“Who is the other person inside you?”
The man in front of me
was pointing at my stomach.
Instinctively,
I placed a hand over it.
But there was nothing there.
No pain either.
“What are you talking about?”
The man didn’t answer.
He simply stared at my body
with a puzzled expression.
No.
He was looking
inside me.
Until yesterday,
the world had only had
forward and backward.
But now it was different.
There was left and right.
The ground had width.
Buildings had shape.
The world looked like
a picture drawn
on an enormous sheet of paper.
The only thing missing
was height.
I was the same.
My arms,
my legs,
my face—
everything was flat.
Seen from the side,
I would probably look
like nothing more than a single line.
And in this world,
even the inside of my body
couldn’t be hidden.
Everything beneath my skin
was visible.
My heart.
My lungs.
My blood vessels.
My bones.
It was as if
a human anatomy model
had been crushed flat,
leaving my insides exposed.
I felt sick
and looked away.
But the man
was still staring at my stomach.
“There.”
“What’s there?”
“A person.”
He didn’t sound like
he was joking.
I looked down
at my stomach.
At first,
I couldn’t see anything unusual.
Between my organs
was a dark shadow.
I thought
it was just a shadow.
Then it moved.
“What...?”
A tiny face
emerged from the darkness.
It was a human face.
A man
who looked about my age.
A face
I had never seen before.
He was staring at me
from inside my body.
I stumbled backward.
“Who are you?”
The moment I spoke,
the man inside my stomach
moved his lips too.
But I couldn’t hear his voice.
He was desperately
trying to tell me something.
I leaned closer.
I watched his lips.
Three syllables.
Probably—
“RUN.”
Run.
The next moment,
my smartphone vibrated.
The screen
lit up on its own.
DAY 2
DIMENSION: 2
Below that,
a new message appeared.
“OBSERVATION TARGET CONFIRMED”
Observation target?
More text followed.
“INTERNAL ENTITY DETECTED”
Internal entity.
There was no question
it meant the man
inside me.
“Wait.”
“Who is this guy?”
I asked the screen,
but there was no response.
Instead,
numbers appeared.
00:59
00:58
00:57
A countdown.
I had a bad feeling.
“What happens
when that reaches zero?”
I asked the man
in front of me.
The expression
vanished from his face.
I looked around.
The people of this world
who had been walking along the street
only moments ago
had all stopped.
And every one of them
was staring at me.
No.
Not at me.
They were staring
inside me.
“It found us,”
the man whispered.
“What did?”
“The outside.”
My heart jumped.
The word
I had answered with
in yesterday’s world.
The thing
that didn’t exist there.
“The outside.”
Why was that word
appearing here too?
I looked at my smartphone.
00:31
The man inside my stomach
was frantically
trying to tell me something.
This time,
I could read his lips.
“DON’T TRUST IT.”
It?
Who did he mean?
The man in front of me?
The people of this world?
Or—
the smartphone?
00:15
A new question
appeared on the screen.
“DELETE
INTERNAL ENTITY?”
Below it
were two options.
YES
NO
“Delete?”
The man inside me
shook his head.
Desperately.
But the man in front of me said,
“You should erase him.”
“Why?”
“Because
he isn’t you.”
00:09
I reached
to press NO.
At that moment,
the man inside me
suddenly reached
toward me.
From inside
my flat body,
his hand moved
in an impossible direction.
Toward this side.
No.
Toward
the “outside.”
His fingertips
burst out of my stomach.
The world shook.
The buildings around us
folded like paper.
The people
all screamed at once.
“THREE DIMENSIONS!”
00:03
The man’s arm
was extending
out of my body.
And suddenly,
I understood.
This man
wasn’t inside me.
We simply couldn’t
perceive the world
he existed in
correctly.
00:02
00:01
I pressed NO.
The screen
turned completely white.
“DELETION OF INTERNAL ENTITY REFUSED”
“OBSERVATION ERROR”
“DIMENSIONAL BOUNDARY DAMAGED”
A black裂け目 opened beneath my feet.
At that moment,
for the first time,
I heard the voice
of the man inside me.
“You can finally hear me.”
The moment I heard it,
I froze.
A face
I didn’t recognize.
A body
I didn’t recognize.
And yet,
I knew that voice.
It was
my own.
The world began to collapse.
One final message
appeared on my smartphone.
DAY 3
DIMENSION: 3
And beneath it,
a line that had never
appeared before
was added.
“ORIGINAL: 2”