Asashi Shinji sat in the quiet corner of the university library, his eyes fixed on the lecture notes spread before him. The soft rustle of pages was the only sound breaking the silence, but it was drowned out by the hum of his thoughts. His mind danced through concepts that were too far ahead for his peers—timelines, alternate realities, and the delicate balance of time itself. A physics major, Asashi had always been a dreamer, but his dreams weren’t of ordinary pursuits. He dreamed of bending the very fabric of time.

  It had been three years since he’d first encountered the concept of time travel, in one of his university lectures. Since then, it had become an obsession. His professors spoke of time as an immutable force, of timelines as fixed threads that shouldn’t be disturbed. But Asashi wasn’t content with just studying it—he wanted to control it.

  The world around him seemed so small, confined by the constraints of the present. He would often find himself staring at the clock during lectures, imagining the moment when the hands would freeze. His hands clenched slightly as he gazed at the rotating gears of the clock on the wall, the ticking sound echoing in his mind like an insistent call.

  "Shinji, you're daydreaming again."

  Asashi blinked, breaking from his reverie, to see Yumeko Asa standing at the edge of the desk. She was the one thing in his life that kept him grounded—a calming presence amidst the storm of his thoughts. Yumeko was kind and sharp-witted, a perfect balance to his ever-racing mind. They had been together for two years, but lately, Asashi felt the growing gap between them, a gap filled with thoughts he couldn’t quite express.

  “Sorry, just lost in thought,” Asashi said with a small, absent smile, pushing his notes aside.

  Yumeko raised an eyebrow. “You always say that, but you’ve been lost in thought more than usual these days. What’s going on?”

  Asashi hesitated, staring at the piece of paper in front of him. It was a draft of a design for a time machine—a blueprint, something he had been working on in secret. He hadn’t shown it to anyone, not even Yumeko. He feared her reaction, feared her understanding of the obsession that had taken over his life. Time was his anchor now, and with each passing day, it felt like it was slipping further away.

  “I’m just... trying to make sense of things,” he said, glancing at her. “The idea of timelines... the infinite possibilities. What if we could travel across them? What if we could rewrite the paths we’ve already walked?”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Yumeko’s eyes softened. “Asashi, you’ve always been fascinated by time, but don’t you think it’s better to live in the present? You don’t need to change the past or jump to the future. You have everything right here.”

  Asashi’s heart tightened, and he stood up abruptly, walking to the window. He gazed out, watching the autumn leaves dance in the wind. The weight of her words lingered in the air. She was right, in a way. He did have everything. He had her, after all. But what was the present, if not a fleeting moment? What was time, if not a constant reminder of what he couldn’t control?

  “I know, but… I can’t help but wonder if there’s more,” Asashi muttered, his voice barely audible.

  Yumeko approached him slowly, placing her hand gently on his shoulder. "You don't have to carry the burden of time, Asashi. You don’t need to control it. You have the future ahead of you... with me."

  He glanced at her, seeing the sincerity in her eyes. She was his anchor, yet the more he looked at her, the more he realized how much he was holding back. He couldn’t explain to her the gnawing feeling inside him—the burning desire to transcend time itself.

  A brief silence passed between them, and for a moment, everything felt perfect—until Asashi’s phone buzzed, a reminder of the work he had left to do. His gaze flickered to the message on the screen: "Meeting at the lab. Don't forget."

  “I have to go,” he said quickly, pulling away from her touch.

  Yumeko watched him, concern clouding her features. “Asashi…”

  “I’ll be fine,” he said, offering a quick smile. “I’ll catch up with you later, alright?”

  She didn’t reply, only nodded, her eyes lingering on him as he walked out the door.

  Later that night, Asashi found himself alone in his cramped apartment, his fingers hovering above the keyboard of his laptop. On the screen was the blueprint—a complex arrangement of circuits, energy sources, and mathematical equations that could potentially allow him to tear through the barriers of time. He’d spent months working on it in secret, pouring over calculations, fabricating components, and calibrating devices. It wasn’t perfect—far from it—but it was close enough.

  The only thing he needed now was a spark, a catalyst. He needed a reason to believe. And so, Asashi pulled up a file he had been meaning to review—a journal from a renowned physicist who had once theorized about alternate timelines and the possibility of traveling through them. The theories were speculative, but they gave him a flicker of hope. The journal spoke of a critical fault in the fabric of time, an inherent flaw in the system, a crack that could be exploited.

  Asashi leaned back in his chair, his eyes glued to the screen. For the first time, he didn’t feel the weight of his obsession. There was no uncertainty, no doubt. Only the clear understanding that the path he was about to take would forever change everything.

  As the clock ticked on, he made a vow to himself—he would travel across time, break through its chains, and find the truth.