It's the last Monday of February, and it's chilly the way late February in Tokyo tends to be. His bedroom is how he remembers it when he went to bed last night: he's in his bed, there's his window, there's the door, there's his desk with his computer and a handwritten note next to it...

...maybe something fell out of a notebook last time he reviewed something. He picks it up.

That's... definitely not his handwriting. Also, it's entirely in Japanese, and written in teineigo.

Please don't freak out.

Magic is real.

I'm from the future, something awful is going to happen, and I need your help to fix it.

I can't read your mind, but if you think loudly in the direction of Iwasaki Yutaka, I will be able to hear you. I would prefer to have this conversation in person, though.

I can be invisible to Ren but not you, and last time you told her about the magic but not about the time travel.

I can stop time and include you in stopped time so you don't need to worry about missing school. It costs me magical energy, but very little of it, and this is the kind of thing I'm glad to spend it on.

That's a very cheap hard to fake test.

Testing.

Good morning, Haru. I'm sorry for the very surreal feelings you must be having right now. I really can't read your mind, I swear it on my ancestors.

How did you get in my room? Are you still in my apartment?

You told me your door's passcode. I'm not in your apartment anymore, I'm on the rooftop of your building. I only entered to drop the note and left. I didn't know of a better way to tell you all of this, just using telepathy directly would have scared you very badly.

I would really prefer to have this conversation in person.

Can you do telepathy to Ren? I don't have another obvious way to prove anything to her.

I don't need to be invisible to her, but I can't do telepathy to her. You are also able to get magic but the means to do so and pros and cons are the kind of thing I would like to discuss in person, and they might influence your decision to tell her.

We could wait until you're at school; I'm a student there, too, transferring today. This isn't urgent in the scale of hours.

No, no, I definitely want to talk about this, just, I ride to school with her. ...you maybe already know that. Uh. Give me a minute.

"Mama, I, uh, got my YA novel call to adventure or something, can you bear with me for a minute while my, uh, mysterious wizard, proves that?"

"...does your mysterious wizard want any toast?"

"...sure, why not, put an extra couple toasts in for him. Should I like, tell him to come to the door? - he's telepathic and made a point of telling me he could not read my mind."

"Go ahead." She's smiling, she thinks this is a buildup to some kind of elaborately godawful bilingual pun, but that's cooperative enough for government work.

Haru decides he'd rather not meet his mysterious wizard in pajamas and takes a moment to get into his uniform for the day.

Closer to ninety seconds later:

Can you like, come knock on our door.

Half a second later: knock knock.

Haru answers the door and offers his mysterious wizard a plate of toast. "Good morning."

His mysterious wizard is a boy the same age as him, wearing the same uniform. Whatever he had been about to say seems to die in his throat and for a moment he looks like he's about to start crying but he regains his composure quickly enough to accept the plate of toast with a bow and a, "Good morning, Swan-san. Thank you for having me."

Swans look at each other trying to figure out which of them he's talking to (Ren thinks it's Haru since Haru handed over the toast, Haru thinks it's Ren since his mysterious wizard addressed him familiarly earlier) but it's Haru who says, "You can come in. Your note said 'Iwasaki Yutaka'?"

"Note?"

"My call to adventure came in the form of a note on my desk!"

"Yes. You can just call me Yutaka i-if you'd like." He clears his throat then steps inside and closes the door behind himself, then takes his shoes off.

"Okay, Yutaka. Can you show Ren the disappearing real quick please?"

"Yeah." He sets the plate down then holds out his left hand, palm up. The silver ring he's wearing on his middle finger flashes white and is replaced by an egg-shaped silver gem encased in a golden setting. Then that glows white, too, alongside Iwasaki himself, and from Ren's perspective he disappears.

From Haru's perspective, though, something altogether different happens instead: his uniform gets replaced by a magical outfit. White tights with silver streaks down the sides going into boots; something that looks like a robe if robes were made to look sexy, also in white and silver, tight on the torso but flaring out at the sleeves, with the sides of the stomach area missing and the coattails starting above his navel so that his side abs and navel are exposed; white gloves with a diamond-shaped silver gem on the back of his left hand; a black choker; and a buckler attached to his left forearm with a clockwork design.

Then, after a couple of seconds, he allows himself to be visible to Ren, too.

Ren sits down abruptly. "My goodness."

"- oh wow that's so cool!" exclaims Haru.

That... seems to upset Iwasaki for some reason. He fidgets in place and doesn't say anything.

"Is it perhaps not so cool? You don't have to be magical right now if you don't want to, she's seen it..."