Reality Rewritten
drip… drip… drip…
The sound of liquid, dripping.
When Mio’s consciousness surfaces, this is the first sound she hears.
A drip. A hospital bed. A white ceiling.
drip… drip… drip…
Mio realises she is lying there as a patient. From the needle in her arm, clear fluid is flowing into her veins.
“You’re awake.”
She turns her head to find the voice. A doctor in a white coat is standing there. His face is—
Tanaka Masahiko’s.
“I’m the attending physician. My name is Tanaka.”
Mio tries to speak. But her vocal cords are paralysed and will not function.
drip… drip… drip…
Only the sound of the drip marks the passage of time.
clatter… clatter… clatter…
Tanaka is writing something in the notes. The sound of a pen touching the metal clip-board.
clatter… clatter…
“Kitagawa Mio, twenty-nine,” Tanaka reads aloud. “Occupation: psychiatrist.”
Mio is confused. She had been a psychological counselor.
“Symptoms: impaired perception of reality, multiple personality, paranoid disorder.”
clatter… clatter…
“Duration of hospitalisation: three years and four months.”
That period does not exist in Mio’s memory. Until yesterday, she had been working in the hospital.
Tanaka approaches Mio’s pillow.
“You are ill.”
His voice is gentle, and yet full of a certainty that allows no contradiction.
“The memory of working as a counselor is entirely a delusion.”
hiss… hiss… hiss…
Mio’s breathing grows shallow.
She tries to trace her memories. The commute to the hospital, the sessions with patients, the scene of the counseling room.
But these memories are growing misty, like fog.
hiss… hiss…
“You are in this hospital as a patient,” Tanaka goes on. “We are treating you.”
Mio looks at her own hands. Around her wrist, an inpatient ID band is fastened.
“Patient No. 0847 Kitagawa Mio Psychiatric Ward D-3.”
She has no memory of when it was put there.
clunk… clunk… clunk…
The door of the room opens.
A nurse comes in. Her face is Yamada Hanako’s.
“Time for your medication.”
In Yamada’s hands are a small paper cup and a tablet.
click…
The tablet rattles in the paper cup.
“Please take this.”
Mio shakes her head. But her body will not move as she wishes.
Yamada places the tablet in Mio’s mouth. She makes her drink water.
gulp… gulp…
The sound of liquid going down her throat. A bitter taste spreads through her mouth.
“This medicine will calm the delusions,” Yamada explains. “You’ll be able to tell reality from dreams again.”
But for Mio, it is no longer possible to tell which is reality and which is the delusion.
buzz… buzz… buzz…
The effect of the medicine begins to appear.
Mio’s consciousness grows hazy. Her thoughts become as if wrapped in fog.
buzz… buzz…
The sound of the drug flowing through her bloodstream echoes in her eardrums.
“Feeling better?” Tanaka’s voice comes from far away.
Mio tries to answer. But words will not come.
Memory, emotion, self — all are dissolving into the fog of the drug.
buzz… buzz… buzz…
And then Mio understands.
This sound is not the sound of a drug.
It is the sound of her very ability to perceive reality being rewritten from the root.
beep… beep… beep…
She hears the sound of machines.
Mio looks around. Monitoring equipment is installed in the room. An ECG, a blood-pressure monitor, a brainwave recorder.
beep… beep…
On the screen of the brainwave recorder, Mio’s brain activity is displayed in real time.
And Mio is struck with horror.
What is shown on screen is not the brainwave of one person.
Multiple brainwave patterns are displayed overlapping one another.
Tanaka’s brainwaves. Yamada’s. Sato’s. And Mio’s own.
beep… beep… beep…
“Interesting, isn’t it?”
Tanaka points at the screen.
“Your brain is generating several personalities simultaneously.”
Mio stares at the screen. Indeed, four different brainwave patterns can be identified.
“But none of those personalities actually exist,” Tanaka explains. “They are all products of your imagination.”
beep… beep…
“Tanaka Masahiko, Yamada Hanako, Sato Kenta—”
Tanaka’s voice is gradually changing into Mio’s voice.
“All of them are you yourself.”
zzt… zzt… zzt…
White noise floods into Mio’s skull.
But this time the noise has a regularity.
zzt… zzt… zzt…
A digital signal. A data stream.
Mio is beginning to understand.
Her perception of reality is being manipulated from outside.
“Who…”
Mio wrings out her voice.
“Who is manipulating me?”
Tanaka smiles. And that smile is the same as the smile she sees when she looks at herself in the mirror.
“You yourself.”
tick… tick… tick…
The sound of the clock changes.
Instead of the normal one-second interval, it marks an irregular rhythm.
tick… tick tick… tick… tick tick tick…
The flow of time is warped.
Mio realizes. That she herself is manipulating the time axis.
Memories of the past, perception of the present, predictions of the future — all of them are intermingled, constituting a single reality.
tick… tick tick… tick…
“The fourth door has been opened.”
Tanaka’s voice whispers from inside Mio.
As there is a moment when water ceases to be water, something is dwelling in Mio’s fingertips.
tremble… tremble… tremble…
A microscopic shudder, as if the material world is sensing Mio’s presence and shrinking from it.
The metal of the drip stand, the wood of the bed, the molecules in the air — everything begins to resonate with the existence that is Mio.
groan… groan… groan…
With each breath Mio draws, the density of the air shifts.
As if her lungs were the lungs of the world.
groan… groan…
The very concept of weight flows and fluctuates according to the rising and falling of her emotions.
Fear generates gravity; bewilderment generates buoyancy; and deep loneliness — a crushing pressure that flattens everything.
crack… crack…
In the walls of the room, fissures spread in the same rhythm as Mio’s heartbeat.
The building is trying to synchronize with Mio’s biological rhythm, but failing because the material reaches its limits.
hiss… hiss… hiss…
Mio’s breathing becomes the fundamental rhythm of existence.
hiss… hiss…
With each breath, the outline of the world blurs.
The boundary between solid and liquid, between past and future, between self and other — all of them ebb and flow with the tide of Mio’s consciousness.
Mio understands. She has grasped the true nature of what she had been investigating.
Empathy is not a matter of crossing boundaries — it is a matter of erasing the boundaries themselves.
crash… crash… crash…
From underfoot, invisible ripples spread out in concentric rings.
They are ripples of sound, ripples of consciousness, ripples of existence.
crackle… crackle… crackle…
The air around Mio begins to carry something.
It is not an electric charge; it is something more fundamental. A density of being. A concentration of consciousness.
crackle… crackle…
Space itself is generating microscopic fractures, unable to bear the existence of Mio.
Between reality and unreality, tiny lightning bolts run.
Mio turns her consciousness inward.
warp…
In accordance with the trajectory of her thought, the geometry of the room transforms.
Straight lines become curves in proportion to the complexity of her thinking; angles turn obtuse or acute in response to the sharpness of her emotion.
warp… warp…
When Mio walks, the very concept of walking as an act warps.
She understands: movement is not a matter of passing through space, but of rewriting space to suit oneself.
pat… pat… pat…
Only the footsteps go on sounding as the unchanging amid the change.
They were Mio’s last anchor — proof that she had once been human.
silence…
Mio, without awareness, erases the very phenomenon of sound.
silence…
Complete stillness. But this is not the absence of sound.
It is the state in which all the possibilities of sound have converged upon a single point.
In this silence, Mio realizes something terrible.
That her confirmation of her own existence had depended upon sensory responses from others.
In a world without sound, Mio loses the sense of her own boundaries.
silence…
Panic.
But even that panic cannot produce a sound.
A soundless scream spirals inside Mio.
“Give it back.”
A prayer from within the heart.
“Without sound, I am not me.”
And then—
boom…
An enormous sound shakes the world.
Mio’s fear pours into reality as a flood of sound.
Every sound returns at once.
drip drip drip… clatter clatter… hiss hiss… beep beep beep… zzt zzt zzt… tick tick tick… groan groan groan… crackle crackle…
A vortex of sound envelops Mio.
She understands.
That she has become the master of sound.
That she has become the creator of reality.
scritch… scratch… scritch… scratch…
Mio takes up the pen.
But the pen does not seek paper. The air itself has become her recording medium.
scritch… scratch…
The trail of light, tracing the trajectory of thought, rises to float in space.
“The boundary undergoes its fourth transformation.”
Not as characters, but as concepts directly inscribed into space.
“The one who perceives becomes the world that is perceived.”
“Matter obeys consciousness, and consciousness dissolves into the abyss of being.”
Mio’s hand no longer follows her own will.
Guided by a greater will — or perhaps a will-less force — it goes on writing truths.
“The concept of danger presupposes separation.”
“In an integrated consciousness, danger does not exist.”
“What remains is only transformation.”
drip… drip… drip…
The sound of the drip returns, like an eternal accompaniment.
Mio is in the hospital bed once more.
But — this room is not the room she remembers.
The colour of the wall is subtly different. The ceiling is a touch lower. The view from the window is shifted very slightly to the left.
The trajectory Mio walked in thought had been engraved on the space.
drip… drip…
Tanaka appears. This time he is only an outline.
A human form woven of threads of light. A phantom in whom only the voice is real.
“You have crossed the threshold.”
The voice is at once the voice of the Tanaka in Mio’s memory and the voice of no one at all.
“There is no longer a path to return.”
Mio searches for a mirror.
What is reflected there — only her own outline in light.
A bundle of pure perception, having released the concept of a body.
Yet Mio is still Mio.
drip… drip… drip…
Only the sound of the drip goes on sounding as the unchanging amid the change.
As the last anchor of time.
flutter… flutter… flutter…
Mio’s consciousness disperses, like the seeds of a dandelion.
flutter… flutter…
Leaving behind the constraint of individuality, it permeates into every corner of space.
Through the walls of the room, filling the corridor, enveloping the whole building.
And then, into the city. Into the world.
flutter… flutter… flutter…
Countless heartbeats touch Mio’s diffused consciousness.
The dreams of sleepers, the thoughts of those who are awake, the innocence of children, the resignation of the old.
Everything flows into Mio, and Mio flows into everything.
The last trace of the concept of boundary is scattered on the wind.
And Mio understands.
The true nature of what she had been seeking.
Perfect empathy.
The eternal cycle of the one and the many.
This was where the journey ended.
scritch… scratch… scritch… scratch…
A hand that belongs to no one, in a voice that belongs to no one, inscribes the last record.
“I became a single drop of water and returned to the sea.”
“But the sea too is made of me, a single drop.”
“The end is a beginning, and the beginning was already over.”
In a world where only sound remained, a door opens quietly to a new stage.
clack… clack… clack…
From beyond the white corridor, all footsteps come together into one and ring out.
They are Mio’s footsteps, and humanity’s footsteps, and—
the footsteps of those who are about to begin.