The dream came again.
Yua stood beneath a dying sun, her feet buried in a sea of clocks. Each tick, each tock, felt like a scream in reverse—sound folding in on itself. In the distance, someone whispered her name.
No…
Not her name.
"Asuka."
She woke with a strangled gasp.
Her satin sheets were soaked in sweat. The city lights beyond her window bled through the curtains, casting long, ghostlike shadows across the floor. She glanced at the mirror.
For a heartbeat, her reflection stared back with different eyes.
And then—her phone buzzed.
Another unknown number.
> "You are more than this timeline allows. We will meet soon. –R"
She stared at the message, numb. She didn't know what frightened her more: the dreams, or the fact that part of her wanted them to continue.
---
Meanwhile
Reo sat alone in the underground forge. The core of MOTHERLINE pulsed like a synthetic heart, each beat syncing with the resonance of his thoughts.
Doraemon paced behind him, unusually tense.
"Are you sure this is ready?" Doraemon asked.
"No," Reo answered without looking up. "But I'm not waiting anymore."
He slid the final memory shard into the central console. The room shimmered as light bent unnaturally around the device. Reality protested its creation—cracks formed in the air like spiderwebs of glass.
MOTHERLINE was not a time machine.
It was a memory corridor—a tunnel through reincarnated echoes. The Nobita of every broken loop, every reset timeline, lived inside it.
And Reo was about to knock on every door.
---
First Contact
His consciousness surged into the corridor.
The air was thick with static and regret. The walls of the tunnel were stitched together with moments—childhood failures, lonely birthdays, quiet sobbing under bedsheets.
Then—
A presence.
Another version of him.
Reo turned and saw a broken boy sitting on the floor, hugging his knees. His glasses were cracked. His uniform was stained with blood.
"Nobita-17A," the system whispered.
This version had died at thirteen, a suicide following the death of his mother in an alternate timeline.
The boy looked up. "Are you me?"
Reo knelt beside him. "I'm what you could've become."
The boy didn't smile. "Why did I fail?"
Reo clenched his jaw.
"Because no one helped you."
He placed his hand on the boy's head.
"But I will."
Suddenly, a pulse of darkness rippled through the corridor. The air turned cold.
A voice whispered in the static.
"You shouldn't be here, Forged One."
Then Reo saw it.
A figure crawling along the ceiling of the corridor—faceless, thin, long-fingered, whispering every version of Nobita's death like a prayer.
Caius.
Not him—but a shade of him. A piece left behind to guard the echoes.
The corridor began to collapse.
Reo grabbed the boy's hand. "You're coming with me."
"I'm dead," the boy said.
"No," Reo growled. "You're part of me now."
He forced the memory core to eject. The corridor exploded into white—
---
Back in the Real World
Reo collapsed, breathing hard, sweat pouring from his brow.
The first fragment of the past Nobita was now inside him—a broken, grieving boy whose pain was now Reo's.
But it was working.
With each connection, he'd grow stronger. Smarter. Complete.
Doraemon helped him up. "What did you see?"
Reo didn't answer. He turned his eyes to the surface.
"Yua," he whispered. "She's changing too."
---
Elsewhere – Yua's Apartment
Yua stood on her balcony in a silk robe, staring at the skyline.
Then she turned.
A man was sitting in her living room.
Thin. Pale. Wearing a black suit. No face.
He tilted his head.
"I told you we'd meet soon," he said, his voice like a hundred whispers.
Yua couldn't move.
He stepped forward, slowly, impossibly tall now.
"Your memories are bleeding through because this isn't your first life. You were someone else… someone dangerous."
He placed a cold hand against her forehead.
"Let me remind you who you really are."
Her mind cracked.
And for a brief moment—she saw herself, holding Reo's hand… as the world burned around them. A name echoed in her skull.
Asuka.
She screamed—
---
Back in Reo's Workshop
He felt it.
A ripple through the core.
Yua's memories were awakening.
"She's remembering…" he muttered.
Doraemon looked worried. "What happens if she remembers everything?"
Reo's gaze hardened.
"Then the world has less time than we thought."
---