Opening her eyes, Mai was expecting to see herself still in the changing room faced with the nightmare that she was in. She didn't quite know what happened, just that all these feelings started to overwhelm her and from that point, everything changed.
She wished she could just leave the city and disappear and when she opened her eyes, that seemed to be exactly what happened.
She found herself lying in a bed, it wasn't her own bed, but at the same time it was one she recognised.
"No… It can't be, but it didn't work last time!" Mai said as she launched herself out of the bed. Her eyesight became blurry as she got a head rush from standing up too fast.
"That's right, Mai, collapse in one world and then collapse in the other straight after.' She thought, this time slowly getting up and opening the door.
Seeing everything in place, it was as she had suspected. She was in the apartment that was in the city. Somehow once again she had traveled to the other world.
'But how?' She wondered. 'Last time when I went to sleep, nothing happened. So why this time, is it just because I really wanted to leave the place?'
The first thing she did was check her phone to see what the date and time was, and once again it was ten years in the future, on the weekend. However, the time was ten in the morning. She found this a little strange considering this time she had fallen asleep, or passed out during the day.
She wondered how ten years in the future she was experiencing the start of the day.
'Does it only matter what day I come here? As long as it's the same day I will always come back here at the same time?'
However there was no way for her to test her theory right now. In the past she had never bothered to care for the time during her visits, she only paid attention to the views outside. After realising her situation, she started to calm down and think about what had just happened.
'My clothes, they were taken, was it by that worker? But why would she suddenly disappear?' She thought, while also trying to think of a way to get out of the situation, or if it was possible the others had found her body already passed out.
The idea of the boys looking at her body made her cheeks burn bright red. No boy had ever seen her body before, and if she was going to show them it wasn't meant to be like this. As far as she knew, after her visit to the other world, she always woke up the next day in the morning, which meant the others had to deal with her half naked, limp body for the whole day.
"Ahhh!" She screamed out in frustration and wanted to try to go back as soon as possible.
Breaking her trail of thought, her phone began vibrating in her pocket. She glanced at the screen and she could see that she had received a text from Simon.
[Hey, I made it and I'm here in the city, let me know when you want me to come over.]
The text read.
She had forgotten about the meeting due to her situation, but it was the weekend and they had agreed to meet. Sending a text back she said she was free to come over at any time, even though she was ill prepared.
The truth was, Mai had planned to prepare in the evening once she had got back from her trip, so she didn't really know how she was going to go about her current conversation with him. There were so many questions that she wanted to ask.
First she wanted to know what happened between the two of them and why they no longer talked, and how did she and Chris get together? How close are she and Shirley now, and finally but most importantly, how did Chris die?
A lot of these questions she could ask Simon directly, but she wanted to go out about it in a certain way.
'At least in the future I didn't cancel the appointment.' Mai thought. 'Wait how does that work, does the future me know about the past me making all these decisions for her, or when I leave does she just think that she had made those decisions by herself?'
Thinking about this, Mai thought maybe leaving a written note so the two of them could communicate would be the best thing. She could even bury something in a particular spot in the past, and then have herself open it up ten years in the future.
However for now, she didn't want to mess with any of that stuff until she one hundred percent knew that this was indeed the future.
Eventually, the doorbell rang and for the first time she would be meeting Simon in the future. Looking through the peephole, when she saw him she felt a tinge of sadness.
Simon had aged so much from how she knew him, his hair was slightly scruffy and he looked to be quite tired. It wasn't that he looked bad in the future or anything, but he was a little unkempt.
Taking a deep breath she swung the door open and put on a big smile.
"Hey Mai, it's been a long time." Simon said, not being able to make eye contact as he said it.
Seeing this, a pain was felt in her heart even more, and she did the only thing she thought she could do to make things right. Immediately she went forward and hugged him.
"I'm sorry." She said.
Stunned, Simon didn't really know what to do. His arms didn't wrap around her and he just stayed frozen in the same position until she eventually went back inside.
"Come on, come in, let's sit down and have a talk." Mai said, heading to the small dining area that was close to the kitchen.
"It's a bit strange that we would meet on this day of all days, and in the city, isn't it?" Simon said, rubbing the back of his head as he sat down.
"What do you mean?" Mai asked, realising it was quite the odd question.
"Well, I was thinking about the question you asked earlier, about when the two of us stopped talking, and I was trying to pinpoint when it started to happen. It was sudden and it all started on this day ten years ago."