Part 84: Okabe Rintarou makes a bad decision

I quickly delete the mail.

It came again.
Danger.
I feel endangered.
This is a warning.
From The Organization?
From SERN.
Did SERN find out...?
Should I report it to the police?
I can't, I just deleted the mail... and the police probably won't take action due to just two "threat-like mails".

When the first mail came, I didn't tell anyone, but should I consult someone after all? But who is that someone? Not those two girls. I can't worry them. They're younger than I.

Then, Moeka? No. She was once a lab mem, but she's been weird lately. Even if I consult her in that state, I won't get an answer.

Suzuha... is probably concentrating on her father. I guess I can only consult Daru. I need to make it clear whether or not SERN found out about our hacking. I wonder how SERN is acting. They're not going to just suddenly kill us, right...





I lock the entrance door behind me, then I finally breathe easily. But I suddenly feel something out of place.

Mayuri and Kurisu should be here, but they're not. Did they go home? But their bags are still here. The lights are still on.

The lock... when I entered just now, the door was unlocked. That's something to worry about. I shiver at the thought of that last mail.



By whom? By The Organization? Or by SERN?

And then I hear a strange noise. This sound is... the shower?

The lab is furnished with a shower room inside the dressing room. Having a shower room instead of a bathroom reeks of poverty. Furthermore, it's such a narrow space, it's one person use only.

Then I hear the sound of water flowing from the shower.



Don't tell me...!

Fresh blood, mixing into the water and flowing into the drain. The corpses of two girls, sprawled out naked--

With that imagination, I hurriedly open up the door to the shower room.



(I'm going to skip ahead a bit again here, in the interest of keeping this solidly SFW. Suffice to say, Kurisu and Mayuri were fine, and Rintarou suffers more much-deserved blunt force trauma.)





"Doing that made Mayushii said and embarrassed."

"You'd better remember this! I-I-I won't forgive you, I won't ever forgive you, okay?!"

Dammit, that was just a small, accidental misunderstanding!

But in the first place, before I left, I purposefully looked at the two showering. That was wrong of me. Kurisu and Mayuri were defenseless if they weren't being cautious about my existence.

Geez. It's good that it was me, but it would've been bad if the enemy came. It's going to be a problem if they're this naive.



Looking at the clock, it's already been more than 15 minutes since I got back. If those two started using the shower when I left, then that's more like a long bath than a long shower. And now, I can hear their laughing voices from the shower room even though they were yelling at me for peeking just earlier. They really seem like they're enjoying themselves... they get along almost like sisters.



"...It's me. Things are getting a little dangerous. I, the dastardly mad scientist, Hououin Kyouma, have suffered a spiritual strike from the sisters: the birthmark girl and the optimistic girl.
...Yeah, this is the highest class of offensive ability I have experienced so far. I have come to realize that defenselessness itself is the strongest offense.
...Those girls seem increasingly serious. It's truly inexcusable.
Take those girls down... you say? Like hell I can do that.
Those girls are being manipulated by those guys... but they're my comrade and my childhood friend nonetheless...
...No matter what? I need to take them down no matter what?
Gh, in that case, this is the only time I'll resent Steins;Gate's choice, you know...!
El... Psy... Congroo...!"

I wring out a murmur and put away my phone. Maybe I'll head out into the night wind a little...





Kurisu and Mayuri confined themselves in the lab. Daru and I also supported Kurisu overnight.

According to Daru's investigation, it should be easy to remotely control mini-black hole generation with the LHC. For time travel, the mini-black holes evaporate after several seconds inside the LHC at the proton collision point - where the lifter is installed. During those few seconds, SERN throws a human into the singular point. We'll use those few seconds, too.

Super gravity at the circumference of the mini-black hole causes infinite compression. SERN's using the lifter to restrain that overbearing force, but that control is a little loose. Obviously, the LHC can't influence its global environment, and the mini-black hole infinite compression phenomenon slightly deallocates memory. We plan to send binary data at that time to compress it to 36 bytes.

(As a compsci nerd, I just mentally replace "36 bytes" with "the amount of space required to store 36 bytes under normal conditions" in every instance and hope that's what they meant, because otherwise, what the fuck?)

Daru's coding a program to remotely control that. What I did was search for that certain something that replaces the lifter. What I understand is that that something isn't inside the microwave, but something interfering with it outside. Kurisu said she never thought about that, but we still haven't figured out what that something outside is.

I consulted Daru about the threat mail, but Daru persistently said "they definitely didn't find out". Of course, I tried to get him to check if we've been tracked, but in the end, he said they didn't find out". I understand he's confident in his own work, so I trust in Daru, too. If Daru says they didn't find out, then they didn't.

But my anxiety wouldn't die.

(Episode eleven clear.)