Master of the Machete Style Manga

Chapter 97 Not a Dream (Seeking First Subscription!)
When I opened my eyes, all I saw was the white ceiling of the laboratory.

The blankets on the bed were a bit messy, with most of them pulled back, indicating that the body hadn't been sleeping well all night...

Yui Takahashi and the others hadn't arrived yet. At this moment, she was the only one in the laboratory, so quiet that only the faint hum of the instruments could be heard.

Ai Hoshino immediately sat up, took off her monitoring helmet, and then lifted her clothes to remove the electrodes attached to her body.

She immediately got out of bed, quickly went to the computer, and began to retrieve the data recorded throughout the night.

These complex data were processed by specialized software and quickly generated a series of complete charts.

Just then, a soft knock came from outside the laboratory door.

"Please come in," Ai Hoshino said without turning her head.

The door was opened from the outside with a key, and Kobayashi Aoi walked in. She saw that Hoshihara Ai was already sitting in front of the computer, so she smiled and walked over.

"So early? How did you sleep last night?" Kobayashi Aoi asked.

“She slept very well.” Ai Hoshino pointed to the screen. “The data is out.”

Kobayashi Aoi sat down next to her and said, "Let me take a look."

She adjusted her glasses and began to carefully examine the complex curves, tables, and EEG recordings on the screen.

"Your heart rate is stable, your breathing is even, and your blood oxygen saturation has remained above 98%... Judging solely from your vital signs, your sleep quality is very high," said Kobayashi Aoi.

Ai Hoshino pointed to the waveform on the screen and asked, "Do you see the brainwave recording of my dream last night? Is it the same as the pattern of a normal person's dream?"

Kobayashi Aoi's expression turned somewhat strange. She looked at Hoshihara Ai and said, "What I was saying was that if we only look at your vital signs, you slept very well, but the EEG recordings tell a completely different story..."

Ai Hoshihara wasn't an expert in this area. She looked at the various data and images on the screen and waited for Aoi Kobayashi to analyze them.

After a long silence, Kobayashi Aoi said to Hoshihara Ai, "Ai... are you sure you slept last night?"

“Of course,” Hoshino Ai said. “You just said I slept very well.”

“But your EEG recordings don’t show any signs of sleep at all, in fact…” Kobayashi Aoi shook her head and said, “It’s more like you’ve been thinking intensely all night, even more extreme than the EEG patterns you have when you’re doing difficult problems in an exam. You didn’t get a moment’s rest all night.”

Kobayashi Aoi asked with some concern, "Do you feel dizzy or have chest tightness?"

“I feel perfectly normal…” Ai Hoshino was quite surprised. She also checked the sleep records on her smartwatch. “It gave my sleep a score of 98.”

"Well... because smartwatches also analyze heart rate and breathing, but your abnormal data stays in your brain and won't be reflected on the device that monitors your vital signs."

"So, I not only didn't dream, I didn't even sleep?" Ai Hoshihara asked in confusion.

Kobayashi Aoi checked the data again and nodded affirmatively: "According to the data, that is indeed the case."

impossible……

Ai Hoshino frowned in thought, the incredibly vivid dream from last night replaying in her mind.

From the moment she opened her eyes in bed and saw Ken Sakamoto, to their passionate entanglement, she eventually felt exhausted until she woke up to the sound of her alarm clock.

The whole process lasted a long time, and every detail is still vivid in my memory.

I couldn't possibly not have dreamt last night!

Moreover, she seemed quite refreshed, without any signs of staying up late or feeling tired, so it was impossible for her to have not slept all night. "If I didn't actually dream last night... then that's correct!" Hoshino Ai gently patted the table and said.

Ai Hoshino doesn't actually want the memory fragments in her mind to be "dreams" in the traditional sense.

Although this conjecture seems like science fiction to outsiders, she still feels that what she experienced last night was something that happened in the "future" of another timeline.

It was just that my consciousness connected with my future self, and I experienced it along with myself.

And because that was originally herself, and her consciousness was also one, she only felt a little awkward at first, but she quickly got used to that "first-person perspective".

The data monitored by various devices last night proved this point—it was not a dream at all.

She didn't leave the lab building for the rest of the day; students brought her lunch and dinner.

On the computer screen was the electroencephalogram (EEG) of the entire previous night.

She quickly learned about the undulating lines and the waveforms oscillating at a specific frequency, and was able to understand some of their features.

Kobayashi Aoi had previously concluded: "Your brain is abnormally active, with no brainwave characteristics of 'dreaming,' just like you've been thinking intensely all night."

Her own physical sensations were also completely different from what she had experienced when she took a nap in her recliner at home that noon.

One is an immersive movie, and the other is an immersive game; that's roughly the difference.

Why does this difference exist?

In the afternoon, she lay down on the lab bed again, put on the helmet covered with sensors, and tried to recreate the experience from that noon.

However, monitoring data showed that it was just a perfectly normal afternoon nap.

After she fell asleep, her brain activity smoothly entered a cycle of alternating light and deep sleep, and then she woke up normally. She may have dreamed during this time, but she had no related memories.

Until late at night, Ai Hoshihara sat at her workbench, jotting down all sorts of messy thoughts on paper.

Over the next few days, Ai Hoshihara repeatedly adjusted her experimental approach and used equipment to verify it.

Unfortunately, although she conducted the nap experiment every noon, she never entered that unusually vivid dream again.

On the contrary, at night, she successfully recreated a "dream" that the monitoring data showed to be characterized by high-intensity thinking.

This time, the scene was on the beach in Shonan, just like the date she remembered.

She and Ken Sakamoto booked a small villa guesthouse facing the sea. Bathed in the starry sky at night, they listened to the sound of the waves on the terrace overlooking the sea until dawn.

Ai Hoshino felt that her "future" self was too greedy; even though Ken was begging for mercy, she still wouldn't let him go.

Even after the alarm clock rang, Ai Hoshihara didn't linger. She knew that everything she saw was just a projection of the future timeline, not a reality that she could control.

The key point now is that if she is alone, this experiment will never be complete.

At the heart of everything is Ken Sakamoto, who himself is absent.

To truly verify this hypothesis, it needs to be included in the experiment.

He needs to willingly lie down on his own experimental bed.

(End of this chapter)