In the domain of the Angels, where eternal slumber reigns, sat a cake.
It was a divine masterpiece, adorned with mousse as fluffy as fragments of clouds. A sweet, fragrant mist of fruit drifted from it like a heavenly perfume.
A man captivated by sweets took hold of this celestial delicacy.
Just by looking at it, his salivary glands throbbed with anticipation. He imagined the rich, satisfying weight of a fruit cake paired with the fleeting lightness of a sponge cake—a thought that sent his soul soaring toward the heavens.
Yet, fate is a cruel jester.
Before he could taste his bliss, the man clumsily let the cake slip from his palm. It struck the ground.
Oh, what a catastrophe!
The cake plunged into a muddy puddle in a corner of the realm. In an instant, it was trampled by the indifferent boots of passersby, drenched in the musky stench of dog urine, and struck from above by bird droppings like bitter toxins. The noble treasure was reduced to a grotesque mess of filth.
In the depths of his despair, the man’s soul froze. But then, a spark of desperate brilliance lit in his mind.
I must go back… I must go back in time!
Fortunately, the angels who govern this realm possess the secret of manipulating the laws of time. To save his treasure, the man performed a “Time Ascent”—a forbidden ritual that regresses causality to a point in the past, branching the space-time continuum.
He flew back to that fleeting moment of collapse and, with a masterful grace, intercepted the falling cake.
However, by intervening, he had split the world into two: the world where the cake fell into the mire, and the world where it remained safe in his hands. These two timelines now existed as “parallel worlds.”
Yet, parallel worlds possess a powerful restorative force, seeking to return to their original state. The closer the branch is to the point of origin, the more violent the pressure of convergence becomes.
Driven by a frantic anxiety, the man began to devour the cake. As the sweet, soft cream slid down his throat, he bathed in supreme ecstasy. But the twin realities began to collapse with furious momentum. The reality of the “fallen cake” and the reality of the “eaten cake” were forcibly fused together, defying the laws of physics.
And what remained?
A nightmare. The cake—mired in mud, drenched in urine, and coated in bird droppings—was now firmly settled deep within his belly.
At least, that was what his memory told him.
When the man tentatively poked the inside of his mouth with his trembling tongue, he felt the grit of sand between his teeth. Simultaneously, the stinging stench of ammonia and the sharp acidity of bird droppings exploded across his palate.
Because the two worlds had physically merged, every speck of filth—the mud, the urine, the droppings—had been equally integrated into his body. Even if it were only half of the filth, for a gourmet with a refined palate, it was an unbearable desecration; it was a pain that tore at his very soul.
The man retched.
He vomited violently, emptying his stomach. He wiped his mouth, then wiped it again. But no matter how many times he did, the stench remained seared into the very core of his brain.
The passersby watched the man writhing on the ground with puzzled expressions. They walked through both versions of the twin spaces, unaware of the rift in reality.
Only one might have noticed him—someone who gazed directly at the man. They might have seen a blurred phantom: a man mourning a fallen cake and a man frantically devouring one, flickering and overlapping like a ghost.
The rest of the world continued in its peaceful stride. Only the man bore the weight of his actions and its wretched consequences.
What had happened to his stomach, and how his memories had been warped by the fusion of time, was something no ordinary passerby could ever know.
It was, truly, a matter for the gods alone.
“This page is the English translation of this page.”
（このページはこちらのページの英語訳版です 笑）
