Coming back to Two Rivers served as a form of therapy for Mikomi. He forced himself to face the regrets he had bottled up inside of him. Even though it helped ease a lot of the tension, he still felt responsible for Serah’s death but rather than sulk and let the guilt eat away at him, he decided to face it head-on and take responsibility for it. This re-energized his goals of saving his father and his friendship with Ryan. Now that those goals had been met, Mikomi knew that only one goal remained. It was time to focus on finding his killer and preventing his death.

He soon found himself back at MUT. He made his way back up to his dorm room where he discovered that his roommate Derek was not back from his holiday break yet as his belongings were still missing. He sat down on his bed and reached into his duffel bag, pulling out the silver frame that Ryan had given to him. He placed it on the table next to his bed and sat there, just staring at it. As he looked at the photo, a mixture of emotions poured over him. A feeling of success and failure battled each other inside his mind but a third emotion… one of purpose… began to slowly take over. To him, that photo served as a reminder of his biggest failure but the successes that were born from it. That filled him with a sense of pride and made him crack a faint smile.

While Mikomi was lost in thought looking at the photo, the door to his dorm swung open and Derek had returned. He saw him sitting there looking at the frame as curiosity gripped him.

“Brought something back with you, eh?”

“Yeah… just a gift from a good friend. How was your vacation?”

“Ah you know, Saw the family, ate some foodstuffs, punched my brother in the head because there isn’t a time where he doesn’t deserve it… you know… just family stuff. I even talked to this one really cute chick. I told her about you and even talked you up pretty well. I think she wants you, man!”

“Wait... what did you do!!?”

Derek busted out laughing and then nudged Mikomi on the shoulder.

“Relax. There’s no girl but the look on your face is priceless. I just hope that’s not going to give you a whole new set of nightmares. I’d hate to lose more sleep.”

“Ah yeah, sorry about that. You won’t have to worry about those nightmares anymore. I haven’t had a single one while I was on vacation. I believe whatever was causing them is gone now.”

“Great because I plan on turning in early tonight so I can be ready for class tomorrow. I need to see if Professor Edwards is going to lecture us on what you say he’s going to. Don’t think I forgot about our bet, bro.”

Oh, crap. I forgot that I made that stupid bet with Derek. I did make two changes to the world while on vacation so what if that had an effect here at school? What if Professor Edwards doesn’t teach us about the new advancements in A.I.? If he doesn’t, I’m going to have to reveal some things to Derek that I don’t exactly feel like revealing. I hope I didn’t screw myself over here.

“Oh, trust me. I’m going to win this bet. I’m going to be eating like a king for the next week!"

“Yeah, we’ll see about that. I have a feeling that I’ll be the one eating like a king and I’ll finally find out why you kept disturbing my sleep.”

The day came to an end and both Derek and Mikomi were in bed by nine. Sleep found both of them quickly. Morning came and Mikomi realized that he had his first night of real sleep while away at college. It felt good not to wake up terrified and in a cold sweat. When Mikomi woke up, he realized he had beaten Derek as he was still sound asleep. In fact, by the time he finished showering and getting dressed, Derek was still passed out.

Mikomi decided to take a page out of Ryan’s playbook and jammed his elbow into Derek’s side as hard as he could. It jolted him awake, which didn’t exactly make him happy but when he noticed what time it was, he realized why Mikomi had woken him up. Derek rushed to get ready, but Mikomi was already out the door and on his way to class, causing him to catch up.

The two of them took their seats as Professor Edwards entered the classroom. Mikomi sat there and silently prayed that the changes he made to the world didn’t alter this event. He would rather keep his personal life to himself and not tell Derek anything. While this kind of bet would seem trivial to just about anyone, to Mikomi, this was the equivalent of a do-or-die situation. Professor Edwards finished putting his teaching materials down on his podium and began to speak. The moment of truth had arrived.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Class, today we are not going to be reading from our textbooks. We are living in an exciting time as technology is ever-changing and is always evolving. Today, I want to speak to you about one of those innovations that was discovered very recently. While some theories about it have existed for quite some time, throughout your holiday break, researchers have found concrete proof of this method, thus proving its effectiveness. What I am referring to is an advancement in A.I. in relation to neural networking.”

Mikomi grinned as Derek slowly turned his head towards him in disbelief. Somehow, he couldn’t believe that what Mikomi had claimed was true. Derek began to think if Mikomi was from the future after all.

“As we know it today, neural networking relies on human input. The code would then construct a database of possible outcomes and responses based on the data fed to it. With these new advancements, dynamic algorithms come into play, allowing the code to extract data samples from outside sources and then construct the database. These outside sources mainly include sound. Through the usage of speech translation software, spoken words can be reformatted into computer language and stored as data. The A.I. would then be able to make intelligent decisions based on the data it had collected. Today, we are going to break down these algorithms and how they work.”

The rest of Professor Edwards’ lecture became nothing more than muffled background noise at that point for Derek. He was still in disbelief over what he was hearing. Mikomi simply glanced over at him and gave him a wink which creeped him out even further.

Needless to say, Mikomi enjoyed his free meals that week. Each meal he ate tasted like sweet victory! He made sure to rub it into Derek’s face every chance he got which annoyed him to no end. Despite this, they ended up becoming good friends. They ended up studying together throughout the remainder of the school year and Mikomi even decided to impart his knowledge of neural networks to Derek.

Of course, Mikomi made sure only to give Derek just enough information to the point where he could still make it believable. He knew a lot more than what was discovered in recent months but revealing that kind of information would be too risky. That didn’t stop him from pretending that the information he knew was nothing more than theories, though. Perhaps Mikomi felt that if his theories came true, then he would just look that much smarter.

This would be the trend for the remainder of Mikomi’s freshman year in college. He ended up passing his finals with flying colors while Derek marginally passed his with a low B average. Due to the recent discoveries, Professor Edwards convinced the school to open a new course completely dedicated to neural networks. Mikomi recalled this happening in the original timeline as well. He vividly remembered signing up for this class which is where he began to work on his theories on how to solve the issues with Project: Serah. Without hesitation, Mikomi signed up for the class which began in the fall. Not wanting to be outdone, Derek signed up for the class too.

Mikomi soon realized that Derek was another change in the world. Mikomi never suffered from nightmares in the original timeline, therefore his original roommate, Caleb, never moved out. He took some pride in the fact that this “new world” was all because of him. Maybe he was starting to let it get to his head just a bit or perhaps it was a sense of pride that he figured out how the world worked and he could always be one step ahead of it. After all, he decided to throw caution to the wind this time around and, so far, it has been working out as he intended. Even though his confidence was rebuilding, he still recalled Sebastian’s words about developing a God Complex. It served as a stern reminder to not let things go to his head too much.

Despite this, Mikomi couldn’t help but be proud of his accomplishments this time around. He truly felt that everything was going to work out.

It had been nearly a year since he saved his father. He kept in touch with him to see how things were coming along with Project: Daphne. He also called home regularly and talked with his mother about how college life was going. Mikomi had a lot of reasons to be happy these days but at the same time, he wanted to continue to dedicate his time to studying. He decided this was the best course of action and didn’t return home during spring break. While his parents were disappointed that they wouldn’t get to see him, they understood that he wanted to use the time to focus on his studies. Seeing how his father told him that he was going to be taking over the company, this is something they half expected to happen.

While that was the cover story that Mikomi was going with, he decided that he wanted to dedicate his free time to thinking about who killed him. It was the one goal that he had yet to accomplish and Spring break was the perfect time to begin figuring out the ultimate puzzle. Mikomi had replayed the scenario over and over again in his head, trying to come up with clues that could possibly give him a lead. He didn’t care how big or small the lead was, he just wanted SOMETHING to go off of. Unfortunately, his thinking didn’t yield any results making him feel as if he had wasted his entire Spring break.

At the end of his freshman year at MUT, Mikomi was still pondering the puzzle. He went to the campus library and grabbed a couple of random books. He sat there and pretended to read them as he, once again, recalled the events of that day. He vividly remembered Lief Rutherford paying him a visit and then getting shot in the parking lot that same night.

I remember that day clearly. I want to put the murder on the Rutherford family but the one thing that makes me believe that they didn’t do it is the fact that Sebastian told me that he had to accommodate my second chance and part of that accommodation was to remove the Rutherfords completely. Because of that, I am certain that they still exist but if they are out of the equation, then they will never visit my father and try to pressure a sale out of him which means that they will never come to visit me once I take over the company.

Alice was the only person left in the building that night. Michael, George, Cassandra, Colin, and Jared all went home after dismissing their teams for the night. The only other person there was the security guard, but there was no way he could have made it from his guardhouse all the way over to the other side of the parking lot without me noticing. Alice was the only person that was out of my sight because she left before me but Alice also came running from the opposite direction from which I was shot so it couldn’t have been her either.

I just can’t see anyone at the company being the murderer. Was it someone external who knew about the project? The only one was Janice but she retired and would never hurt a fly. She had zero motivation for killing me. It just doesn’t make any sense and that’s what’s bothering me.

There is only one scenario that fits but it’s only a theory. I’m looking at this from a perspective where whoever killed me did it out of spite for the company but what if the person who killed me did it out of personal spite for me and me alone? What if I was the target and the company was merely just a coincidence? There’s only one person who knew where I worked who had a lot of spite for me. I don’t want to believe it. It’s the suspicion I had this entire time. All of the things didn’t add up for me because I was judging them by THIS timeline and not the original. Of course, I wouldn’t be dumb enough to dismiss the original timeline… I guess you could say that I’m just in denial.

I don’t want it to be so. I hope it to be false with every fiber of my being but I have to be sure. I have to be one hundred percent certain. You dropped the perfect situation right into my lap and I made sure that you were put into a position where I could keep tabs on you.

So please… prove me wrong. Prove to me that you didn’t do it. Don’t turn out to be my killer…

...Ryan.