Our fourteenth summers continued without incident. One fine day, Shiori and I were in the daycare room, and her mom and my dad were giving us a simple lecture on imaginary science during their work break.
“Do you know what the ‘imaginary’ part of imaginary science refers to?” the director asked. The two of us exchanged a glance. I thought I knew the answer, but it was surprisingly difficult to put into words.
“Uhhh… The ocean?”
“In an analogy, you could say the ocean, yes. Imaginary science is founded upon the concept of imaginary space, or an infinite probability space. In contrast to physical spaces that are constructed with molecules, imaginary spaces are constructed with imaginary elements. We posit that the world is composed of physical and imaginary spaces overlaid atop one another.”
Whenever she was having a serious discussion, the director switched into professor mode, and Shiori and I would raise our hands to ask questions like we were in class.
“In an analogy, those imaginary spaces are likened to the ocean, right?” we asked.
“When explaining the concept of parallel worlds, yes. But at its root, an imaginary space is any space capable of variation.”
“Variation…?”
“Change, in other words. In this world, imaginary spaces produce time, which flows on endlessly. Time is change, and paradoxically, imaginary spaces are therefore places for that change to occur. You see, change is not the result of time—change is time,” she explained.
I was fairly intelligent for a fourteen-year-old, but naturally, even I was having trouble comprehending the brilliant mind who invented an entire field of study. I glanced over at Shiori since she hadn’t spoken in a while. She was looking back at me with a confused frown on her face. I thought maybe she could help me understand, but evidently not.
Next, I sought help from my dad. Ever since the divorce, I had consistently asked him to use simple analogies to explain things, precisely in situations like these. Sure enough, he rose to the occasion.
“Let’s see…” he started. “Right, let’s say you threw a ball. Rather than the ball traveling forward over time, it’s the variation of the ball’s position that defines what time is.”
“…How does that make any sense?”
“What I’m saying is that time doesn’t actually exist. What we perceive as ‘time’ is actually countless tiny variations, one after another… Wait, maybe the best analogy is a flipbook. Each page is just a drawing, but when you flip through them in sequence, it looks like it’s moving, right? That illusion of movement is what we call time. Does that make more sense?”
“Um… Yeah, I think so,” I nodded.
From there, the director took over again. “Those tiny variations are produced by imaginary elements—the will of the universe to change. A lonely soul trying to distinguish itself from its identical siblings.”
Not only was she incredibly smart, the director was also quite poetic at times. My dad told me she was a huge fan of old-school anime, manga, and light novels, which was where she drew her naming inspirations. Unfortunately, it just made everything she said even harder for me to parse.
Luckily, there was an interpreter on standby, and my dad stepped in to help. “If we suppose that our world is a single notebook, then imaginary spaces are the blank paper. You can go through each one and draw whatever you like to make a flipbook, and all the words and pictures you add to the pages are the physical spaces. In other words, the ‘paper’ is imaginary, but the ‘ink’ you lay over it is physical. The imaginary exists to give form to the physical—without it, the physical can’t exist at all. Make sense?”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
After all these years, my dad was a pro at coming up with helpful analogies. Without him, I’m sure I never would have grasped what the director was saying. Even Shiori seemed to understand it better now.
“Imaginary spaces are full of imaginary elements. These imaginary elements shape physical spaces, and depending on the level of variation, can create parallel worlds,” the director explained. “So, the pattern of variables in each world is what I like to call the Imaginary Elements Print, or IP for short.”
“Going back to the notebook analogy, if each different shape on a given page is its own parallel world, then the IP is the imprint of those shapes on the other side of the page,” Dad chimed in, and once again, I found myself grateful for the translation.
“Right now, my research is focused mainly on finding a way to measure a given world’s IP and quantify its variation with the worlds around it,” the director continued. “That being said, a method of observing imaginary elements doesn’t exist yet, so all we can really do is measure the physical particles to artificially estimate the IP. By reading the numerical quantification of the measured IP variation, we’ll be able to tell how distant we are from our home world. At this stage, we don’t have a prototype yet, but I’m thinking it’ll be a wearable device similar to a wristwatch.”
I tried to picture it—a watch on my wrist displaying a number indicating which world I was in. It felt like something out of a manga.
“By measuring and controlling the IP, we may even be able to move between worlds at will. This is the objective of imaginary science as a field of study.”
“Dad, are you researching this stuff too?”
“No, my research is a little different. Truthfully, I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to tell the children, would it?” the director shrugged.
Dad sighed. “I guess not… Well, imaginary science is believed to be a great step forward for scientific discovery as a whole, but if we go further, we may open the door to a whole new category of crime.”
“What kind of crime?” I asked.
“Specifically, we’re talking about IP fraud. Frame-ups, in other words. For instance, let’s say a parallel version of you stole something, then parallel shifted to this world, where you haven’t stolen anything at all. No crime, no punishment. But in exchange, you would be sent to the parallel world where you’d be punished for a theft you didn’t commit. Sounds plausible, right?”
“Wow, no kidding… So how would you fix that?”
“Well, we need to think of a way to prevent criminals from parallel shifting. That’s our job as researchers…or more specifically, my job.”
“Huh.”
Then Shiori raised her hand like a dutiful student. “Um, what if the cops just shift over and arrest him here?”
“How would they know which world he went to?” I remarked.
“Oh, good point… Hmm…”
Together, Shiori and I pondered the hypothetical. I always liked to learn new things, and with her, it was even more fun. Meanwhile, her mom and my dad started muttering to each other and shooting us furtive glances for some reason.
Suddenly, during a pause in our discussion, the director asked us a question. “Are you two together?”
It was so out of left field that we both froze.
“I suspected as much myself,” Dad commented.
As for what they were referring to, it was Shiori who processed it first.
“Wh… What are you talking about?!” she shrieked angrily. “Koyomi-kun and I aren’t like that! Don’t make it weird, Mom!”
Though she was often just as eccentric as her mother, Shiori was generally a more reserved person. That was the first time I ever saw her lash out at her mom.
As for me, I should have understood what was implied by “together” and “like that,” but for whatever reason, my brain took an extra-long time to comprehend it…and when I finally grasped that they thought we were romantically involved, I couldn’t help but felt hatred toward so-called “adults” for the first time in my life.
Admittedly, yes, I had become conscious of my feelings for Shiori just the other day. But I wanted to take it slow, at my own pace. Sure, maybe she would agree to go out with me if I asked her right this second, but I wanted to spend time cultivating a natural transition from friend to something more. After all, that was how we kindled our friendship to begin with.
Why were they even asking us this? What were we supposed to say? It felt like Shiori and I were in the middle of painting a picture, but these stupid adults had walked up and smeared a new color onto our canvas without asking. Now we could never achieve the result we originally wanted.
That was the first and only time I hit my dad. “Screw you!” I yelled.
Looking back, this was the start of a late-blooming rebellious phase that Shiori and I, unlike a lot of other fourteen-year-olds, had thus far never had. Dad and the director both stared at me, mouths agape, like they had no idea why I’d lashed out. But when Shiori saw me strike at my father, her anger toward her mother was overwritten by concern. This only made me feel worse. Frustrated, I turned away from the adults.
“Shiori, let’s just get out of here.”
“…Okay.”
As I left the room, she dutifully followed me. For a second, I was tempted to grab her hand…but decided against it.
After that, we found a riverbank and took turns skipping rocks and talking smack about our parents. That said, neither of us had much experience with this “teenage rebellion” thing, so our insults were a little weak.
“Rrgh, I can’t believe her! Why would she say that to us?” she said.
“It doesn’t make any sense. Like, what does it matter if we were?”
“And your dad said he ‘suspected as much’…”
“Suspected, my ass. He thinks he knows what love looks like? He couldn’t even stay married to my mom!” I yelled.
“Same as my mom. She made my dad so upset…”
“They had no right to say that to us… I should have punched him harder.”
Fueled by anger, I flung another rock at the river. My frustration was out of control. “Koyomi-kun and I aren’t like that,” Shiori had said to her mother. Those were words I never wanted to hear, yet here we were.
Looking back, it all made sense. I never acted on my feelings for Shiori because I wanted to leave our relationship just ambiguous enough to avoid having to hear that. But now, she’d been forced to say them.
“I mean, we’re not even like that, you know?”
“…Yeah.”
Thanks to our parents, our friendship now had hard limits.