Xiaoquan Aonai's eyes lost focus, but if you looked closely at her expression, she was clearly pondering something.

"What's wrong?" Xiaoquan Aonai asked.

"... Aonai, this might not be any kind of parallel universe."

"Not a parallel universe?"

"This, this is the future."

The clock ticked, and the water cooler started humming again as it heated the water.

Outside the conference room, the sound of a neighboring meeting room door opening could be heard.

"Impossible!" Xiaoquan Aonai's voice sounded utterly baffled, "I clearly wrote down the horse betting and lottery numbers, and I was planning to go to the city and buy them on my vacation!"

"The things you said to Akiko and Miyuki are exactly the same as what I told them in my second year of high school."

"But didn't you say you didn't remember?"

"I don't remember, but they do. They told me this morning."

"You mean, I ultimately didn't buy the lottery ticket and didn't go to Tokyo University, but instead became very diligent and made my way to Waseda on my own?"

Xiaoquan Aonai nodded blankly, just as confused.

This kind of thing was beyond their comprehension.

"If this speculation is true, then has history been predetermined from the very beginning?" Xiaoquan Aonai couldn't believe it, "Ten years from now I will surely become a teacher, and I will meet myself from ten years ago, here?"

Xiaoquan Aonai clenched her fists and said nothing.

Who wouldn't be startled upon realizing that so-called fate really exists, and history had been determined far in the past?

"Then what's the point? I don't need to do anything since I'll definitely get into Waseda," Xiaoquan Aonai said with a face filled with confusion and helplessness.

"I think," Xiaoquan Aonai said, "within the month after this, something must have happened that made you... made us, become diligent."

"What happened?"

"I can't remember, I only remember what you've done these past two days. Regarding the first month of my sophomore year, I don't remember a thing, but a voice in my head keeps telling me: to strive hard, to go to Tokyo."

"Who erased our memories? Time-space managers maintaining history?" Xiaoquan Aonai guessed.

Xiaoquan Aonai felt nostalgic, herself once also having had an age filled with such fantasies.

"It's not necessarily maintaining history," she whispered.

"Then why erase our memories?" Xiaoquan Aonai wondered.

"Suppose history is fixed, no matter if we decide to be diligent or not, something will surely happen that makes us become diligent. In the future, you'll definitely be sitting in my position, having a conversation with yourself from ten years ago, then... could the person who erased our history be protecting us?"

"Protecting?"

"Yes." Xiaoquan Aonai nodded, "Because the future is determined, to prevent us from living these ten years without any expectations."

Both sank into contemplation, considering all the possibilities.

The water cooler once again fell silent, the heating light turned off, and the keeping warm light came on.

After a while, Xiaoquan Aonai mused aloud, "Then what's the purpose of your coming to the future? Is someone wanting us to do something?"

"Ah! I know this one!"

"Hmm?" Xiaoquan Aonai looked at her past self, surprised.

"Didn't you dream it, or forget it? It's because you were curious about what a 'Tokyo hunk' would be like that I took over Dubian Che's body!"

Xiaoquan Aonai remembered.

The things Xiaoquan Aonai did, to her, they were just a dream, so the memories were not deeply etched... or was it that at 25 years old, her memory had already begun to decline, not as sharp as when she was 16?

All of that was irrelevant now. The key question was, was all this a chain reaction caused by her?

"Right." Xiaoquan Aonai recalled something that had been weighing heavily on her mind.

She lowered her voice and asked her past self seriously, "Does Dubian know what you did?"

"... He probably doesn't know?"

"Ah—" After a brief silence, both of them exclaimed at the same time.

One voice soft and shy, the other angry and shy.

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