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It was Saturday, thirty minutes before the broadcast of the fourth episode of 7 Years From Now. Minori put down her phone, finally ending her heated online debate with a group of Shiori fans. In the past few days, following Haruto's back-to-back victories in the Ryugin and Naoki Awards, his momentum in the industry had reached a terrifying peak.
His influence was now arguably on par with the Madoka Magica craze last year. Naturally, the fanbases of the two geniuses were clashing constantly, each side refusing to concede an inch of ground.
"Whatever, I am done. They are in completely different lanes anyway, so there is no point in comparing them. We can talk when Initial D and Sword Art Online actually get animated," Minori sighed, her focus shifting toward the television screen.
After enduring ten minutes of commercials, the fourth episode, which she had been anticipating all week, began right on schedule.
Soraki's house had been burned to the ground; there was no mystery as to who did it. It was clearly a move by the hospital's high-ranking executives who had sensed Soraki and Riku digging into their dark secrets. Between the arson and Saki's suicide in the previous timeline, a cold rage was beginning to simmer within Soraki's chest.
However, for him, none of this was permanent. He knew he could fix it.
Suppressing his emotions, Soraki maintained a steady demeanor. After learning the news of Saki's death while standing by Kakeru's hospital bed, he walked with his head down to Dr. Ichiki's clinic.
"Dr. Ichiki... Please, let me go back to Monday again."
The boy's gaze was unshakable.
As the background music swelled into a stirring, emotional melody, Minori felt her restless heart settle. At this moment, it did not matter who was more popular, Shiori Takahashi or the Warrior of Love. She just wanted to immerse herself in this story.
"It is the same as before. Once you return to Monday, you must prove the experiment worked by telling the past version of me about your time-leaping," Ichiki said. He looked into the boy's eyes, seemingly moved by his resolve.
At that moment, a flicker of Ichiki's own memory flashed across the screen, the silhouette of a beautiful woman from his past.
Kanna.
Dr. Ichiki patted the boy on the shoulder before Soraki lay down inside the machine designed to beam his consciousness back forty-eight hours. Through the glass visor, Soraki looked at the doctor.
The Ichiki of Loop 3, moved by the boy's determination to save his friends, finally chose to reveal a secret he had been withholding.
"Soraki, do you know why you lost your memories of seven years ago? You did not just forget. Your memories were intentionally erased. It was Aoi... she was the one who asked for it."
Minori's pupils contracted. frёewebnoѵēl.com
'Soraki's amnesia was Aoi's doing? What kind of twist was this? It was completely different from the generic trope she had expected, The hospital sabotaging his surgery or leaving him with brain damage.'
The narrative shifted into a flashback of Dr. Ichiki's memory. Seven years ago, Ichiki sat beside a bed where Aoi lay, her life force fading rapidly. Aoi was on the verge of death. But her only concern was Soraki. She begged Dr. Ichiki for one final favor. She wanted him to give her heart to Soraki, and then, using his experimental memory manipulation technology, wipe every trace of Soraki's memories of her and the time they spent together.
"Why would you want that?" the Ichiki of seven years ago had asked, looking at the dying girl in disbelief.
"I want Soraki... to forget me," Aoi replied, forcing a final, fragile smile. "Because... if he remembers everything that happened today, the pain will be too much for him to bear."
Everything that happened today? What happened seven years ago on that day? Minori's mind immediately flagged this as a massive piece of foreshadowing. Moreover, LMD was usually a disease that did not become fatal until a patient reached their teens or twenties. Aoi was just a child then, why was she dying? Was LMD not the actual cause of her condition?
"Won't you be lonely?" Ichiki asked, his eyes filled with grief. She was trading her life for the boy's survival, yet she was choosing to be erased from his heart. Was such a choice truly worth it?
"I am dying anyway, so whether I am lonely or not won't matter soon," Aoi said, gazing out at the blue sky beyond the window.
"Aoi... are those really your true feelings?"
At the doctor's question, the girl's shoulders trembled. The smile slowly vanished from her face, and tears she could no longer hold back began to stream down her cheeks. No matter how mature or kind-hearted she was, the ten-year-old Aoi could not truly accept such a lonely end with total indifference.
"Actually... I am incredibly lonely," the girl finally sobbed. "Our first meeting, the first time we watched the stars, every single day we spent together... I do not want him to forget any of it. But more than that, I want Soraki to be happy. I want him to go to a new home, make new friends, see the flowers in spring, the sea in summer, eat good food in autumn, and build snowmen in winter. But..."
"If Soraki does not forget me, he will live his entire life crushed by guilt," she said, wiping her eyes and trying to smile through the tears.
Minori felt a lump in her throat.
This girl, who had been little more than a phantom in the protagonist's memory for the first three episodes, had suddenly become staggeringly real and heartbreakingly noble. She had sacrificed her heart to give Soraki a new life.
Minori had expected the Warrior of Love to start swinging his emotional blades, but she was not prepared for a blow this heavy.
By the middle of the episode, the story entered Loop 4.
Soraki had now lived through three different iterations of these events. Armed with the knowledge that Chief Ishi, the Head of Security, was the one who had attacked them in Loop 1 and was the mastermind behind the current situation, Soraki confronted him.
Instead of an amateurish fight, Soraki used his knowledge of Saki's suicide from the previous timeline to appeal to Ishi's conscience. He warned Ishi that Saki would never accept a life bought through such monstrous means.
'Is he really going to be swayed by a lecture?'
Minori wondered, furrowing her brow. A man who had committed countless crimes would not surely just fold because a high schooler gave him a lecture on morality. It felt a bit too idealistic. But the animation immediately provided a devastating explanation. The final segment of the episode was a flashback from Ishi's perspective.
Seven years ago, Ishi was not the Head of Security; his boss was a man named Mr. Sato. Mr. Sato was a cheerful, middle-aged man who, much like Ishi, had been forced into the hospital's service because he could not afford the treatment for his son's heart disease. He had surrendered his son to the facility as an orphan, hoping that one day, one of the terminal LMD patients would die, allowing the hospital to transplant their heart into his son.
Mr. Sato had worked in the same building as his son for eight years without ever revealing himself. But seven years ago, he could not take it anymore. He visited his son under the guise of a kind stranger and took a photo of the boy, Aoi, and Saki together.
That was the first and only time he ever truly met his child.
"The brat is only ten, but when I teased him a bit, he admitted he already has a girl he likes. As a father, I had to see the girl who stole my son's heart..."
The upbeat, nostalgic music paired with Mr. Sato's laughter made Minori's eyes well up again.
"I went to see them. I saw all three, and I took this photo," Mr. Sato told the seven-years-younger Ishi while looking at the picture. "One of them is your daughter, right? Hey, tell me... why are we doing this for the hospital? The organ trafficking, the illegal transplants..."
"It is a bit late for that, isn't it?" Ishi replied, his face contorted in pain. "We both did this for our families. There is no point talking about justice now."
Then came the line that shook Minori to her core. Mr. Sato, Soraki's father, looked at Ishi and spoke with absolute, haunting clarity as the music reached its crescendo.
"I am doing it because there is no way I can ever tell my son that I murdered the girl he loves just to buy her heart for him!"
"I cannot tell him that his life was paid for with her blood."
Minori sat in stunned silence. This was the perspective of the father. He realized that the voluntary donation the hospital promised was a lie. He knew the hospital was planning to kill Aoi to save his son.
In the flashback, Ishi realized his boss was planning to betray the hospital. "They will kill you," he warned his friend.
"Maybe," Mr. Sato replied, looking out at the sunset. For the first time, the heavy weight of sorrow had left his eyes. "But isn't this a better way to go? Dying to save my son's first love... that is a pretty cool way for a dad to check out, right?"
The flashback ended. The ending theme for 7 Years From Now began to play.
Minori could not move. The revelation was staggering. Soraki's father had been just as complicit as Saki's father, but he chose to die to stop the very system that was supposed to save his son. Seven years later, Ishi had become the Head of Security, it was easy to imagine what had happened to Mr. Sato after his rebellion.
"I cannot tell my son I murdered the girl he loves."
That single sentence haunted Minori. It explained why Ishi was so easily moved by Soraki; he was not just seeing a boy, he was seeing the son of the man he had once called his brother.
The weight of the plot was becoming almost unbearable. If Minori had known the story would be this tragic, she might not have started it. But it was too late now. She was invested in Mr. Sato, Ishi, Saki, Aoi, Honoka, and Kakeru. Every single character had been carved into her heart. She felt a desperate, itching need to see the next episode. She wanted Soraki to use his time-leaping power to shatter these tragic destinies and bring the corrupt hospital to its knees.
The fallout from the fourth episode was not limited to Minori. Across Japan, the legions of Warrior of Love fans were left in tears. The emotional blows had exceeded all expectations. That night, the Warrior of Love's official social media accounts were swarmed by emotional fans, their comments a mixture of praise and heart-wrenching complaints.
