Tahro Akagi shouldn't live in two worlds at once.
Yet, forced to spend his days studying by a no-nonsense mother, he longs for adventure. In a moment of desperation, Tahro's soul splits in two. While one of his selves remains in Japan, the other fi...
In Saishuu Riku, nothing I'd read had happened yet. The year was 469 AE, not the 473 AE of the manga. Perhaps it had to do with how I'd imagined squad eleven to be around my age, even though they were older in the manga. This only spurred me to train harder, in the hopes that I might one day get to work with them.
It took my bodies a while to get used to the sensation of being tethered to something else, like an invisible rope tying both of me together across dimensions. But soon, it became my daily reality.
While one of my selves learned the art of being a swordsman, the other obsessed over the manga. Every day I'd rush to the computer, hoping and hoping for a new chapter. For the hiatus to finally be over. And of course, it wouldn't be. Then I'd refresh the page ten times, fifty times, sometimes for several minutes straight. And there still wouldn't be a new chapter. After about a year of this, I began to calm down. By two years, I only checked each Wednesday. Yet every time I went to sleep, I wished for that one night, a lifespan of a dream, to only have one body and wake up in Heikisato. And every time I opened my eyes disappointed.
Four years later, at long last, the author announced the hiatus would end.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
February 1. Fourteen and a half years old. Japan.
It was time.
I opened the web browser, missing the icon the first three tries with a trembling finger. My head felt light like I was floating up in the clouds. After years of waiting and waiting, the announcement had seemed unreal. A practical joke.
The page began to load, and the circle spun.
What would squad eleven's new mission be? How's everyone doing?
The circle spun.
My legs tapped in a frenzy, and I held in my breath. Any time now.
The circle spun.
It was taking a long time to load today. The Internet must be slow.
The circle stopped.
The page was blank save for one picture and a message-- Unable to connect to the internet.
I stared at the words. For a long while, I couldn't understand them. They were no more than a string of letters. No, surely not. Not at a time like this. It was fine yesterday.
The screen in front of me seemed to vanish as a certain kind of warmth rushed over me. It was not the kind that made me feel all fuzzy inside. No, it made me feel as though my head would burst.
'Mum!'
'What is it?' she called out from the hall.
'The internet's not connected!'
'I know.'
What did she mean she knew? Pushing away a vague but horrible idea of what she might have done, I marched to the living room. The hardwood floor seemed to bob up and down in sync with my heart. My mum was on the sofa, her back turned to me while typing away on her laptop.
