Part 54: Okabe Rintarou struggles to understand the shape of the new timeline

I leave the development room, look around the lounge, behind the sofa, in the dressing room, the bathroom, and the shower room. I look down the window to the street below. But Moeka's nowhere to be found.

She disappeared... She vanished... This can't be...



I desperately convinced myself that that phenomenon was a dream, or a phantom. The same thing has happened again.

Does this mean Moeka disappeared because I made her experiment? Why did she disappear?! What does it mean to disappear?! Did I undo her entire existence?! Did she get blown off into the valley between dimensions?!

I start shivering in fear of my own mistakes.



I grab her shoulders and shake her.

"Where's Kiryuu Moeka? She was here just now, wasn't she?!"

"nnNNnnaaAAaahh? wwWWhhhOO?"

"Kiryuu Moeka!"

Daru and Kurisu also ask with their glances.



"Never heard of her."

"...No way."

So I erased Moeka's existence after all...

Wait, did I really?

I don't want to accept it. I won't accept the fact that I killed her!

"Okabe... again?"

"What do you mean, 'again'?"



"Oh yeah, 'Reading Steiner'."

I certainly did give that name to this phenomenon, or ability. When the past changes the world line, people's memories are reconstructed to match that world line. I just thought of that possibility. If that's true, then how come only my memories continue even in the world line after the past changed?

The answer to that may be the demon eye, Reading Steiner. Looks like Kurisu remembers the name I gave in yesterday's explanation. To tell the truth, I only thought of that ability as a suitabe explanation, but now that Moeka has disappeared, I want to believe that the demon eye is real. Their memories. Only their memories of Moeka have disappeared! Only I remember because of Reading Steiner. That's definitely it!

Anyway, I need to contact Moeka. I want to make sure I didn't erase her very existence.



Now, in this world and at this time, I've only contacted her by mail.


Now all I can do is wait for her reply. Please, reply...



"Ah, yeah, I'm okay..."

My mental state is not okay, but I'm desperately feigning calmness since I don't want to recognize that Moeka's existence disappeared.

"...Assistant, how much do you remember about the current experiment?"

"I don't even remember experimenting. You sent a D-mail just now, didn't you?"

"...Yeah. But things are different from yesterday. I didn't send the D-mail. Kiryuu Moeka did."

And the perpetrator disappeared from the room like smoke. She shouldn't have had time to walk out. Which reminds me, yesterday, with the LOTO SIX experiment, Daru teleported from the development room to the lounge... so I shouldn't think that she disappeared, but rather she instantly moved somewhere. I hope that's it...

I couldn't calm down while waiting for Moeka's response, so I check my phone's history for the mails Moeka and I exchanged.

...That's strange.



But the mails I received from Moeka after that time... the dozens of mails I should've received from that woman are nowhere to be found. Even the existence of those mails disappeared

The D-mail to cancel the phone model exchange. Its arrival date was July 31. A time paradox occurred, and at the same time Moeka received the D-mail, her existence disappeared...

I shiver once I notice that line of thought has no contradictions.
No way.
That can't be.
I mean, her D-mail was something as harmless as "Don't change phone models", you know? So then, what's the cause? What's the cause for all trace of Moeka these four days after August 1 to disappear...?



"...I don't know. Not a single person has yet experienced a time paradox."

"But before, didn't you say something like the world would disappear?"

"I said that was only a theory. Perhaps nothing happens, and like a certain movie, history gets amended to accommodate the paradox. According to Dr. Hawking's chronology protection conjecture, it's impossible to do things that can possibly cause time paradoxes in the first place."

So is everything just a hypothesis...



"Since Mayushii and Okarin and everyone can talk like this, I think that a paradox hasn't happened. Mayushii doesn't know that Moeka person, but I'm sure she's okay too♪"

"That's Mayushii for you. A cute dumb girl."

"Ehh? Mayushii's not a dumb girl."

Right now, I hate how Mayuri and Daru can have such a carefree conversation. They don't realize the gravity of the situation. Even though a person's existence may have disappeared from the world...!

In fact, if Moeka really did vanish, then at the same time, that means our creation, the Microwave Ophone (Temp), is also responsible for that mass disappearance phenomenon. I blew out the existences of that many humans...

I don't want to think such frightening things, so I desperately shake my head.







"...Ha, haha."

My body goes limp from the relief...

Her reply came. It came.

Moeka still exists in this world. She didn't disappear. Knowing that made my impatience, my tension, and my fears all wash away. I'm moved to tears. Not because I was worried for Moeka, but because I had avoided the fearful situation of being responsible for erasing someone's existence.



Urged by Kurisu, I explain everything that just happened.