But what shocked Hiroki even more was that he had discovered an even stranger file in Minato's mind—
It was a—shortcut?
A shortcut itself was nothing strange, but the icon for this shortcut was the strangest part.
It was a dark blue circular icon with a strange white elongated pattern inside.
Hiroki focused his consciousness on it and instantly realized something was wrong.
There was absolutely no way a second person in this world could recognize the icon for this shortcut.
This was fucking Steam—
How could he possibly fail to recognize it?
And the filename made his eyelid twitch even more.
steam(I)-v0.I version.Ink
That naming format—was a personal habit from his previous life when naming freelance projects, one he would never have shared with anyone!
The number 1 had been replaced with a lowercase L! And uppercase I's might even be mixed in among the L's.
Was this a tool his future self had passed on to his present self?
What the hell—
His future self was seriously twisted. Using such an outdated project name and icon as a code—wasn't he afraid that his past self would forget it?
Hiroki immediately understood the purpose of this shortcut.
Most likely, his future self had deliberately left behind some kind of loophole, allowing them to remain unaware of whatever information he had hidden within the shortcut.
And since his present self had already captured Minato, he could easily determine that Minato would return from the future to the present, launch a surprise attack on him, and fail—
That was why he had left such a contingency on Minato, to tell his present self exactly what he had done.
And judging by the time-travel theory in Steins;Gate, that classic reference work about traveling through time and space, he should now leave the