Suppose—and I mean just suppose—that there existed an eternal dream.
Within this dream, you could obtain everything you ever wanted, experience lives you had never lived, and have someone who would always love you.
Would you be willing to immerse yourself in that dream forever?
“The prerequisite for answering that question would be whether I could still distinguish reality from illusion.”
Inside a transparent school building seemingly constructed from endless panes of glass, Makoto Tsukimi rested his chin on one hand, listening to his teacher’s lecture.
Nearly a month had passed since his transmigration and the awakening of his memories.
The memories of two different worlds overlapped within his mind, allowing Makoto to observe the world he had transmigrated into from the perspective of an outsider.
If he had to describe it in a single word, that word would be bizarre.
The world’s technological development was so peculiar that he hardly knew what to say about it.
A space elevator had already been developed.
According to reports, controlled nuclear fusion projects were already underway.
Vast railway networks stretched across the entire world, connecting practically everyone.
Yet this world had no airplanes, only railways.
It had tablet computers but no smartphones.
Even automobiles had apparently skipped the entire era of gasoline engines and moved directly into the age of electric vehicles.
This was nothing like the technological progression Makoto remembered, where civilizations gradually developed their technologies step by step.
Instead, it resembled the civilizations depicted in certain movies and television series, where technological advancement depended on archaeological discoveries.
When new technologies could be unearthed from time to time, technological development would naturally follow some extremely strange paths.
And Makoto wasn’t entirely without evidence to support this theory.
For one thing, the number of countries in this world exceeded anything an ordinary person could imagine.
Flipping through the history textbook in his hands, he could see that the time it had taken for civilization to progress from slavery to feudalism, and then from feudalism to capitalism, was astonishingly short.
The entire process had essentially been completed within a few centuries, involving only three changes of dynasty.
Perhaps it was precisely because of this that the various regions of this world had rarely experienced what could be called wars of unification.
Without wars of unification, there naturally wouldn’t be unified governments established as a result of them.
Countless countries, each roughly the size of a province, were densely scattered throughout the world.
Even individual towns possessed their own administrative systems.
It was as though the tribes of ancient times, before they could establish powerful centralized states capable of concentrating their resources on major undertakings, had suddenly unearthed alien technology advanced enough to bring about modernization.
Consequently, they had all rushed into modern society as hurriedly as people flocking to a marketplace.
“No First Industrial Revolution, no Second Industrial Revolution, and not a trace of the Renaissance. Technological advancement seems to have been pumped full of stimulants, with new inventions suddenly appearing out of nowhere. Yet in everyday life, there isn’t the slightest clue as to how any of this happened.”
Makoto shook his head and sighed.
However, if someone were to ask whether he was particularly concerned about the matter, the answer would probably be no.
The world was far too vast, and history far too distant.
Matters such as uncovering the truth behind the world’s mysteries were better left to actual heroes.
As an ordinary person living on this earth, Makoto cared only about the small piece of the world immediately surrounding him.
For example…
Perhaps because technology had developed too rapidly, or perhaps because people had never invented these technologies themselves and had merely excavated them from ancient ruins, many secondary developments that would normally accompany technological progress had never appeared in this world.
“Can something with only a single search engine even be called the internet?”
Taking out his phone and casually browsing through it, Makoto found only a handful of crude applications and a window that displayed nothing but a search bar when opened.
Despite the world having already entered the digital age and the internet having long since been invented, the circulation of information was nowhere near as vibrant as it had been in his previous life.
“I can’t help feeling like I’ve been handed the script of a protagonist who makes a fortune by copying works from his previous world. But are the works I remember actually real, or are they just products of my imagination? Since those memories existed before my ability awakened, they should be real… probably.”
Muttering to himself, Makoto turned his head and glanced to the side.
Outside the transparent glass classroom, a gigantic whale suddenly leaped out of the water, while radiant angels flew freely across the brilliant blue sky.
Makoto deliberately began manipulating his senses with his mind.
As he interfered with his perception, the surrounding space underwent sweeping transformations.
One moment, it became an endless grassland.
The next, it transformed into a vast blue ocean.
Then, in another instant, it became the pitch-black emptiness of outer space.
Yet regardless of how the scenery changed, Makoto could still hear the teacher delivering the lesson inside the classroom.
That’s right.
Throughout all of this, Makoto’s physical position in the real world had not changed in the slightest.
He had merely manipulated his senses to make himself perceive these scenes.
As for the images themselves, they were actually pictures he had found on the internet the previous night.
[Sensory Manipulation]
That was the name Makoto had given to the ability that appeared after his memories awakened.
Rather than a supernatural power, its fundamental nature was actually closer to a physiological disorder.
Put simply, Makoto had been granted unrestricted access to his body’s controls.
Through conscious thought, he could interfere with his hearing, vision, touch, and every other sense, allowing himself to see whatever he wished to see, hear whatever he wished to hear, and smell whatever he wished to smell.
At first glance, didn’t this ability seem to have nothing but advantages?
Unfortunately, human beings cannot completely control their own thoughts.
We cannot simply become angry whenever we wish, nor can we become happy at will.
As the old saying goes:
If I tell you not to think of a white elephant, a white elephant will inevitably appear in your mind.
During the initial stages of his ability’s awakening, Makoto had been almost completely incapable of controlling his senses.
In fact, even now, there were many occasions when he couldn’t distinguish whether what he was seeing truly existed or was merely an illusion.
For example, when he woke up in the morning, he might suddenly see his parents from his previous life standing before him.
When he walked down the street, the pterosaur he believed he was riding might actually be nothing more than a taxi.
Several times after school, he had seen magical girls dressed in elaborate outfits flying through the sky.
Sometimes, he would encounter enormous, strangely painted objects occupying entire corners of the city.
And two weeks earlier, he had even witnessed an apocalyptic storm of unimaginable proportions engulfing the entire world, making him believe that he had already died once.
Illusion and reality intertwined within Makoto’s vision.
In his eyes, the world had become a hazy blend of colors in which nothing could be clearly distinguished.
Yet Makoto wasn’t particularly bothered by this.
He had no parents, no relatives, and no friends.
Having grown up in a welfare institution since childhood, the boy had awakened his memories and subsequently learned about the bizarre course of historical development in this world.
As a result, the sense that reality itself was somehow unreal had only grown stronger.
After all, could anyone else do what he could?
Every day, he could watch an Ultraman battle gigantic monsters so realistically that it seemed completely genuine.
Dinosaurs passed by him daily.
He frequently saw magical girls in magnificent costumes leaping through the night sky.
As for whether his hallucinations might eventually cause him to encounter something that endangered his life…
Perhaps some subconscious instinct for self-preservation was protecting him.
At the very least, Makoto had yet to experience an incident in which he imagined solid ground where there was nothing, stepped into empty space, and injured himself as a result.
“Still, I really do need to find some kind of anchor that lets me distinguish reality from illusion. Fantasy without any connection to reality isn’t something you can survive on. I also need to find a way to earn some money. If I can’t make a living in the real world, I won’t even have the luxury of indulging in fantasy.”
Makoto himself had absolutely no objections to immersing himself in illusions.
However deeply he indulged in them, he still needed to ensure that his physical body remained alive in reality.
He wanted to live for a very long time.
He wanted to use his Sensory Manipulation ability to experience even more extraordinary things.
Strictly speaking, if Makoto could perfectly control and effectively utilize his ability, he might even be able to create a companion who belonged entirely to him.
A companion constructed completely from his own imagination, someone he could touch, communicate with, and whose personality would be perfectly compatible with his own.
“The ultimate dream of a hardcore anime otaku, huh? But then again…”
He gazed at the enormous whale rising from the ground beside the classroom.
“Isn’t fantasy simply the purest expression of human desire? People abandon their fantasies only because fantasy is ultimately just fantasy, something that can never truly compare to the sensory experiences of reality. But for me, there’s no difference between the two in the first place.”
Resting his chin on one hand, Makoto continued murmuring to himself.
If something was completely imperceptible to everyone else, but you could see it, touch it, and even communicate with it…
Then, as far as you were concerned, could it truly be called fake?