intently. "And after that?"
Asuka blushed slightly, feeling a bit embarrassed as she recalled what happened next. "Well, as you can see now, we kept running into each other… and eventually, we fell in love."
"Hmph, how odd." Yukikaze gave a small, amused smile. "A mysterious person like him actually caught your interest."
Asuka nodded slowly, still baffled by how fate had brought them together. The atmosphere became quiet until Shiranui, who had been silent up until then, finally spoke.
"Um… I don't want to bring this up, but I think we need to talk about it now," Shiranui said cautiously.
"What do you mean, mom?" Yukikaze asked, her eyes shifting to Shiranui with curiosity.
"Kaoru. He often mumbles about 'outer gods' or suddenly curses something he calls 'the outer gods.' And… his old phone is broken. He seems really stressed whenever he mentions it," Shiranui explained as she tried to recall the details she had observed.
Asuka looked surprised. "Ah, right. When we first met, he also talked about that. He even asked me to introduce him to a phone from 2022."
Murasaki, who was usually calm, suddenly looked puzzled. "A phone from 2022? Asuka, as far as I know, phones from that era don't exist anymore. Since technology suddenly advanced in 2025, everyone has switched to the latest devices. Even old phones have been recycled."
"Eh?" Asuka stared at Murasaki, confused.
Shiranui, always polite in her actions, sought clarification. "What do you mean, Murasaki-san?"
Murasaki sighed. "What I mean is that phones from 2022 are almost nonexistent. You might find them in a museum, but in the market… it's impossible. They've all been replaced by newer technology."
A strange silence filled the air, and it was clear that the others were starting to question the same thing but were hesitant to voice it. Finally, Yukikaze spoke, breaking the tension with a startling speculation.
"Could it be… that Kaoru is from the year 2022? I mean… time travel?"
When Yukikaze posed her question, Asuka felt her heart race. "Time travel?" she thought. Although the idea seemed impossible, nothing about Kaoru had been more bizarre than the last few weeks. From the moment she met him, she knew he was different—as if he didn't belong in this world. But… time travel?
Asuka glanced at Yukikaze, who was still deep in thought, and quietly wondered if everything she knew about Kaoru was just a small piece of a much larger mystery.
---
Kaoru lay on the infirmary bed, staring blankly at the ceiling, which seemed to spin above him. An overwhelming exhaustion filled his body, as if every muscle fiber and nerve was screaming in fatigue.
"Man, I'm really worn out…" he thought, letting out a deep sigh. He could feel his Aura and Mana drained. It hadn't even been a day since he had last restored his Mana, but now he was forced to use high-level healing magic again. It wasn't just physically exhausting, but mentally as well. And now, his consciousness was teetering between fatigue and alertness.
However, a question suddenly surfaced in his mind. "What am I even doing?" His thoughts wandered back to how all of this began—all because of the outer gods' mistake.
Kaoru remembered the moment when he first left another world, where he had played the role of a hero. After completing his mission there, the outer gods had promised to send him back to his original world—Earth, in the year 2022. But something had gone wrong. Instead of returning, he was flung into the year 2082, a different Earth. This world, filled with supernatural occurrences beyond anything he could have imagined, had no way back.
"Waiting for help from the outer gods… yeah, that was my goal back then." The memory resurfaced. His old phone, strangely still functioning as a means of communication with the outer gods, had been his only link to his original world. The outer gods had promised to fix the problem, but they told him it would take time. And in the meantime, Kaoru was stuck.
Then, everything changed when his phone broke. That's when he met Asuka, then Shiranui, and got involved in events he had never planned for. "Why is my life always like this?" he thought, giving a bitter smile. Always, he ended up caught in trouble either out of curiosity or maybe… because he was too kind to refuse helping others. Trouble always seemed to find him, as if this world was drawn to pull him into chaos.
Kaoru took a long breath, closing his eyes for a moment. "Ah, whatever… After all this is over, I'll fix my old phone," he thought, finally setting his next goal. He needed to find out what the outer gods had to say. That phone was his only communication device with them, and without it, he was truly isolated.