Story:

Peach took a breath.

Then another.

Across the library table, the Butterfly Sisters watched her with the chastened attention of two students who had narrowly avoided being sent to the head teacher.

Peach placed both palms beside the biography.

“One question at a time,” she said. “Did either of you find your own name in these books?”

Violet and Kicho shook their heads in perfect synchronization.

“No Queen Violet? No Fairy Princess Kicho? No marriage between Nobunaga and the Butterfly Sisters?”

Another synchronized shake.

“Good. Now—Black Rose? Vampire Lord Bel? A demonic invasion of Yamato?”

This time, their denial came more slowly.

Violet’s brows drew together. Kicho looked from Peach to the open books, the accusation in her eyes giving way to uncertainty.

Peach pulled the blank sheet closer.

“Then please stop treating this biography as a letter delivered from your husband’s battlefield.”

She drew two circles.

Inside the first, she wrote Beta. Inside the second, Gamma.

“This is my world. Beta. Modern Japan.”

Her pencil moved to the other circle.

“This is the world where I lived for ten years. Gamma. Your Yamato. Your Gloucester. The world where we left Nobunaga.”

Kicho leaned forward.

“But the names—”

“Yes. The names are similar. So are many places, and some people’s faces. That does not make Gamma the natural past of Beta.”

Peach drew a line beneath each circle, extending both across the paper.

“Parallel dimensions,” she said carefully. “Two worlds with their own histories. Their own events. You crossed from one into another. You did not simply travel forward along the same road.”

Violet looked down at the diagram.

Something changed in her expression—not complete understanding yet, but the recognition of a familiar mechanism being used in an unfamiliar way.