Night――
In the room he was told it was his, he was looking for something that could tell him about this body.
At this rate I got no choice but to go through with this pretend-amnesia, but I need to know more about this body.
"Well, all I knew is that the owner of this body was a huge hunter fan..."
Most of the magazines he had were about hunters fighting monsters.
It would be a problem if there were erotic books, but he wish he had a diary or something.
In this world, there seems to be something called Hunter Ranking, and they are featured as if they were celebrities.
I guess Takeru wrote what he thought about it.
――I want to join this guild someday, this hunter is great here, this guild has some suspicious parts.
It seems that he had almost no aptitude as a hunter, which is why he admired them so much.
Well, but I guess it wasn't a mistake to ask in the car after all.
He understood what kind of place this is.
First of all, just as the news on the car mentioned, it is now the year 2040 AD.
It's a time period over 40 years ahead of when Takel went to the other world.
"In over forty years, things can change this much, I suppose."
A cell phone that looks like it belongs to him.
When he asked his father about it, he said it was called a "smartphone", but he was confused because he didn't know how to use it.
"It would be bad if I used it so much that the charges become ridiculously high..."
Takeru had a memory of how using a mobile phone carelessly could lead to serious consequences.
Even more, with something this highly advanced, he wondered just how much the cost would amount to.
"Hm?"
While thinking like that, there was a sudden beep from the smartphone.
Even though he didn't know how to use it, he thought he'd try holding it, and the dark screen suddenly lit up.
Apparently, it reacted with a fingerprint or something.
Anyway, there's something like a mail so he opened it with hesitation and――――
"Oi Kusanagi! I heard you woke up! You did a crazy thing like killing yourself they said! The police came to my place because of you! I'll never forgive you!"
Such messages were contained one by one in short sentences, and Takeru closed his eyes once, taking a deep breath slowly for the time being.
Then he heard a beeping sound once more, and looked again.
"When you come to school, you'll be treated to something worse than anything you've ever experienced before, so get ready!"
Sure enough, such a message continued to be written, and Takeru thought that this person might be the reason the owner of this body was in the hospital.
――You don't have to go to school for a while.
It's been a week since his parents told me that.
He had visited the police and the hospital along the way, but since he was acting as if he had amnesia, there was nothing he could answer.
“It’s just like Urashima Taro.”
At first, thinking he didn't know anything about the world, he walked around the area near his house, and he couldn't help but think how different things had become.
The first thing that struck him was that there were almost no opportunities to use cash.
When he went to the convenience store, there were no employees, and it seemed like everyone was just taking things without paying. In fact, they were leaving without paying.
The reason for this was 'unmanned payment.'
The system was such that when you entered the entrance, your phone would respond, and when you left with your things, the system would pay for them on its own.
It was something unimaginable in the time he came from, almost like a story from the future in an anime becoming reality. Honestly, his confused fumbling in the convenience store is a memory he find rather embarrassing.
“I mean, smartphones are just too convenient.”
He received instructions from his mother and tried to use it himself, and he finally got used to it, but this can be called a small computer.
Takeru didn't fully understand the functions because it's too convenient, but he was impressed by the fact that he could use the internet freely anywhere.
Even in places without unmanned payment options, you can use the accumulated Hunter's Points, commonly referred to as 'HP,' on your smartphone to make payments, which works like cash in most cases.
As he thought about how times have changed in the past forty years, he noticed a man glaring at him.
The man, with his hair dyed gold and cropped, was wearing his uniform in a very delinquent fashion.
Just as he was wondering why he was glaring at him, Takeru realized that he was an acquaintance of Kusanagi Takeru, and his gaze naturally became sharper.
"Hey, Kusanagi! You have the nerve to ignore my message!"
"...."
Among the images in the message on Takashi's smartphone was a photo of this man boxing.
I think the name was...
"Araki, huh?"
"Ha? Haan? Did you just call me without honorifics!? Hey, Kusanagi, did you just call me like that!? Not 'Araki-kun' like usual, but just 'Araki'!?"
He thought if it were his old self, he would have shrunk back in front of a man who approached him menacingly, spitting out insults with a piercing glare.
And most likely, the owner of this body, Kusanagi Takeru, was also frightened of this man, just like my old self was.
Thinking like that, he somehow felt like he understood the reason why he ended up in this body.
――This Kusanagi Takeru is, "Me if I never go to another world".
And he thought...
Even after forty years had passed, and the world had changed significantly, some things remain unchanged.
