DAY 5
DIMENSION: 5
"In the next world,
you will see every life
you did not choose."
The moment those words disappeared,
I was back home.
The same room as yesterday.
The same bed.
Misaki was sleeping beside me.
"Again...?"
As I tried to sit up,
I noticed something was wrong.
There was no ring
on my left hand.
Until yesterday,
Misaki and I had been married.
I looked beside me.
Misaki was gone.
No.
She had definitely been there
just moments ago.
Instead,
a woman I didn't know
was sleeping beside me.
I shot out of bed.
At that moment,
the room changed too.
A spacious apartment.
Outside the window
was a city I didn't recognize.
I checked my phone.
The screen was flooded
with notifications.
Messages from work.
A company I'd never heard of.
Coworkers I didn't know.
I opened my photos.
My life was there.
But it wasn't
the life I had lived.
Me, successful at work.
Me, living overseas.
Me, married
to a woman I didn't know.
Me, holding a child.
"What the hell is this...?"
My phone vibrated.
"CHOICE BRANCHES DETECTED."
Countless options
appeared on the screen.
A life where I went to college.
A life where I didn't.
A life where I joined that company.
A life where I quit.
A life where I met Misaki.
A life where I never met her.
Every path
I had chosen not to take.
I tapped one.
The world changed.
I was in a hospital.
Misaki was lying
in a bed.
A man who looked like a doctor
bowed his head to me.
"I'm sorry, but..."
The world changed.
This time,
I was in a small house.
Misaki and a child
were laughing at the dinner table.
I was laughing too.
The world changed.
An apartment
where I lived alone.
There wasn't even
a photo of Misaki.
The world changed.
A cemetery.
My name was engraved
on a gravestone.
The year of death
was three years ago.
"I...
died three years ago?"
The world changed again.
I was an old man.
In the mirror
was my white-haired reflection.
Behind me,
an elderly Misaki was smiling.
A life where I died.
A life where I survived.
A life where I got married.
A life where we never met.
A life where I succeeded.
A life where I gained nothing.
Every one of them
was me.
New words
appeared on my phone.
"OBSERVABLE WORLDS:
1,048,576"
More than a million lives.
And the number
kept increasing.
I turned off the screen.
"Enough."
I didn't want to see anymore.
I could no longer tell
which life was the right one.
I had always believed
the life I remembered
was the real one.
But here,
every one of them existed.
Then what
was real?
That was when
I noticed something.
There was one thing
that existed in every world.
It wasn't me.
It wasn't Misaki.
It was the phone.
In every life,
I had the same phone.
Even in the world
where I was dead.
Even in the world
where I had grown old.
The phone alone
was always the same.
"No way..."
I remembered
the first day.
When I entered
the first world,
the phone was there.
It was there
in the second world.
The third.
The fourth.
No matter how the world changed,
this thing
always followed me.
I placed the phone
on the floor.
Then I stepped
a few paces away.
The screen lit up
on its own.
"HAVE YOU NOTICED?"
My heart jumped.
"Who are you?"
More words appeared.
"You are not
receiving messages
through the smartphone."
I didn't understand.
Then I read
the next sentence,
and stopped breathing.
"The smartphone
is receiving you."
I stared
at the screen.
I was
being received?
"Explain."
The moment I said it aloud,
the world around me vanished.
In the darkness,
countless versions of me appeared.
Me as a child.
Me as a student.
Me as an office worker.
Me, married.
Me, single.
Me, dead.
Me as an old man.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Tens of thousands.
Every version of me
was staring at me.
At the center
stood a single man
with his back turned.
The same height
and build as me.
The other me
I had seen in Chapter 4.
"The original entity..."
The man turned around.
He had
my face.
But something about him
was clearly different.
He was the only one
looking at me
with a smile.
"So you made it
to the fifth."
"Are you
the original me?"
The man didn't answer.
"Was it you
who sent me
into these worlds?"
Slowly,
he shook his head.
"No."
"Then who?"
The man pointed
behind me.
I turned around.
A gigantic smartphone
was floating there.
On its screen
were countless versions
of my life.
Each one
had a number.
I searched
for mine.
I found it.
"ORIGINAL: 2"
Beside it
was another label.
"STATUS: DUPLICATE"
My body froze.
"Duplicate...?"
I looked
at the original entity.
"Am I
a copy of you?"
The man answered.
"You're not my copy."
Then
he pointed to his own chest.
"I'm a duplicate too."
"Then what
is the original entity?"
The smile
vanished from his face.
"It's not human."
At that moment,
countless worlds
began collapsing at once.
A warning sounded
from the phone.
"UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS
TO OBSERVATION DOMAIN DETECTED."
The original entity's form
began to distort.
"Wait!"
"Where is the real one?!"
Just before he disappeared,
the man left me
with one final message.
"Go to the sixth."
"From there,
you can see
every world from the outside."
Light exploded around me.
A new display
appeared on my phone.
DAY 6
DIMENSION: 6
Beneath it
were words
I had never seen before.
"OBSERVER ACCESS GRANTED."
And finally,
one last line.
"The world you believed was reality
currently exists
in 1,048,576 versions."