“Welcome! Room for one?”
“Oh, uh, I’m supposed to meet someone here…”
“Could I get their name?”
“Takigawa.”
“Takigawa… Yes, here it is. Room 301. Elevator’s right over there.”
Prompted by the employee, I boarded the elevator and took it to the third floor.
This karaoke lounge was about a fifteen-minute walk away from the train station. Due to the distance and the slightly inflated prices, people my age didn’t really come here. Even so, the rooms were well-kept, and the food was good, so it was popular with adults, or so my mom told me.
When I arrived at the third floor, I quickly found Room 301. I put my hand on the knob and took a deep breath… And summoned my courage… And finally opened the door.
No one was inside.
Upon further inspection, I could see a schoolbag sitting on the table, so clearly she had to be around here somewhere. Maybe she was using the restroom? Finding no one inside took the wind completely out of my sails. What now? Do I sit and wait for her to get back? Or should I stand outside and—
“Takasaki-kun?”
“Aaagh!” I cried. The sudden voice behind me made me stumble forward into the room.
“Er… Are you all right?” It was Takigawa-san, and contrary to her words, she didn’t sound all too concerned about my well-being. She stared down at me as she held a drink in one hand.
“Yeah, uh, I’m fine.”
“I was just grabbing a drink. They’re free, you know. Would you like to go get one? You can use one of the glasses there.”
And so, at her prompting, I went to get a free drink on my own. I dropped in three ice cubes and filled my glass with ginger ale. Over the short walk back to the private room, I eased my fraught nerves.
Wait a minute—she called me Takasaki-kun this time! Before yesterday, that would have felt normal, but after she called me Koyomi, well… Anyway, she had expressly invited me to a place where we were all but guaranteed not to encounter anyone from our school. Surely she was going to give me some sort of explanation for all this—though I suspected I already knew what it was. Nervous and hopeful, I pushed the door open once more.
She was sitting up straight, just as she did in class, and was sipping her iced tea through a straw. I sat down across from her and took a sip of my ginger ale.
Awkward.
Was I supposed to initiate the conversation here? No, if anyone ought to talk, it was her! She didn’t actually invite me here to sing, right? And yet she remained silent. The only thing holding me together right now was the muffled sound of the latest pop single over the speakers.
But when the song ended, and the room went quiet…
“I’m sorry about yesterday,” Takigawa-san apologized, her expression unchanged.
“Oh, uh… No, it’s fine…” I stammered.
“You must have been so confused.”
“Yeah, uh… What was that about?” I asked.
Instead of answering, she raised her wristwatch up for me to see. “Do you know what this is?”
“It’s…not a watch?” I asked, though I suspected I had an answer for that too. On the small LCD screen were just three digits, while an ordinary wristwatch would have had four.
“No, it’s not. It’s an IP band. Have you heard of them?”
Sure enough, it was exactly what I expected. The field of imaginary science had developed rapidly over the past few years, and IP bands were one of the latest innovations it had produced. With your home world registered as 000, you could check your IP number to see how far you were from home at any given time. IP bands were still in the refining stage, so only scholars and their families were given prototypes to test out. I didn’t have one, but my dad showed me his before. It looked exactly like the one she was wearing.
“Yeah, I know of them.”
“Okay then, so I guess you know what this number means.”
She pointed to her three-digit number: 085.
That would suggest…
“The Takigawa-san I spoke to yesterday was a parallel one from 85 worlds away?!” I exclaimed.
“Yep. And I’m still here, it seems. But I didn’t realize I shifted, so I spoke to you like you were the same Koyomi from back home.”
“So you’re saying…back in your World Zero, you address me by my first name?”
She was certainly implying as much. What kind of relationship did we have in her universe?
“Well…the Koyomi I know is more of a social butterfly, but I suppose when you parallel shift across 85 worlds, these things can turn out rather differently.”
When I first started high school, I promised myself I would be more outgoing. In the beginning, I did make a conscious effort to be friendly and initiate conversations. But ultimately, I went right back to being the same loner I always was. Had this parallel me 85 worlds away succeeded where I failed? Did he have lots of friends who all called him by his first name?
“Does that mean…in your world, you and I are friends?”
At this, her brow furrowed slightly. She was fairly hard to read in general, but in this case, I could tell she didn’t like the question. Averting her eyes, she muttered, “Well, to be completely transparent…we’re dating.”
…What?
Did she just respond to “Are we friends?” with…“We’re dating”?
DATING?
“Wh-what…? Dating, as in…you, and me? We’re…like…boyfriend and girlfriend…? Or whatever?” I stammered, flustered.
She narrowed her eyes even further, glaring at me. On its own, it was pretty intimidating, but it lost a lot of its impact when I noticed her ears had turned red.
“This is completely throwing me off. You’re nothing like the Koyomi I know!” she yelled.
“Well, I don’t know the guy! What’s he like?”
“He’s manly, for one thing!”
I was well aware of my unmanliness, thank you very much, but hearing someone else call it out point-blank really stung.
“Okay, well… Like you said, people’s personalities are bound to be different when you shift eighty-five worlds away. I mean…there’s no way you and I could ever…you know…be in that kind of relationship in my world!”
“What relationship do you have with her?” she asked.
“We’ve never even talked before. Until yesterday, I mean,” I admitted.
“No wonder you were confused.”
“Darn right I was! If you have an IP band, why didn’t you think to check it first?”
“Normally I only ever shift by one or two worlds, not eighty-five!” she shot back. “And I hardly ever notice the difference most times, so I don’t think to check!”
To be fair, I could understand where she was coming from. Imaginary science was progressing so rapidly. There were new theories and discoveries being reported practically every day. Because of that, even the average member of society had a baseline understanding of parallel worlds.
These alternate universes were said to be countless, all of them overlapping with one another and in constant flux. As a result, human beings shifted between the closest ones on a near-daily basis. But because worlds close in proximity were nearly identical, most people wouldn’t notice they shifted at all.
For instance, suppose you put an eraser in a drawer in your home world, but when you went to fetch it, it was inexplicably missing. You were so sure you put it there, too. However, then you went and opened the next drawer and found it there instead. You’d be confused, but nonetheless take the eraser and go about your day.
This situation would indicate that you had inadvertently left your home world at some point between the moment you put your eraser away and the moment you went to retrieve it. Here in this other world, your other self put their eraser in the second drawer instead of the first. This inadvertent movement between parallel worlds was now known as parallel shifting—the theoretical culprit behind tons of mundane misunderstandings.
As I understood it, minor shifts didn’t significantly impact daily life, but a long-distance shift could create severe confusion and palpably feel like an “alternate universe” for the affected person. That said, major shifts were incredibly rare, and as such, most people could go their whole lives blissfully unaware that they ever shifted at all.
For better or for worse, I myself had experienced a long-distance shift once before. Back when my grandpa died, I somehow shifted to a world where he was still alive. I had no clue how many worlds away it was, but fortunately, I woke up back in World Zero the next morning without incident. And because of that experience, I readily believed Takigawa-san was telling the truth.
“Anyway, I think it’s all cleared up now. Hope you get home soon.”
“Yeah,” she replied simply.
Silence. She took another sip through her straw, and I downed my ginger ale—I liked it best when it was a little watered down. But by the time our glasses were empty, she still hadn’t spoken again.
Personally, there was something I was dying to ask. How the hell did my 85th self end up in a relationship with her? Despite her good looks, she always struck me as a rude and pessimistic person…but after seeing her blush over the word “dating,” I was starting to find her cute. Being a teenage guy with a healthy interest in such things, I couldn’t help but get some ideas. Hey, if the other me had a shot, then maybe I do too. That being said, I didn’t have the balls to actually ask her.
“Well, uh, I’m gonna get going now,” I said.
Grabbing my bookbag, I rose to my feet. As far as I was concerned, now that I understood what happened yesterday and she apologized for it, this conversation was over. Soon, she would go back home to World 85, and I’d go back to having nothing to do with this version of her. This was just an anomaly.
But right as I grabbed the bulky doorknob—
“Wait,” I heard her say in a tiny voice behind me.
She had spoken just as the knob rattled loudly in my hand, and I suspected it was her way of giving me the option to ignore it. I stopped and closed the door again. If I were to be completely honest…I didn’t want this anomaly to end just yet.