Multiple Realities
ring… ring… ring…
A telephone rings and cuts through Mio’s sleep.
4:17 a.m. Red digits float in the darkness of the digital clock.
Mio picks up the receiver.
“Yes…”
“Please, Doctor. Help me.”
The voice belongs to Tanaka Masahiko. Yet it resonates not through the telephone line but from inside Mio herself.
ring… ring… ring…
The telephone goes on ringing. Mio lifts the receiver once more.
“Is this Dr Kitagawa?”
This time it is Yamada Hanako’s voice.
“The Tanaka inside me is going wild.”
Mio stares at the receiver. The telephone cord had been pulled from the wall.
ring… ring… ring…
Yet the sound does not stop.
clatter… clatter… clatter…
Mio prepares to go to the hospital. The sound of a key turning, the sound of a door opening, the sound of feet descending stairs.
Every sound is overlaid with sounds from inside the dream, and arrives at her ears doubled.
pat… pat… pat…
The sound of Mio’s bare feet on the corridor floor. But she cannot tell whether it is her own footsteps, or the footsteps of someone in the dream.
She steps outside the apartment and the sounds of the city wrap themselves around her.
hmmm… hmmm…
A car engine.
chirp… chirp…
A birdsong.
shhhh… shhhh…
Wind stirring the leaves.
But in between these sounds—
clack… clack… clack…
those footsteps are mixed in.
rattle… rattle… rattle…
In the train carriage, Mio is sorting through patient files.
Tanaka Masahiko’s file is still blank. And yet in Mio’s memory her conversation with him is certainly inscribed.
A middle-aged man is reading a newspaper. rustle… rustle…
An office worker is touching up her make-up. click… click…
A student is listening to music through earphones. hiss… hiss…
And then—
Tanaka Masahiko is sitting in the seat facing her.
Mio blinks. blink…
Tanaka’s figure vanishes.
blink…
Yamada Hanako is sitting there.
blink…
An elderly man she does not know is sitting there.
blink…
Tanaka appears again.
He looks at Mio and moves his lips in silence.
“A third patient will come today.”
No sound reaches her. Yet Mio understands his words.
tick… tick… tick…
The hospital clock announces Mio’s arrival.
8:45 a.m.
Mio heads for the counseling room. She passes a colleague in the corridor.
“Good morning, Dr Kitagawa.”
“Good morning.”
Mio answers, but she cannot see her colleague’s face. Only a voice hanging in the air.
clack… clack… clack…
Her own footsteps echo in the corridor. But the sound does not match the rhythm of her walking.
When she enters the counseling room, a new file lies on the desk.
“Sato Kenta, 35, chronic insomnia…”
Mio sits down. scrape…
She takes up her pen.
scritch… scratch…
But before the pen’s tip carves its first character—
knock… knock… knock…
A knock at the door.
“Excuse me.”
The one who enters is a man in his mid-thirties. Thin. Deep shadows under the eyes. The very image of Tanaka Masahiko.
“I’m Sato Kenta.”
His voice is Tanaka’s.
Mio is confused. Is this Tanaka, or Sato? Or is it—
“Please, sit down.”
scrape… scrape…
The sound of Sato sitting. Mio senses his breathing.
hiss… huff… hiss… huff…
The same rhythm as Tanaka’s. The same pattern as Yamada’s.
“Tell me about your symptoms.”
“I can’t sleep,” Sato’s voice trembles. “Every time I sleep, I lose my way into the dreams of other people.”
Mio’s pen stops.
“Other people’s dreams?”
“Yes. A female counselor at a hospital…”
scritch… scratch…
Mio’s hand moves of its own accord and begins to write.
“The patient is invading the empath’s dreams.”
“Dream-sharing phenomenon occurring.”
“The dissolution of boundaries is bilateral.”
zzt… zzt… zzt…
White noise floods into Mio’s skull.
Sato’s face is changing into Tanaka’s face. And into Yamada’s too.
blink… blink… blink…
With each of Mio’s blinks the personality facing her is exchanged.
“It’s Tanaka.”
blink…
“It’s Yamada.”
blink…
“It’s Sato.”
blink…
“It’s Kitagawa Mio.”
Mio looks in the mirror. What is reflected there is Sato’s face.
hiss… huff… hiss… huff…
Four breathings synchronize into a single rhythm.
Four breathings. Four heartbeats. Four blinks.
But is it truly four?
Mio stares at her own hands. They are trembling, but the trembling is not from fear.
It is resonance.
The air in the room grows heavy, like water.
hiss… huff… hiss… huff…
Someone’s breathing fills Mio’s lungs. Someone’s memories race through Mio’s nerves.
And from far away — as if rising through water — a voice sounds.
“There never was a boundary, from the very beginning.”
That voice belongs to none of them — not Tanaka, not Yamada, not Sato.
Nor is it Mio’s own.
“You have always been alone.”
Mio tries to stand. But she finds there are several bodies. A body that stands, a body that goes on sitting, a body that turns, a body that looks down.
Which one is the real self? She can no longer tell.
tick… tick… tick…
tick… tick… tick…
The clock’s hands are pointing simultaneously to multiple times.
The face of the clock as it appears in Mio’s pupils. There, many overlapping hands can be seen. Past time, future time, time that does not exist.
tick… tick… tick…
But what is being marked is not time.
It is the fragments of Mio’s consciousness.
scritch… scratch…
Someone is holding the pen. Is it Mio’s hand, or someone else’s?
On the white paper, characters are rising into visibility. Yet Mio has no memory of having written them.
“Recorder: unknown.”
“Subject: unknown.”
“Symptom: ambiguity of existence.”
The characters, like ink dissolving in water, alter their form upon the page.
And the last words that remain—
“Who is treating whom?”
silence…
silence…
Stillness fills the room.
But this is not the absence of sound.
It is the state in which all sounds have converged upon a single point.
Mio understands.
The thing she was searching for. The thing she feared. The thing she was trying to flee.
All of them were the same thing.
Her own self.
clack… clack… clack…
Footsteps are heard.
But no one is walking.
Only the sound moves through the space.
Mio follows the sound and leaves the room. She steps out into the corridor.
A white corridor. A passage that goes on without end.
There, countless doors line the walls.
On every door, Mio’s name is written.
Kitagawa Mio.
Kitagawa Mio.
Kitagawa Mio.
Mio opens one door.
Inside is another consulting room.
Another Mio faces another patient.
clack… clack… clack…
The sound continues beyond the door.
Mio opens the next door. And the next.
In every room, Mio is there.
As a patient. As a counselor. As an observer. As the observed.
“Which is the real you?”
A voice rings out in the corridor.
Mio turns.
There is no one there.
But the voice goes on.
“Or is all of it the real you?”
blink…
Mio opens her eyes.
The counseling room. The clock reads—
8:45 a.m.
On the desk lies Sato Kenta’s file.
But words had already been written inside that file. In Mio’s own hand.
“Patient: Sato Kenta, 35, chronic insomnia.”
“Symptom: invasion of other people’s dreams.”
“Diagnosis: secondary infection of empath syndrome.”
“Course: the patient is being absorbed into the counselor’s dream world.”
Mio telephones reception.
“Sato Kenta’s appointment—?”
“There is an appointment at 9 a.m. this morning.”
She sets down the receiver. Mio’s hand is trembling.
This time, the patient is real.
But—
knock… knock… knock…
A knock at the door.
“Excuse me.”
The one who entered was Mio herself.
Another Kitagawa Mio, wearing a white coat.
“I have come as Sato Kenta, for my appointment.”
The other Mio sits down across from Mio.
scrape… scrape…
“My symptom is,” the other Mio begins, “that I invade other people’s dreams.”
Mio looks in the mirror. Nothing is reflected there.
scritch… scratch… scritch… scratch…
Two pens inscribe the same characters into two different records.
“The empath multiplies.”
“The boundary between counselor and patient has vanished.”
“The definition of reality is collapsing.”
That night, Mio feared to sleep.
But she no longer had a choice.
The distinction between waking and sleep, the boundary between reality and dream — these had already ceased to exist.
clack… clack… clack…
In the white corridor, countless Mios are walking.
A Mio who is a counselor, a Mio who is a patient, a Mio being treated, a Mio doing the treating.
“Who are you?”
“Where are you?”
“Do you exist?”
Mio’s voice echoes in the corridor.
But no one answers.
scritch… scratch… scritch… scratch…
Only the sound of the pen goes on recording a shattered reality.
Mio’s hand goes on inscribing characters, unconsciously.
In the dream. In reality. In a place that is neither.
scritch… scratch… scritch… scratch…
Only the sound goes on speaking the truth.