Re:Zero EX: "Butterfly Dream (Kochou/Lust IF)"

The aftermath of the April Fools' project extra chapter. Do you know what the "Butterfly Dream" means?

One day, a man dreamed that he had become a butterfly, fluttering through the air. There was no deep meaning to the act itself, but when he awoke from that dream, the man thought this:

"Well now, did I just wake up from a dream of being a butterfly? Or is the butterfly dreaming that it is me, right here and now?"

Don't you think it's an interesting way of thinking? This isn't a story limited only to butterflies. The important thing is, what is the basis upon which one can certainly define "the self that exists here and now"?

When one sees a scene that looks like a "dream" to someone else, is the self that exists there truly not oneself? If that place is an ideal world—when one sees such a place, can one truly give up on it as just a dream?

Or perhaps, thinking in that way, when the needle swings completely toward the dream, one might say they have... lost the boundary between dream and reality. No, no, it's a bad habit of mine to speak in such a roundabout way. Let's try to summarize what I want to say more clearly and briefly this time.

In short, though it was only for a very brief moment, there was a scene of a dream that certainly should have been here. It was a world different from the original flow of time, and while I don't know if it actually turned out that way... whether it was a world where you, having become a butterfly, danced and fluttered, or a reality that you, dancing and fluttering, want to believe was "just a dream"—in the end, the one who judges that is not those around you, but your own perception.

—The world he sees shows him different facets over and over again. Among those, it is his imposed mission to choose a single world and walk through his own reality. Then, what becomes of the worlds that were not grasped?

Pondering questions without answers is also a blessing for me. Eventually, will he affirm or deny the dreams he has seen? Or how will he judge whether the world he walks is dream or reality?

And, it is a great shame that I cannot witness it by his side. Goodness, I've made a mistake quite unlike myself.

Since deleting a work puts a burden on the site, only the main text has been removed. Just like a dream.