Chapter 11: Voices Between Time
Two days passed like fog drifting across still water.
Cal's small apartment was untouched by noise or disruption—its shelves lined with carefully stacked Blu-rays, sports magazines, and a growing number of handwritten notes tucked into folders labeled by year and theme. But inside his machine, in the timeline known only to him as 2010-A, the waters were beginning to stir.
Since the One Piece Wano arc stream, the viewership curve had doubled. Quietly. Persistently.
The YouTube repost of that single stream had already been mirrored to six forums. A few small blogs in Tokyo and Osaka had started asking: Where is this coming from? Who had access to a "film-quality" version of an arc that hadn't even been hinted at by Weekly Shonen Jump?
But Cal had no answers to give.
Not in words.
Instead, he turned to music.
On the second evening, Cal sat in front of his screen with a pair of studio headphones draped around his neck. The system dashboard was humming—its blue-white interface now highlighting a different category.
[MUSIC STREAM MODULE: Activated]
[Unlocked Artists: 150+ | Genre Filters Applied: J-Pop, Alt-Vocaloid, Rap/Hip-Hop]
[Suggested Pairing – Ado: "Usseewa" | Creepy Nuts: "Case" | Projected Impact: Subcultural Echoes (High)]
[Estimated Viewer Retention: 78% | Secondary Spread: DJ Forums, Indie Circles]
Cal clicked into the curation panel.
Ado's voice. Sharp, visceral. The kind of emotional grit that punched through screens.
Creepy Nuts. The rawness of live-wire lyricism. Underground brilliance wrapped in wordplay and rhythm.
These were artists who wouldn't even debut until years from now in 2010-A.
He hovered over the first track: Usseewa.
It had hit like a meteor in his original timeline—brash, unapologetic, female rage channeled through a mask of vocal chaos.
Perfect.
Then he selected Creepy Nuts' Case to follow—jagged and clever. Anchored in Japan's spoken-word scene.
He built the stream with care: minimal visuals. A slow-building audio drop. Lyrics translated and pinned in a delicate font over shadowed motion backdrops. A bit like a theater. A bit like a whisper.
[Stream Schedule Confirmed – "Late Night Layers: Future Echo Sound"]
[Time: 11:45 PM JST – 2010-A Timeline]
[Visual: Animated Abstract Loops | Text: English & JP Dual Overlay | Viewer Chat: Hidden]
[Stealth Shield: On | Artist Attribution: Masked Sample ID Only]
Cal leaned back and exhaled.
He wasn't sure how this one would be received.
But something told him it mattered.
That night, as the stream launched across the alternate world, the first notes of Usseewa exploded into compressed analog silence. Viewers joined cautiously—curious, tentative.
[Live Viewers: 4… 11… 23… 42… 58… 89]
The vocals tore through the calm like glass being shattered in reverse. Ado's scream, polished and feral, rolled over the layered bass and cracked synths.
"Ussē wa, ussē wa, anata ga omou yori kenkō desu…"
The chat was disabled. But that didn't mean the world wasn't watching.
Inside a cramped apartment above a secondhand guitar shop in Nakano, a 19-year-old girl named Ayumi stared at her laptop with wide eyes. Her hand hovered above her sketchpad, where she'd been designing album covers for local punk bands.
The voice on her screen gripped her.
Who the hell is this?
Her pen dropped.
She copied the timestamp. Rewound it. Replayed it again.
The lyrics were like a scream she hadn't realized she'd been holding in for years.
[Backchannel Traffic Detected – Live Re-Rip Initiated by User: AY.STudio | First Bootleg MP3 Created]
[Secondary Chain: "SoundPulse Thread" Discussion Begins | Viewer ID Cross-Track: +34 Anon Listeners]
Cal saw the pings. Small. Fragmented. But unmistakable.
He had tapped something personal this time.
By the time Usseewa ended, there were 117 people watching.
Then Creepy Nuts took over.
"Ore wa ore o yameru yatsu to…"
A deep groove. Word-heavy. A stark contrast.
The animated loops shifted—urban shadows in motion, city lights like ink drops spreading across a blank map.
R-Shitei's voice cracked open rhythms like puzzle pieces. DJ Matsunaga's cuts and turntable accents sliced into the stream's pulse.
It wasn't just music.
It was identity.
And somewhere in Kobe, a 20-year-old boy working part-time at a record store stopped reorganizing vinyl crates mid-shift and listened to the stream through a borrowed office computer.
He would later start Japan's most-followed indie rap analysis blog.
Because of that night.
Cal didn't smile often. But when the last note of Case faded into soft ambient loops, his eyes softened.
He didn't need comments.
The system was his compass.
[Mission Complete – "Future Echo Sound"]
[Total Viewers: 154 (Live) | Stream Mirrors Created: 8 | Bootleg Copies Shared: 23]
[Impact Detected – Independent Creator Chain (Music x Graphic x Zine)]
[Reward: +95 Points | Subcultural Sync Achieved]
He saved the stream log into a folder labeled "Echo Beats".
Then checked his Points tab.
[Total Points: 3,670]
[New Unlocks Available – Film Music Video Packs | Exclusive Concert Cuts (2023–2025)]
[Special Archive: Aimer, YOASOBI, Kenshi Yonezu, RADWIMPS, King Gnu]
A small note from the system appeared below.
[Recommendation: Slow Integration – Continue Low Visibility. Use Music as Cultural Primer.]
Cal nodded quietly.
He wouldn't jump ahead.
The timeline needed time to breathe.
As he powered down the stream for the night, a faint buzz lingered in his thoughts.
Not adrenaline.
Not pride.
Just the quiet hum of change—like static before a storm.
For all their brilliance, these artists didn't exist yet in this world. Their futures were blank tapes waiting to be filled.
But he had just scribbled the first few notes.
The next morning, in 2010-A, a Tokyo university dorm room buzzed with quiet chaos.
"Yo, you saw that late-night stream? The one with the chick screaming like a banshee over trap beats?"
"What, Usseewa? Yeah. I ripped it off a board at like 2AM. Sounded like the future. No clue who made it."
"You think it's Vocaloid? Some demo version?"
"Nah. Too human. Too raw."
They would argue about it for weeks.
And one of them—unknown to even Cal—would go on to co-found a future indie label called SplitWave, focusing on female alt-vocal acts.
Another ripple.
Another light.
That afternoon, Cal walked to the nearby convenience store, hood up, earbuds in. He listened to the same two songs he had streamed—Usseewa and Case—in his own time.
There was something poetic about it.
Broadcasting sounds that didn't exist yet in the world he was sending them to. Watching the seeds fall. Not knowing what would grow.
He picked up canned coffee and a sandwich.
The old man at the register didn't know that the person standing before him was altering the creative pulse of an entire alternate decade.
Cal liked it that way.
[System Message: New Feature Available – "Subculture Curator"]
[Function: Bundle Cross-Genre Artistic Triggers to Amplify Micro Movements in Timeline]
[Warning: Frequent Use May Cause Notable Cultural Shifts. Proceed Gradually.]
He returned home. Slid into his chair.
Eyes on the map.
New lines had formed since last night.
Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Fukuoka—threads of activity forming faint dots of energy.
Like fireflies blinking into a world slowly waking up.
And in the distance—just beneath the edges of that glowing web—an unfamiliar pulse had begun.
A studio.
A small recording booth.
A voice being tested.
A name not yet chosen.
Ado.
End of Chapter 11