The yesterdays that were mine

the Stars of the Future

Twelve years in the future

"Everything is completely different, you don't understand." He sat up trying to stitch together the rags of the muddled past and new future. "There was a girl there...with Manjiro Sano and Ken Ryuguji"

"Are you fuckin' with me?"

"I'm serious! I goddamn saw her, Naoto!" Takemichi walked over to the board, staring at all the profiles and red lines connecting one from the other, like the weaving of a loom. But there was one thing missing, that girl's face.

"Did you hear her name, or...see her face?" Naoto, whose voice had returned to its original stoicism, placed a hand on Takemichi's shoulder, turning him from the board. The once blond boy stared at the pearlescent buttons lining Naoto's dress shirt. He thought back to those moments before, those years before, that girl before.

"I'm all outta' Nana's biscuits..." Nana.

"Her name was Nana. Her hair, it...it was...tied back but her eyes...i've seen them somewhere I just," Takemichi shaked his head trying to force more out of himself. "She was wearing a Tokyo Manji jacket but the back...it was different"

"Nana..." Naoto drew out the word, as if he was searching for something hidden between the letters. "Why do I know that name?" Naoto turned away, scouring through some filing cabinet. He stood up a few moments later with a worn out diary in his hand.

"If the timelines have changed, then there is a high chance that what might be in here isn't there anymore. But clearly, the passage of time can be warped." He explained, a small smile etching onto his lips.

"What are you talking about? She was never there before in my past, how could that change? It's the same past" Takemichi follows Naoto across the room where he laid out the diary onto the illuminated desk, flipping the pages swiftly.

"When I first got recruited into the local police force, I was an errand boy. I bought coffee and sent uniforms for dry cleaning," He explained, and Takemichi's face only grew more confused. "So I made an effort to know as much as I could for when I was put on a case. The first case I ever investigated with the team was a murder of a fifteen year old girl in Shibuya. Her body was found in a car outside the red light district." The more Naoto spoke, the more Takemichi's confusion grew, weighing his shoulders down to where he was watching the passage of pages from the diary.

"You're changing the past from here in the future, right? Well, maybe someone is changing the future from inside the past. And now with this girl, if she is still alive now, you'll have another opening to get into the middle of Tokyo Manji."

"Wait, wait, do you hear yourself? What if she just walked a different path that day? Or stayed home sick? Anything can manipulate the future, how can you be sure that someone else is time jumping?" Takemichi blurted as Naoto's vigorous swiping came to an end.

"Because Nana Komore should have died twelve years ago standing before the six original members of Tokyo Manji"

There it was, all laid out before him. Her name, and face, and her dismembered body.

"Something happened that day that stopped Tokyo Manji from watching Nana Komore die in front of them. That's not a coincidence, because why should they care, you might be asking?" Naoto speaks, walking over to the board and pointing to a face.

"Because this is Yuichi Komore. Prior commander of the black dragons, Shinichiro Sano's best friend."

"There was a shift, something small that let Manjiro Sano know who he was letting be killed in the new past."

"No, that's not true, read the statement." Naoto shifted his gaze to the book, and Takemichi picked it up, reading the words aloud.

'She was marked. Slashings were present on her right outer thigh reading 'Tokyo Manji'. Her severed leg, and school ID was sent anonymously to Yuichi Komore's house, where he lives with his father, Kazushiro Komore.'

"No way. I don't believe that they would do something this...cruel. I just-"

"They didn't. Masashi Nakamato did.  In the early stages, Tokyo Manji wanted their men to prove their loyalty to the gang. They choose someone, break them down and then beat them to death. They watched Masashi kill her, but they didn't know what he did to her body after he had taken it away. Nana Komore's body was found three days later in a car abandoned near some farm road."

"But none of that seems to matter now, because Nana is still alive. Now, in the past, Yuichi Komore is the commander of the Black Dragons. We just need to figure out who it was that wanted Nana to live...and why" Naoto turned back to the board, eyeing it as if it might jump from its place.

"What about Draken? He is still going to die..."

"Focus on him. I'll gather information on Nana Komore and where she might be now. Takemichi, you cannot mention the time jumper in the past, even if you are one hundred percent certain. They'd have to still be alive now."

"I won't, I got it"