This Is the World Inside a Comic?!

The anchor delivered it all in a perfectly level voice. Her tone never shifted. Her eyes stayed straight ahead. She went on without the slightest sign of alarm.

It was the ordinary sort of news you could find anywhere. Any other day I would have given it a glance and nothing more. This time I could not look away.

If only the reason had been something petty. The anchor being pretty, say. How much easier that would have been. This was a body thrashing for some way to understand the unknown.

A white man appeared, dressed in a costume with the Earth drawn across the chest. At a glance the outfit looked almost tacky, and yet it suited him better than it could have suited anyone else. Blond, blue-eyed, and handsome, he gave the interview without losing his composure, though a thicket of microphones had closed in around him.

He handled the moment with the ease of a man for whom this was hardly the first time, or the second. The words were not empty courtesy. He truly believed them. Everyone had been magnificent. Nobility came through in them, and humility, and a quiet grace. If an ideal hero had stepped out of a painting, would he not have looked exactly like this?

There was probably no one in the world who did not know him. To be ignorant of the hero among heroes meant one of two things: you were an alien, or you belonged to an entirely different world.

Ironically, I was the latter. And still, I knew him. He had been a character in a comic I had read. The man on the television screen was from Forever, the series I had finished only yesterday—and he was one of the precious few who had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠never lost their popularity, not even on the day the work reached its end.

"No way. This is real?"

So this was the world inside a comic. It was impossible.

"No. What did I even do..."

I hadn't fired off some 5,700-character letter of rage because I was angry at the work. Quite the opposite. I had sent the author a note of encouragement. They couldn't have dropped me here as a thank-you. Could they?

"Or did I drink so much last night that I'm still seeing things?"

I had put away enough to fry my brain, that much was true. Forever's unsatisfying ending. Friends I hadn't seen in ages. A wallet with money still in it. Once those three fell into step, the drinks had been inevitable. First round, second, third—and then the film cut out. The last thing I remembered was stripping my clothes off and getting hot and heavy with my oldest friend...

"Now that I think about it, the world inside the comic might be the better option."

What the hell had I done? I was too afraid to drag the rest of it back into the light. Burying it forever in that other world would probably be kinder to my sanity.

"Haa... damn it. What am I supposed to do?"

It was bleak. There was no way through.

I looked at the clothes hanging on the wall: a fedora, a cape, and a suit gone worn and faded. A white mask lay on the table.

"Of all people. If I had to become someone, why this guy?"

Whatever else was true, it seemed I had become the extra phantom thief from the comic.

Forever had exactly one phantom thief in it. For all the popularity the archetype usually enjoyed, Forever's phantom thief was treated miserably. Calling him a phantom thief was already being kind.

"In practice he's just a petty thief..."

Looking like a phantom thief did not make you one. You had to have presence to be a phantom thief.

He called himself Phantom. At his first appearance, handsome art and an outstanding superpower had announced him with a flourish. When he waited alone, aloof, inside the protagonist's house, he had even gathered the readers' hopes. The truth was that he was a petty thief who had broken in—foam, nothing more, beaten half to death by the protagonist and hauled off to prison.

The fandom had spun its little circuits of wishful thinking. Surely even the stupidity was an act. Surely he would return in the latter half. Then the author posted a setting book on their blog and finished the character off for good. That was his worth, confirmed in writing.

And that was the character I had become.

"Then why don't I look like him?"

My face was not the phantom thief's. I was not the man I had seen in the comic, made flesh. I was myself, from Earth.

"No point puzzling over it. It doesn't mean anything."

I had entered the world of the comic. The phantom thief had become me, and I had become the phantom thief. What difference did the details make? It had already happened. What I wanted to know most was something else entirely.

"Then how about I test the power?"

I brought a spoon from the kitchen and set two fingers against it. The solid metal bent without resistance. With those same two fingers I bent it back into shape.

An extra, yes. But a superhuman was a superhuman even gone rotten, and a body past human limits came standard. Even so, that was only a byproduct. The real thing was the superpower. If the setting book was right, this phantom thief's ability was everything a Phantom Thief was. Every trait people imagined when they thought of one had been poured into it.

I stared at the crooked spoon. In an instant the spoon in my hand became a flower, then a fork. I slipped the fork into the fedora, and a dove burst out. The dove wandering the room popped in midair and scattered feathers. I snapped my fingers, and every feather turned into a playing card. I reached out. The cards shot forward and buried themselves in a dartboard.

All of it happened in a single moment. I did not know the principle. The instant I thought I wanted it, it simply became possible.

"...This is more than I expected."

Why had the original owner of this power used it for petty theft? It was too versatile to dismiss as a simple thief's trick—versatile enough that instinct told me I could do still more.

"Why go picking pockets with an ability like this?"

Not that it mattered to me. Failing to use it had been his own fault.

"So what should I do?"

I called the stuck cards back into ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my hand and thought. Forever was a hero comic. It had villains in abundance, and heroes as well. Each of their stories had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠appeared in the pages, however briefly, and the author had kept posting setting books to a blog, so there was no shortage of information. I knew the future. There were incidents I could stop before they began, and I knew which villains—and which men who would become villains—had to die.

How was I supposed to change the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠original ending?

"It's decided."

I crushed the deck in my fist. A handkerchief sprang out, a pattern stitched across the cloth.

Forever: the thing that had ruined the comic of the same name, and the strongest substance in this world.

Forever.

I would take it into my hands and erase it.

The handkerchief burned. Not a single spark leapt free. Only the cloth itself went up, and it vanished without leaving even ash.

"Let's see. About finished?"

I lost track of time while I set my plans in order and confirmed who I was in this world.

"The phantom thief of this world is completely gone..."

Resident registration, smartphone, the name on the bank account, credit cards—all of it was mine. The phone the original phantom thief had used did not hold a single photograph. Messages, numbers, browsing history: the same. Any existence that might have been identified as this world's phantom thief had been erased entirely, and I had taken the place he left behind.

"Gives me the chills."

The deeper I looked, the more it felt as if only the bare minimum of an identity had been prepared for me. A cold prickle ran the length of my spine. Was there anyone in this world who might still remember the phantom thief? I shook my head and cleared the useless thought away. Straightening, I checked the time on my phone.

"It's past ten at night..."

And the date...

"Huh?"

Cold shot up my back. Instinct told me something had gone wrong—a worse feeling than the moment I realized every exam was open-book.

"I'm screwed..."

Only a few hours remained until that incident from the original!

"Of all the days to wake up, it had to be this one!"

I scrambled into the phantom thief's costume, threw the window open, and jumped. It was a three-story drop, but I had no time to care about that. The instant my feet touched the ground, my body pitched forward on reflex. I understood, as if by instinct, exactly how I needed to move. My feet reached the way I wanted to go, and even difficult acrobatics came easily.

I ran up the sides of buildings and vaulted over them. When the distance ran short, I traveled by a rope I could not have said where I had produced. I was moving at a speed beyond anything I could imagine, and even that felt slow. This was the day the original story began, and the day the protagonist's tragedy fell.

"Don't let me be late!"

It was the day the protagonist lost everything.