An Unexpected Wish (Part 11)

Nanami did not know how to react. She is kind of disturbed that a random stranger claiming to be her younger sister is living in her house, but the things in her house does suggests that she really does stay there. At the same time, she is kind of glad that she has someone living with her now.

Nanami thought of something: if Naomi was like the office man she witnessed being turned into a school girl, that means that Naomi could have been anyone of a different family of any age and gender, but somehow had been transformed to be Nanami’s younger sister in every way. Naomi herself probably doesn’t even realize she was a completely different person! Nanami wondered how many more people faced the same fate.

Then Nanami realized something else seem odd: where is her grandmother? She was hesitant to ask Naomi, being unfamiliar with her, but asked the question to her anyway.

“Grandma Ajisai? She’s living with our cousin and his wife. You know, the one with Kotomi and many other children. I don’t know why they had so many.”

Nanami noted that Naomi knew the name of the grandmother. She guessed that her grandmother changed places since this Naomi appeared, but still concerned as our parents and older brother had died.

However, this is the first and last time Naomi mentions her grandmother as not only will the changes going on will affect the grandmother, a more noticeable section of the population will be transformed.

*****

Some weeks later, Nanami noticed that there are suddenly more students, female mostly, on the train to school. Initially, she thought nothing of it as they could be heading to some events, but the large crowd persisted over time long enough for Nanami to notice the same faces. Nanami wondered why: no events she knows of are going on, and there’s no way a new school would begin in the middle of the second term.

She also noticed that something is different with the people she normally see along the route, but can’t figure out what exactly it was.

In her school, she also can’t help but notice that all classrooms are filled to the same maximum number of students per class, which, as Nanami recalls, has unequal number of vacant seats.

Nanami received an email from Kotomi. It said, “I don’t know how I didn’t realize this earlier, but there is news on how odd it is that we have a lot of young people even though statistics and archived news say that we have an aeging population and low birth rate. Speaking of the elderly, you may have noticed that most of them seemed to have vanished completely. Even more amazing is that no one could explain why or who they were. Demographics data don’t lie, but they dont add up to what we are seeing now. Can you say a name of anyone of that age I’m supposed to know without mentioning how I know them? Not sure if my memory has been modified like the last time, and it can happen without me being aware of it.”

Nanami felt a sense of worry: her grandmother could be one of them, so she entered her name (Ajisai Miyazawa) in the reply to Kotomi, who is also her great grandmother.

She did not get a reply until an hour later. Nanami figured she doesn’t recognize the name as there are people who don’t know names of their own relatives and probably figuring out who that is. Unless the person is well known, it’s likely that just entering the name in the search engine could just show results of someone else with the same name.

When she got a reply, it said, “Sorry, I can’t remember or find anything on who that was, no matter how hard I tried. Was that a name of one of my relatives? I oddly don’t seem to remember any relative who is an elderly… Did this crazy thing going on made me forget? Has she also been turned into one of those many teenage girls that suddenly appeared? If it happened the same way as what you witnessed happening to a man being turned into a girl, that means that it can happen to anyone, and with the amount of teenage girls we are seeing today, I would say that so many people have been transformed that it caused a very noticeable population imbalance.”

Nanami was schocked. Does that mean that her grandmother has just simply vanished without any farewell? Nanami started to cry since her grandmother is gone now. Nanami typed the following words slowly while still in tears: “Is there a way to bring her back?”. She figured out that this would be pointless anyway as, even if her grandmother could be turned back, her health condition already has her the risk of dying from an age-related disease to be high.

Kotomi replied, “Without even knowing what caused it, that would be impossible. This is not like some mad scientist filling up the air with some gas. It’s more like our whole world is like data and something has modify that code so that our world will work differently from what we have seen, changing what we are and our memories in the process. I would say that what we are seeing now is the transitioning stage that I’m not sure what it will be like, or how long it would take, but I will see what I can do with the help of my colleagues here in Hatsuya. I have to, I don’t want to be turned into one of them and forget who I was.”

In her sadness, Nanami didn’t really look through the message properly that Kotomi wrote apart from the bit on doing something about it. Seems that Nanami only has Kotomi for a family, and some stranger who has been genetically modified to be her sister.

Part 10 | Part 12

(Author’s note [to be posted as a separate post later]: This story chronologically takes place during the transining stage of the human evolution. Other stories I wrote covers this too, but of different stages. “Alternate Dimension” only covers the end of the transition and 4 years after. “Disoriented Feelings” covers the transitioning stage, but somewhere in the middle to early-late stage. “Teary Promise” takes place before this happens, so there is no mention of it. “Yononaka no Okugi” is from a viewpoint of a girl who was born after the final transformations happened, where simply thinking of males would have them have an irreversible feeling that has them difficult to think, which means anything they are in has to be censored out to maintain everyone’s sanity, though the task of censoring itself is so difficult that, until details are worked out, there is a blanket censorship on subjects like history and biology as those feature men a lot and the human reproduction has since changed dramatically, so the people born after it know nothing of those subjects. I avoid mentioning the month and year as it would give me more flexibility to time the event of things without conflicting with another, especially when I forgot when something happened.)