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[Nano's been pretty quiet for the past week or so. She's still been going to school every day and working at the inn, but she mostly keeps to herself, and has been going directly home afterward. Those accustomed to seeing her out and about during the 13th Hour helping to fight demons will find her conspicuously absent. So it's perhaps a relief to anyone who's been wondering or worrying about her that she's finally back on the network, doing her best not to look as sad as she feels.]

U-um... would anyone like to come over for dinner sometime? Or... or maybe I could have another party or a sleepover at the inn? Would anyone be interested in that?

[It's clear something else is up, but she's trying not to focus on that.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ahaha...

I actually have two best friends from home. Both of them have ended up here at some point, but... neither of them are actually from my world!

It's strange, huh?

I don't understand. How are they from your world but not?

It seems like there are a lot of different parallel worlds out there.

[Atsuro gives a small shrug.]

They all depend on these little decisions we made during the lockdown - the demon invasion.

I've never heard of anything like that before.

Maybe they were important to affect the fate of the world and spin it off into different outcomes.

Someday, when you have to decide between having pancakes or waffles for breakfast, you'll probably start your own spin-off.

What? I didn't know my breakfast was so important! W-what happens if I eat miso and rice?

We'll call that the Prime Timeline. Pancake Timeline probably ends in catastrophe because you run out of syrup and the Butterfly Effect makes a riot break out, and Waffle Timeline ends in a mess because I've never made waffles without making a mess.

I'm never eating pancakes again.

But that's a choice you're making too! If you never eat pancakes again, that timeline could have different consequences altogether. Maybe one morning when you were meant to eat pancakes, you eat miso and the miso's gone bad.

Not that miso ever really goes bad.

[A slight pause.]

Aha, I'm just teasing, but... you'd be surprised at the things that make a difference sometimes.

Timelines are so complicated...

Yeah - There was this one timeline where, depending on who we gave someone's lost bag to, three or four people's lives were totally changed.

[Atsuro decides that saying they would die was probably not going to make Nano feel any better here.]

[Yes, that would definitely not be a good thing. Nano's friends with Midori, after all.]

All over a lost bag...

...Anyway.

The lesson I've learned is that there's always a timeline where the best possible outcome can happen.

That's a good way of looking at it.

[But maybe sometimes you weren't living in that one.]

Sometimes, I think about me and my friends being together in a different timeline.

It doesn't help that much, but it's nice to think about, anyway.

Are they not all together in the one you're from?

Well...

I'm here right now, aren't I?

...I guess so.

...Heh. Well. I guess what I mean is, it doesn't matter if we're apart. There's always a place where we're together.

I've never heard of a world where Kazuya and I aren't best friends.

Best friends are special that way.

...They say there are an infinite amount of universes out there, so...

I'm sure in any universe where the two of us exist, we'll still be friends, too.