My Parallel-World Self Is Photogenic

I woke up, and Tsukino was there.

I hadn't been able to fall asleep, but I must have passed out at some point; it took me a few seconds to grasp that I'd been sleeping until just now. It took a few more to notice that we were still lying the same distance apart as when we'd settled in the night before; apparently we were both tidy sleepers. Only after that did I register the rest: we were staring right at each other with our just-woken faces, and our fingers were still intertwined.

"G-good morning!"

"Ah, uh, morning!"

Reflexively we let go and shot upright, turning our faces away from each other on the bed.

"…The whole late-night-high thing is a scary business, huh."

"That's me for you. You really do get it."

"Asahi, are you the type who pulled something on a late-night high on a school trip or over New Year's, too?"

"I'm the type who remembers the screw-up out of nowhere and makes an 'aargh!' face."

"That's me for you. I get it. Aargh! …I wish I didn't."

After a rush of fast-talked excuses that trailed off into wry smiles, the two of us got out of bed.

Even after getting up, checking my phone, and looking around the house, nothing had changed: I was still in Tsukino's world. My phone was barely usable, and the house held only the two of us, me and Tsukino.

The morning routine was no different from usual, but breakfast we had to make for ourselves.

On the living room table, we laid out the breakfasts we'd each picked up yesterday while we were out buying dinner. A sweet roll, some yogurt, and a small salad: we hadn't coordinated at all, yet the menus were nearly identical.

"At this rate, we should've just bought things we could split between us from the start."

"Though one of us did go red-bean-butter bread and the other peanut butter."

"That's what happens when you can't decide which one."

"That's me for you. Same here."

While we were at it, we split the rolls in half so we could each enjoy both.

Neither Dad nor Mom was here, but the hour we sat down to breakfast like this was no different from back in my own world. We'd both already changed into our uniforms.

Today, though, neither of us was actually headed to school.

"Like I said last night, first I'll head over to my uncle's. I'm going in uniform so he'll be reassured I mean to go to school afterward."

The reason I was in my uniform was simply that I'd washed yesterday's clothes. I could have borrowed clothes the way I had the pajamas, but honestly I felt awkward about wearing Tsukino's parents' clothes.

"Once that's done, I'm thinking I'll meet up with you and walk the same forbidden-ground route as yesterday. Nothing like the adjustment in my case has happened, and that has me on edge."

"Yeah. I'd like to come along to your uncle's too, but it'd probably just complicate things."

"I'll handle the asking just fine. And… there's still a lot I couldn't tell you last night. That too… just give me a little more time."

Tsukino lowered her eyes. It wasn't so much that she was keeping quiet; even I could tell there was a great deal she simply hadn't been able to bring herself to say.

"Let me hear it later, then. But only as much as you're up for."

"Thank you. …The biggest bad is the one I told you about last night, so you don't need to worry."

I could tell she was speaking in as light a tone as she could manage. If anyone should be anxious here, it was Tsukino, and I didn't think anything about this was really okay at all.

"So what should I be doing in the meantime?"

"There's no telling what might happen, so, Asahi, you should just stay right here at home—"

She looked at me with a troubled droop of her brows.

"Since I'm me, I can tell. You're bound to be curious about this world, aren't you."

"That's me for you. I mean, there are risks, though."

Just as Tsukino had watched the differences between her world and mine with such interest, of course I was curious too.

"As for what happens a year in the future, I do think it's better not to dig too deep into that."

"Isn't it fair game to jot down the lottery numbers, or look up which stocks are going to rise?"

"If this were a year ahead in my own world, there'd be that option, but since this is a parallel world, wouldn't the results come out different? Besides, I don't have enough money to buy stocks, and I don't even know how."

For that matter, I didn't even know whether I could get back to my own world at all.

"Anyway, I think it's fine to go out for a little while. Our phones don't connect, though… so I'll be in trouble if you're not back home by noon."

"I'll try not to get too carried away. If anything, you're the one who'll have it rough if your uncle's actually angry, rare as that is."

"You know him, right? My uncle's kind, so it'll be fine."

Tsukino and I thrust out our fists at the same moment. Three fist-bumps.

It was the usual "More bad! More hell!"

 

*

 

Since we weren't going to school, I took my time within reason, then left the house with Tsukino.

We went down the slope along the national highway, a route that felt utterly unchanged for being a different world, and reached the familiar area in front of the station.

After parting ways with Tsukino, who was headed for her uncle's house, I figured I'd wander the shopping district by the station for the time being. The karaoke joints and fast-food chains were the same too, so I couldn't tell the world was any different.

Was this how Tsukino had felt, too, when she was looking down over the town from the lookout park?

Since I'd been in no hurry, Green Mall was already open by the time I got there.

My feet carried me toward the movie theater all on their own.

Just as Tsukino had once mistaken it for the mall in her own world, the layout here was identical, and I reached the theater without getting lost.

The big cineplex, and the fragrant yet cloyingly sweet smell of popcorn wafting over, were unchanged as well. Only the lineup of showings was completely different. If events here ran the same as in my world, these were the movies that would be screening a year from now.

"There was no info on this one, but it's a two-parter, huh…"

I'd gone and learned that a movie announced for production wasn't going to wrap up in a single film.

At any rate, since I could hardly watch a movie right now, I made a circuit of the lobby and then turned on my heel.

One floor down from the theater level was another familiar bookstore. I'd been to the same chain's branch in my own world just a few days before, so the different posters at the entrance made it perfectly clear this was a bookstore in a different world.

And before I knew it, I was inside. Getting sucked into a bookstore when you've got time on your hands is an everyday reflex, so there was no helping it.

Fine details aside, the magazine titles and big hits looked more or less unchanged in Tsukino's world too. Half of me didn't want to step on another weird spoiler like the one just now; the other half wanted to check out the parallel world's bookstore lineup.

Giving in to the urge, I turned toward the novel corner. And then,

"…!? Why."

I stumbled to a halt and my eyes went wide.

I checked what was in front of me once more. I stepped closer and stared, looked away and back again, but what I was seeing didn't change.

A poster was stuck to the wall of the novel corner.

The girl there, the girl in the photo, was unmistakably Masumi Tsukino.

The black and silver roses adorning her long black hair were just as always, but her skin was paler than the Tsukino I knew, and heavy eyeshadow accentuated eyes that looked frozen over. Her lips were red as though blood were seeping through them. The shot only showed her from the chest up, but the black dress, sewn through with intricate embroidery, could not have suited her more perfectly.

Her dark, gloomy gaze was fixed on empty space, without even a hint of a smile at her mouth. Like the Tsukino I knew, and yet not Tsukino. She seemed to exude nothing but beauty and that fragility I'd felt the night before.

It was a poster for a book called "The Eternal Continuation." The author: Mikagami Owari. The same pen name as mine.

In the novel corner, hardcover copies of "The Eternal Continuation" were displayed front and center.

In other words, Tsukino, the me of this world, had made her debut as a novelist.

I got my phone online through the mall's free Wi-Fi and searched, and the details turned up on the publisher's website without any trouble.

"The Eternal Continuation" was a novel written about her parents' deaths.

It had only come out about half a year ago, yet even the search results alone made it plain the book had caused quite a stir. Tsukino had sat for any number of interviews. I didn't read the interviews themselves, but the material it dealt with, and the pity and acclaim directed at Mikagami Owari, and the backlash, too — the whole for-and-against of it came through from just the search results.

I picked up the hardcover. The black-toned cover looked exactly like something Tsukino would love, though how much of her was actually in it, I couldn't say. It showed a girl glancing back on a faintly lit night road. The book settled into my palm heavier than it looked.

I wanted to read it, and I hesitated in about equal measure. What was written here was a Tsukino I didn't know. Reading it would surely mean prying open something she'd kept hidden, without her permission.

"That book? I'd recommend it."

The voice came out of nowhere, and I nearly dropped the book.

When I turned, a clerk in the bookstore's apron was standing there with a smile.

Round glasses and soft eyes. A mellow, gentle expression, and black hair gathered into a single braid, probably to keep it out of the way while she worked.

I nearly dropped the book a second time.

It was Nanaha-senpai.

Her hair color and style were different from the person I knew, but it was unmistakably Nanaha-senpai. Her name tag read Hananokorizuki, and I'd never once seen that surname on anyone else in this town.

"It's been getting a lot of buzz, and you know the author goes to the same high school, right? All the more reason to recommend it, then. I really want as many people as possible to read this book."

Senpai spoke to me the way she would to any customer. I watched to see whether she'd realize I was Masumi Asahi, but nothing in her manner said this was anything other than a first meeting. As I'd figured, unlike with Tsukino, the world's adjustment hadn't been applied here.

For a second I wondered why Nanaha-senpai was working as a clerk here, but then it clicked: this was a timeline a year on. Senpai had already graduated high school. Nothing strange about a college student working a part-time job.

"…I especially recommend it to students who are playing hooky."

She whispered it furtively, still smiling.

Now that she mentioned it, I was still in my uniform, so I looked exactly like a guy flat-out ditching. That aside, I could feel the pressure of "if you're just going to loiter, then buy this book."

"It's a good book. …Actually, this is just between us, but I over-ordered it."

"Is that going to be okay?"

So free-spirited it was pure Nanaha-senpai.

"It's not a sales pitch just because I ordered a lot, okay? It's a good book, so it's selling just fine on its own."

Through her glasses, she gazed at the black book like something she cherished.

"…Ah. If I overdo this kind of thing, the manager scolds me. Excuse me, then～"

"Ah, th-thank you."

The black-haired Nanaha-senpai gave a little bow, then carried her stack of books back toward the register. After that she opened a magazine and started reading.

I caught sight of the manager coming over to tell her off, only to get smoothly talked around: a classic Nanaha-senpai exchange.

A fashion magazine was a rare choice for Nanaha-senpai, who used to read nothing but novels and reference books. Maybe she'd changed after starting college, or maybe she'd always read that sort of thing outside the literature club.

In any case, I took the book Tsukino had written and headed for the register.

The utterly natural way she handled me, as if she had absolutely not been slacking off with a magazine, was so very Nanaha-senpai. Leave it to the person who used to pass her silver hair off as her real color.

 

*

 

Before I knew it, I'd read the whole thing.

I'd gone into the café where Tsukino and I had spent two hours talking bad ends on the day we first met, spread the book open, and — read it straight through to the last page. On the table, my coffee sat maybe half drunk, gone stone cold.

Amid the murmur of the other customers, I let out a long, deep breath.

What was written there was the story of a Tsukino I didn't know, rendered in a familiar prose style much like my own. It wasn't the kind of entertainment fiction I always write, the light-novel sort. You might call it an I-novel: a rich, detailed record of everyday life and the emotions drifting through it.

It was based on events that had actually happened. The protagonist wasn't Tsukino herself, and the other characters were written as different people, but to me, the very same existence as her, it read as almost pure nonfiction.

The story begins with the everyday life of a high schooler just like Tsukino. Days that pass without any real incident to speak of, days that are even a little enjoyable, end in the sudden accidental death of her parents.

The protagonist goes on living in the house where her family had been. With relatives lending their help, her life itself doesn't change much, and once a spell of busyness passes, she returns to the same days as before. Her life at school and her trips to the literature club stay the same as well.

One Sunday morning a month on, at breakfast, she catches herself calling out to family who are no longer there, and, feeling the loss for real all at once, she breaks down sobbing.

That daily life, little by little, drifts out of alignment with the world I know.

The character modeled on Jun asks himself: "Can a happy novel make anyone happy?" He takes to writing novels that aren't happy endings, and to reading more and more books that aren't light novels.

The character modeled on Nanaha-senpai just up and quits both writing and reading novels. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do with novels anymore." Now a third-year, she entrusts the club to Jun and steps away, earlier than third-years usually retire.

And then the protagonist, too, quits the literature club. She's gone and changed the club, changed her friends. She can't accept the loss and the change. Even so, the days go on. The same string of flat, uneventful days as in the opening.

She falls asleep dreaming of a world that never changed, but when she wakes, the reality of loss is always there.

"Tsukino…"

"Whaaat?"

At the voice from behind me, I slid right off my chair.

When I looked up and back, Tsukino was sitting in the seat behind mine, back-to-back. Still in the same uniform as this morning, she was looking down at me where I'd landed on my backside on the floor.

"Huh, wh… why are you here?"

"'Why,' hm."

Tsukino stood and held out a hand to me, flashing her white teeth in a grin.

"So, who was it that jumped the gun and found out something I hadn't told you yet?"

"Ngh… that's… Sorry."

"It's fine. If it were me, the moment I noticed the book, I'd have bought it and read it too."

As she gave me a hand up, Tsukino turned her eyes to "The Eternal Continuation," still lying on the table.

"Now, to get back to it. 'Why are you here,' right?"

When I nodded, Tsukino showed me her phone screen. The time was well past two in the afternoon.

"You're kidding!? No, reading a whole book through will do that, I guess…"

"I got home before the noon we'd agreed on, and nobody was there. Was my book good enough to make you lose track of time?"

"That's… yeah. I was reading the whole time."

"I know you were. All of it."

She rested a hand on the back of the chair she'd just been sitting in.

"How long have you been here? No, for that matter, how did you even know I'd be here?"

"How? Well, it's me we're talking about."

Tsukino glanced outside the café.

"If I'd come to a town that's both a parallel world and a year ahead, and I had time on my hands, where would I go? Think about it that way, and it wouldn't be the lookout park or the school; I'd head for Green Mall, wouldn't I? Back when I met you, I hadn't even realized it was a different world, and I still went and peeked into the movie theater."

"Though I do get the sense that this is about the only place in Himurogioka where you can properly kill time."

"I know what you mean, but that's such an indoor-type way of thinking."

Smiling wryly, Tsukino picked up her things.

I started getting ready to leave the café too, and reached for "The Eternal Continuation."

"Eternal HellEternal Inferno."

At her murmur, my hand stopped.

"I came up with it while I was writing this book. The promise that someday I'd have you read a novel I wrote? Looks like I've gone and kept it."

Playing it off as a joke, Tsukino looked just like the girl I'd seen on the poster, like the dark, beautiful, fragile Mikagami Owari.