The place was a domain of angels, ruled by an eternal slumber.
In this sanctuary beyond human comprehension, the angels commanded time itself. The “halos” floating above their heads were no mere symbols of authority; they were sophisticated navigation devices designed to cleave through the currents of spacetime, sailing from past to future.
Why did the angels appear in the same form regardless of the era they visited? The answer lay in the evolution of humanity: the acquisition of “wings.” In the distant future, humanity would develop wings upon their bodies, granting them the ability to leap through spacetime. The angels were the zenith of that evolution—visitors (or perhaps pioneers) from the future, who had chosen to isolate the present within an “eternal slumber.”
In this sanctuary, where the laws of time were rewritten, sat a cake that could only be described as a “miracle.”
It was adorned with layers of mousse as fluffy as fragments of clouds. Around it, the sweet, rich aroma of celestial fruits drifted like a mist. It was a crystal of pure “beauty,” severed from the flow of time.
A man, captivated by such sweetness, laid hands upon this divine masterpiece. With just a glance, his salivary glands pulsed with frantic desire. He imagined the heavy richness of a fruit cake paired with the fleeting delicacy of a sponge cake. At the mere thought, his soul soared as if guided by a celestial melody.
But fate delights in cruel pranks. Before he could savor that bliss, the man clumsily let the cake slip from his palms.
Ah, what a tragedy.
The cake fell mercilessly into the mire at the edge of the sanctuary. In an instant, it was crushed by the merciless soles of passing shoes, drenched in the stench of a stray dog’s urine, and struck by a final blow as bird droppings fell from the sky like venom. The noble masterpiece was reduced to nothing more than “filth.”
In the abyss of despair, the man felt a shock that froze his soul. Yet, in that very depth, a flash of lightning struck his mind.
“I must turn back time…!”
Fortunately, the angels who governed this world were masters of the rituals that manipulated the laws of time. To rescue the cake, the man forced a forbidden “Temporal Ascent.”
The space shrieked. The threads of causality recoiled in the opposite direction. The colors of the world inverted, and its very structure began to warp.
In this realm, “Time” is nothing more than a phantom, an illusion. What we perceive as the “progression” of time is merely a spiral staircase of spacetime, warped by the effects of gravity. We are merely walking upward from the bottom of those stairs. However, if one can pierce through that spiral, it is possible to strike directly into the past in a straight line.
But when the gravity required to pierce that spiral is generated, the world cannot withstand the pressure and fractures. This is “Parallelization”—a Rift of Causality.
Temporal Ascent is the secret art of piercing this spiral, regressing causality into the slight past, and branching the spacetime from there. The man returned to that exact moment of collapse, just before the cake fell, and with masterful grace, intercepted its descent.
However, at this moment, he stood in a different spacetime—one where the “cake had not fallen.” Through his intervention, the world had split into two. One world where the cake sank into the mud, mired in污辱 (humiliation/filth). And another world where the cake remained safely in his hands. These two timelines were fixed as parallel worlds.
However, parallel worlds possess a powerful restorative force that seeks to return to the “original state.” The closer to the point of divergence, the more formidable the pressure of this convergence becomes.
Driven by agitation, the man began to devour the cake frantically. The sweet, soft cream slid down his throat, and he immersed himself in supreme ecstasy. But the parallelized spacetimes began to converge with violent velocity. The world where the cake fell and the world where the cake was eaten—these two realities were being forcibly “integrated,” defying the laws of physics. The world could not tolerate the contradiction and began a forced overwrite upon one of the facts.
And what did exist there—?
In a nightmare vision, the cake—supposedly drenched in mud, soaked in dog urine, and covered in bird droppings—was already nestled deep within the man’s stomach. It was a desecration of the sacred space, a rebellion against the laws of physics.
At least, so it felt within the man’s memory. As the man tentatively tasted his mouth with a trembling tongue, he felt the sensation of gritty sand wedged between his teeth. Simultaneously, the pungent ammonia stench of dog urine and the acidic sting of bird droppings erupted into his oral cavity with explosive force.
Because the two worlds had physically merged, the filth, the urine, and the droppings clinging to the cake—or their mixtures—were equally absorbed into the man’s body. Even if it were only half of the filth, for a gourmet with a sweet tooth, it was an unbearable desecration, a pain that削 (carved) into his very soul.
The man vomited.
He retched violently, expelling the contents of his stomach. He wiped his mouth and sniffed. But no matter how much he wiped, the stench remained, embedded in the very core of his brain.
The onlookers merely watched the convulsing man with strange expressions. Whether they existed in one of the twin parallel spaces or the other, they repeated the same actions, utterly unaware of the rift in the world.
If one were to scrutinize the man closely, they might have seen a phantom-like blur: the man lamenting the fallen cake and the man frantically devouring the cake, overlapping like ghosts.
The people around him walked on in unruffled peace, while the man alone bore the wretched recompense of his actions in the branched time. As for how his stomach or his memories had been mutated by the integration, the passersby could never know.
Truly, only God could know.
—End—
Original Work: “Eaten Cake, Fallen Cake” (from Angel’s Forgotten Things)