Chapter 5: I Think I Died In An Accident, Cause This Must Be Heaven

The digital clock on my nightstand screams 4:03 AM in angry red numbers when my eyes snap open. Sleep isn't coming back, not with my brain running a marathon of thoughts about the Harris twins. My body's exhausted, but my mind refuses to shut down, too busy replaying yesterday's highlight reel in vivid detail. Maybe some mindless gaming will help. Animal Crossing always knocks me out after an hour. I reach blindly toward my nightstand for my Switch, fingers expecting the familiar plastic case. Instead, they brush against something completely different, the unmistakable texture of book covers. "Huh?" I bolt upright, suddenly wide awake. Where my Switch should be sitting is a neat stack of books I've never seen before. I blink hard, wondering if I'm still dreaming, but the books remain stubbornly real when I open my eyes again. I pick up the top book from the stack, squinting at it in the dim light filtering through my curtains. The cover features a dude with flowing hair gazing longingly at a woman in a blood-red gown who's baring her fangs. "Melting the Vampire Queen's Heart," I read aloud. I flip through the rest, growing more bewildered with each title. "His Werewolf Protector." "Claimed by the Billionaire CEO." "The Dominant Doctor's Desire." "What the fuck?" I mutter, tossing the books aside. These aren't mine. I don't read romance novels, especially not these male-targeted ones with their flowery language and submissive male protagonists. Did Chris put these here as a prank? I stumble out of bed and flick on the light switch. The sudden brightness makes me wince, but what I see makes me freeze completely. My room looks... wrong. The furniture is in the right place, but everything else is off. The gaming posters I had on the walls have been replaced with landscape prints. My collection of action figures is gone from the shelf. Most disturbing of all, my custom gaming PC, the one I spent two years saving for, with its rainbow LED lighting and transparent case, is missing. In its place sits an outdated desktop computer that looks like it belongs in a high school computer lab from 2015. "Am I being grounded? No way. Mom would never. She's hardly even around." I approach the strange computer cautiously, like it might bite me. When I press the power button, it whirs to life with a mechanical groan that my SSD-equipped gaming rig would never make. The monitor flickers to life as it boots up. While I wait, I try to make sense of what's happening. Something's been nagging at me all day. The car accident, the chemistry class full of women, the twins suddenly noticing me... it all felt surreal. Now, alone in the dark with this strange computer humming in front of me, I can't ignore the wrongness anymore. When the desktop finally loads, I open the browser and head straight to Reddit. Maybe the internet can give me some answers, or at least distract me from this bizarre situation. The front page loads, and my jaw drops. The trending posts are nothing like what I'm used to seeing. There's an article about "Male College Enrollment Continues to Rise Under New Incentive Programs," and another titled "Boston's First Male Police Chief Appointed, Breaking the Glass Ceiling." I click on the police chief article, scanning it quickly. The language is strange, celebrating this "brave man" for "entering a traditionally female-dominated field." My heart's hammering against my ribs as I click through more headlines, each one more disorienting than the last. "Men’s Professional Basketball Still Not Taken Seriously," "Male Fashion Week: Are Nipples An Accessory?," "Dating App for Men Seeking Female Protectors Set To Debut shortly." I start googling like crazy, searching for anything that might explain what I'm seeing. "Gender demographics US," "male-female ratio," "gender population statistics." The results make me dizzy. Page after page confirms it, in this world, women outnumber men three to one. Women hold most positions of power, run the businesses, dominate politics. Men are the protected gender, valued for their rarity, their nurturing abilities. "What the actual fuck?" I whisper, running my hands through my hair. An hour of frantic research later, I'm staring at the screen, my mind struggling to process everything I've learned. This isn't my world. This isn't my reality. In my world, the Harris twins wouldn't have looked twice at me. In my world, men didn't need "protectors." "It must have been the car," I mutter to myself, pacing the small confines of my bedroom. "That accident. That's when I switched." The realization hits me like another collision. If this isn't my world, then what else is different? ‘What about my collection?’ My heart practically stops as I remember my important belonging. I scramble across the room to my closet, pushing aside clothes I don't recognize to reveal a small safe built into the wall. I punch in my usual code, Lilly and Rose's birthday, and hold my breath. The lock clicks open. I sigh with relief. Inside sits my journal, the same worn leather cover I've had since sophomore year. With shaking hands, I pull it out and flip it open. Relief floods through me as I see the familiar contents, various things I've collected over the years from Rose and Lilly. A strand of Lilly's auburn hair I found stuck to her backpack after she sat in front of me in English. The wrapper from Rose's protein bar that she'd tossed in the trash. A napkin with Rose's lipstick print. Notes I'd intercepted from the trash that they'd written to each other. "Thank god this world's me was also obsessed with them," I grumble, carefully closing the journal and hugging it to my chest. I return the journal to its safe, carefully closing the door and making sure it's secure. Back on my bed, I stare at the ceiling, my mind racing through everything that's happened. Most guys would probably be freaking out right now, trying to figure out how to game this bizarre reality. I bet they'd be plotting ways to take advantage of the skewed gender ratio, aiming for some kind of harem fantasy. But not me. I don't want a harem. I don't want multiple women fawning over me because I'm some rare commodity in this world. I just want Lilly and Rose. Always have. The fact that I somehow, through some cosmic glitch in the universe, actually have a chance with them both... "This must be heaven," I whisper into the darkness. My eyelids grow heavy as exhaustion finally overtakes my racing thoughts. Whatever weird parallel universe I've landed in, it's given me the one thing I've wanted most in my whole life. Tomorrow, I'll see them again. Touch them again. Kiss them again. I drift off with their faces floating through my mind, a smile playing at my lips despite all the strangeness. Maybe I should be more concerned about this reality shift, but right now, I can't bring myself to care. Not when the twins are finally mine.