The Reason for the Change
"What brought you looking for me?"
Surely she hadn't come all this way just to torment me like that and beg to be called Mom.
"Aren't you curious? Not just why you came to this world — but where the original owner of that body went. Why your personality changed. Don't you want to know?"
She crossed her legs, and the hem of her dress rode up, baring a smooth stretch of thigh.
I forced my gaze not to drop and turned the question over in my mind.
The reason my personality changed...
I'd suspected it had, but I'd never been certain. Finding some peace of mind might simply have let my true nature surface. Or maybe I'd just never had occasion to talk about anything sexual, so I'd never noticed.
But the way she put it — she was clearly telling me that crossing into this world had changed who I was.
"Feeling ready to listen now?"
"Yes."
I nodded. A satisfied smile spread across her face, and she snapped her fingers.
"Whoa..."
Water lifted from the floor and gathered itself into two spheres. The one on the right was easily twice the size of the one on the left.
"The left is the Earth Dan-woo used to live on. The right is the Earth you live on now."
"They're both Earth?"
"That's right. Think of it as the multiverse people talk about — each universe has its own Earth. That should make it easier to picture."
Countless more spheres bloomed and vanished behind the two. She'd conjured them just so I could follow along.
"Shall we start with what happened to the original owner of that body?"
"Alright."
She snapped her fingers again, and a pair of squat little dolls appeared atop the spheres — the kind with oversized heads and tiny bodies. This time there was no difference in size.
"The original owner, to put it simply, is gone. He took his own life, and his soul was extinguished."
Something seeped out of the doll on the right-hand sphere. The shapeless blob quivered — then, matching her explanation, popped and vanished.
"Was there no way to save him?"
He was a complete stranger. All I knew of his life was what I'd read in a diary. But I felt a pang of sympathy all the same. Maybe because I was the one who'd inherited his body.
Mom shook her head.
"The damage to his soul was far too severe. Have you heard of reincarnation?"
I nodded.
"The original owner had already been through ten cycles of reincarnation, and every single death was by his own hand. Suicide clouds a soul. After ten times that tainted..."
"Even a god couldn't turn it around."
I finished the sentence she'd let trail off.
But Mom tilted her head and looked at me like I'd said something completely off-base.
"That's not it?"
"I could have saved him, if I'd wanted to. It just would have taken a great deal of power — and even if I reincarnated him again, there was a high chance he'd repeat the same ending. So I didn't."
The effort itself wasn't the problem. She hadn't reincarnated him because that second possibility was overwhelmingly likely.
"So don't go thinking you stole his body, alright?"
She reached out slowly and brushed my bangs up off my forehead. That gentle touch seemed to dissolve a knot of unease I'd buried deep in my chest.
As if she'd read the feeling, Mom smiled, warm and pleased.
"Next, shall we talk about why we called our Dan-woo to this world?"
The doll floating above the left sphere drifted into the space between the two.
"You said your mother sent me, right?"
"That's right. She went to the Earth on the left for a visit and met you, Dan-woo. She was close with that dimension's god, so she dropped by often."
Every parallel universe had its own dimension, she explained. Each dimension had a god, and those gods talked to one another.
"Mother was worried about our Earth's future. In most parallel universes, Earth is the only planet with life on it. Take Earth away and there's nothing left to look at."
In human terms, it was her entertainment.
"But that Earth's balance-collapse value was climbing at a steep rate, so she passed the seat of godhood to me and went looking for a solution."
"Balance-collapse value? What happens if that number gets too high?"
I'd never heard the term before.
"When it rises high enough, a species goes extinct. At the current rate, humanity will vanish from Earth within a few hundred years."
"That's... a big problem."
"Don't worry yourself too much."
Mom said it lightly.
"Mother sent you to this world so that wouldn't happen."
"I... prevent humanity's extinction?"
Suddenly the fate of this entire world had been dumped in my lap. That was an even bigger problem.
It was more weight than any one person could possibly carry.
Had she read that anxiety? Mom cupped my face in both hands. Or maybe it had just been written all over my face.
"It's alright. Stay calm and listen to Mom."
I followed her slow, deliberate breaths — in, then out.
Once I'd settled, it struck me how strangely easy it had been to panic. Normally, the idea that humanity's fate rested on me wouldn't have felt real at all. I'd have been numb to it.
"That's because this is a dream. Dreams are incomplete things — they inflate even the smallest worries. There's nothing strange about it."
She snapped her fingers as she spoke. A teapot and two cups appeared on the table.
"Drink this and your emotions won't be so easily shaken."
Mom pressed a finger to the teapot's lid so it wouldn't fall and poured. As her arm lifted, a smooth underarm came into view.
A hint of color, just the right amount of crease — one perfectly erotic...
Stop being a pervert!
I wrenched my eyes away from her armpit and watched the milky tea fill the cup.
After pouring one cup, Mom set the teapot down without warning.
"Doesn't it feel hot all of a sudden? Why am I sweating so much?"
"Huh?"
It wasn't hot at all. What was she talking about?
I looked up from the cup — and found her lifting her hair off the back of her neck with both hands. A pose that put her underarms on full display, and eyes sparkling with mischief. She'd read my mind.
"I-I'll pour the tea!"
Embarrassed for no good reason, I grabbed the teapot and filled the remaining empty cup. Strangely, this time the tea came out a translucent pink.
"Here..."
"Thank you."
Mom took the cup I offered and swallowed a sip, her throat bobbing.
I lifted my own cup — the one with the white tea — to my lips.
It's sweeter and brighter than it looks.
Despite the milky appearance, it tasted like a well-balanced blend of citrus and tropical fruit.
"What kind of tea is this?"
"Oh my. You like it?"
"Yes. It's really good."
I took another sip before answering.
"You were sucking so greedily earlier, too. Mom is delighted."
"Earlier...? What are you talking about?"
Had I drunk something before?
"Why are you pretending you don't know? After you latched onto Mom's breast milk like that."
"Pffft!?"
I sprayed the tea I'd just brought to my lips. The words hit that hard.
"Hack! Kh—!"
"A-are you alright? Did it go down the wrong way?"
She came around behind me and patted my back, but that was the last thing on my mind.
Breast milk. I'd been drinking breast milk.
The idea that a goddess produced breast milk was shocking enough. The fact that I, at my age, had been drinking it was another shock entirely.
"Is that what you were thinking? It's fine. It's a little different from what humans call breast milk."
"I-is that so?"
The coughing finally stopped, and I wiped my mouth clean.
"What comes from a goddess's breast is residual divine power. I don't know what happens when a human drinks it, but nothing bad should come of it."
When I first heard "residual divine power," I'd wondered whether a human should even be consuming something like that. But my body felt perfectly fine.
Nothing had improved, either. If I had to name something, I just felt a little calmer, mentally.
"According to another god, drinking it steadily over a long period can raise your physical abilities to an extreme degree... but that's not confirmed."
"There's a god who's actually tried that?"
I don't know. The image I'd had of gods was drifting further and further from reality.
"Then where does a male god's residual power come out?"
It was genuine curiosity. I didn't think it would come from... that kind of place.
"A male god? There's no such thing."
"What? There isn't?"
"Of course not. Gods are exclusively female."
I'd just learned something staggering.
Then the gods from Greco-Roman mythology, from Norse mythology...
Zeus and Thor were actually women?
...That's actually kind of great?
The tea's effect hadn't fully kicked in yet — my thoughts were bouncing all over the place.
I didn't even know if those gods existed in the first place. What was I getting excited about?
"Nngh!"
"You've been awfully interested in other gods since a little while ago. Is Mom not enough for you? Do you want to drink another goddess's milk?"
The sudden impact made me jump. A weight settled on my lap, and two enormous peaks filled my vision — Mom had climbed on top of me.
"M-Mom?"
"Don't tell me... there's another god you'd rather meet?"
She grabbed my cheeks and forced my eyes to meet hers. Pupils without a trace of light stared into me.
"Th-that's not it! I was just actually curious!"
She'd gone full yandere again. I scrambled to explain.
It wasn't even really an excuse. I had asked out of genuine curiosity. I'd asked if male gods existed. Getting jealous over that was a little weird, wasn't it?
"Stop talking about other gods. Even Mom doesn't know what she'll do."
She toyed with my ear, pressed a light kiss to my forehead, then slid off my lap. She stroked my hair a few times and returned to the chair across from me.
"We'd gotten as far as Mother sending you here to prevent humanity's extinction, hadn't we?"
She asked as if nothing had happened.
"Yes, that's right."
My throat had gone dry from the tension. I reached for my cup — then flinched.
This is not breast milk. This is residual divine power.
I repeated it to myself like a hypnotic mantra, then drank. It was unnecessarily delicious.
"Dan-woo, all you have to do is make a lot of children. That's how you stop the extinction. More precisely, that's how you lower the balance-collapse value."
Tiny dolls began spawning wildly from the figure between the two spheres, and the right-hand sphere gradually shrank. That size represented the balance-collapse value.
The curious part was that the little dolls, seen from a distance, formed the shape of a pyramid.
"How is that even possible? Is it because I'm from a different Earth?"
Mom took a sip of tea and nodded.
"A child you impregnate inherits, however faintly, the nature of your original world."
Children who inherited even a trace of Old Earth's nature would increase in number. My children would have children, and those children would have children of their own. After decades, after centuries, the balance-collapse value would fall. The pyramid those dolls had formed was a visualization of exactly that.
"On top of that, the power Mother left in your soul is playing a major role."
"Mother's power... you mean her Authority?"
A god's lifespan was the total sum of their power. When that total dropped below a certain threshold, a successor god was born.
Mom's mother had passed the seat of godhood to Mom, transferred every last remnant of her power to me, and then ceased to exist. That was why my soul hadn't been extinguished crossing dimensions — why it had settled safely into this body.
"And that remaining power, following Mother's will, is what allows the nature of your original world to be inherited."
"...Was there a reason it had to be me? If that's the case, there must have been any number of people more suited to it than I am."
"I can't know Mother's thoughts exactly. But I can guess."
When she crossed dimensions into this world, Mom had managed to read a sliver of her mother's will. The will to entrust the world's future to a child who had longed for love more desperately than anyone.
"Wouldn't it be better to hope he truly falls in love, rather than simply liking women? The fact that Mother happened to meet you, Dan-woo, was luck — but still."
"...Can I really do it? Impregnating so many women. Loving them, too."
Even if all I had to do was get them pregnant — how far could one person go? Artificial insemination with semen clearly wasn't going to work. Otherwise she wouldn't have specifically said "impregnate."
And I had my doubts about whether I even had it in me to love and be loved by that many women. I'd never loved anyone in my entire life...
"You can. That's why I altered your personality."
"What?"
My personality had been changed... for that?
"Do you remember me saying I approved and assisted your crossing into this world?"
I nodded.
"After I approved your soul's passage across dimensions, and before it entered this body — in the moment you crossed into this dimension — Mom intervened."
The doll that had been between the two spheres climbed back onto the left one. Something burst out of it. A soul. As it traveled from the left sphere toward the right, its path bent — drawn onto Mom's waiting hand.
"I read Mother's will from the soul I'd caught, and I altered the personality."
Made him proactive with women. Gave him extremely broad sexual tastes. Shaped him into the kind of personality the women of this world would love.
"So all you have to do is follow your heart. Simple, right?"
"Follow my heart..."
Discard Old Earth's perspective, and act as the me who lived in this world.
Maybe I'd needed a reason all along. A reason I could meet this woman and that woman. A reason it was alright to love several people at once.
Looking back now, even the Escort Officer's non-exclusivity clause had probably just been an excuse.
"The way you think is just too cute."
"Nngh!"
She teleported to my side again and pulled me into her arms. A snap of her fingers swept the table away, and she sat on the floor with me wrapped in a back hug.
Even if I asked her to let go, she wouldn't listen. I gave up.
"I've told you everything I was going to. Anything else you're curious about?"
"Hmm... Ah! You said your mother's power is still in my body. Are there any side effects?"
In the end, that meant an Authority had taken root in a human body. Was that really alright? Wouldn't it put a strain on me?
"What are you talking about? You've been using it this whole time."
"I-I have? Me?"
"That healing ability you've been using. That doesn't just heal — it rewinds time, too."
So the healing ability I'd been using... was actually an Authority? The way impurities would drain out, like time was being rewound — that was actually rewinding time?
"Don't joke around."
"I'm serious. You don't have to believe me if you don't want to. Do as you like."
She said it while gently stroking my stomach.
She wasn't calling it a joke. That meant it was real. I had actually used an Authority. The kind of Authority that only existed in urban legends.
"Anything else?"
"...Not really."
I still hadn't recovered from the shock of the Authority, but if I let this chance slip, I had no idea when I'd get to ask again. I tried to think of something — anything — I wanted to know, but the Authority was lodged so firmly in my mind that nothing else would come.
"Then we have a little time left. I'll give you a present."
"A present?"
A gift from a goddess was bound to be something extraordinary. Was refusing even an option?
"Are you sure you'll be alright?"
Mom asked, having read my thoughts.
"I felt bad about changing your personality however I wanted, so I was going to put just a little of it back the way it was."
"Mom, I love you!"
I don't usually like flip-flopping this fast, but we're family. What's the harm?
Just the thought of getting some of my original personality back already had me in a good mood. Even I had to admit I was a simple man.