DAY 4
DIMENSION: 4
And finally,
one last message appeared.
“TOMORROW,
YOU WILL WATCH
THE MOMENT
OF YOUR OWN DEATH.”
The moment I read those words,
the world stopped.
No.
It didn’t stop.
It multiplied.
There were
multiple Misakis in front of me.
Misaki sleeping on the bed.
Misaki opening the window.
Misaki drinking coffee.
Misaki crying.
Misaki laughing.
All of them
overlapped
in the same room.
“What... is this?”
I tried to stand.
Then
I saw myself too.
Me sitting on the floor.
Me standing up.
Me walking toward the window.
Me looking at my phone.
The me from a few seconds ago
and the me from a few seconds in the future
existed at the same time.
I closed my eyes.
But it didn’t disappear.
The scene before I closed my eyes
and the darkness after
were both visible
at the same time.
Time wasn’t flowing
from past to future.
The past,
the present,
and the future
were all here.
My phone vibrated.
“FOUR-DIMENSIONAL PERCEPTION
INITIATED”
Behind those words,
another message overlapped.
A future notification
that hadn’t appeared yet.
“SELECT AN OBSERVATION TARGET”
And beyond that,
another message.
“WARNING:
AN OBSERVED FUTURE
CANNOT BE CHANGED”
I held my breath.
I could see
the future?
I looked around the room.
There were now
dozens of Misakis.
Among them
was one I had never seen before.
She was dressed in black.
She was crying.
She held
someone’s photograph
against her chest.
I moved closer.
The person in the photograph
was me.
A chill ran down my spine.
Was this
my funeral?
The moment
I tried to touch her,
the scene changed.
A road.
Rain.
Night.
A red traffic light.
And
I was standing
in the middle of the road.
“Wait.”
My future self
was looking at something.
Across the road.
There was
another me.
“...Me?”
There weren’t just one of us.
Two versions of me
were facing each other.
One wore
the same clothes
I was wearing now.
The other wore
clothes I didn’t recognize.
But
our faces were identical.
The other me
was shouting something.
I couldn’t hear his voice.
The next moment,
a powerful light
filled my vision.
Headlights.
Impact.
My body
was thrown into the air.
I saw myself
collapse onto the road.
Misaki screamed.
And then
I stopped moving.
“Stop!”
I screamed.
The room
returned.
I couldn’t breathe.
My heart
was pounding violently.
Was that
my death?
I looked at my phone.
“TIME OF DEATH:
TOMORROW, 11:47 P.M.”
Tomorrow.
I was going
to die tomorrow.
But something else
bothered me even more.
The other me
standing across the road.
Who was he?
Was he
the version of me
who had been living with Misaki
in this world?
Or was he
the “other person inside me”
I had been told about
in the two-dimensional world?
A new message
appeared on my phone.
“VIEW OBSERVATION RECORDS?”
Below it
were three options.
“PAST”
“PRESENT”
“FUTURE”
I had already seen
the future.
So
I chose the past.
I tapped
“PAST.”
The world
collapsed again.
The first day.
The first world,
where everything
was only a single line.
I was there.
But that wasn’t
what I wanted to see.
Further back.
The world began
running in reverse.
My apartment.
Night.
I was asleep
in bed.
Then,
someone appeared
inside the room.
It was me.
Another version of me
stood over
my sleeping body.
“What the hell...?”
He was holding
my phone.
He operated the screen,
then placed the phone
beside my sleeping body.
Immediately afterward,
words appeared
on the screen.
“TRANSFER INITIATED”
I trembled.
On the first day,
the person who had sent me
into that one-dimensional world
was—
myself?
The other me
slowly raised his head.
Impossible.
This was
a recording of the past.
He shouldn’t have been able
to see me.
And yet,
he looked
straight at me.
Then he spoke.
“So,
you finally made it this far.”
I couldn’t move.
“Who are you?”
The other me
smiled slightly.
“That question
is backward.”
My phone vibrated.
The familiar words
appeared on the screen.
“ORIGINAL: 2”
The other me spoke.
“Do you still think
you were
the first one?”
At that moment,
the vision of the past
disappeared.
Back in the room,
I watched
the numbers on my phone
change.
“ORIGINAL: 2”
“ORIGINAL: 1”
Then
a new message appeared.
“ORIGINAL ENTITY
CONFIRMED”
I stared
at the screen.
The original entity.
That meant
the first version of me
existed somewhere.
Then
what was I?
One final notification
appeared.
“TIME UNTIL CONTACT
WITH ORIGINAL ENTITY:
23 HOURS”
Twenty-three hours.
Almost exactly
the same time
as my predicted death.
Then
the screen went black.
DAY 5
DIMENSION: 5
Only one final line
remained.
“IN THE NEXT WORLD,
YOU WILL SEE
EVERY LIFE
YOU DID NOT CHOOSE.”