I'm a doctor by profession.

To be completely honest,

people rely on me quite a lot.

My patients trust me deeply,

and my fellow doctors respect me.

I think it's fair to say I'm among the fairly successful ones.

I got married last year, too.

My wife used to be a doctor as well.

She was known in the department for both her beauty and her impressive medical skills,

but when she married me, she gave up being a doctor without a second thought.

She just wanted to spend as much time with me as possible.

According to her, that was the only reason.

Honestly, the people around us tried to talk her out of it,

and I didn't think she needed to quit either,

but her mind was set.

Besides, I made more than enough income for us,

so I didn't try too hard to stop her.

Above all, I was simply happy that she needed me that much.

Laying it all out like this,

it might look like I was at the peak of happiness,

but it wasn't as if I had no troubles.

Though, to be fair, it was entirely my own fault...

The source of my trouble back then was A-ko.

A-ko was an ER nurse at my hospital.

She had a headstrong personality, but with her gorgeous features

and stunning, striking figure, she was really popular.

For whatever reason, she took a liking to me,

and I stupidly let our affair continue once or twice a week even after getting married.

Today is the day I break it off.

Steeling my resolve that day,

I headed over to A-ko's place.

"You're late," she said.

A-ko was wearing a nightgown,

smiling with that irresistibly charming face of hers, just like always.

"Actually... there's something I need to talk to you about."

Sensing the gravity in my tone,

A-ko sat down across from me without a word, waiting for me to speak.

How should I bring this up?

As I wrestled with my thoughts,

a headache started to creep in,

and I suddenly began to feel sick.

"Sorry, could you get me some water?"

When I turned my eyes toward A-ko as I spoke,

I saw a sight that horrified me.

Her eyes and mouth had turned into huge, pitch-black holes,

and those dark voids were opening and closing, snapping silently.

As I froze, unable to comprehend what was happening,

my vision suddenly narrowed and went dark.

"Eno-san! Eno-san! Are you okay?"

I snapped awake to find a strange man in a white lab coat sitting right in front of me.

"What happened? Are you alright?"

The man in the lab coat kept pressing me with questions.

"Uh..."

Completely bewildered, I offered a hollow response and looked around—it seemed I was in an examination room.

"Excuse me, but what on earth happened to me?"

Unable to make sense of the situation, I asked the man in the white coat,

and his expression suddenly sharpened as he began asking me all kinds of questions.

He kept interrogating me for over thirty minutes,

most of which was honestly complete gibberish to me,

until he paused and said, "Please remain calm and listen to me carefully."

After that preface, the man started saying something insane.

He claimed that I had been a patient in this psychiatric ward for two whole years.

Two years ago, while working part-time at the gift shop in this university hospital,

I had suddenly collapsed and been rushed in,

and after suffering from amnesia, I had been receiving outpatient care,

but my delusional state became so severe that I had to be admitted to the psychiatric ward.

Honestly, I thought it was a nightmare.

There was no way all that studying for my medical license, my beloved wife, and A-ko were just delusions.

And yet...

For some reason, I could no longer remember what I had studied, nor could I recall my wife's face or A-ko's face.

Although I remembered the fact that I studied, how I met my wife, how I met A-ko, and drinking with colleagues,

everyone's faces and the specific places we went were completely blurred.

The man who believed he was born and raised in Ueno and became a doctor after graduating college was actually a 30-year-old high school graduate from Chiba who worked odd jobs.

And the final blow was when I looked in the mirror. "Who the hell is this?" That was my very first thought.

Reflected in the glass was a creepy man with sunken eyes and an emaciated frame,

who looked nothing like the person I thought I was.

This is me?

Everything up until now was a delusion?

Seeing that I couldn't believe it,

the doctor took his time

showing me various records and pieces of evidence.

Part of it was video footage where I saw myself winking at a nurse during a checkup, saying, "This Friday at the usual spot!", or consulting with doctors about delivering cancer diagnoses.

Overwhelmed by embarrassment and horror, I couldn't bear to watch it to the end....

After another month of hospitalization, I was discharged.

Incidentally, they still don't know the cause, so I continue outpatient visits once a month.

To an outsider, it might have just been a severe mental illness,

but honestly, to me, that was my real life,

and even as memories fade, my current life feels profoundly wrong.

That was how deeply immersed I was in my own world.

Granted, looking at the video footage now and hearing what I did back then, it's obvious I wasn't normal and was completely out of my mind.

But to me, living inside it, it was just ordinary everyday life with nothing out of place.

The only time something felt wrong was at the very end, when black holes opened up on A-ko's face.

Apparently, in reality, I was in the middle of a routine examination for hospital patients at that moment,

and no one knows what triggered me to come back to my senses.

Naturally, I couldn't go back to working at the gift shop,

so I'm currently working a part-time job at a factory.

And as I endlessly sort parts on the assembly line,

I often find myself wishing I could go back to when I was out of my head.

Every time I realize my smooth, successful life was just a delusion,

and that my miserable current life is reality,

I'm overwhelmed with sorrow and terror....

I've read and heard similar stories,

and I really want to know how those people are doing now.

Maybe it's impossible, but if that wasn't a delusion and was actually a parallel world,

and if such a thing exists, I want to go back.

My name isn't Eno.