[Short-Short] 'The Four-Dimensional Gaze'

'The Four-Dimensional Gaze'

I desperately wanted to see inside my classmate's uniform.
I can't explain the reason well.
I just wanted to see it, to the point of madness.

But, naturally, I couldn't see it.

Because the fabric was there.
The fact that it was 'hidden' fueled my craving.
—
One day, an idea struck me.

'Why don't I just look from beyond the dimensions?'

—
In three dimensions, matter blocks everything.

Walls, doors, skin.


They act as 'boundaries' that bounce my gaze back.
But if I look down from the heights of the fourth dimension,
it's a different story.
Every solid object is reduced to a mere 'cross-section'.
—
I worried, thought, and became nothing.

I dove into the abyss of thought and kept peeling away the shells of concepts.

Layer by layer.

It felt like peeling off the thin film covering the world,

one layer at a time.

—

It was when the last layer peeled off smoothly.

She was standing there.
But it wasn't the 'her' I knew.
The front, the back, the sides, and even her pulsing internal organs existed simultaneously, at an equal distance.
There was no perspective, no front or back, no privacy.

—

The clothes were certainly there.
But at the same time, the soft curves inside, the marrow of her bones, everything was 'exposed' all at once.
There was no place that was hidden, not from the beginning.

—

I saw.
I could see.
I was supposed to have obtained everything.

—

And yet.

—

My heart remained calm.

—

The pounding of my heart,
the passion that had made my fingertips tingle at that time,
had vanished like mist clearing away.

—

What was spread out there
was information that books from all times and places could not contain.

She was no longer a being wrapped in mystery.

Just a stack of continuous molecules.

Even the distinction between inside and outside was nothing more than a list of data.

—

I was struck by a cold terror.
'...Is this everything?'

—

At that moment, our eyes met.
No, not just our eyes.
Her entire existence was 'perceiving' me at the same time.

—

'You can see it too, can't you?'
She said in a transparent voice.

'So, are you satisfied?'

—

I had no way to answer.

—

The next moment, the world quietly
settled back into its original place.

—

She is standing there, wearing her uniform.
I can't see anything.
What lies on the other side,
I no longer know.

—

But.
The moment I touched that 'unknowability',
my frozen heart
suddenly leaped with heat.

—


I quietly catch my breath.

—

'...I knew it.'


—

Beyond that, I couldn't find the words.
Only a temperature, decisively different from before,
continued to burn in my chest.

The End