Clockwork
By: L00P
Publisher: N/A
1
“Tick tick tick tick”
“Tick tick tick tick”
“Tick tick ti-”
The clock and alarm stopped abruptly at the exact same time. A boy, about the age of 16, rose from his bed and used his hands to comb through his messy orange hair. To be honest, he was not any kind of supernatural being or alien, so his orange hair was the most standout thing about him. He was tired, but not because he spent all night fighting intergalactic beings or saving people from a burning skyscraper. Those were jobs for firefighters or superheros. Though he had the ability to, Sakyo Uso, orange hair and all, instead chose to use his power to fulfil his own personal desires. No, the reason Sakyo Uso was tired was because today was the first day of year 2 at his high school. It was a big change in wake-up time from his long hours of sleeping in throughout his summer break. Standing up from his bed, he smelled breakfast being cooked by his older sister downstairs, but didn’t hear the familiar sound of popping bacon grease or the chime of the toaster oven. Sakyo walked to his alarm on his tired legs and looked at the digital display: ‘8:00AM.’ The exact time that high school class was in session, though instead of being panicked like many of his peers would be after finding out that they were technically late for class, Sakyo was perfectly calm. That’s because after striking ‘8:00AM’ the alarm clock wouldn’t continue until Sakyo willed it. That is what made him special, that is what made Sakyo unique, he could stop and start time.
|OLO|
“Mom! Dad!”
Sakyo’s cry was drowned out by the noise of the crowd around him. The closest familiar sound he could hear was the sound of his shoes slapping the sidewalk concrete. The sun was shining and the birds were chirping, but Sakyo was alone and afraid. Their trip from Japan to New York was only shortly happy, as Sakyo had lost his parents in the busy New York crowd after the family decided to go shopping. Sakyo was running out of ideas and knew calling out would be futile, regardless, he tried again to get the attention of his parents.
“Mom! Da-”
Before he could finish his cry for help, a man dressed in all black that towered over Sakyo grabbed his hand and placed it on a metallic object that the man was holding in his hand, not having a chance to react, all of the loud noises of the busy New York street suddenly disappeared and Sakyo was left speechless, staring up at the massive man. With a raspy voice, the man stared down at Sakyo, he was so tall that Sakyo was unable to see his face.
“You need help, kid?” The man asked.
“Uhhhh, erm, Mom says not to talk to strangers.” Sakyo replied.
“Well, stranger would imply the person is at least like you, but not someone you know, right?” The man replied.
“Erm, yeah, no strange humans.” Sakyo told him.
“Well good for you, because I’m not a human.” The man told him.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Wait what?? What are you??” Sakyo was confused.
“No more questions. Listen now. Time is paused, you can find your parents now, take this pocket watch and click the crown on it to start and stop time. Be careful, if you don’t bargain with it, a ghost will leave the watch and will kill you within 5 minutes.” Immediately after his hasty explanation, the man quickly disappeared without a trace, leaving the metallic item in Sakyo’s hands.
Peering down at the item, it appeared to be a normal pocket watch at first glance, though after he opened the pocket watch, he saw that the numbers were instead replaced with images of a ghost progressively getting more angry as the images went around clockwise. The watch wasn’t ticking and under the crown of the watch was the text ‘BARGAIN’ which was glowing green. Taking his eyes off the watch and looking at his surroundings, it was unmistakeably significantly quieter than when he initially recieved the watch. The birds that were once chirping in the sky were still with their wings spread. At first it looked like they were hovering, but upon second glance it was clear they were frozen in place. The crowd that was once lively and loud was completely silent and every face that he saw was in mid-emotion, like they were starting a sentence but couldn’t get it out. The annoying and frequent honking that came from the cars on the street was absent and the cars themselves were unmoving, despite there being a green light at the intersection. Looking along the road, Sakyo spotted his parents about half a block up and ran to them.
|OLO|
“School is such a stupid drag.”
The boy walked along the sidewalk with a spring in his step, feeling like he had all the time in the world.
“I agree, I’m glad I’m dead so I don’t have to go anymore.”
The boy stared at the watch in his hand.
“That’s true, you’re dead and a ghost by this point. What’s death like? Is it nice?” The boy asked the watch.
“I don’t know, it isn’t particularly bad I guess, why don’t you die and find out for yourself.” The ghost said back to the boy.
“You’re funny Takahayo, but if I died I wouldn’t be able to look at girls’ panties completely uninterrupted!” Sakyo said.
“Whatever kid, to each their own I guess.” Takahayo said.
“What? You’re telling me you’ve never had the urge to see a girls’ underwear?” Sakyo asked.
“I don’t know kid, those days were a long time ago. As you can see, I’m just a watch so I can’t really do anything even if I wanted to.” Takahayo said.
“I guess you’re right, pretty sad life you live to be honest. I get to look at all the panties I want!” Sakyo said.
“You know, if a girl found out about your antics, you’d be in huge trouble.” Takahayo said.
“Yeah probably, but that’ll never happen.” Sakyo said, arriving at the school entrance that was devoid of movement, in the same state it was in when Sakyo paused time at 8:00AM.
|OLO|
“Ah, seems like my powers worked once again! Ahaha!” The girl peered outside of her window to see the traffic outside stopped in place.
“Looks like it happened at 8:00AM, just like on September 5th of 2011.” She said to her mirror.
Unbeknownst to the girl, she hadn’t actually stopped time, nor had she ever stopped time, though she thought she could. Because of Sakyo, this girl, Umaru Yuta, believed she had the power to randomly stop time. So far, she didn’t try anything crazy while time was stopped, because it would randomly un-pause and she didn’t want that to cause her any problems. Some days, her power would work more than others, but she couldn’t lie about taking advantage of the stop to cheat on tests from time to time. Sometimes, time would pause for what felt like only 5 minutes, but sometimes it would pause for what felt like hours. Umaru was still unsure, but was confident she would be able to control her “powers” eventually. Umaru had one thing going for her though, she lived really close to her school, so she could sleep in longer than many of her classmates. “I get the most beauty rest” she would tell herself, to make her feel better about living so close to what she hated the most.
Regardless of what Umaru thought about herself, her powers, or school, she didn’t know how much of an adventure she was about to go on.
End of Chapter 0/-
Author’s Note: Hey guys, trying out the slice of life genre, hopefully you think the concept is interesting! If you’re here from my other LN “Re:Turn” then welcome and thanks for supporting me, and if you don’t know what that is, then I recommend you check out my other LN, “Re:Turn, The Legend of the Four Swords,” an action-isekai I’m working on. As far as this LN goes, I can’t work on it consistently due to daily chapters for Re:Turn, so I’ll try to release a chapter of Clockwork once or twice a week. Clockwork will be a much shorter LN than Re:Turn, so that should work well. If interest in Clockwork is much higher than interest in Re:Turn, then I will devote more time to Clockwork accordingly. Anyway, thanks for reading, let me know what you thought by reviewing this LN or leaving me a comment below!
-L00P