Master of the Machete Style Manga

Chapter 48: What kind of existence is Ken Sakamoto?
Ai Hoshihara first confirmed the place where she had passed out drunk in her dream, and then visited Ken Sakamoto's residence and the art school he attended.

The residence was room 403 in an apartment building, but it was occupied by a woman, not Ken Sakamoto.

However, when she searched for the keywords "Sakamoto Ken" and "manga," she found some related information online.

A man named Ken Sakamoto drew a manga called "Chainsaw Man" and published it on a JUMP-owned web site.

However, when she searched for the title "Young Lady, Sniper Rifle, and Pantyhose!", the results showed that the pen name was March Spring.

These two comics were released in the same week. One had the same title as I remembered, and the other had the same author's name as I remembered.

If it were just a dream about the "future," Ai Hoshihara wouldn't be taking it so seriously now.

More importantly, these days, she often recalls those scenes.

The scene was incredibly realistic, stimulating every sense of sight, hearing, smell, and touch... every single detail during our intimate moments.

Ai Hoshihara felt that she couldn't possibly be the type of person who always had erotic dreams, especially since it was always the same man she had never met. She had consulted a psychologist, and this situation was extremely unusual.

Then she continued to search for clues, recording information from each fragment of her dreams and piecing them together to form a rough timeline.

First, a time baseline was established, which was the topic that made her so depressed that she wanted to drink. The outline was proposed within 2015, so the time when she first met him was Time0=2015.

Then, before the ending, I remember mentioning something like, "Let's go to the World Expo."

Since the Osaka Expo is scheduled for 2025, then T2 = 2025.

Another crucial point is that for a period of time, restaurants and businesses across the country announced their closure, all foreign flights were suspended, and there was no one on the streets.

That unusual time period seems to be around 2020.

She must have gotten two tickets to the opening ceremony of the Olympics in advance from her school or somewhere else. However, the Olympics were postponed, and she even discussed it with Ken Sakamoto.

As for the reason for the delay, my memory is a bit hazy, and I can't recall it.

But she remembered that in her dream she had a very uncomfortable respiratory illness, which he took care of at home. After she recovered, he got it, and it took about a month for him to recover.

Since the Olympics have been postponed, the new date will be after the originally scheduled date in the summer of 2020.

It's impossible to pinpoint the exact time, but I'd estimate it's around T1, which is the midpoint between T0 and T2.

Near T1, there is another point that can serve as an anchor point.

That was during the time when Ken Sakamoto had a fever, she read a novel he recommended, which was translated from Chinese and was called "The Three-Body Problem".

Ken Sakamoto knew she liked science fiction, and since the book had just been published in Japanese, he recommended it to her. She remembered that conversation very clearly.

She was quite surprised by this scene in her dream. She didn't expect that Ken Sakamoto would pay attention to Chinese science fiction novels, because she had already read the English version of "The Three-Body Problem" at the end of 2014. It had just been published in North America, and she asked a friend to buy it for her.

Therefore, we now have three time anchor points, corresponding to:
The starting year T0 is 2015, which is now.

Midpoint T1 = 2020, anchor points include "The Three-Body Problem", infectious diseases, and Olympic postponement.

The ending T2 is 2025, with the World Expo as the anchor point.

With these three anchor points, and by recalling the time spent with him, the clothing of the two people, and the surrounding environment, one can distinguish the four seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

Next comes the hardest part of recalling, because in that dream, what I remember most clearly are things related to him, anything. The less related something is to him, the more blurred the impression becomes.

Flip the notebook to the back, and you'll find a folded map of Tokyo tucked inside.

Unfold the map; it's marked with circles, dots, and lines, and there are notes attached to it.

In dreams, the difficulty lies not so much in determining the "time," but in determining the "location," it becomes extremely challenging.

There are a few key pieces of information.

First was Kanzaki Art Academy, the art school he attended.

The date is certain: she enrolled in 2015. She drew a circle around the Kanzaki Art Academy.

Then there was Ueno Zoo. In that dream, I went to the zoo with him to see a giant panda named "Xiang Xiang".

I can't remember what the giant panda looked like, but I do remember the bustling crowds and my conversation with Ken Sakamoto.

A search revealed that there is currently no giant panda with that name at Ueno Zoo.

Therefore, it can be inferred that the time is from today until the time of T1.

She also drew a circle at Ueno Zoo.

Finally, there's her own place, the University of Tokyo, which was also a destination where the two had dates.

Draw a red circle around it as well.

Starting from these three red circles, mark them on Google Street View based on the approximate duration and direction of the ride, as well as the vague outline of the destination. Then, go there in person to confirm that what you see in front of you matches the general outline in your dream.

Ai Hoshihara then marked some of the places where she and he had actually dated, such as distant train stations, coffee shops, and riverside paths.

Ai Hoshino was certain that she had never been to these places, nor had she seen any information about them on the internet.

After all, these are all ordinary and inconspicuous locations, and the probability of them being seen in the media is extremely low.

Why do I dream about places I've never been before?

Since these places seen in the dream actually exist in reality.

So, will the things that happen in dreams also happen in reality?
At the end of the dream, it was no longer important that he and two other women killed Ken Sakamoto.

The important question is: how does information travel from the future year of 2025 to my mind in 2015?
This naturally led Ai Hoshihara to think of quantum-related theories.

Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance".

In other words, for two entangled particles, no matter how far apart they are, an operation on one will instantly affect the other.

This effect is faster than light and ignores spatial distance.

So, is there also an entanglement in the time dimension?

Am I, in 2015, now, and in 2025, in the future, in a state of temporal entanglement spanning a decade?
Under normal circumstances, this entanglement is stable and unobservable.

But in 2025, an extremely intense "observation event" occurred, in which he and two other women joined forces to kill the core of it all—the man named [Sakamoto Ken].

The death of Ken Sakamoto, and the extreme anger, regret, and remorse he experienced at that moment, caused the quantum state of "me in 2025" to collapse instantly, transmitting the result to "me in 2015" in a moment of disregard for time and space.

Dreams are the process by which my brain decodes and visualizes this collapsed information.

So, I saw that very, very long dream.

Then.

What kind of person is Ken Sakamoto?
Cliché labels like "scumbag" are no longer meaningful.

More importantly, is it possible that all this information came with him?
It's not that Ai Hoshino considers herself noble; although she has never been in a relationship, she is certain that she would never date an ordinary person.

Otherwise, she wouldn't still be single now that she's graduated with a PhD, despite having so many suitors since childhood.

The person I fall in love with is definitely not just someone who is good-looking, nor is it someone who is academically successful or career-oriented—these are all worldly factors.

There must be other reasons.

He must have some quality that no one else has.

So...we need to find him and study him.

(End of this chapter)