Variables and the Singularity
After the day Kashi Iliya awakened the power of foresight and the singularity, her life turned into hell. The servants who had always greeted her with warm smiles now seemed capable of killing her. Even her family harbored the potential to murder or betray her. In thousands of futures, it happened only once, but witnessing that scene even briefly was enough to shatter anyone's faith. Yet the world wouldn't leave her in peace. As if by cruel fate, one of those countless futures became reality. In this worldline, her own brother lusted after her life.
Fortunately, her comrades saved her, but that relief was short-lived. She learned of her mother's mad deeds from Amon's lips, and she crumbled. She could no longer trust reality. Why was her worldline cursed like this? Had there ever even been a happy one for her? Turning her eyes from reality, she imagined countless parallel worlds. In truth, it was just an excuse. If she glimpsed a future where her comrades betrayed her, she wouldn't have the strength to go on—so she barricaded herself in her room, refusing all meetings.
"Kashi. Let's go eat!"
Ignoring her turmoil, that gentle morning voice made tears well up endlessly. The kinder they were, the more terrifying the futures she foresaw became. But her comrades exceeded imagination in every way.
Hiss! The familiar sound of a fuse igniting snapped her back to reality, followed by a BOOM! In an instant, her comrades burst into the room and seized her. No matter how tightly she squeezed her eyes shut, they pried her jaw open, forcing her lids apart. And before her eyes, their threads of fate unfurled.
The Recetio family's foresight seemed invincible at first glance, but it was riddled with flaws. Take her father, for example: he could hear conversations from the future—specifically, the sounds the future version of himself heard. In other words, he couldn't know facts his future self hadn't heard. Kashi was no exception. She could read the threads of connection between herself and anyone whose eyes she met. Once she glimpsed what bonds the other shared with their future self, she could perfectly manipulate them after a single eye contact. But without meeting them, she remained blind to those futures. That's why she hadn't foreseen her brother's assassination attempt or the chef receiving orders to kill.
Unlike her father, she had to meet her target at least once. But she quickly overcame this weakness. Threads could be woven into cloth, and fate's threads were no different. By reading one person's thread and weaving it with others, she could indirectly glimpse those she hadn't met. She'd traced her brother's actions through the threads of the assassins he hired. So when she locked eyes with her comrades, she instinctively wove countless cloths from their threads.
But the finished cloths were strange. They weren't smooth like unbroken fabric—holes dotted them unevenly. Some parts visible, others shrouded. Yet she had no spare capacity to notice the anomaly.
'Gone...'
The futures she'd dreaded weren't there.
'No one... betrays me...'
In no future did her comrades betray her. Instead, though details varied, their destinies split into two broad paths: live with her, or die saving her.
Kashi's gaze naturally drifted not to the happy futures, but the tragic ones. In those, she distrusted her comrades, abandoned them, and fled. Yet they sacrificed themselves willingly for her sake.
First, the breeder mage died.
"Haha. Wonder if history'll remember me as the genius mage who fooled a megacorp."
Caught manipulating her illusions, he was sniped.
Second, the ogre fell.
"Valhalla!!"
Blocking assassins chasing her, he self-destructed spectacularly with the tunnel.
Third, the mute sniper.
Ptui. Captured and facing brain-scan, he flipped off the security team, shoved a pistol in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.
Finally, the water buffalo tank.
"Pay the price for not trusting you back in that dungeon."
He escorted her to the airport, then hugged a doll mimicking her form and fled the opposite way. Enraged at being toyed with by the four, Owen pulped their corpses and dumped them in the sea. They vanished without even a gravestone.
But something was off. In this tragic future, Amon was absent. More precisely, futures where Amon should appear were severed, impossible to see. Midway through broken threads, future Kashi clutched an inexplicable plane ticket from some unknown savior, or gripped Amon's sword weeping on a hill. In one, she operated as a mercenary under the alias Amon. Yet in all, Amon himself never appeared.
Realizing this, she found herself fixated on Amon's eyes. It was obsession—unwilling to accept the tragedy, desperate to verify it, above all yearning certainty from him. In his ordinary pupils, she saw her reflection. Their gazes met in his eyes. Then, like falling into a hallucination, she peered into the reflection's pupils, and deeper still.
'Wha... what...?'
She panicked. Like mirrors facing each other, infinite images cascaded in the pupils. Kashi peered into them all. She couldn't comprehend it. Her vision wasn't sharp enough. But there it was. Beyond the myriad reflections, she spotted one uniquely different—not her, not Amon, but a stranger woman. A woman she'd never seen, yet her chest warmed inexplicably. Hard to describe, but like the comfort of her mother's embrace as an infant.
"Thread-weaving witch. Why do you peer into this place? Did I not warn you of taboos when I blessed your bloodline?"
Kashi knew nothing of the taboo the woman mentioned. Yet her lips moved of their own accord.
"To complete the cloth woven with my most precious one."
"Pitiful child living in futures. What is that one to you, that you break even taboos?"
"Everything to me."
"Fevered daughter. Do you speak knowing the weight of love?"
"I swear on my heart."
At those words, the mysterious woman smiled contentedly and nodded.
"Blood of David, heir of Solomon. I permit you to open the door and enter."
With that, the woman vanished. Before Kashi could question her identity, the memory of their exchange evaporated from her mind. And as if nothing had happened, the erased futures of Amon became visible. Amon charging into armies for her sake. Amon forging her a false identity. Amon building a resistance with her, avenging their comrades thirty years later. In no future did he betray her. Even the "tragic" ones ended in hope.
A single tear traced her cheek. Back in the present, she met her comrades' eyes. Somehow, she could now control her power. But she didn't stop. Instead, she averted her gaze from the tragedies—not denying them, but to avoid poor choices in the now by fixating on doom. All those tragedies stemmed from her distrust. The first step to erasing them was a simple word.
"Thank you."
With that, countless tragedies vanished. As she embraced her comrades, most of the rest faded.
Finally.
"It's shameless, but... help me out."
That erased the futures where she sacrificed herself alone. She peered into the futures once more.
"I'll make sure we're happy."
All for the perfect happy ending.
Unlike the power to peer into futures, computers calculating them were far from perfect—riddled with flaws relative to their strength. Based on preset data and variables, uninput variables never emerged in results. So when reports confirmed the failed assassination on Kashi, Owen didn't panic.
"I anticipated it. I forgive your failure, team leader."
From Owen's view, forgiveness was all he could offer—the team he'd sent with the leader had been wiped out. Finishing his reflection, he leaned back in the chairman's chair and closed his eyes. He added variables for the team's annihilation and Kashi's comrades. Countless futures calculated, data flooding his mind. Multiple futures appeared with probabilities.
No preparing for every future. Choice defined it. Picking a 0.01% path meant abandoning others. The chairman plotted rationally: Plan A at highest probability, then B... up to about twenty.
'This'll do.'
He contacted security and external intel. Within hours, a hunter team formed to take down Kashi and her comrades.
"Depart immediately."
The hunter team launched on the chairman's order. Success rate: 100%. Owen trusted it utterly—six people couldn't stand against them. That confidence lasted less than an hour.
He couldn't rationally grasp prey storming the hunter's lair.
He never imagined Sonia Perfumrose, whom he saw as Amon's wife, as a variable.
Security gaining the upper hand? Unbelievable. Variables upon variables stacked.
'Why? How?'
Owen hadn't optimistically assumed they'd fall easily. He'd calculated they might raid the company while the hunter team was out, leaving ample forces behind and measures for quick return. He'd prepared, but rated the odds low. Yet that slim chance became reality—mocking his defenses.
'Why this strategy...?'
He couldn't fathom why such suicidal tactics succeeded, or how they wielded such combat prowess. The only certainty: his computer's calculations were nullified. Owen fed in new variables and reran it. The wetware computer whirred furiously. Amid the computations, he recalled a past question to his father.
—"What happens if two prophets start seeing the future at once?"
His father had answered:
—"The one with more singularities wins."