After I explained everything to my parallel dad and convinced him to let me use the Cradle to come back home, my actual dad and the director yelled at me for traveling to a distant world without their permission. Then, they told me how happy they were to have me back.
As for me, however, I developed some severe anxiety. Was I truly back home where I belonged? Was this the same world I originally departed from? There was no proof anywhere. How could I be sure this wasn’t the world next door? And not only that, but what if Dad or the director had shifted from another world themselves?
Any further experiments were suspended for a while due to my mental instability.
Nevertheless, I continued to meet up with Shiori. According to her mom, her imaginary elements were fixed in place the moment she became a ghost, and therefore she was unable to parallel shift in her state. Add in the fact that most people shifted naturally about once a day on average, and Shiori was the one person I felt it was safe to talk to.
Meanwhile, the director became so concerned about my condition that she made the development of IP bands her number one priority. As a result, a prototype was ready before I even graduated junior high, and it was decided that I would be its first tester. Once it registered my home world as World Zero, it would measure the IP variation and display what numbered world I was currently in. Wearing it truly did wonders for my anxiety, so I jumped back into parallel shift experiments with increasing frequency.
From there, I used the Cradle to parallel shift about a dozen times. All of the worlds were relatively close. In all of them, I had chosen to live with my father after his divorce and met Shiori at the lab…and in all of them, she was now a ghost.
Going back to the bubble analogy, micro-bubbles were often referred to as “twins,” but of course there were more than just two of them. All bubbles who split off from each other were considered twins. Putting it simply, in the majority of these nearby parallel worlds, Shiori had suffered the same accident.
But I had only shifted a dozen or so times, and the worlds were limitless. Surely there had to be a world where Shiori had been saved, or so I told myself.
But deep down, I couldn’t help but wonder… Was this what they called “fate”? Or was it a curse inflicted upon her the moment she met me?
✦ ✦ ✦
At age seventeen, Shiori was taken out of the Kyushu University Hospital and put on a ventilator in a newly constructed room for her at the Imaginary Science Research Institute. The director had it remodeled into a living space so she could be with her daughter at all hours of the day and night. As for me, I kept combing the parallel worlds for a way to save her. But, as I had feared, I still had yet to find it.
Meanwhile, I continued to study my ass off until I was accepted as the incoming first-year valedictorian at the most competitive high school in the entire prefecture. The first thing I did was go to the lab and tell Shiori’s body; then, I went to the intersection and told her ghost. She jumped for joy and told me she was proud of me. That was what just barely kept my soul from breaking down.
But then the day finally came…
“Koyomi.”
One cold winter day, I was about to leave for school, but my father stopped me.
“No school today. You’re coming with me to the lab.”
It was the first time he ever wanted me to cut class in favor of the lab, so I knew it had to be important. Maybe Shiori was showing signs of recovery! I tried not to get my hopes up, but deep down, I just couldn’t help myself.
Dad brought me to Shiori’s life-support room.
“Oh, hello. Thank you for coming, Koyomi-kun… Come on in,” the director said, greeting us.
Her eyes were red, which was uncommon for her. Had she pulled an all-nighter? Regardless, I didn’t have the mental bandwidth to worry about her. If they were making me skip school to be here, then there had to be some kind of good news. I ignored the sense of gloom I sensed from the adults and went straight to Shiori’s side.
She was still lying there on her bed…but she had been taken off the life support machinery.
“…Shiori…?”
I stroked her ghostly pale cheek…and I felt the same lack of warmth that she and Yuno had taught me as a child.
“About an hour ago…her heart stopped beating.”
A single thought crossed my mind. I wish mine would too.
✦ ✦ ✦
After a modest funeral, I watched the smoke rise from Shiori’s cremation. In place of funeral attire, I was still wearing my school uniform. Then, I went to the intersection, where Shiori’s eternally fourteen-year-old ghost greeted me with a smile.
“Hi, Koyomi-kun. Long time no see.”
“Yeah… Sorry.”
Normally, I visited her daily without fail, but I had left her on her own for the past three days. I just didn’t know how I was supposed to tell her that her body had left this world for good.
“Did something sad happen?” she asked me gently. When I didn’t answer, she continued talking. “It’s okay, Koyomi-kun. Don’t cry. I’m here for you.”
Her translucent hand attempted to stroke my hair, but it passed right through me. Then, the light changed, and pedestrians started walking by. Whole crowds of people walked past us…and not one of them even noticed Shiori was there.