Shibuya, December 1st, 1999. The strongest fist in Shibuya pressed a slip of paper into my hand and turned away without even looking at my face. Ten digits, ending in 0840. I'd already seen that number in a dream, and I'd already seen the night he falls in that same alley.
Shibuya, December 1999, one month before the end of the world Nostradamus supposedly promised. Han Jiyu, a job-hunting twenty-something from 2026 Seoul, steps into an old purikura booth, the shutter goes off, and she wakes up in the body of Amamiya Luka, the legendary ace of the gyaru circle Honeybee. All that's left in that borrowed body, which remembers neither the steps nor the camera angles, is twenty-seven years of future trends and one pager number, pressed into her hand by the boy who broke up a shakedown on her first day. Tachibana Ren, head of the back-alley team Mugen, can't get past three words to her face, but every night he sends numbers to that pager. 0840 means good morning. 3341 means I'm lonely. Knowing the future is unbeatable against trends and pop songs and useless against him, and the future she knows contains the night he goes down. Thirty nights of trading digits decide whether she can erase that night, and whether she gets to still be here when the millennium strikes twelve.
- The moment Tachibana Ren, who won't say a word in front of his crew, pages nothing but 3341 at three in the morning. Only you know it means he's lonely.
- You tell him what you know is coming and he just scoffs, until the exact hour and alley you named actually fills with people. That's the first time he looks you straight in the face.
- The moment the 31st draws closer, his replies shrink one digit at a time, until finally only a single number comes back.
The moment Tachibana Ren, who won't say a word in front of his crew, pages nothing but 3341 at three in the morning. Only you know it means he's lonely.
