In the anime's story, the date was July 28th.
On the rooftop of the broadcasting building, a machine suddenly appeared out of thin air.
Amid the smoke and dust stirred up by its arrival, the silhouettes of Suzuha and Okabe slowly emerged, blurred and unstable, as though they had been torn from another era and thrown into that moment.
"Uncle Okabe, be careful not to come into contact with the version of yourself in this world. If that happens, it could trigger a serious time paradox. I'll configure the time machine. You go protect Makise," Suzuha warned.
The anime then revealed the truth behind the first episode.
Back then, Okabe had heard a loud noise coming from the rooftop and gone upstairs to investigate.
And at that exact moment, the Okabe of this timeline happened to run up the stairwell. Since the time machine had landed on the roof, the sound it made was impossible to ignore. Through the narrow gap in the door, he caught a glimpse of the machine.
Myo felt chills crawl across her scalp.
It connected perfectly with Episode One.
Everything connected.
"Kantoku Sora… you buried this foreshadowing all the way back then just to reveal it now?"
In the following scene, the Okabe of this timeline failed to see anyone suspicious. Soon after, he went down to the seventh floor with Mayuri Shiina to play with the capsule toy machine, where she obtained the Metal Upa.
At the same time, the Okabe who had come to save Makise desperately searched for her on the eighth floor.
Since someone would stab her on this day, all he had to do was prevent the attack.
Simple.
Or at least, it should have been.
And there, at long last, the Okabe who had endured countless loops finally met the Makise who knew nothing of any of it.
Because of several strange actions on his part, he left a strong impression on her. But everything happened too suddenly, and the two were separated for the moment.
Later, during the time machine seminar hosted by Makise's father, she pulled the Okabe of this timeline away from his heated argument with her father.
Once again, the story aligned perfectly with Episode One.
Back then, after pulling the protagonist outside, Makise had asked him:
"What were you trying to tell me earlier?"
Meanwhile, the Okabe who had returned from the future hid inside the room where Makise would be attacked, silently waiting for the killer to appear.
But what he witnessed there was completely unexpected.
Makise's father - the same man hosting the seminar - was trying to steal his daughter's research results. Coveting her thesis, he intended to publish it under his own name.
Their argument escalated violently.
The father envied his daughter's genius so deeply that he eventually lashed out and struck her.
Then, in the middle of the struggle, Okabe, who had picked up a knife to protect Makise, grappled with her father.
And in a single horrific instant, the blade pierced Makise's abdomen as she stepped forward to shield her father.
Myo's mouth fell open.
Her eyes widened.
Her pupils froze.
"So in Episode One… Makise was stabbed… and the person who stabbed her was actually the Okabe who had repeated everything dozens - maybe hundreds - of times before traveling back to this exact point in time?"
The story and time itself formed a perfect closed loop.
From that point onward, the returning Okabe completely broke down emotionally. Unable to save Makise, he gave up and used the time machine to return to his own timeline.
Meanwhile, the native Okabe of that world discovered Makise lying in a pool of blood and sent a message to his best friend Daru saying that Makise had been stabbed.
That message was intercepted by SERN.
And because of it, the worldline shifted to Alpha.
After enduring endless suffering in the Alpha worldline while desperately trying to save Mayuri Shiina, Okabe eventually returned to the Beta worldline and once again traveled back to this point in time with Suzuha.
Only to stab Makise himself.
It was like a Möbius strip.
No matter where one walked, everything inevitably returned to the starting point. A ring of fate with no end, endlessly looping back into itself.
When Myo fully understood it, her scalp went numb.
What kind of genius could conceive something like this?
And what kind of despair was this story?
How was anyone supposed to break free from it?
The murderer was his future self.
The one trying to save her was his present self.
"Heh…"
"Hehehe…"
"This is completely insane…"
Simply understanding the plot felt like sacrificing half her brain cells.
"I… still don't want to die."
"I still don't want to die…"
In the anime, Makise lay in Okabe's arms as she whispered those words through tears.
Dragged back to his own point in time by Suzuha, Okabe mentally collapsed.
The time machine still had enough fuel for one final trip to the past.
But then -
The convergence of fate began.
After struggling countless times in the Alpha worldline, Okabe finally understood something.
If he kept repeating this process, all he would accomplish was making Makise suffer even more. Even in death, even in history's eternal silence, she would never find peace.
So he gave up.
"Don't give up…" Myo muttered, her chest tightening painfully.
She couldn't think of a solution either.
But she still didn't want the protagonist to surrender like this.
And then, at that very moment, came the sequence that truly elevated Steins;Gate into legend.
The reason the Beta worldline led to world war was because of Makise's thesis on time travel.
After Makise collapsed in a pool of blood, her father fled in fear and guilt, taking her thesis with him.
During his escape, the airplane caught fire. Under normal circumstances, the stolen thesis should have been destroyed in the flames.
But tucked between its pages was the Metal Upa Makise's father had picked up after Mayuri dropped it.
Because the toy contained metal, airport security detected it during inspection. As a result, the thesis drew attention before boarding and ended up being preserved.
That thesis was the root of everything.
And Okabe's failure during this time travel attempt had also been part of Suzuha's plan -
Or rather, the plan of the "future Okabe."
He was the one who sent Suzuha to this era.
He was the one who made Suzuha guide Okabe through the experience of failing to save Makise for the very first time.
And then, at the exact moment when the Okabe of this era had fallen into complete despair, the plan was finally revealed.
"This must be our first meeting… me from fifteen years ago."
It was a video recording stored on Suzuha's phone.
On the screen appeared the Okabe from fifteen years in the future, speaking directly to his younger self.
Myo held her breath.
The story was moving in a direction far beyond anything she had imagined.
To enter the Steins Gate worldline, there were two conditions.
First: erase Makise's thesis.
Second: save Makise the correct way.
The future witnessed by the Okabe of the first loop - the Okabe from Episode One - could not be altered. And yet, Makise still had to survive the stabbing incident.
If even the smallest detail failed to match, the effect would be the same as a D-Mail altering the worldline. Everything would change, and Makise would never escape convergence.
So the answer was deception.
To deceive the world without changing the past in which Makise "died."
To save Makise while making the Okabe of the past observe a living Makise as though she were dead.
That way, the past itself would remain unchanged.
The anime's soundtrack suddenly erupted with intensity.
Myo - and millions of viewers across Japan - understood absolutely nothing.
But inside the anime, Okabe understood everything.
He spread his arms wide and burst into laughter as tears streamed down the corners of his eyes.
That plan had been created by his future self.
Which meant that the Okabe of the present instantly understood the correct way to save Makise.
"So even at thirty-three, I'm still this deep into chuunibyou? Fine then… I'll show you. Deceiving the world is nothing to me."
The ending theme began to play.
Myo's expression became indescribable.
She had watched everything.
And yet it felt like she hadn't understood anything at all.
What was the correct method?
How exactly do you deceive the world?
You bastard…
You ended it right there?
Damn you, cryptic mastermind.
Just die already.