“Yeah, exactly!” “Gosh, that is kinda spooky to think about.” “See, I told you!” The two girls prattled on—Oh my God, speaking of spooky, I found this huge spider in my room yesterday! Ew, seriously? Yeah, I had my grandpa come in and whack it with a rolled-up newspaper. Ha ha, your grandpa’s kind of a badass. Yeah, he’s great—ditching one topic in favor of the next at the speed of light and crumpling up the previous like day-old newspapers, only good for killing spiders. But I reached my hand into that recycle bin to fish out the one article that piqued my interest from all the ones they discarded to save it from the shredder, then smoothed it out in my mind to give it another look. The Urashima Tunnel: a mysterious passage that dramatically aged all those who entered it, yet which would grant them any wish in return. It was my first time hearing this particular urban legend, though I could tell from the name and time shenanigans alone that it was based on the tale of Urashima Taro. While “granting one’s every wish” was a fairly tired cliché for stories like this, the “rapidly aging” part was at least pretty unique. I wondered what would happen if someone went in that tunnel and wished to grow younger. Would it cheat the system, or would they simply grow younger briefly before turning into an old coot the moment they stepped back out? What if they wished for an infinite supply of youth serum they could take with them? Or immortality? Yeah, this is just asking for people to find loopholes, I thought to myself as I opened my eyes to see that the train had finally arrived. I glanced at the clock—it was thirty-five minutes late. Yet thanks to nodding off for a bit with some interesting food for thought, it hadn’t felt that long at all. There was no blood or anything on the front of the train that might suggest it had run over a deer; it looked the same as always. I boarded the train via the rear doors and let out a heavy sigh of relief as the merciful air-conditioning slowly cooled my sunbaked body centimeter by centimeter. As soon as I fell backward into the nearest open seat, the pneumatic doors wheezed shut, and the train set off again toward its destination. “Thank you for choosing to ride with us today. We’d like to express our sincerest apologies to all of our passengers, so please listen carefully to