Chapter Text
Chapter 1
As the Sun disappeared beyond the horizon, bidding farewell till the next day, the Nobi family finished moving into their new house, which wasn’t very new at all.
Nobita put the last box down in his parent’s room. “Mom, this is the last one.” he told his Mother, Tamako, who was fixing the position of the kotatsu table, “Is there anything else I should help with?”
Tamako turned around and smiled at her son, who hadn’t slept the entire last night helping with packing up of their previous house. “Thank you Nobita. You’ve helped a lot, you can rest after taking up your boxes to your room.”
“Are you sure? I can still help.” Nobita insisted. At that moment, Nobita’s Father, Nobisuke, walks in.
“You should relax, Nobita, my boy. You do have your first day of highschool tomorrow, you need to be well rested.” Nobisuke said, putting his hand on Nobita’s shoulder. “Here, take this box to your room, and take a nap. We’ll call you down for dinner.”
Nobita sighed and took the box from his father. Before he could take the box out of the room, however, his eyes landed on the photographs on the newly setup dresser. The photos showed their family, their once complete family. The first photo showed the wedding of Tamako and Nobisuke, both smiling and blushing, surrounded by confetti. The second one showed Tamako and Nobisuke cradling baby Nobita. The third showed the family all together. The two parents, and their two sons, Nobita and Doraemon.
Nobita walked towards the dresser, the box now held to his side. He looked at the picture that showed his robotic adopted brother, the blue robo-cat’s wide smile frozen in time. Both of them had their arms around each other's shoulder. Nobita remembered the day they took the picture vividly. He remembered every day spent with Doraemon vividly.
His parents saw him standing so solemnly and grew tense as they saw him reach for the photo. “Nobita, son, are you okay?” Tamako asked cautiously.
Nobita broke out of his trance and forced a smile for his parents, “Yeah, Mom. I-I’m fine, I-I’m completely f-fine…” He spoke weakly, his voice cracking slightly.
Nobisuke lightly patted his back, “We miss him too, Nobita. He was, no, he is our son just as much as you.” Nobita looked at his parents with teary eyes, but he didn’t cry, not anymore.
“I just wish he was here, that’s all.” He took one last look at the picture of his long gone brother, and rushed up to his room with the box.
He ran up the stairs, and into his room. A room that was very familiar, yet quite different. When they moved back to their hometown after 3 years, they had decided to have the house rebuilt. But, Nobita had declared clearly that he wanted his room to be the same even if it was refurbished.
And so it was, the entire house was new and renovated, but Nobita’s room remained the same. The desk by the window facing the side yard of the house, the bookshelf beside it and the sliding door cupboard. The cabinet which held so many memories.
The only difference immediately visible was the new bed, placed near the window at the front of the room, replacing the old mattress Nobita used to sleep on. Sighing sadly, Nobita slid open the sliding door cupboard and put down the box on the top shelf.
He went and sat down on his bed, and looked around at his room. “God, it’s been three years?” Nobita scoffed, looking up at the ceiling, “Time flies fast huh?” He winced at his own words.
Time. Time was a funny thing, and yet a bitter thing for Nobita. “Future world, how are you right now?” He mused, thinking of the now very feeble memory of the world of the 22nd century, “Sewashi, how is your life? Am I still to blame?”
At this moment, Nobita remembered something. The first glimpse of the future he had seen. The damned photo album. The reason Sewashi had sent Doraemon to him. Nobita jumped up and went to the four boxes he had just brought up. He rummaged through the boxes until he found it, the old, rugged leather bound book.
Nobita hadn’t looked at it since God knows how long and now, as a highschooler, he was holding it again. “Let’s see, do my choices change my descendants’ lives better?” He inhaled deeply and opened it.
The first picture, “Nobita at highschool graduation. Passed with 88%” said the label. ‘On what planet?’ Thought Nobita.
He flipped a page, the label read “Nobita’s first job, at Rakuten”. He frowned ‘Corporate, Nobita? Really?’
He turned to the next page, one he had no interest in seeing anymore. The label said “Nobita weds-”, and it got cut off. The letters kept constantly changing, too fast to make out any names at all. As for the photo above, beside Nobita’s smiling face in a tuxedo was a woman with changing faces, just as the label.
What this meant, Nobita didn’t understand. Temporal logic was hard enough to understand, but what does this mean? Either he married someone, or he didn’t. Simple as that, how was his bride constantly shifting in the future? What could it be? A paradox? Or branching realities?
‘Maybe I’ll just go and check.’ He thought as he got up and opened the big drawer of his desk and….
‘What was I thinking? It’s been ages since it was here!’ He scolded himself mentally, frowning at the mundane contents of the drawer that once housed a brilliant machine.
He angrily shut the drawer, sat down on the chair and held his head. ‘One minute into the room and I’m losing it! Pull yourself together!’
Just then, he heard a cackling, high pitched laugh. Nobita jumped up and looked around. There was no one, no source of sound. Inside, or outside. Was he really losing it?
He waited for a few minutes, just standing still, but the sound didn’t come again. What is going on?
Nobita came back up to his room after dinner. His mind is still wondering about the laugh. Where did it come from? And why the hell was it so familiar? He knew the laughter from somewhere, but he couldn’t put a face to it.
‘Maybe I should just sleep. Maybe I’m just hallucinating from the fatigue.’ With that thought, Nobita slumped down on his bed. Many aspects of him might have changed, but what remained the same, was his ability to sleep whenever he wished.
Suddenly his eyes opened because of a deafening scream. He sat up straight and looked around. The sky outside was dark, and these walls had, what looked like, blood dripping down them. All of a sudden, two skeletal hands came out from under his bed and grabbed his ankles. Nobita tried to punch them off but he couldn’t, so he resorted to breaking the bones of the arms with his bedside lamp.
He jumped off the bed and ran out of his room, the skeletal armless hand still on his ankles like broken shackles. As he got to the corridor, he saw that somehow it was endless. “What is happening?” he said looking around. Now, the door had vanished.
He began running, towards what he didn’t know. ‘What else can I even do in this situation?’, he thought. Then, he heard a voice, a very familiar one.
“How far will you run, Nobita?” Said a voice looming from the shadows. As he stepped closer, Nobita got a closer look. It was an anthropomorphic dog-man, in armour and an eye patch. “You can’t run forever.”
Nobita looked at him astonished. He hadn’t seen him in years, practically forgotten him. And yet, here he was, the supposed greatest swordsman of the dog kingdom. “Saber?! How are- what place is this?” Nobita said, backing up.
“I don’t do words, human. All I know is the way of the sword!” He roared as he slashed at Nobita with his sword. Nobita, startled, jumped back, the blade cut at his right arm. Nobita screamed in pain and clutched his arm.
“What are you even here for? How are you here?! I’ve killed you back in Bauwan!” Nobita yelled slowly retreating, but suddenly he fell back onto the ground. He looked down, the lifeless skeletal hands that had gripped uselessly at his ankles, had now melded into a pure white shackle, binding his legs together.
“That dishonour, that disrespect, is exactly what I’m here to repay!!” Saber yelled as he slashed his sword to slice nobita’s head open. As the strike came forward, Nobita heard the same distant, cackling laugh. But when the blade was almost about to touch his face, he woke up screaming.
He sat up straight, breathing heavily, drenched in sweat. He checked his right arm, no cut. He threw off his blankets to see his ankles, no shackles. There wasn’t any blood on the walls, and the sun was almost rising. It was 6am. Was it all just a bad dream? How could a nightmare feel so real? And of all things he could have a nightmare about, why Saber? He hadn’t seen him since he had helped Pekko get back his kingdom. As a matter of fact, he was very sure he had killed Saber that night. Nobita clutched his forehead, ‘What was happening?’. First the weird picture in the Album, and now this horrible dream?
Suddenly, his phone rang. He hastily put on his glasses and looked at the phone. The caller ID read ‘Hidetoshi’, Nobita frowned. Why was he calling him at 6 in the morning? He picked up the call nonetheless.
“Hello?” He greeted him groggily. On the other end came the voice of a boy who was once more of a rival to Nobita. “Hey, Nobita! Are you up? It’s our first day of high school! You wouldn’t wanna be late right?”
“Yeah, yeah, Hideto. I’m up. How the hell are you so energetic so early?” Nobita asked, getting off his bed and stretching.
“Oh, I woke up at 5 a.m.!” Hidetoshi replied cheerfully from the other side. “So, done with the move in? How does it feel to be back?”
Nobita turned and looked out the window, at the town he had grown up in. Out a few metres to the left of his window, he saw a slightly large brown owl, flying off into the distance. “Yeah, it’s been…..quite the experience”