Like Déjà Vu

8 - Winter Rose

Chi Chi coughed like she just swallowed a bug. The words flew quite well into her ear, but got disrupted when it reached her brain. It was the first time in her life anyone was saying those words to her, so it struck her as absurdity.

"I'm going to have to ask you to elaborate more on that," Chi Chi said to Eizō. "Also, I'm gonna put the gun away. My arm is starting to ache. Behave!" She passed the gun back to Juanita, who grabbed it without hesitation.

Eizō heaved a sigh of relief. He adjusted his shirt for better comfort. "To think you call yourself the greatest physicist in the world, and you don't know the concepts behind time travelling? Someone who spent ten years—"

"Give me the fucking reason why I don't exist!" Chi Chi boomed in frustration. She was trying her hardest to tolerate Eizō, but his attitude begged her to cut his head off. It was an incredible amount of self-control stopping Chi Chi from succumbing.

Her voice caused Eizō to flinch, after which her frowned at her. "Okay, tell me something," Eizō started. "If, on your way here, something had delayed you and you had arrived at Vaughn's office an hour late, you wouldn't have met me there, would you? Therefore, it wouldn't have been possible for me to be here right now with both of you in this car. Which means, if you had been delayed, this event wouldn't have existed. Do you understand that? Time travelling is dangerous — very dangerous. Even more so, when you travel to the past. You must be extremely careful that you don't change anything in the past that would affect the future you came from, if you do, that future wouldn't be possible, and wouldn't exist. How many things have you changed since you arrived in the time?" He spoke to her slowly, like she was a little girl learning a new language.

Chi Chi stared blankly, trying to digest what Eizō was saying. "So many," she said.

Eizō continued. "Now tell me, with all the things you've changed, does your future still exist? No. The events that were supposed to occur in your timeline can't occur anymore, your future can't occur anymore. And since you belong to that future, you can't occur anymore. You don't exist. I'm sure you've been experiencing the migraines and the nose bleeds, yeah? Yeah, that's your body decomposing from the inside. Soon you'd be dead."

"You liar!" Juanita spat. "He's lying, isn't he?"

"He is telling the truth," Chi Chi admitted solemnly. "What about the people that I left when I time travelled? — The world I left behind. If that future don't exist, what happened to that world after I left it?"

Eizō imitated an explosion with his fingers. "Poof!" He said. "The world literally exploded — like a massive volcanic eruption. Everyone would die an agonizing death."

Juanita looked despondent. Her face, swollen. She looked like she might burst into tears any second, yet when she spoke, her voice bled anger. "Why?" She asked, and sniffed.

"Because that world can not exist. The moment Chi Chi changed one thing here, it rendered that world null, and it exploded," Eizō explained, looking over his shoulder.

"But then what if I still travel to that future. What would happen? Would I meet the destruction?" Chi Chi asked.

Eizō frowned at her. "No, Chi Chi. You can't travel to a place that don't exist. Can you hear me at all? If you attempt to travel to that time, you'd only end up travelling to this future and you'd still meet another you there. It might even cause your body to decompose faster, bringing you closer to your death."

So, it became certain. Chi Chi was going to die, and nothing could stop it. It wasn't the fact that she would die that hurt her, it was the fact that she was never going to see Amarachi ever again. She wanted to cry; she really wanted to cry, but for some reason, the tears refused to flow. Her tears had betrayed her when she needed it the most. If she could cry, maybe it would hurt less. It broke her heart into more pieces than her moon had crumbled into. She still needed some answers cleared up. "In my future, you broke into my home and murdered my little girl. I want to know why." She spoke like she had a cold.