[FFML] [orig] Pandora's Paradox Chapter 1: Hindsight Is 2015

[Abdiel]

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Pandora's Paradox
An Anime-Inspired Original Story
By Abdiel
https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3185673/


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Chapter 1: Hindsight Is 2015

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Back in December 31, 1996...

It started exactly like a manga or a light novel would.

It was New Year's Eve and the... "big-boned", 174 centimeters (5'6"),
108-kilo (240-pound) Junpei Endo was busy typing up a storm for his
at-home (or at-apartment) programming job when all of a sudden, in the
midst of the halfhearted, sporadic burst of fireworks just a few more
minutes before the "main event" of a brand-new year, he heard several
insistent knocks on his front door.

Was it an emergency or were his non-working, alcoholic sempai out to use
the bathroom? Maybe it was Belldandy instead, out to deliver his wish of
not being a virgin for the rest of his foreseeable future?

Maybe he should get some barf bags just in case, but he hated having to
clean up the beer cans and cigarette butts those assholes left in his
apartment. Couldn't they do that nonsense in their homes instead?

He was actually living in a dormitory that he rented out under the
pretense that he was going to college instead of being an underpaid
freeter ronin... or, in other words, a college dropout without a stable
job save for freelance ones.

He blinked. The knocking hadn't stopped yet. If anything, it got louder.
With a scratch of his butt and with no sense of shame whatsoever in
regards to his light clothing even in winter... his overclocked computer
provided enough heat for the small apartment, if anything... he got out
of his swivel chair to answer the door.

"Okay, sempai... I'll let you stay here if and only if you promise not
to thrash my house and smoke from the outside. My landlord almost kicked
me out the last... time... Oh."

"Oh... uh... Good evening!"

A girl that looked no younger than a high school student greeted him
with a bow at the other side of the door. She fidgeted as Junpei blocked
the light of his house with his own girth, her face looking flushed. Was
she drunk?

Junpei cleared his throat and crossed his arms to hide his jelly-like
chest. "G-Good evening."

At any rate, the presence of a high school girl at his apartment in and
of itself wasn't unusual... unfortunately. There was such a thing as
"Enjo Kosai" or "Enko", after all (in other words, it was Compensated
Dating wherein high school girls no older than this fine lass with
brown-dyed "chapatsu" hair before him would date older "salarymen"
provided that they pay for their "attention" in designer goods or
money; in other words, underage prostitution by high school girls).

The term spread like wildfire from an article in the Asahi Shimbun about
two years ago, if the amateur programmer recalled correctly. The fat
virgin didn't remember ordering any high school girls for New Year's
Eve, though. Maybe she was lost and couldn't find her customer?

Oh great, he wasn't exactly a Casanova when it came to talking to girls,
and he hadn't even bathed yet, so he didn't want her to notice whatever
stench he had on him. How was he supposed to tell her that she got the
wrong apartment?

Also, what if she wasn't doing "Enko"? What if she was a normal high
school girl who was looking for her boyfriend or something? Had he not
thought through what he was going to say, he would've almost told a high
school girl that she was a teenage prostitute!

That was even worse than the time he once daydreamed a girl rejecting
his advances. Yes, he was the kind of guy who daydreamed getting
rejected by girls. Even his fantasies couldn't deal with the bullshit of
him ending up with a girl.

"Um...?" the girl probed yet again, which woke Junpei from his reverie.
"Are you okay? You're sweating a lot."

"Y-Yeah. I-I'm doing great." Junpei forced a smile. "Um, Advanced Happy
New Year, I guess...?" Oh, wonderful. Now why did he have to say that?

The young girl blinked twice at the bespectacled tub of lard before
covering her mouth and giggling. After her fit of laughter, she slumped
her shoulders, wiped the tears on her eyes, and said, "Advanced Happy
New Year to you too, Mister."

Junpei felt his own rounded face heat up as he scratched the back of his
head. "S-S-So what brings you h-here?" he stuttered, which he remembered
was the reason why people called him "E-E-E-Endo-kun!" every time they
greeted him, even his so-called friends.

"I was just wondering if Endo Junpei-kun is around," said the girl as
she attempted to see past the large man in order to look at what was
inside his apartment. No such luck, he was as wide as his door.

"Er, really? Because I'm Endo Junpei-kun. I mean, Endo Junpei. That's
me," the sweaty, awkward Junpei repeated several times in a voice that
sounded way more excited than he intended. Was this for real?

The last time his sempai partied at his place, they promised that, to
make it up for him almost losing his tenancy, they'd send a real-live
high school girl to take his virginity away. Could it be that...?

Endo was almost certain that they were joking by the way that they
laughed until they were on all fours after mentioning that pledge of
theirs. However, sure enough, there she was. The epitome of loveliness
herself, with curly brown hair, an unidentifiable sailor uniform from
God-knew-what school it came from, and a lithe, athletic body that had
legs that wouldn't stop.

He imagined her in his bed, squashed by his own weight, as he thrust
into her repeatedly. He then winced as his crotch area started becoming
warmer and stiffer than ever before.

"Y-You're Endo Junpei-kun?" she asked, looking rather startled. Like
she saw a ghost or something.

"Y-Yup," he confirmed with a sigh. If his sempai really did set him up
with a girl, she looked less than thrilled to be there. He couldn't
blame her, with him looking the way he did. He bowed as though to
apologize for her own disappointment. She must've thought the man she
was going to "service" was one of his sempai.

"You're not lying?"

"I'm afraid so."

She then became teary-eyed as she shook her head repeatedly in seeming
denial. "N-No. I-It can't be..."

He got that a lot. With a long exhale and a dying erection, he murmured
another apology and was about to slam the door in her face... even if he
expected such a reaction, his feelings were still hurt... the unexpected
suddenly happened.

"D-Daddy?"

"Wha...?"

"I almost didn't recognize you without your beard! It is _you_!"

Then, something that never happened in all his twenty-one years on earth
happened then and there. A young, nubile high school girl of perhaps
fifteen years of age... or any female that wasn't his grandmother,
mother, his sisters, or his cousins, for that matter... just jumped into
his arms and gave him a warm embrace without any disgust or revulsion.

"DADDY! I MISSED YOU SO MUCH! It's me! Pandora! I'm your daughter!"

On cue, the fireworks started exploding from behind them.

And that was how Junpei Endo met his fifteen-year-old daughter, Pandora
Endo.


===


Because of the sheer surprise (and magnitude) of the situation, even the
overweight Junpei couldn't help but stumble back to his room, his face
pale in complete and utter shock. To hell with shock, this was outright
shellshock he was experiencing, like the shock of a fighter plane pilot
chosen for a kamikaze mission.

There were so many things wrong with this situation that he couldn't
even begin to comprehend it. First off, how did a twenty-one-year-old
_virgin_ like him manage to impregnate a girl fifteen years ago? Did he
rape some kid in the playground when he was only six? It was possible,
since the youngest girl to get pregnant, Lina Vanessa Medina, was
herself only five years old.

Did his parents pay the parents of the little girl hush money or settled
out of court then had him lobotomized so that he wouldn't end up raping
any other young girls again? Was his "daughter" looking for him to pay
alimony to her twenty-year-old mother?

Wait, that wasn't fucked up enough. Maybe mother and daughter had a life
not unlike Jack Nicholson's, who only later on in life found out that
his "sister" was actually his mother and "parents" were actually his
grandparents. Maybe the mother he raped pretended to be Pandora's sister
because they literally had five years between them in age.

Then again, none of that occurred to his mind at the moment... those
were his thoughts for later, when the words of this girl at his front
door finally sunk in. He heard her say "Pandora" was her name, but what
she said after about her being his daughter hadn't fully registered in
his mind. For all he knew... or for all his penis knew... "Daddy" was a
term of endearment.

All he knew was that a fifteen-year-old girl hugged him and he lost his
balance, so she ended up sitting on top of him while their efforts to
regain balance had them end up shutting the door closed instead.

Junpei's heart almost jumped out of his mouth. Or he was having a heart
attack? Either option was equally likely.

This was the closest he'd ever been with any woman. Grandma's hugs were
never _this_ intimate, for one thing, and all his cousins and sisters
only "embraced" him when absolutely necessary (like if he was choking on
a chicken bone), for another thing.

Besides, she was his daughter? Bullshit! If she was his daughter, then
Masaki Endo... the hot-blooded singer of action anime... was his father!

The brunette girl on top of him wiggled her hips. "Daddy, there's
something hard hitting my butt."

Before he did anything he regretted later on, he crawled away from her
like a gigantic, slimy sea slug before his own gigantic, slimy sea slug
got anywhere near her oyster.

He prostrated himself in front of his... blood relative, if her words
were to be believed. "I-I'm so sorry! It was an accident, I swear!"

The sweet, sexy thing waved him off as she took off her shoes and put
them on the shoe rack. "Oh, don't worry. It's my fault too. I was being
so clumsy and everything. My bad."

"Oh, it wasn't your fault at all! I assure you!" Junpei grabbed the
nearest face towel he could get and sat down on his beanbag chair. He
was drenched all over. His armpits and the front of his shirt were all
wet from his own sweat.

This was hardly how a gentleman would present himself to lady. Or a
father would his daughter, whichever the case. He couldn't make heads
or tails out of the situation.

Was she really his daughter? Maybe like in Terminator, she was from the
future. Maybe he was Japan's very own John Connor. Maybe he was supposed
to stop America from dropping a nuclear bomb on Kyoto or something to
start World War III (incidentally, that was the city that the original
atomic bombs were supposed to destroy).

From time to time, he would glance at his so-called daughter, who now
had a smile plastered on her face that made him feel tingly all over.
Who was this perfect woman in front of him? Why was she claiming she was
his child? Did she escape from some mental institution (reserved for
insane fashion models), stole a set of sailor fuku, and knocked on
strangers' doors claiming she was their missing offspring?

The girl... Pandora, was it? She stared at the fireworks in awe. "Wow.
Is there some sort of festival going on nearby? Those sure are pretty."

Was she for real? Didn't he just greet her, "Advanced Happy New Year"?
How ditzy was this chick?

Maybe she really did belong in a mental asylum. Or, better yet, she
might have woken up from a long comatose sleep, and now she ended up
wandering around, confused, falling all over people because her muscles
hadn't recovered yet from years of not being used.

On the other hand, Junpei kind of wished she was instead a time traveler
who got back in time Terminator-style, with her ending up naked as she
emerged through a globe of pure energy before she stole someone's school
uniform from a nearby clothesline.

Before he knew it, she was already rifling through the rest of his
things, from his closet to his cabinets, just like... a young girl would
in her father's office.

"Huh. This PC model is older than me."

"S-Stop calling it old! I'm still paying the installments for that PC!
Jeez, I know that nowadays, in only six months, a newly bought computer
can be considered obsolete, but please do spare me!" he rebuked in a
tone that was much harsher than he intended. What was he so mad about?
It was only a computer.

"I'm sorry, Daddy. I should've known that antiques such as this would
cost a fortune."

"A-Antiques...?"

Anyway, he had half the mind to call the police. But this was probably
his first new year since he'd flunked out of college (or rather, he
never entered college in the first place because he set his sights too
high and ended up not getting accepted in Tokyo University) that he
wouldn't spend alone.

Who did she remind him of, exactly? She was like a mix between Ifurita
from El Hazard (because of the curliness of her hair) and perhaps even
Marller from Ah! My Goddess for the same reason. No, wait, Fubuki Kai
also had the same seaweed-like hair! But she was from the infamous adult
title, "La Blue Girl", so the comparison was a little... extreme.

"Wow! Your room is so retro! Check out the CRT monitor!" she exclaimed
as she scoped out his desktop computer setup.

He scratched his head. "Retro"? He wasn't keeping any Seventies-era
platform shoes or afro wigs around, so what was she talking about in
regards to being "retro"? Was she seriously a time traveler?

"Wow, it even has a floppy disk drive! I haven't seen one of these in
ages!" she exclaimed in between chuckles. "This is running on Windows
95, isn't it? It looks so plain!"

"H-Hey, don't touch that!" he weakly protested, but his actions belied
his words as he sat there, mesmerized at the first girl he ever saw who
was as fascinated about computers as he was.

"Everything is so big! The monitor looks like one of those old TV sets,
and even the keyboard is bigger than normal! And your mouse even has a
ball!"

He did a croaking sound with his throat as his head went to the gutter.
"Your mouse even has a ball"? "Everything is so big"? Was she trying to
tell him something? Women were so complicated.

Meanwhile, he himself demonstrated how simpleminded men were as he kept
staring at her shaking bottom. He shook his head to wake himself up from
his trance. Dammit, he was getting hard again. No wonder girls back in
high school called him a pervert.

"Daddy," Pandora turned towards Junpei, which made him almost fall off
his chair and apologize on reflex for checking out his "daughter's"
butt. "Can you explain something to me?"

He gulped. Unbeknownst to his (unlikely or time-traveling) daughter,
he'd just finished reading a scanned manga he downloaded off the World
Wide Web a while ago, before he started his work. It was about a young
little sister asking his big brother what was sex all about.

Again, he adjusted his pants so that his "little guy" wouldn't start
poking out of it. "What do you want to know?" he squeaked, well-aware
that this "Daddy" business could still be all a ruse and she was merely
acting that way because that was what she was paid to do. As a teenaged
hooker.

"What did you mean by, 'Your very existence may be in peril'?" she asked
just short of putting her finger on her lip.

Junpei sat up, tilted his head to the side like an owl, and asked,
"Pardon?"

So she repeated what she said. He asked again, and she also parroted the
same thing. By the fourth time, Junpei rephrased his question to, "I did
_what_ now?"

"You sent me a letter that I wasn't supposed to open until October
Twenty-First! You know, after you abandoned me!" she snapped, her facade
of good will wilting alongside the growing tempo of fireworks and
firecrackers from outside, which were now firing off like Tommy Guns.

"H-How could I send you a letter if this is the first time we've ever
met?" he protested. "Also, what's with this 'Daddy' business? I'm not
your father! Although people have said I look forty, I'm barely in my
twenties, thank you very much!"

"Eh?" It was Pandora's turn to become a slack-jawed, barely coherent,
and flabbergasted mess. "But... what... you... you don't even remember
me? IS THAT THE GREETING YOU WANT TO GIVE TO YOUR OWN DAUGHTER AFTER
ABANDONING HER FOR SEVEN YEARS?"

She screamed before she went behind him, grabbed him as though she was
about to perform the Heimlich maneuver, and with surprising strength
that belied her mass... specifically her 163 centimeters tall (5'4") and
51 kilos (112 pounds) heavy "when wet" body... German-suplexed him to
oblivion.

A second later, Junpei found himself with a shooting headache and an
aching back. Pandora wasn't quite done with him yet as she crawled on
top of him, grabbed him by the collar, and began choking him while
crying out:

"After all the years I've waited, after looking forward to this day, you
have the _gall_ to disown me as your daughter and pretend you're some
sort of young bachelor? I was right, wasn't I? You were having a lewd
relationship with that bitchy lab assistant of yours, weren't you?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about, crazy lady!" was what Junpei
tried to say, but no words could come out of his mouth as his "daughter"
continued strangling the life out of him. No one could hear their ruckus
from outside either, thanks to all the fireworks.

Was this how he was going to die? Getting choked to death by an insane
girl who escaped from a mental ward, thinking that he was her father? If
Junpei could shrug, he would've. There were worse ways to kick the
bucket.

It was at that very moment that the door to his apartment opened and
someone said, "Oh, the door was unlocked? Endo-kun! Come outside! The
fireworks looks splendid from the..."

As Junpei's eyesight cleared, he saw the lovely widow and daughter of
his landlord who lived next door... the beguiling Yukari Shimamoto...
drop her tray of meat buns in shock. The stout freeter then figured out
what had happened.

On top of him was a flush and sweaty fifteen-year-old girl, whose shirt
was half-undone and whose skirt had hiked up in all that excitement,
which exposed her underwear for all the world to see. Meanwhile, Endo's
own pants had slipped down to his ankles, revealing his boxers, while
his ruffled shirt exposed his Buddha-like belly.

Junpei remembered revering Yukari like a goddess or a Bodhisattva, with
all the tenants living there swearing never to masturbate to what they
called a Living Saint of a Woman: Saintlier than Mother Theresa or Saint
Bernadette Soubirous, the saint who was famous for having her body
remain uncorrupted and preserved from decomposition centuries after her
death.

While the freeter, true to his promise to himself, never masturbated
while thinking about Missus Shimamoto, he might as well have done
something _worse_ to her, because he now appeared, for all intents and
purposes, like she caught him in the middle of coitus.

"E-Excuse me, I didn't know you were busy," she said with teary eyes and
an agape mouth as she shut his door. "I'm sorry for the interruption,"
came her muffled afterthought of a remark.

"I-IT'S A MISUNDERSTANDING!" both father and "daughter" chorused after
the widow left, but their voices were swallowed by another peal of
thunderous fireworks.


===


After Junpei and Pandora had settled down and fixed their half-undressed
clothes, the supposed Endo daughter crossed her arms, sat down on the
swivel chair reserved for the freeter's computer work, and tapped her
socked foot on the floor.

The fat man himself scratched the growing stubble underneath his double
chin. What was her problem? Why was she claiming he sent her some sort
of letter? The only letters he ever sent to girls were love letters that
were promptly torn apart as soon as they figured out where these
(unwanted) notes came from.

"So you're saying that I left your _mother_ seven years ago and I wrote
you a letter showing where you can find me? That's rather insightful of
fourteen-year-old me."

She nodded absentmindedly, her eyes still red from all her crying. The
front door was locked this time around so that no more misunderstandings
could take place from this... rather bizarre situation. "I don't get it.
Why did you abandon me, Daddy? I thought you loved me. I thought I was
the only thing you had since Mommy died."

"Okay, okay... One thing at a time." Junpei gripped his chest as his
left arm went numb. That couldn't possibly be a good sign. "Maybe you've
gotten the wrong man? There are probably a lot of Endo Junpeis in Japan.
I mean, I look a lot like the forty-something old farts in the
neighborhood because of how big I am. Maybe you've mistaken me for your
bastard of a father?"

Pandora tilted her head and considered Junpei's words. Then the look of
horror started to fill her reddened eyes, which dried out her tear ducts
in an instant.

Junpei was quite familiar with that look. It was the same look that one
of his sempai had when he heard that one of his girls were pregnant, and
he could be the father.

If the freelancer had to hazard a guess, then Pandora was probably
replaying all those times she hugged and touched his sweaty self inside
her head with growing revulsion in her stomach as the minutes passed by
and as realization dawned to her.

Talk about opening Pandora's Box. Good thing they didn't get to the
point of unleashing the secrets underneath Pandora's Underwear!

"If you're quite done, the door's over there," said Junpei as he got up
his beanbag chair and considered playing Street Fighter or Vampire on
his PlayStation until the psychotic girl with daddy issues left
already. He also made a mental note to line up for the release of Final
Fantasy VII by the end of January.

To his surprise, Pandora kneeled down and bowed right on the floor, her
face to the ground as though she were a newlywed about to offer herself
to her groom. "I'm so sorry I hugged you earlier. And threatened to
kill you. I didn't know what came over me."

Junpei waved her off, signaling her to get up. "It was nothing.
Everybody makes mistakes. I myself can't keep count of the number of
misunderstandings I've gone through myself..."

Pandora started to sniffle again, and Junpei slapped his own face for
not offering her a tissue box earlier.

"Thank you," she said as she blew on a piece of tissue. "I can't help
but think that you were my father, though. I mean, look at all the
posters, manga, video games, and anime VHS tapes you have. This whole
apartment looks just like my father's basement back home!"

Junpei whistled. "Your father collects anime and manga? He must be one
of those Gundam-Era otaku from the Eighties or something! My father was
never that cool!"

Pandora waved Junpei off as she chortled and rubbed her nose. "No, no!
My father isn't that old! He was born in the Eighties!"

"Don't you mean _you_ were born in the Eighties?" Junpei asked as the
drumbeat of a familiar theme started to play in his mind. The familiar
sound of the Terminator theme, to be exact. 'Nah. It couldn't be. She
couldn't possibly mean...'

Pandora smiled as she punched Junpei's arm. He winced, but then realized
that the punch was actually a light tap that barely hurt at all, like
one of those thrown by some of his butch classmates as a tomboyish
high-five greeting of sorts.

"I'm not forty years old. I was born in the Year 2000! I'm a millennium
baby!"

Junpei gulped. The question he was about to ask this young lady that
suddenly arrived in his life was one that he dreamed of saying for the
longest time since he first watched Back to the Future as a ten-year-old
kid. "W-W-What year do you think we're in?"

Like father, like daughter, she asked, "Pardon?" He repeated his
question, and by the fourth time, they realized they were in a rut, and
she answered, "Today's October 21, 2015... Right? Or is it October 22
already?"

Junpei either fainted or had a heart attack then and there. Whichever
the case, all he saw was the room spinning before everything faded to
black.


===


By the time he came to, he saw himself lying on a futon and his supposed
"daughter" sitting right beside him while reading some periodicals. To
be specific, his adult-only periodicals.

"G-G-Give that back!" he stammered as he waved his stubby arms at the
athletic girl who stood up and kept him down with her foot. "D-Don't
look at them! It's so embarrassing!"

"Ew. Will you stop talking like some girl in an H-game or something?
_That's_ far more embarrassing," said Pandora as she casually tossed
the gravure magazine back in the box where she found it.

"Hmmm. If you're still keeping porn magazines in boxes instead of the
computer, then maybe you're right. Maybe I am in the past!"

"So you figured out that you traveled to the past?"

"Your _mom_ traveled to the past! This 'What year is it?' prank of yours
is the same bullshit you pulled on me when I was a little kid! Of
course, we're not in the past!"

"Don't talk to your grandma like that! I mean, wait just a minute! The
one who has the burden of proof isn't _me_, but _you_! You're the one
who's claiming that you're from the future, not me! You should prove
yourself by telling me about future events, like where people keep their
porn and stuff!" he demanded.

"Out of all the things you'd ask me about the future, you choose to know
how men keep their porn stash safe?"

Junpei turned blue. In fairness to him, he'd woken up from a dead faint,
so he wasn't quite sure what he was saying. To save face, he still
insisted, "It's as valid a question as any!"

Pandora gave him a look that one would give to a squashed cockroach.
What happened to the loving daughter he was supposed to have a minute
ago? "Pull yourself together, Dad. You're a mess." She shook her head.
"It's a miracle how I was even born."

Junpei sighed. His own kid, giving him lip. What was the world coming
to? "Suppose I believe you," he began, "Can you tell me about future
events? What happens in the Year 2000? If the 1980s was called the
Eighties, and the 1990s is called the Nineties, what would the 2000s be
called?"

Pandora looked at him as if he grew a second head. "I... I don't know
what happened back in the Nineties! I mean, you aren't seriously
suggesting I traveled back through time, right! If that were true, then
your stupid future self left out _that_ little detail when I entered
that chamber of his! What year is it anyway?"

With a creepy grin and a irregularly beating heart that could be
arrhythmia... he hoped that wasn't the case... Junpei handed his
"daughter" yesterday's newspaper.

"Oh. December 31, 1996. So that's why you greeted me Advanced Happy New
Year earlier. I thought that was a joke or something."

"Actually, it's January 1, 1997. We won't get today's newspaper until
later."

"...And here I thought having your neighbors say, 'Happy New Year!' and
'1997 is finally here!' is going too far for a prank," she mumbled.

"What's the matter, Pan... P-Pandora-chan?" He had no other recourse in
what to call her. He couldn't call her Endo-chan or Endo-san since he
might as well be referring to himself, so he decided to call her
Pandora-chan: His little "sister" that he never had, Pandora-chan.

"I-It's my birthday today," Pandora confessed before furrowing her
eyebrows and correcting herself. "N-No. I'll be born about... three?
Yeah, three years later, so technically, it's not my birthday today. If
that makes sense."

The way she looked at him, it seemed she wasn't fully convinced of this
time travel business. Well, so was he.

"I get it. I guess," said Junpei as his head started to spin. Wow. This
girl was from the future! Probably. And she was his daughter! Which
meant... that at some point in time, he was going to get laid! He wasn't
going to be a virgin forever! Unless... "Are you adopted?"

"What? No, I'm not adopted!" exclaimed Pandora as she covered herself up
by reflex in order to protect herself from her father's leering eyes.
"Don't get any bright ideas, Woody Allen!"

'Woody Allen? I don't get it.' Aloud, Junpei exclaimed, "YES! You're not
adopted! Which means that I'm going to be a father! You're living proof
that I got laid sometime in the future! Before the new millennium, at
that! Sweet!"

"That's all well and good, but what did you... your future self... mean
when he said in his letter that 'Your very existence is in peril'? I
mean, my existence. What does that have to do with anything?"

Junpei shrugged. "I don't know. I can't imagine how I'd think as an old
fart in the future anyway. Why don't you ask him?"

"Haven't you been paying attention? You... your other self abandoned me
for your lab assistant, so I ended up being raised by my aunt and
uncle!"

"Wow. Is that true? From a virgin loser freeter, I'm now banging lab
assistants on the side? Things sure are looking up for me!" cheered
Junpei, but the fat man's celebrations ended up short-lived as soon as
he got on the wrong end of his daughter's fists.

With a swollen, tomato nose, Junpei droned, "I'm sorry. Your old man's a
messed up asshole. I wish I don't end up growing up to be like him.
Please continue."

Pandora exhaled through her nostrils. "All you left me was this stupid
letter and instructions to go to some abandoned apartments in Akihabara!
I entered some strange, egg-shaped pod with all sorts of lights and
switches, and the next thing I knew, I ended up in this place!"

"...Lights and switches? Oh, OH! That must be the time machine!" said
Junpei with a little clap as though it were Christmas Day 1983 and he
was receiving his first Famicom... although he did append, '...I hope
you're not some deluded mental patient who watched too many Back to the
Future marathons,' to himself.

"I'm not completely convinced that I was in a time machine, _Father_,"
said Pandora in tones that would've melted concrete. "For all I know,
this could be some sort of elaborate practical joke concocted by you and
your bitchy girlfriend."

Junpei scratched his head. "Really? I'd almost say it's the other way
around. Are you sure you're from... OHOHOHO!" he laughed like Santa
Claus while pointing wildly at Pandora.

"What do you mean, 'Ohohoho'?" she asked, perplexed.

"You can't fool me! October 21, 2015? That's the date when Marty McFly
went to the future in Back to the Future Part II! Yeah, that's the date
when he kept his kids, Marty Junior and Marlene McFly, from going to
jail! I knew this was some sort of practical joke! Who put you up to
this? Was it Uemura-sempai?"

"I'M NOT JOKING! Ugh, and there you go again with that Back to the
Future nonsense, jeez! I must have watched that a million times when I
was growing up. Stop it. That movie isn't accurate! The fact that we
still have newspapers in 2015 shows it's not accurate!"

"Wait, wait, wait, Future Girl... There are no flying cars, self-lacing
shoelaces, self-drying jackets, or hover boards in the future?" the fat
man said as he grabbed his smaller (by weight, if not by height)
daughter and shook her about like a maracas.

"You mean to tell me that Akihabara today looks just like Akihabara in
about twenty years with no change whatsoever? Or the rest of Japan, for
that matter?"

"OW! Stop shaking me!" She socked her old man on the jaw, and he ended
up down for the count.

"Look, I have no clue! I came here, thinking this was going to be a
tearful reunion with my stupid father who finally came to his senses and
left that bimbo cow who was probably too young for him to date anyway.
But nooo, I ended up with you, who's either him after a shave feigning
ignorance that it's him, or some other fat idiot who wants to make a
fool out of me!"

Junpei rubbed his jaw and groaned. "All right. Fine. Show me that letter
and that... pod of yours, and we can go from there. If worse comes to
worst, maybe we can just send you back." He grinned. "Back to the
future."

He could barely protect himself from the ensuing foot stomps to his
face.


===


"I-It was right here! I swear it was just right there! You've got to
believe me!" said the almost hysterical Pandora. Her "box" was
apparently missing.

It was around this time that Junpei considered calling the cops, the
nearest mental health ward, or social services so that they could get
this clearly disturbed individual some much-needed help.

Maybe after she got her medications, she'd be a bit less... psychotic?
Would he risk dating such a ticking time bomb? 'Yes, of course,' he
thought to himself.

There was a part of him, though, that wanted it all to be real.

"That bastard."

"What?"

"That bastard set me up. _You_ set me up!" She punched him on the arm,
this time in a non-tomboyish greeting sort of way.

"Ow! That hurt!"

"You men are all the same, aren't you? I saw how you were leering at me
earlier! To think, you'd have such lewd thoughts about your own
daughter! You sicken me!" She punched him some more.

"Hey! Ow! Stop! It's not my fault your 'pod' or something isn't here!
Why blame me?"

"Yes, it is your fault! It's the fault of your forty-year-old self! You
tricked me into seeing your younger you while the older you was off
gallivanting with his assistant! Your assistant! If Mom were alive, what
would she say? You monster!"

The punches became weaker, and her shouts soon became sobs. Junpei
didn't know what to do. His two older sisters usually made him cry
instead of the other way around.

In between snivels, she asked him, "Why'd you stop loving me, Daddy? Why
were you cruel enough to do this to your own daughter?"

The freeter bit his trembling lip, lifted up his arms, and thought,
'Fuck it.' Maybe this Pandora was named as such because _she_ herself
was the Pandora's Box that wasn't ever meant to be opened.

The irony of the situation was not lost to him. However, for good or for
ill, he'd indulge her little time travel fantasy for a little while
longer. Why? Maybe because he was as big of a nut as she was.

"Gimme my letter."

"Huh?"

"I said give me the letter that my future self wrote to you."

She took a yellowed piece of paper and envelop from her jacket and
handed it to Endo. The stout man opened the letter up, and sure enough,
it only contained three lines.

The first line was, "Go inside the pod. It will automatically open and
close."

The second line was, "As soon as the pod opens, go to the nearest
apartment's second floor at the second to the last door to the right
marked '12'. Knock on it because the doorbell is busted. Wait for an
answer and look for me."

The third line was, "Do as this letter instructs. Your very existence
may be in peril."

The letter only contained three lines and seven sentences, nothing more.
Was there any significance to this? Junpei had no idea. He recognized
the penmanship, though. If it wasn't him who wrote it, then it could
very well be a topnotch forgery.

He looked down just as the crying Pandora looked up. "What am I supposed
to do now? If this really is 1996, then I could be stuck here forever. I
have nowhere else to go!"

"Is there nothing else on this letter?"

"That's everything there."

He looked at the envelope. Sure enough, like in Back to the Future, it
read, "Do not open until October 21, 2015." He remembered making many a
time capsule like that. In fact, he recalled back in high school,
because the girls kept tearing apart his love letters, than he became a
little sneakier when making them. He hid the love notes in his letters
to his crushes by...

"Huh... Daddy? I mean... J-Junpei-kun? Where are you going? HEY! Wait
for me...!"


===


Back in Junpei's dormitory room, he took out a candle he saved for
blackouts, lit it up with a lighter, and made the paper hover right
above the flame.

"What are you doing? Are you going to burn it? Stop! That's my only clue
of what I'm supposed to do! That's my only link to that bastard father
of mine!" beseeched an out-of-breath Pandora, amazed at how the fat man
could move so fast.

The similarly winded Junpei was able to choke out, "I-I'm not burning
it. I'm trying to find the secret message."

"Secret message? What secret...?" Pandora's eyes widened as, soon
enough, a whole new hidden message located in the blank parts of the
paper emerged. "H-How'd you do this?"

"Back in the Eighties, when I was a kid, sending secret messages to each
other via 'invisible' ink was all the rage. All you need to do to make
heat-activated secret messages was use some milk, onion juice, diluted
honey, diluted cola, or baking soda as 'ink'. I used to do this all the
time."

Pandora clenched her fist, hit her palm, and cracked her knuckles.
"Hooo. Is that so? Daddy, you're so cool," she said with a flat tone and
a throbbing vein on her head.

"Okay, wait. Let's see if it says anything about getting you back," said
Junpei as he blew out the candle and beckoned Pandora to read the newly
formed characters of his future self's letter along with him.

"By the time my younger self has figured out the secret message in this
letter, the time machine should've ended up back in the future, where it
belongs. Your suspicions are correct. That was a time machine. You are
talking to myself from 19 years ago. Dora-chan, I'm so sorry for
deceiving you, but from the bottom of my heart, I can honestly say that
I'm doing this for your own good. Please help my younger self find your
mother. Otherwise, you'll cease to exist."

"...." came the pair's conclusion of the whole proceedings. They
remained silent for a good twenty minutes, staring blankly at the page
before they both screamed, "WHAT THE FUCKING HELL IS THIS ABOUT?"

In any case, for the second... or was it third? For the umpteenth time,
"Dora-chan's" hands were at Junpei's neck (or what she could grab of it)
as she used her whole unbelievable strength to squeeze the life out of
the fat man and flatten out his windpipe.

"I'LL KILL YOU! I'll kill you so that I won't be born and I won't have
to suffer the indignity of being your daughter! Who am I supposed to be?
Your own personal Doraemon?"

"Heh. _Pandoraemon_."

"DIE!"

Seeing red, the Endo daughter went behind Junpei and used the entirety
of her arm to choke him since her small hands couldn't reach all the way
to the back of his massive neck.

"Hey, the door's open. HEY, E-E-E-ENDO-KUN!"

Junpei's one of many sempai, Uemura, called out while fake-stuttering,
which had the rest of the gang of upperclassmen in stitches.

"I heard from your sexy dorm manager that you were able to pony up
enough dough to buy yourself a high school prostitute! Is this true? Or
did she see you riding on a blowup doll in the dark or something?"

Uemura and company stopped dead on their tracks in the middle of taking
off their shoes as they saw a gurgling Junpei get accosted by a fierce
yet stunning young girl just short of wearing S&M Gear.

"Uh, Uemura? I don't think that's a blowup doll," said one of Junpei's
sempai.

On Uemura's part, he turned around and put his shoes back on while
saying, "Come on, guys. Nothing to see here. Let's go."

Another sempai said, "They grow up so fast... especially Uemura. He's
like the universe, always expanding."

As the group of sempai laughed it up and left Junpei to his own devices,
the twenty-one-year-old gurgled incoherently with a foaming mouth and a
blue face, unable to even scream for help as his future daughter's
python-like arms crushed his flabby neck.

Afterwards, the sweet darkness claimed his consciousness once more.


===


On New Year's Day 1997...

"What a horrible dream," said the Elder Endo, which was the same line
that the Younger Endo also said.

They didn't scream when they saw each other lying on the same futon.
They were too tired to do so. At the back of Junpei's mind, he realized
that the extra freelance work he had to finish on New Year's Eve was
never attended to because of yesterday's shenanigans.

He also discovered that his daughter was not a morning person.

"Take responsibility," she said as she lifted him up by his shirt's
collar. He blushed. "NOT THAT KIND OF RESPONSIBILITY! IDIOT!"

She slapped him yet again, and he began to get flashbacks of Ranma 1/2.
The animated adaptation. The one where Akane Tendo was acting angrier
and more vengeful towards Ranma Ssaotome than in the comics. 'Jeez.'

"So what kind of responsibility are you talking about?" he asked with a
nervous smile.

"The one where I get to survive this era! My idiot _father_ didn't even
have the foresight to ask me to get a change of clothes before I stepped
into that stupid time machine of his!"

Oh, _that_ kind of responsibility. The poor kid... Lost in time, and
with no place to go...

"My big sisters should have a few high school hand-me-downs back at my
home in Shibuya. It's a train ride away from here, in fact. I'll go pick
them up and say I'm giving them away to charity or some bullshit.
Anything else you need?"

It was apparently Pandora's turn to blush. "Um, I also need shampoo,
conditioner, facial cleanser, my own toothbrush and toothpaste, and..."
she murmured the last part of her sentence.

Junpei strained to hear her. "Hmm? Dora-chan? Is there something the
matter? What was that last one?"

"I SAID SANITARY NAPKINS, YOU GIGANTIC PERVERT!"

As she stormed off in a huff inside the bathroom, only to recoil, shut
the door, and give another dirty look at Junpei as she mouthed, "Were
you raised in a barn?" before going to the corner and sitting there like
a child undergoing "time out", the freeter thought, 'Uncute. She's sooo
uncute.'


===


On January 3, 1997; a Friday...

After indulging his future daughter's requests... which included getting
her "new" clothes that were her size, some toiletries, and hydrochloric
acid to help clean out his own bathroom from all the accumulated filth
that one would expect out of a "bachelor pad"... she eventually became
calm enough to talk to him about their current situation.

"Your future self is an asshole," Pandora concluded, and Junpei had no
room to disagree.

The fatherly (and, apparently, still fat) version of himself had the
gumption... nay, the balls... to leave his own daughter stranded in the
past so that she herself could do his dirty work for him, finding a girl
that would someday give birth to her. In the future.

"Agreed. Now that we have that out of the way, what now?" Junpei asked,
and all Pandora could do was look at him and sigh. Not a good sign.

"...Well, it seems like I have to find out who my mother was." She went
quiet, which made Junpei twitch, as though waiting for the other shoe
to drop. It never did.

"Um, I guess that seems simple enough. Do you have a name? What she
looks like? Who she is?"

"No. I never met my mother. My father said she died while giving birth
to me... like her sole purpose was to give birth to me."

Okay. Junpei had no idea how to respond to that, so he decided to change
the topic. "Do you have any clues? Or even pictures? Should we find the
girl that looks most like you or something? Come on."

She shook her head. "No. That's the thing. The first time you'll meet
Mommy is the first time I'll meet her too."

Goddamn.

"That's not the least of our problems either," she added as she went
from somber to mildly disgusted.

Oh shit, there was more? "What else are our problems?"

"Your problem actually," she said while pinching her nose. "You're
disgusting. You're fat, you're ugly, you stare at pretty girls for too
long, and those 'sempai' of yours are obviously not your friends if
they're out to use you as their personal gopher."

Oh, that was right. She bore witness to him buying them beer. "Those
guys aren't so bad."

She gave him a droll look.

"Okay, here's the deal. I don't know what happens to me in the future
that turns me into this gigantic asshole. Maybe my sempai are
responsible, who knows? But I understand what you're trying to say. The
me right now isn't exactly a ladies' man. Even a blind, deaf, and mute
child can tell that's the case with me. What am I going to do about it?"

She shrugged. "You could start by cutting down on your soft drinks and
junk food. It'll probably help if you start cleaning up your room and
bathing more too. Your smell like spoiled milk, _Dad_. How are you going
to woo Mom if you're going to act like a pig all your life?"

He shrugged. "I'm guessing that's all up to you...?"

She took his nose, pinched it, squeezed, and turned it like a knob.
Again, as usual, he had a way with words when it came to the ladies.

"No father of mine is going to be a lay-about freeter with no prospects!
I have no idea exactly who Mommy is going to be, but you better shape up
for my own good! I'm not going to cease to exist just yet!"

To Pandora's annoyance, her twenty-something father had that stupid grin
on his face again. "What now?"

"This is just like Back to the Future! You've watched that, right? Marty
McFly went back in time to when his parents were teenagers, he fucks up
his mother's meeting with his father, and in order to keep himself from
ceasing to exist, he has to bring his mother and his father back
together again!"

Pandora palmed her face. "Oh great. Knowing Daddy, he probably did this
on purpose."

Junpei patted his daughter's head. "Oh, come now, Dora-chan. This isn't
so bad. Like Marty, you're going to teach your old man some new moves
with the ladies to the point that he might even impress you more than
you'd admit! Gee, I wonder if I'll even get to sock Uemura-sempai?
He'll be the Biff Tannen to my George McFly!"

"Ugh. Spare me the Back to the Future references, Dad. You made enough
of them when I was a little kid."


===


On February 14, 1997; Valentine's Day; a Friday...

There was no epic battle between George McFly and Biff Tannen in order
to win the heart of lovely Lorraine Banes. Why? Because there was no
Lorraine Banes.

Was he supposed to go for the first girl that made his heart flutter
(aside from his daughter, which in fairness, was because he wasn't aware
or didn't believe she was his daughter at the time) since that fateful
New Year's Eve? Or should he instead wait for fate to lead him to his
destiny, which was incidentally _also_ the destiny of the stranger that
came into his life?

He had no obligation to believe her story or the letter she gave him.
He never saw any time machine. The date when Pandora came into his life
was also bogus in that it came straight from a sci-fi movie about time
travel. She could tell him anything about the future, and he wouldn't be
able to call her bluff.

She said all sorts of future events and terms that didn't matter to him
one way or another. Napster. DMCA. Torrent. 9/11. YouTube. NicoNico
Douga. Facebook.  Twitter. Moe. Tsundere. Superhero movies. A Lord of
the Rings trilogy. Megavideo. Harry Potter. Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
The Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami. And so on and so forth.

They all sounded like gobbledygook to him... although he did like the
idea that the inspiration behind Dungeons and Dragons (and, in turn,
video role-playing games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy) would have
a proper and epic movie adaptation.

Pandora insisted that these were all in store for the future. He had no
time to confirm any of them. He had to impregnate someone nine months
before January 1, 2000.

He had to undergo a leap of faith to find out whether the "daughter" he
was with was Nostradamus or P.T. Barnum. He couldn't help but be
skeptical. Hell, even her name, "Pandora", was obviously fake.

He also couldn't help but feel hopeful too. Just like with Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle and the Cottingley Fairies Hoax by Elsie Wright and Frances
Griffiths. The creator of Sherlock Holmes... a master of logic and
deduction... should've known better, but let his whimsy get the better
of him.

So there he was now, at the convenience store where Pandora got part-
time work in order to help with their expenses at his dormitory room
that the two of them now shared. He espied a cute cashier there last
month that, strangely enough, reminded him of his daughter.

Or at least his daughter whenever she wasn't having a psychotic
breakdown every few minutes for whatever reason (from menstruation
cramps to him looking at her funny).

The cashier reminded him of Pandora before she realized that she was
supposed to hook him up with a girl so that she could be born. The cute,
sweet, innocent, and clueless Pandora with the wiggling bottom.

They had the same bottom, come to think of it. 'She could very well be
Pandora's mom.'

He wooed the cashier with all his might even though he was out of his
depth and comfort zone. However, despite his daughter's advice, he
still couldn't talk to women properly. Regardless, he'd find a way to
make sure that his daughter has a future to speak of.

In fairness, he lost a bit of weight. Not enough to get rid of his
potbelly, but enough for him to start wearing his clothes from back in
high school. He also started to observe proper hygiene at his daughter's
behest.

He wore antiperspirant. He took speech lessons. He went outside and
talked to the hot widow of a manager more often than before. Thankfully,
the awkwardness of New Year's Eve hadn't strained their relationship
with each other.

He was a freelancing freeter still, but at least he wasn't a cooped-up
hikikomori or recluse anymore. He was actually going outside to eat.
His mother did scold him about his sedentary life, after all.

Well, there was a tinier but just-as-loud version of his mother back in
his apartment at the moment, and moving out and about was one of his few
reprieves from the constant nagging.

Was this what it was like to be married? No wonder he ended up with a
hot lab assistant mistress. Oh wait, that was _after_ he became a
widower, right? Then it was all good.

He wasn't cheating on anyone or anything, although he couldn't fathom
why a responsible father like himself would do something as cruel as
leave his daughter stranded in the past.

On second thought, he was still an asshole in the future.

Besides which... _lab assistant_? He was going to have his own lab? He
could barely keep up with programming code projects and whatnot, so how
was he supposed to manage an entire lab? Did he become a scientist of
some sort? That was even more preposterous.

Another thought occurred to him. Was he the one who invented that pod...
no, that "Pandora's Box" time machine? He couldn't even figure out why
his PC restarted every time he kicked it, so how in the seven hells was
he supposed to invent a time machine?

All the same, he had his chocolate ready to give to the cashier. Sure,
it was more of a Western  Tradition to give girls chocolates instead of
waiting for them to hand him some, but the way he figured it, pigs would
sooner fly before he could get some chocolate of his own. Even his
sisters wouldn't bother giving him "duty" chocolate.

He snuck up behind a trash bin. Sure enough, there they were, Pandora
and Miss Inoue the cashier, taking a break from their shift and...
smoking cigarettes?

No, wait, only Inoue was smoking. And she was laughing too. He didn't
expect this. This was far from the Inoue he saw back at the counter. He
strained his ears as he eavesdropped.


===


"...And that fat guy couldn't take no for an answer, can you believe
it?" chortled and snorted Inoue as she took more puffs from her cig.
"Like he had a chance with me! I mean, come on. I'm not that desperate
for dates, Dora-chan."

Pandora laughed weakly and fanned away all the secondhand smoke that was
gathering around her like smog from a city bus exhaust pipe. "Oh, I
don't know, Inoue-san. He seems like a nice enough guy. Maybe you
shouldn't judge a book by its cover."

Inoue stared at the Younger Endo with an eyebrow raised way up. "Unlike
you, Dora-chan, I'm no chubby chaser. I have my standards. I do find it
pitiful how he's probably the kind of fatso who clings to any girl who's
nice to him. You better be careful, kiddo. Be nice to him once, and you
could end up with a stalker."

"Oh, come on. He's not that type of..." At that very moment, Pandora's
eyes met with Junpei's. He quickly hid as she glared at him. "Okay,
you're right. I'll make sure that I'm extra mean to him."

"Attagirl. You're, like, neighbors or something, right?"

Pandora giggled by reflex as she tugged at her collar. "Y-Yeah. You
could say that."

"It must be tough hanging around with a disgusting hambeast like that."

"You said it, sister."

"You know what's funny? He even gave me a potted plant!" Inoue again
went into a giggling (and snorting) fit unbecoming of the lady that she
portrayed herself to be from behind the cashier counter.

Pandora palmed her face, feeling for all the world like the daughter of
parents trying too hard to be hip. "How romantic. If it's potted, at
least you won't have to put it in a vase with water."

Inoue was in stitches this time around. "I know, right? That guy is
unbelievable! If I weren't so revolted by him, I'd be sorry for the poor
thing!"

The two were startled as they heard a thump around the corner, followed
by a screeching cat.

"Some cats must be in heat or something," Inoue said as she wiped the
tears from her eyes and gasped for breath and the surrounding smoke
around her. "Hey, where are you going, Dora-chan?"

"I'll catch you later, Inoue-san. I have something important to do."


===


Next:  More heartbreak and college.

Adieu,
Abdiel
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