The muffled voice from beneath the futon suddenly lost its playful edge, turning sharp and surprisingly grounded. Agung sat up abruptly, the blankets falling around his waist. The "Panda" looked exhausted, but his eyes were clear as he leveled a look at the legendary leaders of u's.
"And Umi," Agung said, his voice cutting through the chatter. "Don't corrupt the timeline. The 'Deadbeat' you all hate has been gone for **three years**. Not thirteen. My reincarnation just got knocked off course by thirteen years because that bratty operator can't program a GPS to save her life."
He looked directly at Umi, then shifted his gaze to Eli, Maki, Nico, Nozomi, and Kotori. The temperature in the room seemed to drop as he brought up their "first" meeting.
"Did you already forget?" he asked, his voice echoing in the quiet room. "I told all of you exactly what happened when we met **yesterday** at Kanda Myojin. You were the ones who found me shivering and confused on the shrine steps because I asked to be sent to when \mu's first started, only to be dumped thirteen years into the future."
He leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest.
"You were the ones who realized I was a 'glitch' before anyone else did," he continued, glancing toward the Aqours and Nijigasaki girls. "So why are you letting yourselves get swept away by Mari and Lanzhu's rhythm? They're reacting to the three years of pain the *other* Agung caused. But you six... you know I only arrived in this world twenty-four hours ago."
The members of \mu's went silent. Umi's hand, which had been reaching for the chocolate, froze in mid-air. The memory of the shrine—the cold stone steps, the panicked man who didn't recognize the modern Tokyo skyline, and the sheer impossibility of his story—came rushing back.
"He's right," Eli murmured, her authoritative stance wavering. "When we found him at the shrine... he didn't even know what a smartphone was. He was looking for the Otonokizaka of ten years ago."
"We were so focused on the children and the mess with Agung's 'other' self," Kotori whispered, her eyes softening as she looked at him. "We forgot that for *him*, we just finished explaining what a 'QR code' is yesterday afternoon."
Agung let out a long, weary sigh. "Exactly. I'm playing catch-up with fourteen years of history, seven children I didn't know I had, and a version of myself that apparently became a world-class jerk. My brain is fried."
He pointed a finger at the door. "So, please. I'm not running away. I have a quadrillion dollars; I could manifest a private jet and be in Brazil in six hours if I wanted to. But I'm here. At a Ryokan. Eating Swiss chocolate. Just... give the 'Panda' a break so I can figure out how to be a father to fourteen kids I haven't even met yet."
Maki bit her lip, looking from Agung to the furious Mari. "He has a point, Mari-chan. We're attacking a man for crimes he technically hasn't committed yet in his own timeline. It's like... arresting a baby for what he'll do when he's thirty."
"I am NOT a baby!" Agung protested, though his rounder physique didn't exactly help his case.
"Close enough," Nico muttered, though she finally stepped back from the futon. "But if you aren't here tomorrow at 9 PM sharp, I'm using that quadrillion dollars to buy every billboard in Japan just to post your 'Panda' photos."