The gate didn't lead to fire.
Which was disappointing, honestly. If I was going to be thrown into hell, I'd at least prefer some aesthetic commitment...lava, screaming, dramatic lighting. Something cinematic.
Instead, I stepped out into… a neighborhood.
A quiet one.
Too quiet.
A row of identical houses stretched on both sides of the street, each painted in soft, pastel colors that hurt my eyes in a way only artificial cheerfulness can. Pink. Blue. Yellow. All of them wrong in the exact same way. Like a kid tried to draw happiness using a ruler.
The sky was blue. The air was warm. Birds were chirping.
No screams. No explosions.
I turned slightly, expecting the gate to still be there.
It wasn't.
"—Satori?" I muttered.
A faint buzz in my ear answered.
"I'm here," his voice said, filtered and calm. "Audio is stable. Visuals synced."
"Cool," I said. "So I'm either not in hell, or hell's doing a suburban rebrand."
"This is a Class-Two Bleed," Satori replied. "Low hostility. High instability. The most dangerous kind."
"Of course it is. Putting a literal kid who starts all troubles in charge of worst kinds of bleeds.How wise."
I took a step forward. The pavement crunched under my shoes. Real sound, real texture. Everything felt solid. Too solid. That was always the trick, my experience at unluck tells me that.
I glanced at one of the houses. Curtains drawn. No movement.
"Status check," I said. "What exactly am I looking for?"
"A causality knot," Satori answered. "Something that doesn't belong. A repeating event. A paradox loop. Emotional residue strong enough to distort local physics."
"So," I nodded, "something that tries to kill me? Also, people don't talk like that."
"Correct. Also, I do."
I sighed. "Why is it always weird ones I get stuck with."
I walked down the street, counting my steps out of habit. Ten houses in, I felt it...the itch.
That familiar pressure behind my eyes, like the universe clearing its throat before saying something stupid.
I stopped.
"Found something," I said.
"Describe it."
"It feels like…" I searched for the words. "Like standing in a room where someone just finished crying, or....as I describe it... Something that'll tickle my womb if I was a girl."
Silence on the comms.
"Basically just a gut feeling," Satori said finally. "Proceed carefully."
I approached the nearest house.The yellow one. The paint was peeling if you looked closely, like it was aging faster than the rest of the world. The front door was slightly ajar.
I knocked.
No response.
I pushed the door open.
Inside, the house was furnished. Lived-in. Shoes by the entrance. Family photos on the wall.
And every single photo had the same person.
A boy.
Different ages. Same face.
Same haircut.
Same stupid cowlick.
"…Yeah," I muttered. "I don't like this."
"Identity echo," Satori said quietly. "A self-reinforcing loop. The timeline is trying to overwrite someone."
"Someone who looks a lot like me?"
"Someone who is you," Satori corrected. "Or rather,one of you."
My stomach dropped.
I hated these multiversal variants of mine. One of them was a girl. Another one was a bigger pussy than I am.Most were happy.
The living room TV flickered on by itself.
Static. Then an image.
A younger version of me,maybe ten,sat on the floor, holding a gadget. Doraemon stood beside him, smiling like nothing was wrong.
The scene replayed.
Again.
And again.
Each time, something changed.
The gadget malfunctioned.
The room distorted.
The smile stayed.
"That's not right," I whispered.
"No," Satori agreed. "It isn't."
The loop stuttered, and suddenly the boy looked up—straight at me. At now me.
The screen cracked.
The air shifted.
Walls stretched. Corners bent at wrong angles. Gravity tilted slightly to the left, just enough to make my balance feel off.
I staggered back.
"Hey," I said loudly, because that's apparently my coping mechanism. "Kid. If this is about unresolved childhood issues, I promise you—I've already got a backlog."
The boy on the screen stood up.
The image bled out of the TV, pixel by pixel, until he was standing in the room with me.
A version of me.
He looked confused. Scared. Angry. All at once.
"You left," he said.
"…Yeah," I admitted. "I did."
"You broke it," he accused.
"Also yes."
"You promised you'd fix everything."
I swallowed.
"I promised I'd try."
I don't know what he's talking about. But... I feel like I don't have the right to deny anything.
The younger me clenched his fists. The room responded. Furniture rattled. The ceiling cracked.
"This," Satori said sharply, "is the knot. An unresolved promise amplified by a bleed. If left alone, it will collapse this branch and infect adjacent timelines."
"Cool," I muttered. "So what's the solution? Punch myself?"
"No violence," Satori said. "That will worsen the feedback."
I took a breath and stepped closer to the kid.
"You're right," I said. "I messed up. A lot. I don't get a redo. You don't get one either."
His eyes filled with tears. "Then why am I still here?"
I knelt down.
"Because you mattered," I said softly. "And because I didn't know how to let go."
The room went still.
The pressure eased.
The kid's outline flickered.
"Will it hurt?" he asked.
"…A little," I said. "But it already does, doesn't it?"
He nodded.
Then he smiled.
And faded.
The house exhaled.
The walls straightened. The sky outside darkened slightly, correcting itself.
I sat back on my heels, breathing hard.
"It's done," Satori said. "The knot is dissolving. Good work."
"Add that to my résumé," I said weakly. "Professional childhood apologizer."
There was a pause.
"You handled that well," Satori admitted.
"Don't get used to it."
The world shimmered around me as the bleed collapsed, folding in on itself like a bad memory finally losing relevance.
As the street vanished, one thought stuck with me:
This was just a Class-Two.
And there were over a hundred thousand more.
"…Satori," I said as the light swallowed everything.
"Yes?"
"If I survive this," I muttered, "I'm charging overtime."
_____beep.
"Hm?"
I heard a loud sharp sound in my microphone.
"Hello? What happened?"
...
"Hey? It's not funny? Where's my exit?"
....
Ah shit. Where am I?