Chapter 187: Steins;Gate Premieres! (Part 5)
At the top of the Mage Tower, the Arch Mages, too, found themselves marveling at the film's richly detailed and immersive "sci-fi" aesthetics.
To them, it wasn't just impressive—it was almost prophetic.
Still, while those futuristic details sparked some discussion about whether magic might one day become accessible to the common people, the emotional impact didn't run as deep for them.
After all, at their level of magical mastery, the world they lived in already far outstripped the average citizen's reality.
Their surroundings—artifacts, tools, magical infrastructures—were practically science fiction already.
What truly captured their interest, however, was the confounding storyline of the film.
Even the most learned among them couldn't yet grasp why the plot had spiraled into such paradoxes.
"What do you think caused the discrepancy between the protagonist's memory and reality?"
Administrator Hohenheim's question rang out like a bell through the observatory, triggering a wave of thoughtful murmuring.
After a short silence, the Arch Mages began offering their interpretations.
"I believe his memories were manipulated," one offered. "While that would usually require immense power, this film's world is fictional. Anything is possible."
"Yes, that would make sense. It's the simplest way to explain the difference between his recollections and the 'reality' around him."
"But why are you all so quick to assume it's his memory that's wrong?" another Arch Mage countered. "If there's a conflict between memory and reality… isn't it also possible that reality is what changed?"
The room quieted at that.
"I've considered that as well," another said, "but it's hard to imagine. What kind of event could possibly warp reality so drastically, in a mere instant?"
"Exactly. And more importantly, everyone else remembers things normally. They even recall things Okabe himself said. He's the only one whose memory is 'wrong'. Doesn't that strike you as strange?"
"Didn't there also appear a completely empty street scene earlier? Maybe that's when the memory distortion happened?"
"Yes, yes! I support that theory as well."
As expected, most of the Arch Mages leaned toward the interpretation that Okabe's memories were faulty. It was simply the more rational explanation—and, to most minds, the more digestible one.
But after a moment of deep thought, Administrator Hohenheim quietly interjected:
"Perhaps that's not the case."
"Oh?"
The other Arch Mages immediately turned their attention to him, clearly eager to hear the reasoning of one so revered.
After organizing his thoughts, Hohenheim began slowly:
"Do you all recall the giant machine that appeared on the rooftop?"
Nods of affirmation rippled through the chamber.
"In Okabe's memory, the machine descended smoothly, without damaging the roof. But in what we're calling 'reality', the machine crashed into the rooftop and shattered the edge. Isn't that difference… suspiciously subtle?"
"Exactly. That's why it proves the memory was altered," one Arch Mage asserted.
"But what if we flip the logic?" Hohenheim said.
"Let's suppose that because the machine did crash into the roof, the presentation was canceled. As a result, Okabe never attended the press conference—meaning everything he remembers never happened."
"But in the timeline where the machine didn't damage the roof… the press event went ahead. He did go. And everything he remembers… did happen."
A stunned silence fell over the chamber.
And then, a creeping sensation of dread began to wash over them all.
What Hohenheim was suggesting wasn't just a memory issue. It was a temporal divergence.
He saw their expressions and spoke again—this time, with weight in his tone:
"Regardless of the exact mechanics, if Edward once claimed that this was a story about 'magic'… then perhaps we should allow ourselves to entertain more radical possibilities. Just maybe— Just maybe, we can catch a glimpse of the secret hidden within time itself."
At that moment, something shifted among the Arch Mages.
The arrogance that came with standing at the summit of magical understanding melted away, replaced by sincere, razor-sharp focus.
For the first time, these titans of the arcane peered at the story not as entertainment, but as a potential revelation.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Meanwhile, the plot of Steins;Gate continued to unfold on screen.
Rintaro Okabe, seemingly having tossed aside the bizarre events of the day, returned to his lab.
There, surrounded by his ragtag group of "researchers," he resumed his usual idle chatter…
But what the audience—and perhaps even Okabe himself—didn't realize was that the true descent into madness had only just begun.
And then, Rintaro Okabe pulled out a strange-looking machine, declaring that he was about to perform an experiment that would shake the very foundations of the world.
Of course, in reality, his so-called "experimental apparatus" was nothing more than a microwave oven—albeit one slightly modified.
The only notable feature was that this microwave could be operated via his cellphone. By sending a message, he could trigger it to start remotely.
"Now then, let the experiment commence!"
With theatrical flair, Okabe placed a banana inside the microwave and fired off a text message to initiate the process.
Moments later, the experiment concluded… and the result?
The banana had simply become warped and twisted from the heat—nothing more.
"Just as expected," Okabe muttered with a sigh, bringing the experiment to an anticlimactic end.
The next day, Okabe and Itaru Hashida (a.k.a. Daru) headed to the university to attend a lecture.
Just as they stepped onto the elevator, Okabe was hit with a sudden wave of déjà vu. He recalled the bizarre incident from the other day… and then, in a flash, remembered something chilling:
In his memory, he had sent a text to Daru—warning that Makise Kurisu had been murdered.
With growing urgency, he snatched Daru's phone from his hands, ignoring the other's protests as he began to scroll through the message history.
"Hey! That's a total invasion of privacy!!"
"This is important. I sent you a message, right?"
"Huh? What message?"
"The one about Makise Kurisu being stabbed. You received it, didn't you?"
"You mean that weird text from last week?"
"Last… week?"
Okabe's breath caught in his throat. According to his memory, he had sent that message yesterday—not a week ago.
With trembling fingers, he navigated to Daru's inbox and—sure enough—found the message, dated from an entire week prior.
His expression turned to sheer horror.
"The message… was sent into the past?"
Before either of them could process the implications, the elevator arrived at their floor. As the doors slid open, there stood a familiar figure—leaning casually against the wall.
A red-haired girl.
Makise Kurisu. Alive.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
"Wha— What's going on!?"
"She… she died, didn't she?"
"Why is she… alive again?"
"And what did the protagonist mean by a text being sent to last week?"
"I'm completely lost now."
"…"
Inside the various theaters across the empire, the audience's bewilderment was palpable.
Many viewers were clearly struggling to comprehend how someone who had definitively died could now be standing there—alive, unscathed, as though nothing had happened.
Just when they thought the story's threads were beginning to make sense, this sudden reversal once again threw everything into chaos.
Still, the more attentive viewers began to grasp a possible explanation.
If the events that Okabe witnessed at the press conference were somehow false—fabricated, or from an alternate reality—then it would make sense that Kurisu hadn't died in the first place.
But the bigger question remained:
What caused this?
What was the true nature of the confusion in Okabe's memories?
What did it all mean?
Even the most dedicated moviegoers found themselves lost in a whirlwind of speculation.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
At the palace, Emperor Hubbard watched with furrowed brows.
He couldn't make sense of the contradictions either, but something else had captured his attention: the dazzling futuristic tools and environments portrayed in the film.
From the elevator's smooth, glass-panel interface to the campus's modern architectural design—it all felt like a glimpse into another world.
A possible world.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
At the Imperial Mage Academy, confusion reigned among the mages.
The revelation that a message had been sent to the past had shattered all their previous theories.
"Wait… Okabe's text actually went through? To an entire week ago?"
"That's impossible. If his memories were fake, then how could the message really exist?"
"So then—was his memory real, or wasn't it?"
"Could it be that everything he remembers did happen a week ago, but due to some memory distortion, he forgot everything that happened in between?"
Murmurs filled the halls.
Theories multiplied, but none could fully explain the timeline's contradictions.
The mages, like the audience across the empire, had been led deep into a mystery—one where the borders of magic, science, and time itself had begun to blur.
"That's still impossible. If that were the case, how could Makise still be alive?"
"No matter what, either reality or memory—one of them must be wrong. If the protagonist's memory isn't the problem, then could it be that…"
"…Reality itself is flawed?"
At that moment, all the mages fell silent.
A bold, terrifying idea had struck them—and it sent a chill down everyone's spine. They stood frozen, overwhelmed by the implications.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Meanwhile, inside the film itself.
Just like the audience, the protagonist Rintaro Okabe was in complete disbelief.
He rushed to Makise Kurisu's side in a state of panic, totally disregarding her annoyed expression.
He patted her hair, poked her cheek, and even reached toward her clothes—clearly attempting to check for the wound she was supposed to have.
His behavior, of course, enraged her.
Just as she was about to call security—or perhaps even the police—a staff member hurried over and summoned her away.
Okabe tried to stop her, but it was no use.
Powerless, he could only watch as she walked off, then followed Daru to the lecture venue.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
"…Thank you all very much for coming today," said the girl now standing on the stage.
"I've never given this kind of lecture before, so I may be a little awkward. Please bear with me."
Seeing Kurisu up there as the speaker stunned both Okabe and Daru.
"Wait, she's the guest lecturer?"
Kurisu continued:
"This time, the organizers have asked me to speak on the topic of time machines. Although the content will differ somewhat from what was published in the official abstract, I'll do my best to present my ideas clearly."
"Let me state my position up front: in my conclusion, time machines are fundamentally impossible. They are nothing more than whimsical fantasy."
The moment those words left her mouth, Okabe's face twisted in indignation.
"I object!" he shouted.
A wave of murmurs spread through the lecture hall as all eyes turned to him.
"Time machines are impossible? That's far too hasty a conclusion!"
"…You?"
Kurisu recognized him immediately. With a sigh, she raised a hand to stop the nearby staff who were preparing to escort him out.
She responded calmly:
"It's not about being hasty. Time machines should be rejected outright on a theoretical basis."
At that moment, the sparks flying between them were obvious to everyone in the room.
No one dared to speak.
The lecture hall fell into silence, and all attention turned to the intense verbal duel unfolding before them.
In the end, the outcome was inevitable.
Rintaro Okabe, an eccentric self-styled scientist, was thoroughly outmatched by Kurisu—a bona fide genius researcher of global acclaim.
On the way back, Okabe was seething.
Frustrated, angry, humiliated… but ultimately, there was nothing he could do.
After that, he ran into Mayuri, who was returning home with groceries.
Following her lead, he visited the trap shrine maiden, Lukako, and then bumped into Suzuha Amane—who had just started working part-time at the convenience store downstairs.
All of this helped him gradually forget the bizarre events of the previous day.
Eventually, he convinced himself that it had all just been a hallucination.
However, just as he was ready to leave everything behind, yet another strange event occurred.
When he tried to reread the books about the time traveler John Titor—the one who supposedly appeared in the year 2000—he found that all the books were gone.
At first, he thought Daru had hidden them, but when he searched online, he discovered that all the information about John Titor had vanished without a trace.
John Titor—the time traveler from the year 2000—had suddenly ceased to exist.
As if he had been erased from the world entirely.
"What the hell is going on?"
One strange event after another pushed Rintaro Okabe's confusion to the brink.
At the same time, it completely ignited the curiosity of the audience.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
"What the hell is going on now?"
"It really doesn't feel like the problem is in the protagonist's memory anymore."
"Could it be… reality that's changing?"
"The world itself has been altered?"
"By the way, what's that machine the protagonist is using? It seems like he can search for information on it. Looks super convenient!"
"Right? If only something like that existed in real life."
"The world in this movie is incredible. So many things are completely beyond what we know."
"Could this be some kind of imagined future? What genre is this even? Magical future sci-fi?"
"If only a future like that really existed, and I could live to see it..."
"…"
The theaters were filled with murmurs and excited chatter.
As Steins;Gate's plot slowly unraveled, it finally seized the full attention of its audience.
Everyone was now desperate to understand the mysteries at the story's core.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Meanwhile, at the Imperial Academy of Magic...
The mages, too, were beginning to grasp the true backdrop of the story, and were growing increasingly excited.
"Could it be that something the protagonist did actually affected reality, causing the world itself to change?"
"But why? What caused it?"
"More importantly, why is the protagonist the only one who retains his memories after everything changes?"
"What's the foundation of these changes?"
"Is this movie… really about magic?"
Question after question filled the room.
Even these learned mages—people who stood at the peak of human magical knowledge—had their curiosity completely hooked.
One after another, their eyes lit up with anticipation.
<+>
If you want to see more chapter of this story and don't mind paying $5 each month to read till the latest chapter, please go to my Patreon[1].
Latest Post In Patreon: Chapter 239: The Premiere of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure! (Part 1)[2]
Link to the chapter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/138667623?collection=162522[3]
https://www.patreon.com/collection/162522?view=condensed[4]
[1] https://www.patreon.com/collection/162522?view=condensed
[2] https://www.patreon.com/posts/138667623?collection=162522
[3] https://www.patreon.com/posts/138667623?collection=162522
[4] https://www.patreon.com/collection/162522?view=condensed