A/n – I'm sorry for the long delay. I couldn't quite work out Ash's time leaps for where and when he needed to be. Maybe they're still not quite perfect, but I figured it would be better to finish it and work it out later than to leave the story in limbo forever.

The End

Chiaki followed the map. It led far out of the city, to a place no one ever went. There he found a coffin-like object, beset with dials and wires. He turned one, and the lid began to creak open.

Inside, Makato began to wake up. She'd been asleep for a long time.

Kousuke had worked on this, a machine that could keep someone held in suspended animation for a long time. Ash had brought her to it.

Removing oneself from the present was one way to travel through time.

*

Back in the 1940s, Ash was a schoolteacher. He taught art, and painted in his free time. He died when the school was bombed.