Work Text:
Asurei Rune is not abusing the privilege.
He’s a young intern for El Dorado, accepted straight out of high school, getting to work on missions. Missions. Toudou Heikichi scares him a little, but it’s nothing to worry about when he realises what it involves.
Time travel.
“Use it wisely,” the formidable leader warns him. Rune closes his hand tight around the small metal disk handed to him. Beneath it were two straps, undoubtedly to wear as a watch, with colours representing different modes gleaming on the front.
Toudou’s strict voice breaks through Rune’s dreams. “Follow me.” The intern quickly hurries along the corridor, no doubt about to be taken to his induction.
In the wide lecture hall, Toudou explains the division details to the new interns. El Dorado is currently the leading organization in terms of time travel. The public already knows it exists, but not much interference lies within the hands of Japan’s puppet government. El Dorado could change as much as they liked, and no one had any say about it.
“The only thing you will need to keep in mind,” Toudou clarifies in his introduction to the new agents, “is that you will have to keep your involvement in this division a secret.”
“Why?” An intern’s hand raises up, cocking her head slightly as she speaks. Rune briefly recognises her, either from seeing her around during the interview process, or walking somewhere around the cafeteria. Long, milky-brown hair hangs from either side of her head, and the rest of her mane is tied up into a ponytail.
Toudou Heikichi, formidable and intimidating as always, poised and predicted to be the next leader of El Dorado, glares at her. “Public opinion of our organization’s time travel movements has placed it under scrutiny. You would know this very well, Ms. Nanobana.”
She’s Japanese? Rune quickly deduces the fact from her name. While El Dorado is located in Japan’s capital, little to none of its employees were fully Japanese, aside from division leaders. Being Chinese himself, he’d always found it confusing why many of the country’s children didn’t go into the main governing force behind Japan — and much of the world, too.
Nanobana gives her superior a small smile and prods further. “What plans would El Dorado place in order to protect its employees, then?”
“None for unruly interns,” he returns coldly. “I will give orders and you will follow accordingly, and there is no room for a why.”
Shortly after, the meeting is dismissed and most of the interns disperse. An air of tension hangs in the room until Toudou leaves, then several students turn towards Nanobana.
Rune finds himself among them. He wants to ask her why she would go so far with one of El Dorado’s elite, but his throat closes up and words come out in a mumble that never reaches her ears.
Another girl, seemingly one of her friends, says, “Kinako, that was daring.”
“So,” she shrugs, “Toudou Heikichi doesn’t seem like one of the best options for leading. I’m not a big fan of him, or this time travel programme.”
“You’d miss out on El Dorado’s most prestigious branch of work?” a boy beside Rune pipes up.
She shrugs again. “Like I said, Toudou seems to be using it for his own gain to gain prestige in this organization. Some people would want to use it for good at this moment, but it won’t be very good in the long run to stay in the programme.”
Rune subsequently doesn’t see her around very much. Once or twice in the cafeteria he catches a glimpse of her milky brown hair, but soon, her work in El Dorado’s explosive development section covers it in soot.
Meanwhile, the time travel programme takes off.
It goes exactly as Toudou had drawn the lines for it, with interns quickly getting the gist of handling their time travel watches exactly how they should work. Rune’s first missions aren’t very big: de-escalating a scuffle in a railway station 2 months ago, which saves a net loss of $100K from the division’s funds; placing a bug in trading material (no doubt for some extra information on demand); a small operation in which Toudou is conveniently placed next to Sakamaki Togurou, the head of communications.
For that last mission, Toudou had personally, privately, tasked Rune with doing it himself, without the knowledge of anyone.
“I know I can trust in you, Asurei,” he told him. “You are the fastest progressing employee, diligent in your work, quiet and undistracted.”
It wasn’t necessarily a life or death operation. Just cause some scuffle on a side street and make a younger Toudou Heikichi choose a different route, one that would eventually lead him to bump into — and form a friendship with — Sakamaki.
It wasn’t until two months of complete absorption into climbing the ranks that he emerges through the surface to breathe.
A quick ex-intern meet-up, just after the successful applicants were announced the previous day. Hanging out on the roof of the cafeteria building. Why not in the cafeteria, Rune can’t tell, but wherever they go, he goes.
A mane of milky brown, smelling like mochi in a way he’d never noticed before, quickly passes him and sits down on the edge of the roof.
Maybe it’s the new edge he gained for adrenaline in the past two months that moves Rune into hyperdrive mode. He finally plucks up the courage to sit down next to Kinako Nanobana, who’d taken his superior with a challenge on her very first day.
He holds out a cup towards her, filled with something fizzy and pink. “Uh – er – do you want…?”
She stares at Rune for a second, then smiles warmly and beckons for him to sit down. “Sure, thank you.” She takes the drink and places it on her other side.
He searches for something to say, but after a minute gives up. Luckily, she takes the lead. “What department do you work at?”
“Uhm, time travel. Been two months.”
“Oh, interesting.” She smiles again, albeit this time more awkwardly. “I… didn’t really take a fancy to it on the first day, in case you haven’t noticed. I work in explosives now.”
“Explosives?”
“Hell yeah.” She holds up her hands, showing black soot caked beneath her fingernails. “I was scared of explosives in the first place. Not of making them, but what they do to people, you know? But turns out there’s a ton of things you can make with gunpowder. And I took a liking to it.”
“That’s good. I — uh — I find explosives a bit… risky,” he shares, “and time travel isn’t very hard work. Just changing a few things here or there for the company to do better.”
“Mmm.” She stays quiet for a second, then looks directly at Rune with a look he can’t interpret. “Lots of little missions, meddling with time?”
“Uh, yeah. Nothing too big. It can’t be bad, right?”
“It can’t be bad,” Kinako begins, “But Heikichi continues to ignore the report by Dr. Arno Crossword released a few months ago. It outlines that little changes in the timeline could create hundreds of Time Paradoxes…”
Rune gulps down a sip of his own drink, staying silent.
“Can I ask you a question?” she says again.
“Sure.”
“There must have been a mission somewhere, sometime, where you had to move Toudou Heikichi somewhere that was convenient for him, amiright?”
Rune can’t stop the sweat from forming on his face. A small laugh escapes him and he attempts to negate it, but the young woman beside him knows exactly what made him fluster.
“I thought so.” She stood up abruptly. “Just so you know, Rune, that making these little changes might be nice for you now… but not very good in the long run. Have a good night.”
With that, she walks away, leaving the time traveller sitting on the roof by himself, alarmed.
He looks away to hide the flush on his face, only to notice her pink soda was left untouched on the roof’s cold steel.
***
Shit, shit, shit.
A party is not allowed to end before midnight, but Asurei Rune was back in his lodgings at 10:00 PM, cupping his face in his hands.
Damn it. Damn it.
He looks up to see his face in the mirror. The palest of pale skin, sweaty and pasty, clashes horribly with his mint-cyan hair. It hangs limp on his head in a way he hasn’t noticed in the past few weeks.
IDIOT!
He’ll have no chance with Kinako now. Now that she’d completely shut down all the work he’d put in for the past two months, she’ll never want to look at him again.
He lifts his head out of his hands. Deep breath, Rune. You don’t want to ruin things. Again.
What can he do?
***
The answer to that comes later in the most unexpected way possible.
He sits in a room with Toudou Heikichi — as usual — where his superior outlines major details of the next mission. Intercepting officers, sneaking in and out at night… his previous ones only included daytime movement, clearances, two-month travels to the past where the past Toudou stood waiting for the time travellers to arrive and directed them to where they needed to be.
Despite the complexity of its logistics, Rune eventually deems it nothing to be worried about. Toudou has placed the newly-selected agent with some more experienced ones. Before leaving, his sharp red eyes find Rune’s; the meaning is easily palpable. Except Rune could hear it loud and clear in his mind, without Toudou himself uttering a single word.
I have placed you in a higher position, Asurei Rune. Do not fail me.
More alarmed at the fact that Toudou Heikichi could enter minds, he steps onward onto his new mission with his coworkers. This time, they were to retrieve files from a high-security prison in Russia — why Russia? — and escape safely back to 2211.
Hayes, the skilled older time traveller Rune was paired up with, slaps his watch shut once they get back to safety. “You’re not too bad, Rune,” he huffs, out of breath. “See you next mission.”
“Uh…” The junior bites his lip as he watches Hayes begin to leave the room. “Your watch — you need to put it — I mean, I think we should put them back…”
“Hm? Oh, that,” Hayes rolls his eyes. “We don’t have to return our watches, y’know, once we make an important mission. You’re allowed to act independently from now on. Oh, and—” he makes sure the door is shut, then steps closer to Rune— “You can do a little meddling here and there on your own, old Heikichi turns a blind eye to that.”
"Are you sure?” Rune can’t stop his voice from wavering slightly.
“Pfffft, of course. He’s taken a liking to you, stupid.”
***
A quick ex-intern meetup, just after successful applicants had been announced. Again.
(You might wonder, dear reader, if El Dorado has decided to invest in new recruits so soon after the previous ones. As your author, I must confirm that Asurei Rune is defying the very title of this humble one-shot.)
Rune stands off to the side, a little nervous. However, he couldn’t be more grateful for the orange mode on his watch: Merge mode.
[Time travel employee handbook:
Merge mode involves the user being able to travel to the past, but is able to merge with their past body. This means that their body in the present will be held in ‘standby’ mode at rest. Due to this risk, the user must not spend longer than 12 hours in the past, or their body will be in danger of experiencing dehydration, starvation, or symptoms that could further lead to ill health.]
Said watch is kept concealed under his sleeve. For tonight, he dons a long-sleeve orange knitted sweater. He doesn’t fancy orange very much, but this was the only thing in his wardrobe that was able to hide the watch on his wrist, and was simultaneously suitable for a late-night party, on the roof, in the cold.
Oh well.
A mane of milky brown, smelling like mochi in a way he has noticed before, quickly passes him and sits down on the edge of the roof.
Shoot your shot, Rune.
This time, he grabs another flavour: pineapple citrus, which sparkles yellow and emits a fruity smell. Rune also doesn’t fancy it very much, but he hopes Kinako would.
“Uh, hey.” His voice comes out earnest, hopeful. “Feel like a drink?”
Kinako smiles warmly, then beckons for him to sit down. She takes a whiff of the cup he hands to her. “Oooh, pineapple citrus. It smells nice.”
“Glad to see you like it.” Rune leans back on his arms, in the laid-back manner he had seen some of her friends take on. “Uhm, which department do you work in?”
“Explosives!” She holds up her hands, showing soot caked beneath her nails. “I was scared of explosives in the first place. Not of making them, but what they do to people, you know? But turns out there’s a ton of things you can make with gunpowder. And I took a liking to it.”
“That’s great, honestly,” he says. “Uhm, I work in time travel. I remember the first day you didn’t feel too good about it.”
“Mmm.”
“I’m glad you settled in well in another department.” It’s almost as if another person is sitting down instead of Rune, talking with ease to the girl he’d been admiring for almost three months. “I was also a bit nervous about time travel… but we don’t have a lot of missions, you see. Just a bit of gathering intelligence here and there, because causing a lot of change could mess up the timeline.”
Kinako nods vigorously mid-gulp. Her cup is down to half.
He continues. “In fact, I don’t know if you’ve heard about Dr. Arno Crossword…?”
“Yeah, I have!” she exclaims. “He’s great. I’m glad Toudou Heikichi is staying away from the risks, even if I didn’t get a very good feeling about him at first.”
They remain for much longer this time on the roof, chatting about life, about El Dorado’s way of running everything. Kinako, he learns, came from a rural area in Fukuoka, and was indeed fully Japanese.
“It’s unusual,” she says, “but I think it’s cool that the main government, behind all the decisions in this world, has people from different nations in it.”
Rune nods.
A few minutes pass in silence. Rune offers to refill their cups for them, and when he comes back, Kinako cocks her head and tells him, “I like your shirt, by the way. I love orange.”
“Really? Uhm… I hate orange.”
“We should marry and see what our child thinks of orange.” She flips her hair as Rune bursts out laughing.
Heh…
***
Kinako has considerably softened up to him by the time Rune gets back.
Luckily, he’d left a note for his younger self to keep a diary, documenting everything he’d done in the past month. So far, Kinako and him have been waving to each other, and she’s started calling him “Asurei”.
Nobody really calls him that, not even Rune himself. Somehow, in the mess of schooling abroad and working at the multicultural El Dorado, he felt much more comfortable calling himself Rune, even to himself.
So, hearing Kinako say it to him when they meet in the cafeteria the next day rings in his ears a little… magical.
They grab trays of food — Kinako grabbing a small bowl of kinakomochi, which Rune takes note of — and sit down in the small garden area.
He lets out a small puff. Apparently, they haven’t sat together once in the month since the celebration party, which explains her hesitant demeanor.
He insists on breaking the ice once again.
“Sooo… some developments in the explosives department?”
“Er, nothing much,” she trails off, squeezing a mochi ball between her fingers. “I’m thinking of moving to another department, actually.”
Rune waits for her to clarify which one it is, before realizing she expected him to ask. Oh.
“Could it be time travel?” he asks tentatively.
She shakes her head. “No, the labs.”
“Uhm, labradors?”
“The chemistry labs, genius!” Kinako raises an eyebrow, but upon seeing her companion’s face, she covers it with a smile. “It’s fine.”
“Uhm, yeah.”
Cue awkward silence. Rune doesn’t know how to fill it, but Kinako stays staring out at the sky.
“It’s so lovely today,” she finally speaks.
“I agree,” he replies instantly. “I like it when it’s so sunny. And it — it goes well with your eyes, by the way.”
She averts them, but a small smile still stays on her face.
Drawing closer. He doesn’t know if it’s the right move. But — the orange of the sky, slowly darkening, reflects well on her cheeks.
He hasn’t noticed it before, but they look so soft. Almost — no, even softer than mochi.
Steady, Rune. You get worked up about everything. It’ll be fine.
He composes himself.
Just do it.
Rune leans over and plants on her face a kiss.
“Huh—what?” Kinako turns around with clear alarm in her eyes. Which quickly turns to disgust as she shouts, “What do you think you’re doing?!”
“Uh — uh — I thought — I thought you’ll —”
“No, you don’t think.” She stands up, kicking her tray towards Rune as she leaves the garden in a huff.
The heat boils onto his face, which he quickly covers with his hands. Fuck. FUCK. He could feel the hairs standing up at the back of his head, on his arms, as if his whole body was sizzling.
This isn’t happening.
One breath, two. If he imagined it hard enough, this whole interaction was fake. He didn’t destroy his chances with the one girl he admired, he didn’t make an utter fool of himself. It wasn’t real.
He lies there for a few minutes, huddled in, with his head nesting in the warm space between his legs and his torso.
It is real, and there’s nothing he can do about it.
Unless…
***
He’s begun to keep a diary for his future self. In case he might need it.
It proves itself useful the second time he sits with Kinako in the cafeteria garden. This time, he brings up some intelligence he had about trouble in the explosives department, which leads Kinako confessing about her intentions to leave.
So far, so good.
He takes note of the exact moment Kinako sighs out as she stares into the twilight, then times himself to say, “It’s so lovely today.”
She blanches. “Oh—we said it at the same time.”
“Great minds think alike.” Rune musters up the courage to say so, trying to balance between soft and daring. “I like it when the sky is halfway between day and night… it has this nice colour. And it goes really, really well with your eyes.”
She averts them, but a small smile still stays on her face.
So far, so good.
Don’t mess this up, Rune.
Sometimes, silence could be comfortable. Judging by the tired look on Kinako’s face, and her unwillingness to proceed in conversation, he deduces that this is how she liked it today.
All he could do was lean in her direction, softly, tentatively, and watch the sunset together.
***
Of course, not every time he moved back in time things would work out.
(Like making good first impressions with her friends. After multiple attempts to get along with Jeng, Null and Moku, he resolves to keep things with them at a minimum.
An absolute minimum.)
He shuts his diary again, having documented the events of that day. It’s kept under lock and key in a secret compartment he’d cut in the floorboard of his room, which the bed was pushed over for extra security. No one can know about his time travel shenanigans, not now and not ever. If he ever manages a future with Kinako, she could never, ever find out.
He blanches again at the thought of the future. It felt nice talking to her today, linking arms, slowly progressing to holding hands. And going back in time to fix the mistakes he made. In her point of view, every single move Asurei Rune made was perfect down to the last detail.
But for Rune himself, he couldn’t evict the feeling lingering in his mind: what about the future?
He’d never thought about marriage or partnership in a serious way before. But the way Kinako moved about her alliances in El Dorado, she very obviously thought ahead.
[“Explosions didn’t really want to think about the environmental consequences of what they do,” she’d told him a week ago. “We’ve already seen what happens when corporations get a hold of the environment, and what it did to the Earth in the past two centuries… we can’t let that happen again. But our division leader didn’t listen to me, and never even wanted to.”
Rune nodded.
“I can’t change much in this organization. I don’t have power, and it’s hard to gain it without getting my hands dirty. All I can do is stick to the labs and somehow figure out a solution for the climate waste they’re creating. But there aren’t many solutions I can find at the moment.”
He spent a few moments searching for something to say. It’d been two weeks since he’d used ‘Merge Mode’ on his time travel watch, and, to be honest, he didn’t feel like doing it again today.
It was time to be independent.
“I like how you think ahead, Kinako,” he said quietly. “If the whole world could think like that, we wouldn’t have all the problems that we have now. Even with all the diplomatic issues around the world.” He cocks his head and adds, “You could become the leader of El Dorado in ten, twenty years’ time. You sure have the popularity for it.”
“Only among the juniors,” she replies, but a smile still forms on her face.]
He’ll try to think carefully, seriously, about it. Think ahead like Kinako.
You can do it, Rune.
***
It’s the year anniversary of Rune’s first induction into the time travel division.
Toudou Heikichi’s face, gnarled and hardened as ever, looks a little brighter today. A nod of both approval and encouragement is directed towards his protégé, Asurei Rune, as he leads the team of time travellers onto El Dorado’s stage.
Lights glare into their faces, but Rune holds his up high as their names are called out, one by one, along with a description of their mission.
[High stakes and dangerous, it was definitely not what Toudou and his senior time agents had been expecting that day. An unexpected ambush from an unknown group, but with known access to time travel.
A great deal of courage and leadership was shown from the group, but particularly from the newest — and youngest — addition to the team, Asurei Rune. He’d taken extra care to secure the teams’ escape kits, checking up on their progress, and notifying others when one of them was left behind. El Dorado barely expanded on that, but his strategy of moving, planning, thinking ahead had saved them in a time where unexpected ambush occurred.
It was time for El Dorado to shift into ‘emergency’ mode to face their new opponents. But first, they had to recognize the faces of those who could’ve very well perished in that fight.]
Rune had always found it hard, and so exceedingly painful, to stand up in front of all these people. It was there where his anxiety usually failed him, gave in to the pressure, to the point where he found interacting with people and being in the spotlight difficult.
Today would’ve been a disaster for him… if it hadn’t been for his one, true support standing there in the crowd.
He still struggled to plan his moves, to think ahead, as much as she did. If it hadn’t been for the watch, he would’ve never been able to climb so high in the ranks at El Dorado, let alone manage to snag the one he admired, wanted, loved from where she stood; it was time for them to become one, and to place her on the highest top anyone could reach.
With the growing threat facing the organization, almost every one of the junior workers were referred to the time travel and combat divisions in the past week. Kinako Nanobana had been clear that she intended to join the former.
And now, she was standing there, supporting Asurei Rune as he was awarded for his courage. But what her lover did not notice was the worry in her eyes at what was to come.
And whether Rune would be able to overcome his fear of failure as he faced it.
***
In their early-to-mid twenties, people do not often disappear from their places of work.
They do not challenge their superiors, they do not try to build up alliances, only to abandon that courage not long after.
They do not hand over everything they created to other people, they do not sacrifice it all for some great unknown, they do not disappear mysteriously from any public or private eye.
And very often, they do not get married.
It’d been a quiet ceremony, in a quieter hall in a small, rural town in Fukuoka. Rune had only had a couple of days to buy a suit, invite over a select few of his family, and get a wedding planner in to try make something of the mess they were caught in.
His wrist aches with the lost weight it used to bear. It was there to bring him reassurance that no matter what happened, he could always go back and try. But El Dorado faced so much pressure in the past few weeks, and Toudo again Heikichi was forced to withdraw all time travel equipment until the higher-ups could figure out what the hell was going on.
Evan was the supposed surname of the leader of that corporation. Second Stage Children was what El Dorado, the media, and the public had resolved to call them, and the terrorist group embraced the title openly. Having a lifespan of only 20 years, one would think the SSC would not be able to achieve much. But they were reproducing quickly, and more and more babies among the ‘normal’ population being born with the cursed gene.
So, as the saying goes, At times when a terrorist organization threatens the very existence of your world, don’t get your girlfriend pregnant.
(But Asurei Rune is a bit dumb.)
There were already so many risks associated with the pregnancy. Kinako’s health was incredibly disrupted; they needed to find an excuse for her sudden disappearance from El Dorado. Getting married to Rune, a high-ranking employee, and needing to go away to take care of his elderly parents? It was the perfect explanation.
Because people do not often disappear from work, abandon their long built-up alliances, hand over all of their progress to other people and sacrifice it. Especially not in their early-to-mid twenties.
A 23-year-old Kinako Nanobana certainly didn’t fit in the mould of marriage, but it wasn’t impossible, and it was all they could do.
***
“Have a good day,” he calls out from the door. A weak sigh in response is the only thing following him as he leaves.
Day by day, it’s getting worse.
He resorts to cloaked uniform these days. A white beard protrudes from the bottom of the hood, making him look like ancient depictions of wizards. Not like the white beard doesn’t go with the rest of his slowly whitening hair.
Boxes and boxes of kinakomochi were left unopened on the counter, grimly greeting him as he went out. A small, concealed village in Fukuoka was the only place he could leave her in, attended only by his mother who needed attending herself. He’d found a wormhole a few weeks prior allowing him to commute directly to El Dorado’s main entrance, and moved into the house immediately.
Kinako Nanobana missing her own farewell ceremony was a gash cut deep. Many of her friends were affronted — and concerned — at missing her wedding too, and many had sought out Rune to question him about what was going on. Nothing much they could find if he stayed in hiding, even within his own organization.
Leading time travel was simple stuff now. Allocate watches to everyone, monitor their activity over a couple of hours, and check in with what the combat division was doing. Feida, as it seemed, was switching between different methods. All Rune held in his hands was to watch.
The present passed by in front of him. It seemed to be the only thing he was capable of doing now. A time when he could look into the future seemed long, long ago; who could look in the future when you were already drowning in the present?
And the past.
Rune’s eyes stray over to the spare watch left at the register. Its flickering lights seemed to almost taunt him.
He shuts his eyes tight. Memories, memories of that day plagued him. He couldn't relive it again. Not one more time. Not once more over the many, many attempts he’d done to make it stop.
He couldn’t go back in time to stop himself from knowing Kinako in the first place, from just sticking as friends and staying as the loser who followed Toudou Heikichi around, clamouring for his approval. He… couldn’t do it. Too many webs had been spun around their timeline, to the point where so many of his time shenanigans were forfeited.
All he could do was live in ‘today’.
***
With a crying child and a crying heart, boxes of rotting kinakomochi and pineapple citrus drinks, memories of rooftop and cafeteria garden humiliations, and a journal he very much wanted to set on fire, Asurei Rune feels like shit.
Toudou Heikichi, too preoccupied with planning and strategy to notice that his now-former protégé was slowly stepping further and further back from the decision tables.
War raged on outside El Dorado, and inside wasn’t looking very good either.
All he could think of was the moment. If Toudou caught word that a child, a Second Stage Child, was held in Asurei Rune’s arms… the latter didn’t even want to imagine what would happen.
He was tired of abusing the privilege. He was tired of moving forward and going back, tired of calculating every step, tired of thinking, when his whole world just ended.
So it shouldn’t come much of a surprise what happened next.