Work Text:
Time travel.
It’s an outlandish concept, to be sure. Not something that would actually happen anytime soon in reality. Hitori knows that.
Still, she’s worried about touching this… thing the wrong way.
Mainly because she doesn’t know where it came from. When she got home from school, it was just on her desk, with a note saying that it was a time turner. Put in a certain amount of time on it, and it would send Hitori’s mind back to that long ago, putting the current her in the body from then.
It sounds kind of freakish to her, honestly. What would happen to the her that existed that moment originally? How did the timeline stuff work? General time travel logistics?
And it apparently only works once, too. She should probably make sure the thing she’d use it for is something really important.
…If it’s even real, that is, and of course it’s not! It’s not real at all, Hitori tells herself. Just some stupid prank by her parents. (The handwriting looked nothing like theirs.)
Still, from that moment, she carries it around with her.
Hitori thinks about using it a lot. When the teacher asks her a question and she doesn’t know the answer, she considers it. When she has to talk to the cashier and botches it, she feels its outline through the fabric of her pants. When she gets a test back and sees how terribly she did, she grabs it tightly.
She doesn’t use it. Not yet, she thinks, not for something so minor. I’m being stupid for even considering it over something this small.
And then, one day, she joins a band.
Their first live doesn’t go particularly well, but the other two are willing to have her again. She doesn’t think she’d play any better if she turned back time right now. Maybe she’ll collect some experience with the band first, then use the time turner to go back, and impress them with how good she is.
Work is rough, but ends up being more manageable than Hitori had expected. She toys with the idea of turning back time, but sticks with her original plan. She’ll just impress them with her work skills in her second try at joining the band.
It comes out like a mess, but she stops Kita from leaving. She doesn’t think about using the time turner.
After a week of not getting anywhere with the lyrics, she stares at it for a long time. She just needs a little more time, right? Then she’ll get it done. She’ll write the best lyrics anyone has ever seen. So good it undoes all the times she messed up at work or at practice, good enough to not need to retry joining the band anymore.
When she sees the message requesting to meet up, she resigns herself to the fact that maybe she’s just bad at writing lyrics.
Eventually, she gets them done. The audition passes by. She sells her tickets.
Kita and Nijika leave after they’re done designing a shirt. Hitori takes a good, long look at the time turner.
She stops carrying it around everywhere.
The concert happens. Until the next morning, Hitori completely forgets that the device even exists.
At the end of the summer holidays, she thinks about using it again. She concludes that she’ll just do better next year.
SICK HACK’s performance and the school festival go by too fast. Her stage dive might end up being a blemish on her memories, but she doesn’t mind as much as she thought she would.
When she goes out the next day, she leaves the time turner in her closet.
Only once Mikakunin Riot is over does Hitori stumble across it again. She eyes it for a moment, but only to figure out a better place to put it.
The next day, it’s gone like it had never been there in the first place, along with the note. Her parents don’t know anything about it, nor does her sister.
For some reason, Hitori feels content with that.
Someone tells her she used to mumble something about time travel back in the day. Hitori smiles and says she doesn’t remember.