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Hiruko had a box of shame locked away in her memories.
Some of them related to the many encounters she’s had with Eito Aotsuki across time and space—not that she’d ever let him figure that out. The timeline where he managed to kill her in her sleep laid on the top of that pile, but another early one managed to hold onto second place even after all this time.
She referred to this timeline as Coming of Age. A cheesy teen movie experience and one of the fewer happier timelines she experienced. Despite her gripes, she still held it with fondness.
And she had a lot of gripes.
Really, how could past Hiruko be so stupid? Maybe she’d only had two or three timelines worth of experience with Eito at that point, but the fact she didn’t see through his act immediately left her with the desire to rectify that, if she ever got the chance.
Many loops later, she received her opportunity on a silver platter. She’d gotten into the habit of placing video cameras around the school after her last timeline resulted in a massacre of everyone via a specialized invader crafted and let loose in the area after a defensive battle. Call it paranoia, but she didn’t want to relieve getting vivisected while everyone died around her so soon.
Camera in hand, when she passed by the courtyard, she stopped at the sound of conversation. She turned her camera on and pointed it towards the pair—Takumi, and Eito.
Takumi clearly didn’t enjoy the conversation, yet as Eito rambled on, he nodded tersely and left. In Takumi’s hand…
He held a familiar tattoo.
…So it’s repeating, she thought as she slipped away. She wondered if she should just let it play out—Darumi had died already. She’d already failed someone, someone so important to her—what would be the point of dragging things along a different path?
But a much more vindicative side of her sparked with rage. Why should she let him have this? She hated trying to salvage already doomed situations. Roads carved with ruin and emptied into shallow graves. If she’d hit the bottom sooner or later…
What’d be the problem in a bit of indulgence?
If she’d already failed, then she might as well prove something along the way.
“I’m so happy to be here—”
She’d had enough of his faux-cheer before she so much as breathed inside the cafeteria, but hearing the same act spat in her face made something in her snap. Call it timeloop sickness, a general mental break, or something in between all her impulses and desires, but before his last words slipped out, she got up from her table, stormed over, and grabbed him by the collar.
“Shizuhara, what are you doing!?” Takumi called out. Her pounding ears did well to block out concern from everyone, though she noticed Takemaru stepped in to keep the crowd back.
Eito looked back at her with tense terror—and annoyance. Buried deep within, where only she saw it. He looked away from her, a twitch of his nose and a curling of his lips his secret signals of disgust.
Hiruko let him go.
“I don’t believe it,” she said.
“Don’t believe what?” Sirei said, shrugging. “Come on, shouldn’t you all be happy we’ve got more fighting power?”
Hiruko cleared her throat and turned to address the group. Despite the panic, despite their uncertainty, they all focused on her.
“I don’t believe your brainwashing worked,” she said. “The integrity of the group in the long run matters more than grabbing whatever fighting power we can get. Before we let him on the team, I want him locked up and monitored in the capsule room for at least a week. Maybe even two.”
“The capsule room…?” Tsubasa said. “Oh, that weird dark room? Why can’t we just use the cage again?”
“Because I said so,” Hiruko said. She knew it wouldn’t be enough, though. So… “We need to be sure we can trust him. If we don’t do this, then—”
Then what? If she had to make a wager, she’d put the only thing of value she had left on the table for all to see.
“I’ll kill myself.”
Gasps filled the room. Hiruko took a deep breath and unearthed all that buried resentment to further intimidate the others. Whatever they saw in her, as long as it scared them, then she did her job right. “I’ll kill myself, and you’ll have to figure out for yourselves whether it was worth it.”
A tense silence took everyone. Some met her with anger, reddened faces bursting with frustration, while others averted their gazes and displayed their conflicted desires for all to infer.
The one to break that silence cleared his throat. Takumi pulled at the sleeves of his jacket like a cat licking its paws before getting to work, wiping away a bead of sweat before he turned resolute.
“I agree with Shizuhara,” he said. “And I don’t…want you to hurt yourself. I get why you’re so nervous. Sirei, you said before you weren’t sure if it’d work, right?”
Sirei, who’d looked on in shock at Hiruko, snapped back to reality and nodded. “Right, right—but I was there! I’d known if it worked!” From there, he aimed his rage at Hiruko. “Who do you think you are, questioning you commanding—”
“I’ll do it.”
Of all people to interrupt next, no one expected Eito himself to speak up. He had squirmed away from Hiruko, eyes locked onto her with an unreadable gaze. A moment later, he grinned, the carefree sparkles of joy returned to their rightful place. “I’ll do it! If keeping myself apart from the group for a while is what it takes to earn everyone’s friendship, then I’m fine with it!”
He pointed at Hiruko. “Don’t kill yourself! No matter how dark the days ahead seem, there’s always another ray of hope hiding behind the gloom, waiting to bring warmth and happiness to your heart!”
Hiruko said nothing. He laughed, and put his hand down.
“Well…” Takumi sighed, pressing a hand against his forehead. “If Aotsuki’s fine with it, then we’ll do that. Hiruko, how about you keep an eye on him? Once you’re sure he won’t turn against us, then we can put him back on the team.”
She nodded.
“That’s just fine with me.”
So she said.
So everyone could believe, if it made things easier. But as people relaxed, her eyes wandered around. To Sirei, who looked seconds away from hitting the bottle, to Eva, her usual placid state unchanged, and to Shouma, who smiled in relief that the morning conflict ended as quick as it did.
If this timeline was doomed from the start, the least she could do was take pragmatic measures to protect what she needed to. No matter what it took. Even if it meant being around someone she barely wanted to understand.
“So, how’d you figure it out?”
Spending time with Eito Aotsuki had never been high on Hiruko’s list of things to do in the loops. In fact, until this one, she couldn’t say she knew much about him at all beyond what he showed to everyone. The only other loop she remembered where she saw another side of him…
Those circumstances laid outside the realm of the ordinary. They’d all had their reality shattered—how much of his behavior was desperation or potential, she hadn’t figured that out yet. Maybe he was some angel of death, and the longer he persisted in a timeline, the more doomed it became.
Her and him both, in that case.
He sat inside one of the pods, while Hiruko stared at him from the door. “Too over the top,” she said, not at all inclined to share the real reason. “Your behavior yesterday compared to our first day grated me more than I thought possible. Even if the brainwashing worked, I wouldn’t want you on the team anyways.”
Eito laughed, smile donned no different than his grin from the first cycle. “Good thing that’s not your call to make then, huh? Then again…since I confessed it all just now, there’s no chance of putting my plan together. I think you would’ve had fun with it, Hiruko, if you’d given it a chance.”
He crossed his legs. “So, how’d you figure it out?”
“I already told you.” Hiruko looked away. No, no truly hadn’t. No answer was all the answer she deigned to give him.
Maybe it’d been a mistake to say anything. Eito was too perceptive—he noticed one thing off about someone, and leapt onto it with the desperation of a hungry vulture on a rotting, unclaimed corpse.
“Hmmmm…” He adjusted his glasses, as though it’d fix the prescription she knew didn’t suit him. “We only knew each other for a day before Takumi put me in that cage. He knew what I’d been planning before I left any evidence—and so did you.
“You’re the same, aren’t you?”
This had been a mistake after all. Hiruko’s breath hitched.
“I’ll give you some credit,” she said, glare aimed at him. “You’re by far the most predictable person here. Stuck in the same role—but you still think you have power over everyone.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?” Eito said, laughing. “I don’t care about you, Hiruko. Go ahead and tell everyone the truth so I can go back to my cage, please.”
He hummed. “Unless you want to talk to me alone so much. It won’t change anything, anyways. You’ll always be just another stupid, filthy human to me.”
She gritted her teeth. He figured out how she outed him, and now he wanted her to leave the stage at his command. Even when caught, he still acted as though he controlled the situation—she couldn’t risk doing whatever he wanted. She needed to trust her own intuition and knowledge to understand the one person she’d never been able to figure out.
“No, I don’t think I will,” she said as she approached him. He still sat so casually even as she loomed over him. “I wanted to keep you here, so I’ll decide when you’re allowed to leave. If I tell everyone and you’re put back in your cage, you’ll only find a way to escape again.”
“You have so much faith in me,” he said, closing his eyes. “So you’re admitting it.”
She really shouldn’t have. But if she hadn’t, she felt they’d spend the next week going in circles. Besides…
He’d forget. Like everyone else, anyways. So if didn’t matter if Eito thought Hiruko was a time traveler like Takumi. He’d play the same role as always on the next loop, taking up the same script and the same lines and the same bits as everyone else.
Even then…there were some—
Some exceptions. One, in particular.
Hiruko sighed. She didn’t know what it’d take to escape this loop, but at the very least, she wasn’t ready to back down from this challenge she decided on her own to face. To subject herself to a weeks’s worth of Eito conversations was proof of something, even if she didn’t care enough to figure out what yet.
“Even if I am, I don’t have anything to say to you anymore.” She turned away and headed for the door, before she stopped. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”
“Why?” he asked. Hiruko slammed the door behind her.
Of course she didn’t know why, either.
“Are you going to tell me about your previous timeline, now? Takumi shared so many wonderful stories with me, why not do the same? Or have you told him and not me? That’s not fair…”
Despite Eito’s initial comments of disinterest yesterday, when Hiruko arrived for day 2 of their ‘interrogation’, he ended up as the one to initiate the conversation. She’d reported to the others that he’d been quiet and closed off, confused by what was going on…as far from the truth as could be, but it wasn’t like Sirei actually checked the cameras often enough to notice.
“There’s nothing to say,” she said. “I died too early to know much.”
Or so Takumi’s recount of his time leap said. Hiruko knew what she experienced in Takumi’s and then everything that came after, whether Takumi survived or not—though Eito needed to piece it together himself. Hiruko left no room to indulge him.
Not that he needed it.
“That doesn’t make much sense,” he said, hands folded over a book in his lap as he rocked back and forth in the pod he sat in. “You wouldn’t have figured me out based on two weeks of experience, right? Unless you want me to believe I killed you in a direct fight.”
Shouma must’ve given that book to him along with his morning meal, Hiruko thought. He’d always been just a bit kinder to Eito than many of the others.
“How do you know about that?” she asked. Eito sighed.
“Turning the questions back onto me…Sirei gave me a briefing after he shocked me unconscious all night with his ‘therapy’ machine.”
“I see.”
“So, this means you know more than even Takumi does, huh? And yet you didn’t do anything to stop me until yesterday…”
Eito laughed, pushing his glasses back into place. “Interesting. So very, extremely, deeply interesting.”
Hiruko fixed her own glasses into place, taking a seat. “Takumi always stops you. I’m not going to babysit him through all his time travel choices.”
“Hmmmmm.”
Eito hummed and placed his book to the side before he leaned forward. Though there still laid a distance between the two, the look in Eito’s eyes knocked Hiruko off-guard for a moment—not that he’d be able to tell, her stone cold facade armed and ready as always. The sort of intrigue he only showed to Takumi, now aimed at her.
No…
Not quite the same. With Takumi, she knew the two had some odd thing going on sometimes. But with her, a seething layer of petty rage laid underneath the curiosity. Intertwined, all one in the same—maybe he wanted to know her, so he could destroy her.
Maybe Eito was still angry Hiruko thwarted his plans. Even if he did a decent job of hiding it.
“More than one, then?” he said. “How many times have you been through this? By the sound of it, Takumi might not hold a candle to you.”
“If I’d been there,” she said, “you would’ve died.”
She’d have Takumi kill him, or finish the job herself. With everything she knew and experienced, it almost made sense. Maybe letting him die would ensure some measure of a happy outcome after all.
Or maybe he irritated her enough to make the selfish choice to throw that all away, just once. Even as his hopes from timelines past stung her heart to the point of vague attachment.. She’d forget them, escape them—face herself with an obstacle rather than a person.
Maybe she’d learn to stop caring. But, in this moment, armed with the knowledge of years worth of loops, she made the only choices she could.
“You really want me gone that much,” he shuddered, a quick shake of his puppet strings, “it makes me wonder why you haven’t reported me already.”
“It’s…”
She grit her teeth, hating herself and her failed attempt to keep herself centered. “This is a new future. I’ll decide when we’re done.”
“So you’ve never stopped me here before?” he said. “Or have you always let me die until now? Probably not…”
“The more you keep asking about timelines, the more I wonder whether I should report you to Sirei after all.” She fixed him with yet another death stare, wondering whether he’d test her any further.
His smile dropped. “Hey, you know. Maybe, just maybe I’ll stop…if you tell me about one of them? I’ll be satisfied then. I’ll even let you pick, no matter how droll and boring it may be.”
Hiruko pressed her mouth into a thin line. Staring at the wall instead of him became standard practice in this conversation, but now more than ever, she needed to focus on something less irritating. He’d already figured out that part of her, but in the end, she held control over whether she said anything more.
In the worst case, if Eito betrayed her, revealed it all to Sirei, he’d probably just erase her memories again thinking she’d become defective. Then they’d stumble, die, and reset—or she could spare herself the trouble. Run off campus, kill herself.
But—living in ignorance for a while, just for a moment…
She shook her head. “I’ll think on it tonight. If I’m in a good mood, I’ll tell you about one tomorrow.”
“Hah…of course you’d pick a timeline as ridiculous as that.”
Eito reached up and felt around his eye sockets, a look of deep displeasure etched into him as Hiruko laughed, hand to her mouth while she savored every moment of his troubles. She hated thinking back to that timeline—to the last moments of her life, where her satisfaction knowing she’d finally rest with her friends died in the remembrance that she’d do it all over again the moment she passed.
The knowledge it forced her to carry now, seeing everyone around her determined to go back to nothing, to escape from their empty existences into a bleak reality as celebrated tools of genocide.
At the very least, she might as well torment this Eito with some of the knowledge. She refused to elaborate why he changed so much, but informing him that he’d tear his eyes out and beg to be with them under the right circumstances had the exact effect she hoped for.
“You cleaned the school every day for us,” she said. “I had you running errands for me outside the school too, and you always did them with a smile on your face. So desperate to be included—if you want to be my errand boy in this timeline, too, I might consider it if you get on all fours and bark.”
A dark shadow crossed Eito’s face. “I’d rather kill you and then myself than do anything for a loathsome human like you. Loathsome and a liar, too.”
Hiruko’s amusement dried up. Right—he wouldn’t take those jokes like Takumi did. “You’re calling me a liar?”
Eito chuckled. “Well—I don’t believe it. Not in the least. I guess you changed your mind after all.”
“If the truth is too much for you, I’ll have Sirei put you back in the machine to make you forget.”
He winced, moving a hand to his forehead as if to protect his brain. “Because taking my free will away is funny to you, isn’t it?”
No, not really.
She hid the hesitance his words brought with a smirk. “Just as funny as hearing Oosuzuki comment on Magadori’s masturbation habits for the thousandth time. At some point, you’d think she’d get tired of listening and go join her.”
“Don’t make me imagine that,” Eito said, looking queasy for a moment. She wondered whether it was because of the mental image of sex, or he thought humans doing anything with each other in any context seemed disgusting. Likely the latter. “It’s almost as terrible as this fake timeline you came up with.
“Speaking of—I’d like to ask you something. Not about the timelines, of course. Even if you lied I’ll still say you fulfilled your promise.” He rested a hand to his heart, as if overwhelmed by his generosity. “But I want to know: why do you remember so much? Takumi has redo powers, and even he doesn’t remember as much.”
I thought you decided I changed my mind?, she thought, though she knew he left that inconsistency on purpose. Maybe Eito wanted Hiruko to believe he believed her, with all the implications that left behind.
Not that a story would be enough to change him. She knew that.
“It’s not that simple,” she said, crossing her arms. “Hemoanima’s capable of more than we both know. We have our Specialist Skills, but we can do more than we think with those. Takumi used his to remember one timeline—I expanded my power to remember more.”
If anything, Specialist Discipline was the shadow over her true potential. It was all Sirei needed to see her of—and everyone else, at that rate.
“So, you developed more skills? Or is yours different from what everyone thinks it is?”
“Hm…both. It didn’t start out that way, but it’s evolved over time. And before you go and think you can change your skill to break out of here, it took me a while to retain memories of my loops. And before that point, I’d already started each one with snippets, so it was more like flexing a muscle than anything.”
“Loops?”
Hiruko froze. Eito smiled, seeing her grow pale and sweaty.
“Come on, do you really need to panic? How else would you remember so many different versions of us if you weren’t forced to? You really don’t strike me as the social or sentimental type, the kind of person who’d want to meet us over and over again.”
…
She took a deep breath.
Objectively, he was right. What she revealed could be inferred through her personality and knowledge. Knowledge that she shared with Eito over the past three days.
She’d told him so much—but why? Why to him? The one obstacle in their way, only finding some self-awareness and peace when the path opened to inevitable, chosen destruction.
—Maybe she’d let her guard down too much.
Maybe she needed to reset.
Hiruko stood up. Telling herself she was still as calm as ever, she ignored Eito repeating her name as she hurried to the door and slammed it shut behind her.
She didn’t know why, but she told Sirei she needed more time to figure him out. On the way back to the capsule room, though, a familiar fluff of red-hair stopped her on the way.
“Oh, Shizuhara,” Takumi said, smiling and walking up to her. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in a while. You talked to Eito a lot yesterday too, didn’t you?”
“We don’t talk much,” she said, “Only enough for me to discern whether he’s acting or not.”
“Wait, you figured him out already?” His little puff of free hair slacked and fell over, not prompted by anything but gravity, though Hiruko wondered whether it somehow managed to sync with his emotions.
Maybe she’d need to run some tests later. Instead, though, she sighed just thinking about the day she had ahead of her. “I’m still working on that.”
“Huh…well, okay. Are you guys—uh, getting along?”
Hiruko blinked. She thought Takumi wanted to make fun of her, but as she stared down at him, his sincerity left her blindsided.
“What, do you think a few days of interrogation means we’re friends?” Hiruko spoke with more snap than she intended, sending Takumi into a panic.
“No, I mean—” Takumi blushed and put his hands up, “I thought that, now that he might be normal, you two could have a lot to bond over? You both…like books, and studying, and…”
She didn’t love studying, but she refused to correct him. “And we both wear glasses? Is that how desperate you are for commonalities?”
“I’m not desperate! I’m just curious what you guys talk about in there, that’s all!”
“Hmph. Well, have fun guessing with yourself. I need to go.”
It took Hiruko a few more tries, but once she finally shrugged Takumi off, she made her way back to the capsule room, where Eito laid in one of the pods with his nose buried in a book. She came early enough to where he still had breakfast at his side—mostly untouched, though she knew him well enough to guess a reason for his scant appetite. Eito refused anything more than the bare minimum amount of calories to function, no matter what, as long as someone other than him handled the meals.
The sight left her with a pang of conflicting emotions that disappeared as soon as Eito opened his mouth.
“I thought you would’ve given up by now,” he said, closing his book and sitting up. “Are you getting attached to me? Urgh, just the thought is giving me the worst bout of nausea…”
Hiruko wanted to laugh, but considering the note their last conversation ended on… “I considered it,” she said, “but you might feel satisfied thinking you chased me away. We couldn’t have that now, could we?”
Eito hummed against, thrumming his fingers in his lap. If he was sick of her, he didn’t show it, armed with his usual playful smile. “I have an idea, then. How about a little challenge?”
“No,” she said, turning back towards the door.
“A little one,” he repeated. “At least listen to the rules before you run away.”
She would’ve loved to strike some fear into him, be it through her usual methods or through a method with more persuasion, but Hiruko knew from experience how useless it’d be in the long run. A few deep breaths later, and she turned around, going to take a seat again.
“…Fine. Maybe I’ll be interested.”
He grinned. “I knew you cared. So, the rules are simple: I ask you five questions about anything I want. If I’m sure you’re being honest and thorough with your answers, then…I’ll fight with everyone to the end. No tricks, no betrayals, I’ll behave in and out of battle exactly as you want me to.”
Her eyes widened. Eito seemed happy breaking through her defenses for once, folding his hands over each other as if discussing a serious business proposal.
“But, if you lose, then nothing changes.”
Right. Of course he’d be like that! Hiruko knew not to get her hopes up, but she had been somewhat interested. “So it all depends on how you feel. This is less of a challenge and more of a persuasion attempt than anything.”
“A what?”
“…Nevermind. I accept. I see no reason not to.”
His pupils dilated, something between stress and happiness compressed in his tight expression. “Wow, you actually agreed? Maybe we’re becoming friends after all—augh, give me a moment. Just the thought makes me want to vomit.”
Once Eito recovered, he began with the questions. Considering he’d done nothing but ask questions these past few days, she wondered what else he wanted to know. Maybe how to power up his own cryptoglobin, or about the truths of this school, or—
“What was your first timeline like?”
…Hm.
An easy one. It should’ve been obvious, but maybe he wanted to be sure Hiruko didn’t omit anything from any earlier accounts of it.
“I don’t remember much of it. You killed me early on—I’m sure Sumino’s spilled it all to you, but that was our first cycle through the loop.”
Eito paused. His delight snapped away to something more ambiguous, before he nodded. Whatever he felt faded away for that same placid mask before Hiruko thought to question it.
“…I see,” he said. “Boring, but I believe you. It’s a shame you don’t have much of an interesting story to tell, though…So, question 2: How many months of memories do you have?”
Another one Hiruko could answer with ease. She leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “Months is generous. A hundred days is a little over three months, and I’ve been through nearly fifty from the ones I remember. So about…close to twelve years?”
Eito grimaced, looking sickened just imagining going through the same ordeal. “I’m surprised you haven’t given up and killed everyone for a little peace of mind,” he said, and she’d never admit that she used to consider it (or still did, in the group’s more frustrating moments). “I believe you. Question 3…”
“How does Takumi play into this?”
A bit more difficult to answer, mostly due to the fact the man in question never told her much about the extent of his redo powers, nor did she want to bring him in for elaboration on anything she might not know about. Still, even if Hiruko kept her cards close and never let Takumi know about her time loop troubles, she had a decent idea of his.
“He used his abilities to leap back with all his memories at the end of the first cycle, but that’s all,” she said. “I only knew some information about the war based on my memories of the Tokyo Residential Complex. After he leapt, he only ever remembered the first loop, and made choices based off his experiences there. He doesn’t passively remember them like I do, and I don’t think he’s responsible for any further loops.”
Eito put a hand to his chin. “So his ability needs to be manually triggered so he can remember? Then why doesn’t he loop back when things end badly?”
“I don’t know,” Hiruko said, “don’t bother asking me these questions unless I come by with red hair and an idiotic cowlick one day. I don’t know why he makes the choices he does—I only let him make them.”
Eito’s concentration broke, smiling from her answer. She winced—once again, she said too much. Though, even then, she still had the advantage.
“Maybe I’ll ask him one day, if I feel like it.” Eito ran his fingers against the pod’s surface. “Question…four, right?
“What do you think about me? Your honest opinion, from every loop you’ve lived through.”
Hiruko snorted—she couldn’t help it, after all, she doubted he cared one bit about her opinion on him. He made it clear loop after loop that few people caught his attention, the rest filtered into this box of filth he handled with gloved hands and a sneer on his face. Well…if he asked…
She’d be honest.
“I think you’re boring.”
Eito pursed his lips together as Hiruko continued. “Everyone changes with their circumstances. The nicest ones in our group come to abet murder, the most troublesome become close allies—even the tiniest change in choices elicits a ripple effect.
“But you’re some lazy river passenger who only lets those ripples change you when they become a tidal wave. It’s pathetic, irritating, and gets in my way much more often than not. If there’s one thing I agree with you on, it’s that the others aren’t interesting enough to spend years reliving the same 100 days with, but you exist to make things harder for everyone. If you remembered, you’d tire of it, eventually…”
Eito planted a hand next to him, with enough force to ellict a thump and cut off Hiruko’s train of thought.
“So, what does that make you?” he said, and stopped. Expectant.
Hiruko paused, examining Eito—the sudden surge of malice in his gaze threw her off guard. Honestly, did her words get to him that much?
“You talk like I’m some kind of actor tied to the script,” he said, “or some pantomime villain booed off stage left at the end. But what makes you any different? You stand there and watch everyone else make the choices you should. You talk to some unoriginal, pathetic person all day instead of taking charge and doing something substantial to reach your goals. Do you even care about anyone anymore? Are they all just puppets reading lines to you now? Is watching them all suffer and die your favorite entertainment?
“Move the strings here, fix this person there, and you’ll get what you want—but you don’t even care to do that much. Otherwise Darumi wouldn’t have died, or maybe you could’ve stopped Eva’s brainwashing.
“Then again, you didn’t even stop mine! Were you hoping it’d work this time and I wouldn’t be a problem?” A bark of laughter. “See? You don’t even care. What’s the difference between monsters and puppets, if neither are important to us?”
Hiruko should’ve been angry.
Eito said all that to get under her skin, but his words failed to pierce the surface. She felt nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing that meant anything to anyone or anything or even to—
She felt so calm that she slammed a fist against the pod she sat in, leaving a tiny crack. She felt so level-headed that she lunged forward, grabbed him by the neck and squeezed as hard as she could, with a force even Eito yelped at before he lost oxygen, clawing and wriggling at her iron-clad grip.
“Every loop, it’s the same,” she said, voice hoarse. “We wake up, we fight, we fall apart, we die. Sometimes we question, sometimes we go down a different rail than before, but—for someone who pretends to be smart, you’re stupid. You’re ignorant to your own ridiculous desires, lying to the end. You said you didn’t believe me when I told you how needy and pathetic you were, but why else would you bother pretending to be everyone’s friend if you didn’t enjoy it on some level?”
Call it yelling at a wall, call it a cathartic punishment, but as she squeezed tighter, more and more spilled out, things she’d never dream of saying otherwise. If Eito thought he liked to monologue…
Well.
“It’s frustrating! It’s always the same outcome, just peel back the bad choices and they’re all doing the same things every time!” Her hands grew clammy, sweaty. “I can’t make these choices anymore. When I gave up and let Sumino make whatever stupid decisions he wanted, I felt so grateful—now he could make the choices, he could doom us or save us! It wasn’t my responsibility anymore! But even then—he became the same, eventually.
“You, though—you’re the worst. You’re stupid, unoriginal, pathetic…stubborn. Even if you changed once, we all died anyways, so it barely even mattered!”
A final comfort for those of us who wanted to die but simply couldn’t, she thought back then.
What an idiot that Hiruko was.
“Why can’t you make this easier for me!? I don’t want to rot here forever because of all of you! Stop it—can’t you all give me some peace of mind for one loop!? Do anything to make this less agonizing!?”
At some point, Eito became faceless. An avatar for the unchanged, for the constants, for every doom the group encountered.
For every flaw each member held, carrying them to early ends.
“I’m not going to make every choice for a bunch of petulant, suicidal morons! I’m done with that! I spent most of last loop drunk because of all of you! They don’t even have good wine in the Gift-o-Matic, and that happy powder is NOTHING compared to the real thing! If we’re going to be forced into an endless war, the least that power-hungry tyrant could do is give us something that actually takes the agony away!”
Hiruko laughed, wept, something in-between—she only registered the soft impact of her tears on her hands and the dry barks of air that escaped her throat in disgusting, amused wheezes.
“It doesn’t matter, anyways!
“It didn’t matter in all the other loops anyways!
“If the only comfort I have is tearing into the brains and organs of our enemies, then…”
Then.
She let go. Eito collapsed, coughing as he scrambled away from her. Despite his posturing, he too had a survival instinct.
…
Hiruko hadn’t had enough. She stomped over to him, and drove her foot into his knee. Too winded, he could only grunt as she stomped on him over and over again, up until he finally blacked out.
“You know, we never finished our challenge.”
Hiruko had never been more grateful Eito wore that stupid-looking puffy jacket of his. He didn’t inform anyone of the violence she subjected him to—though considering he knew about her time loops, having another secret between them didn’t matter to her. If he revealed it, anyways, she’d likely just kill him, then herself. She didn’t like giving up on timelines, but spending another one in a cage wasn’t her ideal way to spend the next month and a half.
She crossed her legs, situated in a pod across the room from him this time. When she said nothing, he continued.
“Your last answer told me more than I asked for, so I’ll accept it,” he said with a smile. “Though, unfortunately, the last question I wanted to ask might be redundant now.”
Hiruko cleared her throat. “Was it, ‘What do you think of yourself’?”
“Haha, am I that unoriginal to you?”
“…”
“Anyways, there’s one thing I want to know, so I’m making my last question more specific. Is there…”
Eito paused, as if for some dramatic emphasis before he laughed and continued.
“Anything you regret about the person you are now? Oh, and if you strangle me again, I’m disqualifying you by default.”
That earned a bitter laugh from her. “And there goes my back-up plan.”
“You’re scary…” He deflated, as though he were actually scared—but she knew better. Maybe learning about the loops made him fear death less. Did the present matter so much, when the future would be lost to you either way?
Regardless.
She already knew her answer. Maybe she’d caught Eito’s stupidity, but what came out of her was something she never thought she’d say to him.
“I regret…getting involved in fighting the invaders,” she said. “Because it led me here. We’re in a prison and I’m surrounded by bad actors, so I sit back and watch because there’s no point in changing the outcome anymore. I’ve been murdered more than enough times to know I’m better off not walking into an early grave to fix this group.”
She knew of one instance with certainty, yet looking back, there’d been quite a few timelines where her life in them cut off abruptly after volunteering information earned from the past loops.
Really, past Hiruko could have stood to be smarter.
Eito thrummed his fingers against the pod, a habit Hiruko had come to be annoyed by with all the noise it made. “So you don’t know anything about why you’re looping? Maybe you’ve done something unforgivable—or maybe it has to do with this ‘World Death’, and Earth is punishing all of humanity for fighting against fate through you.”
“You think I haven’t considered that?”
“No, I know you have. I only wanted to remind you that you deserve all the suffering you go through. You and the rest of humanity, of course.”
Eito hopped out of his pod while Hiruko contemplated breaking his knee this time. “Hah, all right, I’ll be fair—you win. Despite you trying to kill me and putting me through these horrible interrogations, I’ll put aside all our disagreements and agree to fight with you all. I’ll confess to the faked persona, too. I’ll even let you do whatever comforts your disgusting little hearts like threatening to bomb me if I breathe wrong.”
He laughed and rested a hand in his pocket. “I don’t want to die either, you know. If you all get wiped out without me, then what? It’s in both our best interests to keep each other alive.”
Until he tries to escape, Hiruko grumbled in her head. Until he does something to mess up the timeline even further. Aotsuki knows I know—he’s not going to waste time stating the obvious.
Neither will she.
She really had to contemplate, but after a few deep sighs, she stood up.
“That’ll be enough,” she said. “After being subjected to so much of you lately, your offer more like a punishment. Every time I see you open your mouth, I close my eyes and remember when you begged to clean my room to get along with me better, and I feel so much better.”
“If you give me some time to make gasoline, I’ll clean it out better than that version of me ever could,” he said as he turned around and started gathering up the pile of books he left balanced on a nearby pod. Hiruko could only imagine the daggers he pointed at her that he tried to hide.
“I’ll make sure you find your cage’s toilet nonfunctional, then, if we’re exchanging housewarming gifts,” she said, and almost meant it.
Hiruko expected to face loads of resistance for her suggestion, and luckily, the others didn’t disappoint her on that front. She’d gathered them the next day in the war room, met with all kinds of reactions the moment she finished with her proposal.
“Aotsuki lied, and you still want his ass on the team!? Did you go mental spending all this time with him or what!?” Takemaru’s face flared red as he slammed his fists together, as if holding them back from Hiruko’s face.
“Maybe she caught his rabies,” Kurara suggested with a shrug. “Do we need to quarantine you both next?”
“Hey, guys!” Takumi shouted, which only managed to calm some of the more even-tempered members. “Listen—I really don’t want to let Eito back on the team either. But…Shizuhara called him out first. There’s no way she’d lie for his sake after a few days of talking.”
Hiruko relaxed, a small smile escaping at Takumi’s input. Eito laughed—she raised her foot and gave him a light hit on the knee she abused, eliciting a satisfying wince from him.
“I’m against this,” Sirei said, mechanical eyes boring into Hiruko as if to dissect her mind and motives on the spot. “It’s too risky to give him his infuser when he’s lied to us twice.”
“A bit paranoid,” Eito said, smiling. “What’s the point of the bomb, then? For fun?”
Hiruko involved Eito in the discussion so he could explain his side of the argument, though Sirei had a taser trained on him as he stuck close to the man. Just in case. Not that it deterred Eito from speaking his mind, whatever came of that.
“It can’t be too foolproof if you managed to get around it before…” Tsubasa said with a grimace. “All you have to do is take out Sirei. He controls the trigger.”
Right—Hiruko raised a hand. “Give me a copy of his bomb trigger, then. One for Sumino and I. That way, even if Sirei’s damaged, we’ll just dispose of him and have Tsubasa repair the damages.”
“Wait—can I really fix Sirei?” she said, and Hiruko froze. Covering up her slip, she looked to Takumi.
“What do yo think, Sumino? You’re the team leader. Whatever you decide, we’ll follow. Is that fair for everyone?”
“…in that case, we could trust him to fight,” Shouma said, nodding. “I don’t mind.”
“But we’re not gonna just let him wander around like he’s part of the team again, right?” Ima said, a dark look aimed towards Hiruko and Eito. “If anything happened to Sister Dearest because of it, then no court in the world would convict me for taking revenge.”
“Maybe, maybe we can just keep him in his cage outside battles…?” Kako suggested, sending an apologetic look to Hiruko. Even in this timeline, the younger girl still looked for Hiruko’s approval—she couldn’t help but find some comfort in those consistent strands of connection.
Even if it was all part of the script. Repeated. Subjected to change, defined by a woman who didn’t exist as anything but a shadow, who made herself fade as the others suffered the consequences.
“Hmmmm…” Sirei muttered as he glanced between Hiruko, Eito (who acted as the picture of innocence) and Takumi. “It’ll be your call, Sumino. Do you want to take the risk of trusting this repeat traitor?”
“I…”
Takumi glanced to Hiruko. She betrayed nothing, said nothing. Because to be a person would be to choose, and she’d long since discarded that role.
She had a new destiny—a new, inescapable fate.
To watch.
To die.
(but it was by her choice that this timeline existed—)
“All right. I’ll trust in you, Shizuhara.” He smiled, and though uncertainty still showed on Takumi’s tight face, he did his best to seem sure in his decision.
“And not in me? This has to do with my newfound loyalty to the team, you know?” Eito put a hand to his heart. “I’m almost sick from the cruelty of you repulsive humans…”
“You want us to change our minds?” Kurara snapped. “Ugh. As a lady of the Oosuzuki family, I won’t argue when we elected Sumino to be the errand boy—I mean, team leader. But I’m not gonna pretend to be friendly with the guy who makes weird sexual harassment faces!”
“And I don’t expect anyone to be,” Takumi said, scratching at his face as he frowned at Kurara’s not-so-hidden thoughts on his leadership. “But maybe this’ll be for the best in the long run, for all of us. Honestly…”
Takumi glanced to Eva. He looked at her for only a moment before he chose a wall more interesting to stare at. “…let’s just see how this turns out. We’re all good letting Aotsuki join in on the next defensive battle, right?”
No one seemed to want to argue, not even Sirei. A tense silence sounded closer to a no than a yes, but in this war, no one earned the right to choose other than the one forced to.
Though Hiruko still wondered.
She idly played with the bomb trigger in her hand before she pocketed it. Even as she and Eito climbed through the ruins of the world outside, she still kept her finger over the button. At least, if he cut her down out there, she’d blow him up on the spot.
She and Takumi both.
Of course, Hiruko would’ve preferred to talk to Eito alone—but when she asked Takumi if she could borrow Eito’s cage key so she could force him on some errands outside with her, Takumi refused to let her go alone no matter what. With the main topic of conversation off the table, the trio moved ahead in awkward silence.
“So…what did you need us to find, Shizuhara?” Takumi asked. Eito cleared his throat.
“She wanted me to come along because she needed my knowledge of foraging to find a special plant,” Eito said.
“I didn’t ask you!”
“He’s right,” Hiruko said, trying to hide her obvious frustration with Takumi. He meant well, and she knew that, but it made everything all the more inconvenient. “There’s a mushroom that boosts circulation and focus. I want us to incorporate it into our meals, in case it has an effect on our hemoanima.”
“I can still help,” Takumi said, pouting. “What if you get ambushed? Or what if Aotsuki uses this as a chance to surprise attack you and take your strength?”
“Everyone would know it was me,” Eito said, “give me some credit.”
“Would that stop you, being outside the school anyways?”
Eito had nothing to say to that.
Hiruko paused. Eito could, even after everything she told him—precisely why she kept the trigger close. After a moment, she said, “I need you to focus, Sumino. Let’s stop with the idle chatter and hurry before it gets dark.”
Silence took over the group again as they proceeded in the opposite direction Hiruko wanted to go. With a glance to Eito, the two nodded, and went ahead on the mountain path while Takumi watched the rear. It took a couple hours of frantic ‘searching’ and wandering through various thick shrubs, but once Hiruko noticed Takumi had lost them, she moved ahead of Eito and kept the detonator she clasped in his line of sight as they made their way back down, towards the city.
“You’re not much better than Takumi,” he said, staring at the device in her hands.
“If you love running your mouth more than satisfying your curiosity, we can always turn around.”
Eito glared, yet his silence said it all. She retraced her steps, over to the one place she hadn’t quite figured out yet. An odd laboratory, one which merged with the other ruins on the outside.
Moss clung to its crumbling exterior as if holding the remnants of its structure up. Battered and broken by war, Hiruko wondered why Sirei never mentioned it. Did he believe it to be as decrepit on the inside without looking? Ha…if she still thought they were on Earth, she would be more bothered by the inconsistency.
She knew better than the rest, now. Now and forever.
“In here,” she said, and after an odd look, Eito followed. They proceeded in, and Hiruko guided them to a room with an odd machine at the center, rusted equipment everywhere else. Despite it all, the machine worked—she checked to make sure, even if she couldn’t for the life of her figure out its purpose.
“So this is the mystery lab you need me to figure out?”
“You’re not much smarter than the rest of them,” Hiruko snapped as she fiddled with the controls, as unresponsive as always. She felt thankful that over the last dozen times she messed with this machine, she only blew it up once. “I just wanted a second pair of eyes to look things over. Since I don’t need to waste time bluffing about how I found a mysterious machine like this and why I never said anything until now, I figured I’d make use of you.”
“For your sake, I hope this doesn’t turn out to be some kind of missile launcher,” Eito said.
She sent him a look of death, and he whistled with innocence.
“This isn’t a weapon,” she said. “I told the group once. I thought we might figure out how to operate it so I could use it in the next loop, but only Tsubasa discovered anything important. It harnesses energy from hemoanima, but not for firing missiles or making bombs.”
“So it wasn’t made by the invaders, you think?” Eito said. “Who do you think made it?”
“Either or,” she said.
“Either or between who?”
“Guess.”
“Do you want my help or not?”
“I don’t care who built it, frankly. If you care more about that than getting it to work, then go ahead and let me know so I can blow you up for wasting my time.”
Eito scoffed, but after hovering by the device idly for a minute, he went to work investigating it while Hiruko worked the control panel. She’d figured out the display: the screen showed various branches, which extended out from nodes where divergences occurred. A new one formed only a few days ago: when Takumi chose to let Eito rejoin the team.
Important choices served as nodes for branches. But how and why did this machine record them? What did it have to do with the rest of the device?
“And these?”
Hiruko turned around, and caught Eito rummaging through a locker. It held two fire extinguishers, and various black diving suits.
“They’re suits that neutralize hemoanima,” Hiruko said. “I’ve tested them out once—but don’t get any ideas. They offer as much protection from conventional weapons as a disposable glove.”
“Hm.” Eito fiddled with the suits. He put one on, and took it off, examining it over and over. “It adjusts to the wearer. What about these?”
He picked up a phone-like device at the bottom of the locker, which contained another just like it. As the screen flickered to life, it displayed red wave patterns and listed only scant bits of information: the time, something about a bloodwaves peak in bloodspace (whatever that was), and the period it would occur. Right now, a peak would last until the end of the night—which was part of the reason Hiruko wanted to come today.
“I know as much as it tells you,” Hiruko said as she glided her hands over the buttons and switches, hesitant to press anything, to make a decision and try something new. “Whatever bloodspace is or why it peaks has something to do with the machine, but I don’t know what.”
“And you want me to help you figure it out,” Eito said and shrugged. He pocketed the device—Hiruko stepped away to grab one for herself, just in case. The device didn’t do much on its own, so she didn’t waste her energy on getting the other back from him. Instead she went back to work.
“I’ll focus on the equipment for now, you investigate the room over again.” She barked out her instructions, and with a resigned sigh, he went to work.
…
Hiruko fiddled with the buttons in the same order she’d done a thousand times over. Flipped a switch, two, all of them as she ran her hands over whatever clicked and clacked under her touch.
…
Eito prodded at the platform. He spared a glance towards Hiruko every now and then, expectant. He waited for something—for something to happen with the machine? The more time passed, the less she stayed focus on his antics.
…
Hiruko slammed the console in frustration. Dusk touched the skies, seeped in through the only tiny window, and she wondered whether Takumi had returned to the academy in a panic, afraid to find Hiruko’s withered husk on the way back.
Maybe he’d hit the trigger on the detonator a million times already, hoping he’d get revenge on someone who never died. But—no, it wasn’t one of those timelines. Takumi didn’t choose to kill. He was…
“The others will get suspicious at this rate,” Eito commented as he peered over Hiruko’s shoulder. “If they’re not already. Really, what was your plan here? Having us ditch Takumi in the middle of nowhere—”
Shut up, shut up.
“—spend all day together, doing something we can’t tell anything else—”
Shut up shut up shut up.
“—as if that’s supposed to get everyone to trust you decision? If you’re not careful, Takumi might be stupid enough to think we wanted him to die alone out there.
“Unless you wanted that this whole time?”
Hiruko raked her hands over the control with frantic rage. This dial turned, this button pressed…she swirled around, grabbed Eito by the jacket collar (ignoring the glint of his infuser in his hands), and threw him onto the platform.
“Shut up! Shut up and let me concentrate—”
The console whirred, commanding attention.
The platform began to glow. The sight of something happening sent Hiruko into a frozen shock, while Eito’s eyes widened and he hurried to crawl away. But the light grew brighter and brighter—whatever this machine did, it covered Hiruko with a horrid weight of dread, thick and sticky amongst the growing layer of sweat on her body.
Spark enveloped Eito, cutting a wall between him and Hiruko. He fumbled with his infuser before he slipped and hit his head, rendering him still.
Hiruko ran.
She barely made it onto the platform before a white flash flooded her vision, and her body burned from inside out.
“Hahhh…urgh…”
“You—need to learn to…be quiet…”
Hiruko had been more than ready to accept her death in this loop and all the failure which came with it. But when she opened her eyes, and saw they remained in the same lab as before, she couldn’t help but feel disappointed. The sun had long since dipped, leaving only the dim lab lights to provide solace. Next to her, Eito splayed half on, half off the platform, a purple sickly hue on his face as he groaned in agony.
Hiruko imagined she looked just as pathetic.
Her insides churned, fried by whatever the machine did to them. Vertigo baked into her, mixed with searing agony and numbness, neither Hiruko or Eito moved. Neither had the will to.
“What…the time…” Eito fumbled, trying and failing to get the phone-like device out of his pocket. Hiruko, with some effort, managed to retrieve her own. The time displayed…
“It’s—past midnight,” she choked out. “The school…we have to…”
Though as much as they both wanted to move, their bodies wouldn’t allow it. When Hiruko blacked out again, morning had come.
She stayed in the same spot, though at some point, Eito had dragged himself to the wall and passed out there. The feeling returned to her arms and legs as she shook off the numbness. Though, the dizziness stayed.
No, it doesn’t matter, Hiruko thought. She got up, walked over to Eito, and shook him awake. When that didn’t work, she grabbed his head and slammed it against the wall—his eyes shot open and he pushed her away.
Smacking against the floor took more out of her than she liked, but she got to her feet before Eito recovered, rubbing the back of his head.
“You really are repulsive, resorting to violence first,” Eito grumbled. He looked at the machine. “Well, at least I wasted your time playing with that useless junk. That’s more than enough to satisfy me.”
“You wouldn’t stop running your mouth,” Hiruko said. “Any pain you’ve suffered is entirely on you. Now hurry and put your Class Armor on. We need to think of a good cover story before we get back.”
“We got surprised by an invader trap and separated from Takumi in our delirious state,” he said with a shrug. “That’ll be good enough. They’re all stupid—they’ll believe anything if you say it with enough confidence.”
Hiruko huffed. She had to admit Eito was right—but she’d only do so in her head. He hadn’t earned the right to have a single iota of her approval yet. She went to grab one of the fire extinguishers—Takumi had the one the three took to get outside, but she’d known for ages there were more stored here, so she didn’t worry too much about that.
“By the way,” Hiruko said, turning around as Eito got to his feet. “Once I’ve recovered, expect a punishment for your attempt on my life.”
She didn’t forget the sight of his infuser clutched as he stood behind her. Ready to strike—ready to be rid of her.
Hiruko knew him well. She’d let her guard down for a moment, though. She’d need to make sure it never happened again. Eito set her with a glare of pure hatred as he put a hand in his pocket. Saying nothing, doing nothing.
The two set out.
Despite Hiruko’s energy earlier, the exhaustion set in more quickly than she imagined, no thanks to whatever the machine did to them. Eito panted and held a hand to his chest as he stumbled forward, barely keeping it together himself. Yet, having nowhere else to go, they both returned to Last Defense Academy. Spraying a hole in the wall of fire, they made it to the schoolyard and spotted Kyoshika and Kurara conversing(?) with one another, though Hiruko couldn’t catch what they spoke about, speaking so quietly not even a peep escaped at a distance.
Eito raised a hand and waved. His mouth moved to make noise—yet nothing came out. He frowned, repeated his words, and yet…
Hiruko tried to speak as well. Nothing. The two exchanged glances, but before either reacted, Kyoshika jumped up from the bench and screamed. Her wail came out as a small whimper, but the fact anyone heard anything at all seemed to be a miracle in their current states. Kurara hopped to her feet, grabbed Kyoshika’s hand, and wrenched her inside, acting so animated Hiruko wondered what freaked her out.
The roar of the flames filled the eerie silence as Eito turned to speak to Hiruko. Still nothing—he pursed his lips, and fiddled for some items in his coat: A notebook, and a pen. Why he carried those around was anyone’s guess, but she didn’t feel like figuring that out now, instead waiting for him to write out a message before he passed it to her.
“Is this a commander’s power?”
She began to write—soon, it morphed into a back and forth.
“No, I’ve never seen a commander who could do this. There’s one that can induce hallucinations, but she’s never been capable of this.”
“Then it’s a new invader strategy? Interesting. Those two were off too, weren’t they?”
“They acted as though they saw a ghost.” Hiruko frowned.
Ghosts…
Or a ghost.
Could it be?
No—surely not. But the nodes, the branches. The display, and the machine made to monitor it all.
To connect everything, for some reason. She thought of the branches as some odd diagram she hadn’t deciphered tied to their choices, but maybe they served a deeper purpose.
Maybe they—
Thunk.
Someone landed before them. Clad in black, weapon bared.
One person, first, then more and more. Hiruko and Eito stumbled back as Eito dropped the notebook. As they did for every defensive battle, everyone in the Special Defense Unit landed, school barrier activating as Takumi took the front, blade pointed towards them.
Darumi leaned over with her knives bared around the back, like she’d never died, and Hiruko’s stomach lurched.
Takumi said something. Hiruko didn’t linger to decipher the lip flaps, though, turning and running with Eito on her heels.
“We need to get back to the lab!” Hiruko shouted, and for once, Eito shut his mouth and followed her lead without question. Everyone seemed shocked at their attempt to flee, but soon gave chase, though the hesitation bought the pair enough time to blow a hole through the Wall of Fire so they could escape into the ruins.
The two hid behind rubble, waiting for the group to break up before taking off towards the lab. Though a couple followed, shouting with their newly returned voices, only bits and pieces made it in decipherable chunks to Hiruko.
“It has to be a commander, right? Sumino killed Eito ages ago!”
“And I’m standing right here—” Hiruko’s voice, from someone else entirely, “—unless this is some sort of elaborate prank, they can’t be anything but enemy commanders.”
Hiruko and Eito ducked into the lab as footsteps thundered past them. The SDU continued to walk around the area for a while longer, but without the incentive of a target to put down, they soon retreated to the school, waiting for an enemy who would never come.
“…So they saw a ghost after all,” Eito said. He retched and fell to the ground, clutching his stomach. Hiruko groaned and took a seat too, running out of strength due to their odd affliction and lack of food alike.
Hiruko needed to explain, taking a deep breath before speaking. “In some timelines,” she said, “Takumi kills you so you’ll never be able to betray us. He tells us that he traveled from the future, and about what you would’ve done.”
“And everyone goes along with it?” he said.
Hiruko frowned. “Some don’t believe it. It causes all kinds of problems—most of these timelines end with a lot of us dead.”
Though not this one by the look of it—deep down, she couldn’t help envying this Hiruko. If things had been any worse in the reality she came from, she’d consider killing and replacing this ‘self’ for a tiny bit of solace.
Only consider, of course.
Right.
Yes.
“These are the ‘lucky’ ones, then.” Eito said before he continued. Whatever he felt about Hiruko’s information, he hid it behind a smile. “So, something happened here that didn’t happen before we blacked out. People who died are alive, and some who lived are dead. The machine altered events, but left us unaffected. Either we changed—or the world changed.
“We have the same theory, don’t we?”
Hiruko put a hand to her mouth, fighting back another burst of nausea as she nodded.
Hiruko felt stupid for not understanding until now.
Before she somehow activated the console back in their ‘original world’, she selected a far off branch on the ‘map’. The very branch they stayed in now, the map set to the location of their ‘world’ as if expecting them to return (or so she hoped).
“These are timelines. Branches and deviations from the choices we make.” Hiruko ran a hand over the controls. “And with this machine—we can…travel between them. To wherever we want.”
Only side-to-side, though. Hiruko tried to finagle with the machine to bring them back rather than staying on the same day. It seemed, though, that not even this machine saved them from the forward march of time. Pity.
“It’s unbelievable,” Eito breathed, betraying a rare, passionate curiosity as he paced about the room. “Alternate timelines and a machine used to travel through them, a map of all these different paths, different selves—it’s like we’ve stumbled out of that useless war for humanity and into the realm of science fiction.”
“I’ll accept the genre shift,” Hiruko said. “It’s better than another doomed loop.”
How did she activate it before? As she mentally mapped it out, Eito looked the phone he took earlier over, then went back to the locker. He preoccupied himself with it, until Hiruko felt certain she remembered what she did before and got to work.
She didn’t plan on jumping in right away, especially after how sick using the machine made them before. She just wanted to test it—to make sure she wasn’t wrong, that her memory stayed intact.
Levers readied, she pushed a couple buttons…then finally, the big red button.
An error flashed across the screen.
“…Insufficient bloodwaves?”
Bloodwaves. She pulled out her phone and examined the information, now in a new light—this device must’ve been made to monitor when this machine could be used based off these ‘peaks’. The fact it worked when they used it last lined up with the time frame from before.
And the next window it listed?
Over a week later, in the early morning hours of Day 61. They needed to wait until then, in a world far removed from their own.
Hiruko finally, actually threw up. Eito turned around, grimacing and clutching back his own bile before he vomited in a twisted chain reaction. He dropped the suit he had inspected and stumbled outside, while Hiruko collapsed against the control panel, the world spinning around her.
Maybe, if she were lucky, it’d spin enough to throw her out of this reality.
But, as predictably as always, reality never afforded her the mercy. The horrible stench of stomach acid drove Hiruko to clean out the lab first before she started testing the machine again, hoping against everything she’d find a way for it to work. By the time dusk returned, Eito returned from wherever he wandered off to, putting a half-eaten can of bread down before he lurched back against the wall and collapsed. His Class Armor vanished.
“You should thank me…I left you some scraps,” he said. “I could’ve taken it all for myself. Aren’t I reliable?”
Hiruko did nothing to hide her annoyance. Still, her hunger overpowered her pride, and she devoured the stale canned bread with the enthusiasm of tasting a lavish delicacy. She found her own place to rest against the wall as the thoughts churning in her head threatened to bring about another wave of sickness.
“We’re going to need more than that,” she said. “Over a week on foraged scraps, with no clean water is certain death. We’re already weak as is. And—the last thing I want…is to die with you, in some unfamiliar timeline after I’ve gotten so close to understanding this damn device.”
“I feel the same,” he breathed, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’d rather you blow me up now and save me the trouble of tolerating your disgusting, irritating presence for a week.”
She shook her head. “If I have to suffer, so do you.”
“Hah…time’s made you so cruel, hasn’t it…”
Hiruko slammed a fist against the floor. He shut up, and the two took in the quiet until day passed away for the gift of night.
Hiruko tried to focus on the pages, but as her vision blurred, she knew they needed to go somewhere for food.
For the past two days, Hiruko and Eito formed a makeshift system. Spend the day looking for canned food, and return to conserve their energy the moment the sun started to set. They alternated their routes and obscured their footsteps, so the invaders wouldn’t track down the lab and try to take them out at home base. To occupy the time in-between foraging, Eito lent Hiruko one of the books he kept on him (which made her wonder about how much pocket room that jacket afforded him).
It was a story about light speed travel, and a lone spaceship. She never cared much for those kinds of stories herself, and neither did Eito, it seemed. He claimed the history novel he brought before she had a chance to take it, face buried in the pages as he sat across the room from her.
For someone who hated humanity so much, he had a burning interest to see their stories.
“Are you enjoying it?”
Eito broke the silence first. He usually did—Hiruko only had something to say when it related to scraps from the one can of food they found a day or the status of the machine.
“No,” she said. “It’s droll, and the prose is overwrought. The author cares more about adding fake-complexity to the world by making up physics terms that contradict existing laws like it’s nothing. Why even call it physics anymore? Go write a fantasy story instead and inflict your torture on another audience for once.”
“I knew you’d enjoy it,” Eito said, earning a glare from her. “I’m enjoying mine a lot. I found it buried all the way in the back of the library—it’s about the eldest daughter of a big family living in a war zone. It must’ve come from long, long ago, back when there were countries to even engage in war with.
“She has to make all kinds of sacrifices to keep her family fed, eating only a slice of bread a day so her baby brothers and sisters can have more rations. Then her village comes under occupation, and an enemy soldier targets her and her mother and—”
“I get the point,” Hiruko said. “I’ve read that one already.”
His eyes widened. “You have?”
“I need to pass the years somehow. I don’t know the library like the back of my hand, but I have a long list of favorites…and an even longer list of trash better off being burned before someone else subjects themselves to the author’s drivel.”
“When we get back, I’d like both lists,” he said, sighing. “Shouma’s book selections are a miss more often than not. Honestly, it’s not asking for much if he could skim the first page or so, but what else can I expect from his disgusting stupidity? He take orders from a cartoon mascot.”
“Sirei has his appealing points,” Hiruko said, putting her book to the side. “He’s soft—like a pillow. But he holds air like a balloon…and somehow, he’s sturdy enough to sleep on and does wonders for neck pain. I suggest breaking him down first so he doesn’t complain about it.”
“How many times have you done that?”
“About a dozen. It depends on how much he annoys me in any given timeline.”
“If only Takumi didn’t stop me, you’d have unlimited access to your favorite pincushion.”
“And you would’ve killed me, so I’ll gladly take the occasional access over dying.”
Eventually, the conversation petered off. Despite Hiruko and Eito’s attempts to go on as normal, the lack of food was taking a toll on them. And, without the Revive-o-Matic at their disposal, they ran the risk of starving to death. If they tried to sneak onto campus to make use of theirs…
Well, it’d be a waste of time. Something else of value sat in a nice, cold fridge, a thought which made Hiruko’s stomach rumble again. By the time the sun set and Eito drifted off to sleep, Hiruko shot up and kicked him in the shoulder until he jolted awake and crawled away from her.
“Urgh…you’re so cruel,” he grumbled, stumbling to his feet as he winced. “Did you slip up and give our location away to the Special Defense Unit? Hiruko, you don’t need to take your failure out on me.”
“If you want to starve and die out here so badly, be my guest. I’ll be the one to throw your body in a lake so your existence will have some kind of meaning for the local ecosystem.” Hiruko walked away and started putting on one of the mysterious suits, the dash of weakness left in her body from the machine making her totter every now and then. “We’re going to the school. Everyone should be asleep now—we’ll be able to raid the pantry without interference.”
Eito frowned, but went to retrieve a suit himself. “…All right. You did a poor job foraging, anyways.”
She delivered another kick to the kneecaps. Once Eito recovered from the blow, the two set out.
“You know,” he said, the Wall of Fire looming ahead, providing the only light for miles amongst ruins and dust. “Maybe the invaders make decent sustenance as well. They’re made out of meat, right? Likely not the most edible, but—”
“Absolutely not,” Hiruko remarked, with such force it elicited a spark of curiosity from Eito.
“So you are against it. Why?” Eito’s eyes bore into her. She wondered whether he brought it up as an actual suggestion, or as another way to probe her for information.
“…”
“Come on. We’re stuck here together, so might as well share all our secrets.”
Hiruko bit back a sigh. “It’s not much of a secret. When they start talking to us, you’ll understand what they are if you think about it for long enough.”
While Eito contemplated her words, she raised the fire extinguisher and blasted a hole in the Wall of Fire. They both hurried in, looking around to make sure no one made a habit of frequenting the courtyard at night in this timeline before they proceeded inward.
“Is Sirei active in this timeline?” Eito said.
“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t remember this loop, so I don’t know for sure, but I doubt so many of us would be alive otherwise. It follows a pattern where, if he survives, more of us live too…with exceptions.”
“Exceptions?” he repeated. She left him in the dust and silence, focused on what lied ahead. They proceeded towards the school, careful glances thrown about to ensure no prying eyes caught them as they entered and beelined for the cafeteria. Hiruko knew from experience that Sirei watched the security cameras with the interest of a toddler left to watch paint dry, so she felt confident they could pull off this heist barring no one happened upon them.
The door creaked as they entered. As soon as she could, Hiruko beelined to the pantry, retrieving as many non-perishables as her arms managed to handle, Eito engaged in the same fervor of hunger driven harvesting as her. Once they finished, arms full, they both hurried for the door—
Only for a creature to open it from the other side.
A towering bear of an invader with a strange device taped to its back. Claws out as it jumped—almost as if afraid. Soon, though, it raised its arms and swung. Hiruko and Eito stumbled back.
It looked between the two. After some deliberation, it groaned and went after Eito, giving Hiruko a chance to drop her food in a cacophonous clatter before she shrugged off the diving suit, retrieved her infuser, and transformed.
Eito tripped—as it loomed over the defenseless man, Hiruko brought her axe up and did what needed to be done. The creature cut like cake, with deep red blood jelly to stain the cafeteria floors as it fell to pieces before her.
Eito grimaced and stumbled to his feet. The device hit the ground without a body to hold onto—he lifted a foot up and smashed it to bits with a few good stomps.
The device sparked and sputtered. Fumes of gas eked out and stained nose and tongue alike with rot.
“That takes care of that,” Hiruko said, and her eyes widened when she managed to actually hear her voice. “Now, that’s—”
She had no time to question anything. Something slumped to the ground, and Hiruko turned around to see Eito had somehow fallen over, splayed atop the cold dark floor as if taken out by a phantom. Hiruko kept her axe close, glanced around—
Only to stop, greeted by a familiar, muscle-laden wrestler. Even without words, Moko only needed to crack her knuckles for her to realize they’d made a mistake coming here at all.
“Ah, finally, you’re awake. I couldn’t stand the stench of your putrid breathing any longer.”
Hiruko shot up, looking around as her last moments of consciousness flitted before her eyes. She’d remembered this happened to her before—being in this cage, in this courtyard. She’d never been in it with Eito before, nor has she ever yearned for that particular experience, but there they were, with a familiar idiot and tyrant watching them from a nearby bench.
“They could be the commander that changes forms,” Takumi remarked, looking them over like bugs in a jar. “I think…maybe…I dunno? It’s hard to tell. I really don’t wanna find out the weird way, even if Yugamu really wants to.”
He wiped away a layer of sweat on his forehead. “But—this doesn’t make sense…”
“Why overthink it?” Sirei said. “Who’s to say this commander from your past couldn’t figure out how to make copies of dead people?”
“But, you locked his corpse away in the morgue…”
“Tomato, To-mah-to. I’ll give you a day to absorb them, otherwise I’ll clear them out myself. Team Leader or not, I gotta keep our risk factor as low as possible. You want to win this war, don’t you, Sumino?”
Takumi looked away. “…Right.”
Hiruko and Eito watched the exchange in silence, up until Sirei turned around and left. Takumi looked towards the pair again, both on opposite sides of their cage.
“Sorry, we would’ve kept you apart, but…” Takumi gestured to Eva, who watched them from her own with emotionless apathy.
“So, Takumi, you brainwashed her here too?” Eito said, curious despite the threats on his life. “Your disgusting nature doesn’t change, no matter the timeline.”
Hiruko shot Eito a look. “What are you doing? Don’t mention timelines around Sumino.”
Eito laughed, giving her a look for breaking her own rule. “What? I don’t want to die. Unless you want me to come up with a better excuse for being alive?”
Takumi frowned, hiding his trembling with pathetic attempts to make himself stand straighter. Hiruko stood up and rendered his efforts moot. Eito joined her, furthering whatever weird height war started between the three.
Takumi covered his mouth in thought, then spoke. “It doesn’t matter. One of you is a commander, and the other…has to be a copy. There’s no other explanation.”
“Stop being such a troublesome moron!” Hiruko snapped, grabbing onto the cage bars. “Zen’ta’s copies are imperfect without the right amount of data. I swear, what was the point of leaping back in time if you can’t even recall basic facts about your enemies?”
“It’s a waste of gray matter up there,” Eito added, “don’t bother.”
“I don’t know why I do,” Hiruko sighed. “Sometimes you think he’s on the right track, then he believes Gaku and spends two weeks straight chanting on the rooftop and lighting incense.”
“Is that another timeline memory?”
“Unfortunately. I could tell you about every stupid thing he’s done despite his preemptive knowledge, but we’d be here all week.”
“Not even a month? I’m impressed.”
“Hmm…actually, I could make it a month, if I dig through every timeline one by one.”
“H—HEY!”
The pair turned their attention to Takumi, who was drenched in sweat, hands up as if they aimed weapons at him.
“Can you two stop insulting me and just—explain anything!? If you’re…I mean—you’re right on the…commander stuff, but…really?”
Stress accumulated on Takumi’s face until he brimmed so strongly with distress he might as well have turned into a bomb ready to explode with pure confusion. He clenched his jaw and looked up. In a quiet, tense silence, he studied the faces of the two, lingering on Eito’s a bit longer.
He was the ghost in this timeline, after all, and the only argument Hiruko had to prove they weren’t a commander and creation.
“You’re—you’re right, Shizuhara…I think…” Takumi sighed. “It wouldn’t be possible. And I don’t want to—I mean—I need…”
Struggling to get his thoughts together, he focused on Hiruko. “Please—tell me everything. I’ll think it over. I don’t want to kill a friend, if you’re really…you.”
“And what about me?” Eito said. Takumi shot him a glare, not responding otherwise. “You really do hate me, despise me…maybe even loathe—”
“Let me speak,” Hiruko said, and stomped on Eito’s heel. He winced, and she stole the opportunity to take over. She wanted to avoid talking about the timeloop specifically, but given her and Eito’s earlier exchange, she needed to come up with some reason for her knowledge of other timeline selves.
So, a few bluffs came into play.
They didn’t need to know Hiruko only learned to work the timeline traversing machine a couple days ago, whatever it was called. Less traversing and more ‘leaping’ through time, sort-of like Takumi did, except with the direction of moving into other timelines instead of to points in the past. No matter—it made a good cover story to explain the pair’s earlier comments.
“We’ve been using this time leap method to increase our chances of winning the war,” Hiruko said, “by making alliances with other timeline versions of ourselves. Now, answer me: what day is it?”
“Uh—Day 52,” Takumi said, so overwhelmed by her story he could only spit out an answer after a long pause. “Shizuhara—”
So we really haven’t traveled back in time, Hiruko noted. “Right. We’ll be able to return to our timeline on day 61. But until then, we’re serving as the ambassadors of our timeline. We’ll assist you with some things if that’s what earning your trust takes.”
She hated groveling, but as of now, they were at everyone’s mercy. She only hoped killing the invader causing their speaking blockage problem did something to earn their trust.
Takumi glanced to Eito. Eito smiled.
“Don’t look at me like that, Hiruko and I are comrades fighting for the same goal,” he said as he put a hand to his heart. “Unlike your miserable failure of a timeline, we’ve worked something out. Though I’m sure my version of Takumi wished he could do what you did to this timeline’s Eito.”
“You…there’s no way you’ve changed,” Takumi said, flashing a look at Hiruko as if waiting for her confirmation. She could only imagine his confusion at their partnership, so in an attempt to diffuse things, she held up Eito’s detonator.
“I can set off his bomb if he betrays us,” Hiruko said, “it was part of our condition for him rejoining the team.”
Eito laughed as Takumi withered, before he stepped back.
“…Okay,” Takumi said, “I…I trust you, Shizuhara. I’m gonna go talk with Sirei about this first, so he doesn’t do something before we get a chance to figure this out.”
He turned around and ran out of the courtyard. Hiruko breathed a sigh she’d held in for so long, before going over and sitting on the bed. She crossed her arms, trying her best to not give away how tense she’d been.
It wasn’t the first time she’d been thrown into this cage. In some loops, something as simple as saying the wrong thing casted suspicion onto her, ended in her death or imprisonment for knowing too much too early. It became easier to say nothing, hear nothing—do nothing.
“I almost missed this,” Eito said, an exaggerated wistful sigh added in. “You seem like you’re having fun. Does being on this end of everyone’s ire annoy you that much?”
“If you’re fond of flapping your tongue, you’d stop before I cut it out and leave you to choke on your blood,” Hiruko said, with enough intensity to shut even Eito up. Rolling his eyes, he sat back down, once again at the opposite side of the cage.
The silence engulfed them both.
Hiruko would’ve liked to keep it that way, if she had a choice.
“Did you expect things to go this way?” Eito said. Refusing to look at him, Hiruko only had Eito’s voice to discern his intent. Which, of course, provided her with nothing.
So she said nothing. So he kept rambling. “It’s the worst, having to share a closed space with some hideous monstrosity who dragged me across time. I just want to know how our timeline would’ve gone if you didn’t go and ruin everything, that’s all. I’m assuming I would’ve had everyone fooled, hm, but then what?”
Hiruko squeezed her eyes shut.
“You don’t care about me anymore? That’s sad. I thought we had something special. Then again, I’ve gone off script. You just don’t know what to do with a puppet who won’t cooperate, huh?”
She shot him a glare. “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re more like a dummy who only knows how to run his mouth.”
“Then what are you?” Eito met her hatred in equal measure. “A witch at the center of calamity. If you know so much, then why did Darumi die? Do you revel in seeing human heads split open like you do with the invaders?”
Hiruko grabbed the pillow off the bed, stormed over to Eito, and smothered him with it. He choked and sputtered, she relished in his suffering—as she released him, she said, “if you’d go ahead and kill yourself like the last time I went through this, you’d save the both of us time. Don’t you ever get sick of it?
“Saying the same things over and over, incessant, annoying comments that don’t change anything. It’s a waste of time. You’d be better off as set dressing over being a person. A tree can’t cause nearly the amount of headaches that you do.”
Eito wheezed, and pushed her away, curling into a ball and shutting her out between labored breaths. Hiruko crawled back to the bed soon after, falling asleep as soon as she hit the covers.
Maybe she hadn’t fully recovered from what the machine did to her.
She carved Darumi’s brains opened in her dreams. Cleaved her skull opened before V’exhness came along and did it in her place. She put her hands in the smashed remnants of the girl’s brains and spared a taste for herself before throwing up.
If she could carry a part of Darumi in her body, maybe she’d travel back with her. In her memories—in her nightmares.
Takumi watched her, horror stricken. When he changed fate, it came with good and with ill.
When she took control of fate, it spun away from her, from diseased, dirtied hands to infected, rotting ends. Better cut off and forgotten—he’d forget, at least.
She wouldn’t.
She’d always be…
right here…
Counting.
Counting sins.
She raised her axe, and cleaved Takumi in half. Not for some greater goal or wild plan, but because he didn’t deserve the mercy he’d been given. She hated him—she loved him—she…
Envied him so damn much.
How dare he get to be one of them, despite everything?
A witch at the center of calamity, indeed.
“If I’m a witch,” Hiruko said the next morning, eating the simple lunch Shouma had given the pair in the morning before running off, “then you’re the rotten lunch in the back of the fridge no one wants to deal with.”
“You’re still thinking about that?” Eito said, but she didn’t respond.
Once she finished her food, she looked about the courtyard. No one else came to visit the pair—maybe because they didn’t know how to behave around the newcomers. Hiruko couldn’t say she was surprised the Hiruko here avoided her. Was it a version of her in the past she failed to recall, or a version of Hiruko she had yet to be?
“You know,” he said, “maybe that’s why we ended up in this situation together. No one would notice if a witch and some mold disappeared for a while, right?”
Hiruko picked up the pillow again, and Eito put his hands up. “Hey, maybe I was trying to show kindness to a monster like you for once. Are you going to reward me with suffocation again? What’s that going to enforce?”
“If you want to act like a dog so badly, then get on your knees and kneel like an obedient mutt.”
“I’ll consider it, if you give me a treat first.”
“…Uh, am I interrupting something…?”
The two turned to Takumi, who watched with a flushed face and an awkward smile. He held something in his hand—a key, and a remote. He cleared his throat, trying and failing to regain his bearings before he spoke again.
“Sirei checked you guys over while you were asleep,” he said. “Sorry—he wanted to see if you guys really were, uh…alt-future versions of yourselves?”
“Alternate timeline versions,” Hiruko said. “Not from the future.”
“Right, yeah. You’re Shizuhara and Aotsuki, but he’s still wary, so he gave me this.” He held up the remote. “It’s…it’s what you think it is. But don’t worry, I trust—”
Takumi’s eyes widened, and he gave Eito the briefest of looks like you might give to a skeleton in your closet risen once more. “I trust you, Shizuhara. I want to, I mean…and—as long as Aotsuki doesn’t cause trouble in our timeline, we’ll leave him alone too.”
“How revolting, receiving your mercy after you’ve already cut down another version of myself,” Eito said, smile so obviously fake, “are you only regretting it now? Are you afraid I might take revenge?”
Now there was a funny thought. Eito jumping across time to get revenge on a version of Takumi he’d never known. Hiruko wouldn’t be surprised if that ever happened.
Likely not.
Takumi bit his lip, looking to the ground. A scolded puppy who wet the carpet and wanted forgiveness—he reminded Hiruko of that, if blood and bodies compared to pee. “…I don’t want any trouble. You stay in your lane, I’ll stay in mine. Just—” he looked to Hiruko, “be careful.”
“I know,” she said, though the fear in Takumi’s eyes left her at a loss. Of course he’d be concerned, considering he’d told her time and time again how Eito took her life early on in the First Cycle. Of course he’d be worried at their partnership, afraid for when Eito might take advantage of a moment of weakness and end her life, steal all that she was and reap revenge on everyone.
Though…
Now that she thought about it.
Ever since before the leap—
“Anyways,” Takumi said, “Shizuhara can leave the cage. But Aotsuki has to stay.”
Eito’s face darkened in a way that took Hiruko aback. “Is this supposed to be fair? We’re both anomalies from another timeline. How is she any different from me?”
“Shizuhara’s one of us!” Takumi said, a flash of anger crossing him as his grip tightened around the remote. “Don’t—don’t compare her to you!”
Hiruko glanced to Eito. To Takumi, and back again. If she hesitated for even a moment, whatever feeling she had would evaporate, and she’d let someone else make the choice again.
She’d let this Takumi lead this doomed timeline somewhere where it might be saved.
But a witch liked to spread curses and calamities alike, so before Hiruko could stop herself, she cleared her throat.
“He’s my dog, and I’ve trained him well,” she said. “If I leave, he leaves. No exceptions.”
“Dog?” Eito grimaced. “Aha, I think I’d rather stay here than hear you keep calling me that. Then again, I think I might be missing a few important shots…be careful where you put your hand and all that, you know?”
Takumi winced, though whether from Hiruko’s proclamation or the casual petplay, she didn’t know. “I—I can’t. You know we can’t trust him.”
“I have him leashed,” she said as she held up her detonator. “I’ve brought him to heel as many times as I’ve pleased, even when I didn’t need to. Saying he stays in the cage while I wander free—are you saying I’m incapable of managing him?”
“I’m not—”
“Then there’s no problem, is there? He’ll stay with me.” Even if that means subjecting herself to Eito Aotsuki 24/7…Honestly, she thought, why am I bothering with this?
She asked herself, as if the answer would come to mind so cleanly.
Rotten, defective things stuck together, she supposed. She flashed the worst glare she could muster, enough to make Takumi sweat without much else to add. “Are we clear?”
Takumi blanked, trembling under Hiruko’s authority. She had years of training when it came to deflecting her knowledge of other timelines—at the beginning, she’d had her coldness, her distance between the others…
…but it’d never been such a gulf. Now, though, with so much to hide, she’d changed. She learned to use the others as she saw fit, Takumi included. He sighed, and with the motions of a puppet on Hiruko’s tight strings, he unlocked the door, and stepped aside.
“…”
“I’m trusting you on this,” he said. Unable to look at her. Hiruko stepped out first—as if he didn’t believe it, Eito lingered inside the cage, until he stepped out as well while Takumi locked the door behind them once more. “Sirei’s not gonna like this, but I’ll make him come around. Don’t worry about it, just be like normal and…”
Takumi trailed off, another glance at Eito. “Just try to make things better instead of worse. It’d be great if we could get a real alliance between timelines going, just in case.”
Hiruko smiled. “I couldn’t agree more. So, where should we start?”
She asked, but the answer came from a different source entirely—from the blare of the alarms, on a day they’d never sounded before.
As the pair hurried into the war room, they received nothing but cold and uncertain looks—from all except Takumi, who focused on the monitor, and Hiruko II, who nodded at Hiruko in some odd gesture of understanding before refusing to look at her. Still Hiruko couldn’t discern where this Hiruko rested on the timeline of loops, but as long as she understood and they stayed out of each other’s paths, things would be fine.
“We have our infusers,” Eito said. “So there’s no need to worry about our combat readiness.”
“No one was worrying,” Takemaru said. “Seriously, is this really a good idea…?”
“We don’t have time to talk about it more!” Takumi yelled and pointed at the screen. A massive crowd of invaders streamed over the schoolyard, sending everyone running for their infusers and for the launch pads. Hiruko and Eito transformed last, following the group onto the battlefield without further prompting. The barrier had been half beaten on by the time they landed—whatever the reason for the aggressive approach, Hiruko had her suspicions it related to her and Eito.
She closed her eyes, and heaved her axe. Her soul readied, she bore it all—her violence, her bitterness, her rotten desire to see everything beaten and bloodied until she saw nothing but the blood burned into her hands.
A familiar red blade cut a larger invader in half, one about to get the jump on her. As the other students took on familiar formations and repelled the enemy, Hiruko and Eito stayed close, fighting on their on terms and turf. The wanton, one-sided violence reached a fever pitch as the fodder sent their way lessened, up until a hologram popped up in front of the two.
V’ehxness crossed her arms, fixing the two with a silent glare. Hiruko almost felt disappointed she deigned not to make an appearance in the flesh.
“…How?” she asked, and Hiruko raised her axe to cut through the image—it didn’t do anything, but it made her intent clear.
“How what? How does anything happen, really?” Eito laughed.
“You both appeared out of nonexistence,” she said, a slight hiss to her words. “Did those invaders find fresh bodies to send? Or are they so pitifully desperate against my greateness that they’ve resorted to mass cloning to win?”
V’ehxness wrinkled her brow, concentrated on the pair’s expressions. Picking apart them both. Analyzing. Dissecting every twitch of a nerve, as if one of them would slip up and reveal it all.
…Luckily for Hiruko and Eito…
“…Ah, no matter. I don’t even care anymore—if I have more to devour, then nothing will challenge my godliness.”
Hiruko breathed a small sigh of relief. Eito looked at her with a smile, an ‘I won’t tell’ Hiruko didn’t trust as far as she could throw it. Then again, did she have a choice?
“You can replicate and mass produce as much as you want!” V’exhness challenged them, no longer interested in the reason why they appeared. If she wanted to believe they were clones of clones, that’d be fine with Hiruko. That’d be perfectly fine.
“Hm…” Eito hummed, then raised his scythe. “You called us invaders.”
V’exhness opened her mouth—only for a bright, purple light to consume the hologram. It fanned out, the epicenter of something far more deadly, and sent the Hiruko and Eito scrambling back lest they the flames destroy them too.
The projection vanished by the time the Undying Flames faded. She’d sent the troops to gather information about the newcomers, surely, though Hiruko wondered why V’exhness bothered if she didn’t seem to care about anything but absorbing them in the end.
The thrill of the hunt, maybe. Hiruko understood. Somewhat.
She thought of the time leap machine, and shook her head, as if doing so would hide the location from V’exhness’s prying eyes.
“Did you see me, Takumi?” Shion said, his weak avatar appearing in front of the aforementioned individual. “Now…you’ll stop ignoring me, right?”
“I wasn’t ignoring you!?”
Everyone laughed at the display—even Hiruko couldn’t help but smile. Eito, however, put a hand to his chin, eyes squeezed shut before he looked at Hiruko.
“I want to talk to you,” he said. “Later tonight.”
“I mean,” Takumi said, prattling on as he did what he did best—lifting his foot up and slamming it into his mouth at high speeds. “I’m kinda busy tonight. Maybe…next week…?”
“I…I see…” Shion deflated. “So you lied.”
“What!? No, I didn’t promise anything!”
“You wouldn’t even miss me if I disappeared.”
“No, I would! I promise! I really, really promise!”
“We’re going to need to be careful.”
Freed of the cage, the two of them occupied Eito’s room—it was either that, or use the cage overnight. Eito voted for the cage, but Hiruko refused to sleep in that open air prison, so she stripped him of the right to vote and chose to sleep on his bed while he took the couch. Sleeping in separate areas may have worked…but they both decided it’d be best to stay together, in case Sirei became paranoid about their loyalties.
“We can’t mention anything else about the time machine,” Hiruko continued. “If V’ehxness caught wind, it’d doom this timeline. So far, I’ve been able to utilize it under her nose. I’d prefer to keep it that way.”
“Trust me, I’m not looking to get myself killed in another timeline,” Eito said. “I’ll be good, as long as you explain what that commander meant when she called us invaders.”
He smiled. “You will explain, won’t you? We’re both mold, so might as well fester in filthy secrets together.”
Hiruko took a deep breath. “Quit your barking. It’s exactly as it seems—this entire operation is an attempt to wipe out the native population of the planet. The ‘World Death’ monsters aren’t actually from some will of the planet, but are civilians and soldiers on both sides of the war experimented on and turned into creatures of battle. Earth died long ago, we’re on a different planet named Futurm…what else do I need to explain?”
Hiruko had stumbled onto the same secrets so many times, it became as droll as reciting headlines off the morning newspaper. Maybe they scared her, once. Maybe she’d felt guilt crawling up her spine at the thought of fighting for such a cause.
She couldn’t remember, anymore. That scared her more than she liked to admit.
Eito blanked, then frowned, a deep grimace crossing his face. Maybe if it’d been about anything else, he would’ve argued and called doubt onto her story until the end of time. But when it came to humanity’s side in the war, Eito never struggled against the truth.
It made things easier. At least.
She didn’t need to be comprehensive with him. He’d latch onto anything that validated what he wanted to believe, even the worst truths handed over by even worse people.
“Of course,” Eito said, a bitter laugh to accompany his words. “I can’t expect much else from horrid monsters, can I?”
Hiruko pressed her mouth into a thin line. The bitterness festered, up until she sighed and put a hand to her forehead. Even then—she said nothing. She couldn’t say anything. In some timelines, despite knowing the truth, despite knowing the cruelty and violence in her choices…
She let the missiles fly. She let their promise sweep her away, let them burn anything that posed an inconvenience to everyone’s escape.
Perhaps that was what trapped her here. So she thought, but she knew already it’d never been so simple. She wouldn’t have looped back after dying to save the planet, otherwise.
“When we find the right ending,” she said, “I’d like to find a way to stop the attack and save everyone. So we can make it to the last day and beyond, smiling. Alive, together.”
Eito’s mouth flapped open, incredulous.
“…”
But at her comment, he said nothing. He said nothing for a long, long time.
“I see.”
Eito slouched over the couch. His tall frame left his legs dangling off the side as he stared at the ceiling. “It’ll never happen. But you’re allowed to dream.”
Hiruko sighed. She dreamt—she wished, she learned. She learned so much about everyone, all before letting them walk to their dooms. Letting them play the strings of fate until it choked the life out of them.
Even…
“I want you to be a part of that, too,” Hiruko said. An admission she never thought she’d share with Eito. Life is funny, sometimes.
His breath hitched. With a huff, he turned onto his side and away from her. Hiruko settled into bed too, head burning as if her body admonished her for being so open. Right—she tried so hard to convince herself otherwise, but…
But she knew.
She knew from timelines past, that for all the bravado, malice, evil monologues and ridiculousness, Eito only wanted a chance to experience belonging. A fact which haunted her, just as much as the realization that she wanted the same thing.
Yet neither received it without the cost of their deaths. Funny, that. Eito didn’t change easily, and when Hiruko tried to, it only brought more suffering.
She stood up, slinging herself off the bed and heading out of the room. Eito stayed where he was all night.
The scent of lavender permeated the room.
Eito pulled aside the massive curtain, and when Hiruko caught a glimpse of his bafflement, she laughed.
“It’s a start,” he said, with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, “but these incense sticks only somewhat offset the rotting stench you give off.”
Eito dozed off by the time Hiruko returned, having made various items in the Gift-o-Matic. Mostly incense sticks to burn, two metal poles and a curtain to hang between them, placed between the couch and the bed, and some other things. She picked the most opaque one, so neither could see the other. Waking up earlier than Eito, she lit the sticks before getting ready for the day, then relaxed with a book until he roused.
“You can thank me by preparing my breakfast,” Hiruko said. “It’s almost noon. Are you going to get up already, or do I need to drag you behind me today?”
He grimaced, and let go of the curtain. “Give me a few minutes.”
Eito had exactly three to get dressed until someone knocked. Eito huffed, but confirmed he was ready, so Hiruko went to open the door. But before she opened it—she paused.
…
Should she?
She frowned, and retrieved a few items from her pocket before turning around and shoving them into Eito’s hands.
“A scent diffuser, a sleep mask, and noise-canceling earbuds. Here.” She shoved them into Eito’s hands. “If you start being a nuisance, use these to block everything out and go sit in the corner.”
“…Are you kidding?”
Eito’s face fell. He stared at her, utterly blank before another knock snapped him out of it. Though he looked down at the items with annoyance, he shoved them in a random jacket pocket. “I doubt the others will like seeing me block them out—humans hate being ignored. But, I’ll hold onto them, if that’s your condition for not blowing me up instead.”
“Whatever makes our time here go smoothly,” Hiruko said, and for whatever reason, Eito didn’t call her out on her lie. “If we’re thrown back in the cage again, I’ll use your bones to file down the bars.”
Eito sighed, burying his hands in his pockets. Hiruko opened the door.
“Um…”
Takumi mumbled, scratching his chin as he regarded the pair, unable to hide his hesitation. “Hey. Are you guys okay? I slept in too—we can get breakfast together.”
The trio headed down to the first floor. They passed by a couple groups: Kurara and Kyoshika hurrying to join Moko in the gym for training, Ima and Kako flitting about from place to place. Neither spared the trio a glance—not that Hiruko blamed them. Maybe some of them still harbored doubts they were shape-shifting invaders of some kind, or maybe Eito’s disgusted looks wiped away any curiosity they held.
Nevertheless, the three made it to the cafeteria with little fanfare. Takumi went to get his meal from the Ration-o-Matic. As for Hiruko…
“You’re not a bad cook,” Hiruko said as she took a bite of the food Eito prepared for her. He sat down across from her, while Takumi took a seat on Hiruko’s side of the table with a meal set in front of him. “Is this tuna mixture your own recipe?”
“I like to go light with seasoning, and I finely dice the vegetables,” he said. “Back at the complex, I used to make all my meals in bulk at the start of the week, so I have all kinds of recipes on hand.”
He laughed. “Since I’d murdered my parents, I didn’t have anyone to pack my meals for me—I had to figure out some way to save time between all my studying. Though I’d never accept food from such disgusting monsters anyways.”
Hiruko sighed. Of course he slipped that in there, though honestly, something about the utter nonchalance of his reveal earned a slight chuckle from her.
Takumi’s look said it all: Ah, so you’re both insane.
“Making your meals in bulk…I might take that idea,” Hiruko said. “It’ll save me time, considering how busy I am between studying and my various other activities.”
“Other activities…?” Takumi asked.
“Do you have a whip on you?” Hiruko said. “I’ll give you a demonstration.”
Takumi choked. Hiruko laughed at his misery, until he recovered and covered his face in a pathetic attempt to hide his blushing.
“No thank you!” Takumi yelled, only to flush further at his voice crack. Hiruko smiled, satisfied that no matter the timeline, Takumi fell apart just as easily as always.
Takumi coughed. “Uh—anyways. Please forget I asked…I really wanted to talk to you two, actually. About your timeline. You said you used a ‘method’ to get to ours—but, how…?”
“Well—we—” Hiruko stuttered. Eito butted in, smiling.
“The Artificial Satellite sent down a device to help us,” he said. “It’s only in our timeline, not yours. It’ll send us back once the time comes.”
Takumi glanced to Hiruko. Probably wanting confirmation, which Hiruko provided in the form of a nod.
“O-Oh, okay. Cool.” Takumi smiled, though Hiruko saw how it didn’t reach his eyes, how it wavered from the slightest bit of nerves. “I guess if they can give us these powers, they can make devices like that…I guess? So. So!…You came to our timeline to make an alliance, right? Did something bad happen in yours?”
“Not bad,” Hiruko said. “This is more preventative measures. We lost one of our own to V’exhness. She’s intent on absorbing as many people as possible—has she been a pain on your timeline, too?”
Takumi grimaced. “Yeah. Yeah. I get your pain. She hasn’t gotten one of us, but she’s still out there.”
“Good. Then I don’t need to explain further. This partnership will be beneficial for both sides in terms of fighting power.”
“Now, will you tell me why you killed me?”
Hiruko’s eyes shot open. Eito placed his sandwich aside and locked eyes with Takumi, who paled at his question.
“I…” Takumi swallowed. “I…you…”
No matter how much Takumi stuttered, the answer never left him. How could it? What were the odds Hiruko would see a timeline where Takumi killed Eito, only to be faced with a specter from another timeline challenging him over it?
Takumi looked down—Eito gave him no grace.
“You can’t explain yourself?” Eito smiled, all performed malice. “Then don’t bother. You know, when the Takumi from my timeline spared my life, I really thought that was the kind of person he was. But if you’re him, too—and you definitely are—then maybe he isn’t as merciful as he pretends to be. He’s another filthy human, after all. I never had my expectations high to begin with.”
Eito’s breath hitched. “…Right. He’s just another…
“…
“I only wanted to say that if you’re going to treat me like a regret? Don’t bother. I don’t care. Just go along with Hiruko’s requests and pretend I’m not there, if it means I don’t need to endure your putrid sighs whenever you see me.”
Takumi’s hands clung to the table as if it were about to fly away from him. In a flash, he jolted up, looking well and truly choked up merely existing around Eito, before he backed away from the duo and towards the door, running out.
Hiruko rested a hand against her head as she leaned over the table. After a bit, Eito rummaged through his pockets, clipping the mini-diffuser to his jacket as it released a flowery scent. He donned the mask and earplugs before planting his head against the table and shutting it all out.
“Sir Aotsuki, Lady Shizuhara the Second, are you perchance interested in a bit of sparring?”
After their meal, Hiruko decided to go to the gym, Eito in tow behind her with his senses still blocked. If she wanted to play the part of ambassador well, she needed to make some actual attempt to reach out to the group that didn’t end in an argument.
So, dropping in on the girls’ training session seemed sound. Eito kept a hand on her shoulder to guide him until they got to the door, where he finally took everything off and entered the gym with her. Kyoshika spoke up first, regarding the two with a spark of interest and a greeting.
“Oh my god, it’s the time travelers!” Moko squealed, facing them with a beaming smile. “I super hope you don’t mind, but we agreed to call you Hiruko II, since—you know.”
“I’m not the original one,” Hiruko said, “so I’ll accept it.”
“Not even going to fight for your title?” Kurara scoffed, swinging her oversized shovel about like some kind of toy. “You’re a disgrace. If I were in your shoes, I’d kill whoever dared to imitate my my glorious visage.”
“Oh—right,” Hiruko scoffed. “That adorable, blushing face of yours…I’d murder anyone to keep it all to myself.”
“Hey!” Kurara huffed. “We’re not talking about that!”
“Besides, her blushing visage is reserved for when she joins me while I and the Holy Jumonji sword—”
“Can you shut up!?”
Only Moko, Kurara and Kyoshika were there, all in class armor. While the latter two girls argued, Hiruko and Eito took out their infusers and transformed as well. At the sight of Eito’s scythe, Kyoshika clutched her sword tight to her chest.
“You’ll always be the mightiest blade, my love…” she muttered. Eito rolled his eyes.
“You know, we never got to see your class weapon,” Moko said, putting her hands to her cheeks. “It’s sooooo edgy! Then, is it true? All the stuff Sumino told us about you?”
“Did he tell you about me wanting to wipe out humanity?” Eito popped his mouth into an ‘o’ shape. “Or about how I see you all as disgusting, revolting, hideous, gut-wrenching monsters? Yes, that’s all true. It’s best you assume that at any given moment, I’m trying not to throw up standing near you all.”
Another practiced smile. Had he ever smiled for real, in his life and fake memories alike? “But right now, I’m putting my goals aside. I’d rather leave this timeline in one piece, so for now, I’ll get along with you nauseating things.”
Kyoshika and Moko shared similar grimaces of disgust as his frank hatred. Kurara, however, glared, putting her hands on her hips.
“This guy belongs in a mental patient unit,” Kurara said, shooting Eito a look of pure hatred. “Now I get why Sumino killed him from the start. Well, whatever, do anything weird and I’ll hand you over to Omokage.”
Eito laughed, one of apathy, one Hiruko became well-acquainted with in her misadventures with him.
“How about we start sparring?” Hiruko said. “I want to see what you’re all capable of.”
“R-Right!” Moko slammed her fists together. “C’mon guys, it’s a no holds barred beatdown between us! We’re going 100%! It’s sweaten’, winnin’, roastin’ time!”
Despite her words, Moko held everyone to some stipulations: no pushing anyone beyond their limits, and no fatal wounds. Hiruko faced off with Moko and barely pulled through, while Eito won his initial match with Kurara (to the latter’s anger). Against Kyoshika, though…
“Gh—I can’t believe this…”
He fell to his knees, gripping his scythe as he finally collapsed. Heavily breathing, Kyoshika stood over him, clapping.
“And in the nick of time, I used my special technique to bring my rival to the ground!” She grinned. “Now you’ll never be mocked again for your smaller stature, Holy Jumonji Sword!”
“I never mocked your stupid sword,” Eito mumbled from the floor.
“And I don’t remember seeing anything special about your techniques,” Kurara said.
“Aw, guys,” Moko said, shooting the pair warning looks. “Let her have this.”
Kurara and Eito swallowed, saying nothing more. Kyoshika continued to gloat and cheer as she went to take a seat in between matches, grabbing a drink of water until she readied herself for the final showdown against Hiruko.
They stood opposite of one another—on Moko’s signal, Kyoshika lunged first.
Not that she ever had a chance.
Years of experience fighting with Kyoshika clued Hiruko in on all her moves. No matter which way she swung her sword or how she carried herself for a block, Hiruko maneuvered around each blow. Heavy weapon be damned, the predictability of Kyoshika’s inner script carried the other woman to victory before long.
“How…how is this possible!?” Kyoshika gasped as she knelt, looking down at her hands. “Lady Shizuhara the Second—no, Master Hiruko, teach me your ways!”
“Hm.” Hiruko paused. “I may consider training you, if you lick the soles of my shoes until they sparkle.”
“Anything you wish, Master Hiruko!”
Eito grimaced and reached for his mask and earplugs again, resting against the wall. Kurara pushed her way between the two girls, fuming.
“Hey, her tongue belongs to me!” Kurara yelled. “I need it to trick her into admitting more dirty secrets to everyone!”
Kyoshika gasped and hurried to stand again. “Wait—you’re right! You do need it!”
“Is that really something you gotta agree with…” Moko said. “Girls, please, there’s plenty of Kyoshika to go around.”
“I’m willing to share my toys, sometimes,” Hiruko said.
Kurara stomped her foot. “Sometimes!?”
As Kurara continued to assert her ownership of Kyoshika while the aforementioned girl agreed in complete ignorance of the ramifications, Hiruko glanced over to where Eito sat, only to be met with shock. While they’d been occupied, Takumi had slipped in, and now seemed to be wrapped in a conversation with Eito.
Hiruko frowned, and looked away. It didn’t matter how hard she tried. Everything fell apart somehow, somehow.
So she assumed. But in reality…
Their whispering continued. Each second of tense conversation brought a twitch to her eye. Eito leaned forward, touched his forehead to Takumi’s and whispered something. The other man shot to his feet and absconded, muttering something before he slammed the door behind him. That got the attention of the girls at last, though Eito only smiled before he pulled his mask back on and leaned against the wall once more.
“Good morning, Takumi.” Eito waved as the aforementioned man entered the cafeteria. Takumi nodded in acknowledgment before fleeing to the other side, sitting near where some of the others chatted. Hiruko and Eito claimed a spot with the sparring group from yesterday, though Eito kept one of his noise canceling earplugs in, on the side where the three sat, while off to his right, he kept one off, where Hiruko stayed.
“He approached you?” Hiruko asked, and Eito smiled.
“He begged for my forgiveness. Taking a page from you, I told him I’d let it go if he licked my shoes clean.”
Of course that didn’t happen. But since Takumi seemed to be somewhat okay in Eito’s presence now, Hiruko decided she’d accept the little victories and nodded.
“Good. I’m training you well.”
“Putting it that way makes me feel like you’ve gotten your disgusting slime all over my insides.”
“Even better.” Hiruko stifled a laugh while Eito focused on his food. Just like yesterday morning, he made breakfast for the both of them, this time more of a proper meal than before.
Kyoshika cleared her throat. “Master Hiruko, we require your input on our battle strategies. Please respond within a week. Best regards, your precious student Kyoshika Magadori.”
“Are you trying to talk to her or write her a letter!?” Kurara shouted.
“Both, if I may have the honor!”
“Both!?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Hiruko said, shooting a glare to silence the two bickering girls. “What’s this strategy about?”
Eito took out his other earplug, now listening in. “You see,” Moko said, “Sumino told us there’s another commander coming, right? So I wanted to test a cool new move I’ve been working on. And this one copied me and had me killed in another timeline, or something?”
She laughed, crossing her arms. “I gotta get my revenge, it’d make for the best end to my character arc!”
Kyoshika nodded. “We’re going to clear an opening so Moko can take up the frontmost assault. Master Hiruko, Sir Aotsuki, will you lend us your strength?”
“It won’t matter much either way,” Hiruko said. “With our numbers, half the group could be present, and we’d still win.”
Half the group…
Hiruko bit her lip. It’d been a long time since she’d experienced the Coming-of-Age timeline so closely to how it played out before. Why did something about Hiruko’s own words strike such a chord of terror…?
“If it doesn’t matter, then whether or not I agree, you’ll all be fine.” Eito winked, earning grimaces from the other girls.
“At least Master Hiruko approves…” Kyoshika whimpered. As she did, a shadow loomed over the table. More specifically, over Kyoshika—followed by rabid barking, growling, and other animalistic noises Hiruko had heard time and time again from a certain freaky girl with all her eagerness to become a dog.
Darumi put her hands up, before leaning close to Kyoshika and yapping. “Bark! Bark bark! (She’s my Mistress! Back off!)”
“Huh!?” Kyoshika gasped, then mimicked Darumi’s posture. “Bark bark? Bark…Bark bark! (Are we not allowed to share? Does Master Hiruko not have room in her heart for two loyal steeds?)”
“Steeds are horses, not dogs,” Eito said.
Gaku screamed. “How do you understand them!?”
As the energy in the cafeteria reached a fever pitched, Hiruko fell silent, earning a smug satisfaction from watching the two girls fight for the right to keep Hiruko’s boots clean. She didn’t stay to see the end though. After enough commotion, Eito grimaced and pushed himself out of his seat, grabbing his food and moving for the door.
Hiruko looked over. Someone stopped him at the exit—Takumi. Of course.
“You don’t need to leave,” he said. “Seriously, if you hated us that much, why would you bother showing up and working together in the first place…?”
She grimaced. Takumi may have had good intentions, yes, but the idiocy on display was enough to make Hiruko sick as well. Eito clutched his chest and flinched at the proximity of the other man. The root of his departure had little to do with any practical levels of like and dislike—it was all out of Eito’s control.
“Takumi…seeing your slovenly face begging me to stay is so revolting, I may lose my breakfast here and now if you don’t get out of my way.”
Takumi glared, unable to muster a response before his body moved first. He stepped aside. Eito took a deep breath before he smiled and left the cafeteria. Takumi kicked the ground a few times, plagued by a look of dissatisfaction before he went to sit at his table once more.
…
Hiruko rose from her seat and followed Eito out. The conversation moved on without her, and she’d lost her appetite, anyways.
One more night.
The majority of their stay passed so uneventfully Hiruko wondered if she’d slipped two days in and fell into one of Takumi’s long, drawn-out comas. Everything went so well. Hiruko made friends within this world’s Special Defense Unit, and even Eito seemed to break away and enjoy himself on the rare occasion. Though some gave him grief for his frequent isolation breaks, Hiruko only needed to flash a cold glare to silence them, and everyone carried on as normal.
They fought against the shape-shifting commander, Zen’ta, and won with barely a sweat. They trained, they cleaned (however begrudgingly on Hiruko’s part), and even managed to earn something of a partnership with this timeline in the long term.
“I guess it’ll be good for the both of us,” Sirei said, looking hesitant despite his agreement. Hiruko offered to meet with him in the war room after the nighttime announcement, approximately 10 hours before the next leap window. “If you need us, just hop over and ask. But I’ll only lend as much help as we can spare, capiche?”
“Naturally,” she said, “I’m not expecting you to risk your timeline’s future for ours. I doubt we’ll even need to speak again, outside of the worst case scenario.”
“I hope so,” Sirei said. “This time traveling’s such a headache…if I were a different man, I might consider going back to drinking.”
A drink…
That sounded good.
Hiruko made a quick stop at the Gift-o-Matic before she returned to her and Eito’s shared room. They’d sleep early, and head off in the morning, having already exchanged farewells at dinner with everyone. Though she knew everyone well enough she imagined they still wanted to give proper goodbyes at sunrise.
How funny of them, really.
Armed with glass and bottle, she poured herself a serving of wine and sipped as she lounged against the bed. She could manage herself—the last thing she wanted was to go through that agonizing process again with a hangover.
Just one glass. That’d be all she needed.
“Are you drinking?” Eito pulled the curtain back to peek at her side, before letting it fall again as the sounds of him shuffling on the couch broke through. “I’m not going to judge, but keep it in moderation. I’d rather not throw up carrying your drunken body through the ruins of humanity’s brutal conquest. The conquest you refuse to tell the others about, by the way.”
Hiruko grimaced. Yes, she’d need to drink if she wanted to survive another night being roommates with Eito Aotsuki.
“This isn’t our world,” she said.
“So you’re going to tell the others when we return?”
Hiruko huffed. “They’ll figure it out eventually. It’s better we don’t go blurting out whatever nonsense we want. We’ve already disappeared for so long, do you want them to calls us invader spies and throw us in the cage again?”
“Haha…it’d give me an awful case of deja-vu.” … “What happened while we were gone?”
“Hm?”
“You’ve experienced something like our timeline before. Shouldn’t you be preparing for whatever we come back to, or is the drinking part of your plan?”
“For the most part, you were the cause of the worst of it,” Hiruko said, squeezing her eyes shut as she finished her glass and went to pour herself some more. “So…”
She trailed off.
Was he? What happened after Eito’s brainwashing? He faked being their friend, and absorbed V’exhness after tearing the group apart with that stupid lie about the tattoo. A lie he only utilized because Takumi printed out the thing and never used it way back when, or so she surmised when Takumi explained in the last iteration of Coming of Age.
But something else happened.
Another inciting incident to rip the group asunder. Eito knew how to plot as if his life depended on it, but now that Hiruko dwelled on it more, something else grew at the root of their argument.
“How much do you know about our future?” Eito asked. His voice fizzled into the noise of her thoughts, but broke through nonetheless in bits and pieces. “If you wanted to, you could be the leader and bring the group to the ‘perfect’ ending you say you want so badly.
“So why don’t you?
“Oh, right. It’s because you’re nothing but a witch festering in rot and mold. My bad.”
No—it hadn’t been just Eito.
“Haha, should I apologize for being so blunt? Thinking about how you’ve enabled humanity’s conquest in two timelines, how you let others die and allowed a native defending her planet to be brainwashed into fighting otherwise, it just makes me so nauseous…though you probably don’t care about what I’m saying at all.”
It started on the night of the fireworks—
Eito pulled the curtains back and stared at her. “Hey, are you listening?”
Nozomi’s rejection symptoms acted up, a condition which irked Hiruko to no end with the utter randomness of its occurrences. No matter how much Hiruko planned, sometimes something as slight as a breeze seemed to trigger them. Or stress, or diet changes, or some secret third thing she never managed to decipher.
Nevertheless, they flared up that night. Takumi brought her to a relay base to absorb a commander and cure her side effects before they killed her—or so he planned. Something about V’exhness in this timeline drove her to absorb the commanders and mount an attack early, decimating the school.
Sirei deployed the missiles early and doomed them all to the destroyed surface of Futurm. Eva and Shouma gave their lives to buy time for the others. And without any effort at all, Eito used his chance to tear the group apart so he could strike when they became most vulnerable.
Hiruko chose to take that opportunity from him. But, in the end, that did nothing to prevent the tragedy that they would come back to on Day 61.
She downed another glass of wine and screamed.
Eito winced and doubled back, before pushing the curtains aside entirely and watching over Hiruko as she wailed. He moved to touch her—she lunged, grabbed his wrist, and pushed him to the ground.
For this moment, she let herself see him as another Eito. As someone she truly, deeply despised.
And then she pulled a hand back, and beat him.
Just this once, though, he fought back.
She saw her punches connect with his face, saw a place where a bruise would form later until her world turned over, and he slammed her wrist so hard she wondered if she’d be able to swing her axe for a while. But as long as her other hand functioned—
Hiruko punched him in the chest, right where it’d hurt the most, before she pushed him to the ground and beat his face bloody, hoping that with each hit, she’d blow his skull open.
Invaders, humans, Futurans—they all looked the same on the inside.
Eito grabbed her wrist. With a lot of force, he pushed her against the side of the bed, smiling.
“So, what happened in the original timeline?” he asked. “If I have to taste your fist all night, I’m going to vomit over you…so how about you answer me instead?”
His face twitched, barely concealed hatred threatening to boil over. Hiruko, fixed with a death glare, clenched her teeth. Willing herself to keep the answer under lock and key. Hoping that, for whatever ridiculous reason, she wouldn’t think confiding in Eito could change anything about the doom which waited for them.
…
“Right now,” he said, “it’s just you and me. So, why hold back?”
Hiruko sighed—deep and heavy, mourning everything they had yet to see. If Eito gave her no other choice…
“V’exhness will launch an attack on the school while Takumi’s away with some of the team attacking a relay base,” Hiruko said. “Their numbers will be lower than ever. It’ll be a miracle if we come back to anything at all.”
“…I see.”
Eito pulled back. He grimaced and crawled away from Hiruko, putting a hand to his mouth and inhaling the bile which threatened to escape. Hacking, panting, and all but biting into his gloved hand to keep the disgust back, he retreated behind the curtain.
The two stayed that way for a long, long while. When Hiruko thought Eito had gone to sleep, the curtain shifted, Eito’s hand pressed against it until he leaned forward enough to touch Hiruko’s shoulder with it between them.
“…I…”
He took a deep breath, words balanced on his tongue. Teetering to and fro, from thought to idea, feeling to speech. “…Hah, there’s no way the others will forgive us for missing that. Not that they ever forgave me anyways, but it’s a pity for you. I guess we’re stuck together.
“At least…there’s that, Hiruko. I don’t have anywhere else to be.”
With that, he pulled back, leaving Hiruko in silence until dawn broke.
“Goodbye, Master Hiruko! I’ll remember you!”
Kyoshika waved, her arm a blur of enthusiasm as the group of students slowly faded into the distance behind Hiruko and Eito. Of all the people Hiruko talked to over the past week, one had pointedly ignored her company—her own self. Past, future, wherever she came from…even now, she refused to look at the Hiruko before her.
A future version, then, Hiruko thought. If that was the case, and something horrible awaited her upon return, she could only imagine what ‘herself’ had been thinking this whole time.
“I spoke with Hiruko I, actually,” Eito said as they crossed the Wall of Fire, extinguisher slung over his shoulder. He took one last look before the wall covered up the gap. For a moment, his gaze lingered on a certain red-headed blip on the horizon.
He stepped away, and continued onward. “She wanted me to tell you, if you asked, that avoiding us was nothing personal. She aimed to avoid bringing more stress into your measly existence. Which, if the loop is as impossible to escape as you say it is, truly is the most useless, futile race to nothing I’ve ever seen. Even more hopeless than an ant going on a cross-country trek within its lifetime.”
Hiruko wished she still felt angered enough to beat him bloody. “The bloodspace waves peak in thirty minutes. We have plenty of time to figure out what to do from there.”
For one, she needed to brace herself to undergo that horrendous process again. It seemed odd, making a machine that actively destroyed your body for little gain. She squeezed her eyes shut, and as an idea flashed in her brain, she wanted to groan from how stupid her past self had been.
“This time, let’s wear those suits.”
“Hm?”
“If these bloodspace waves are important to the device, then these hemoanima deflecting suits may offset the damage we endured before. Unless you want to be a useless sack of sludge when we return?”
“…I was thinking the same,” Eito said, fixing his glasses back into place with that shady look of his. “So I don’t need you to remind me of the obvious.”
Hiruko sighed and glanced back. No one followed them—good. She knew none of them had the kind of curiosity to kill thousands of cats, but it’d be an inconvenience if Sirei became suspicious and sent someone to spy on them. At least he knew when to hold back. Sometimes.
They made it back to the odd lab, and Hiruko relied on muscle memory and some careful use of the terminal to set it back to their timeline (or at least, what she hoped was theirs). From there, the two put on extra copies of the suits, and waited.
“These make good disguises,” Eito said, tone altered into sounding like a used car salesman using the in-built voice changer. “Maybe we don’t need to discard them. We can make these our new identities, assuming the school’s as decimated as you believe it’ll be.”
“As I believe? It’ll be chaos back there. I’m not getting my hopes up otherwise.”
“Are you sure?” Eito hummed. “Takumi never went to any relay base in this timeline. He may choose not to because of how much everything’s changed. Or maybe they’ll all be ambushed because they’re desperately searching for you, and that’s the doom you’ve been waiting for.”
Hiruko crossed her arms, intent on blocking out his nonsense. Eito huffed—his tone softened.
“Or…urgh. We don’t know. So worry when we get back. Seeing your pouting all morning made me sick.”
“I wasn’t pouting.”
“Almost crying, then?”
“Do you want to keep your knees intact? You have five seconds to answer.”
“…Yes.” He twitched in irritation, backhanded agreement only showing in his forced pleasantness.
“Good boy.”
The time arrived. Hiruko hit the button, and like before, they got onto the platform (though more prepared) and waited until a bright light whisked them away.
When her vision cleared…well, Hiruko didn’t know what she expected. Maybe she thought the lab would be in ruins, the only scraps of it left being the barely functional machine. Maybe she expected to step outside and see the sky engulfed in red hellfire as if the world admonished her for making her choice.
Corpses lining the ruins, people screaming and running as bombs went off and the world descended into chaos—none of that infected this timeline yet. In fact, as the two threw off their suits and hurried outside, it looked the exact same as the timeline they left.
“How disappointing,” Eito cooed. “Shall we?”
Hiruko nodded and took off. With an annoyed whine, Eito ran after her.
“The ruins look…” he heaved, doing his best and, to his credit, keeping a decent pace with her, “…a bit more destroyed than before.”
“There’s signs of a recent encroaching army,” Hiruko said. “But, if the fighting’s still going, or—or they haven’t gotten there yet…”
Then there might be time.
She didn’t like it, but Eito’s words gave her hope. That timeline’s Nozomi never suffered from rejection symptoms during their stay. Hiruko knew from experience: her illness never acted with consistency, being one of the many random factors Hiruko has had to contend with across loops. Not as devastating as Takumi’s…Takumi-ness, but just ill-timed enough to be headache-inducing.
So maybe—just maybe, there was hope.
A change. A sign, a divergence.
Something.
Anything.
Anything at all. An escape from this punishment, for once.
The Wall of Fire still stood when they got there. When Eito blew a hole open, though, a crater in the center of the schoolyard greeted them, pooling dread into Hiruko’s stomach. She shoved ahead and hurried onward, running around it until the two made it to the entrance and busted in.
“What!?”
“No way!”
“It can’t be…”
The shocked gasps of her companions filled the air, stalactite waiting to fall. Only a handful remained: Kurara, Moko, Nozomi, Ima, Kako, and Takumi. Moko, Nozomi and Kurara had their Class Armor on while Takumi held a basket in his hands.
“You’re…”
Takumi’s mouth flew open, and he dropped said basket. “You two are alive?”
“I—I can’t believe it!” Moko’s class armor disappeared as she sprinted forward, pulling the two into a massive hug. “We thought V’exhness ate you guys, too! You’ve been gone for so long, what happened?”
“Mr. Sumino’s been blaming himself for losing you guys,” Ima said, a noticeably colder demeanor present. “Are you going to explain anything, or did you two actually run off to elope?”
“Two teenagers, exposed to the elements, and only one bed between them…” Kako’s eyes sparkled. Hiruko elected to ignore the wider implications, focusing on keeping herself alive until Moko freed the both of them. Eito retched and doubled over.
Hiruko steadied herself, and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Hiruko, what’s wrong?” Nozomi’s eyes watered, and even as she wiped her tears away, new ones came to replace them. “You and Aotsuki disappeared for so long, we thought—maybe he…did he hurt you?”
“How revolting…” Eito sneered once he regained his bearings. “I didn’t do anything to her. I never asked to spend so much time around another human.”
He appeared…actually offended at the suggestion. Hiruko frowned, biting on her lip as she juggled explanations in her head. Nothing worked. Logically speaking, she had no reason to flee for over a week, nor any reason to do so with Eito, and especially—she couldn’t—
She just couldn’t. Even a hint towards time travel risked unearthing a whole can of worms she hated talking about more than needed. Eito knowing already pushed her limits.
But she wouldn’t get to decide. In most other situations, she might’ve appreciated it, if it didn’t come in the form of Kurara grabbing her collar and slamming her into the massive entrance hall door, using her shovel to hover herself just high enough to grab the other woman.
“I’ve had enough!” Kurara spat, tomato mask bright red from the fumes of her rage. “Do you know what we’ve been through, or are you too in your head from frolicking around with a maniac!? Maybe—maybe if you useless stains actually bothered to stick around, she—they wouldn’t have abandoned us!”
“Oosuzuki!” Takumi snapped out of his stupor and dashed over. He wrenched the angered girl off Hiruko. “That’s enough! Let’s give her a chance to explain herself, after…after we’ve told them what’s going on.”
Takumi then turned to Eito, fixing him with a look of death. “Whatever you did—”
“I didn’t do anything,” Eito hissed. He got back up on his feet, face pinched. “Don’t you dare leave me out of this. Didn’t you’d say you’d let her explain herself? At least wait until she’s done before you start accusing me of something, unless you’re more fond of treating me like a thing to throw your problems at than a living, breathing being.”
“I hate to agree with him,” Ima said, “but I want to hear Hiruko’s story. I don’t think Ms. Shizuhara’s the innocent victim you want her to be.”
Takumi kept a firm grip on Kurara, despite her struggles. He nodded to Ima and backed off. “I’ll explain what happened here first. But, then…you’re gonna tell us what happened to you guys, Shizuhara.”
Hiruko recognized that look on Takumi’s face.
He had the same look, back in the other timeline, when Hiruko insisted Eito stay with her. He’d usually only feel that way about her when he believed her to be an invader, a monster to destroy…
…What a mess she made.
“V’exhness—” of course, “attacked while we were gone, then.”
Hiruko sighed. She’d held onto a foolish hope after all. Even after the entire account, all she had to say was the obvious. How heartless could she be?
Takumi’s events lined up with the original events of this timeline, up until the attack itself. The crater formed as a result of Nigou using his self-destruct feature to damage V’exhness. Sirei lured her into the right spot and died with his fellow robot, while Shouma got caught up in the blast trying to save a brainwashed Eva (who’d, of course, died too) from obediently following Nigou to his doom. The missiles were the only thing to stay intact compared to before.
That fact filled Hiruko with the bitter melody of disgust, slotted between each nervous twitch to a deep soak in her flesh and bones.
“Nozomi’s still not feeling well,” Moko said. “She should be resting, but she insisted on joining the search party, so…”
“The search party?” Hiruko asked.
“The others…the ones not here,” Takumi spoke, as if telling stories of ghosts, “they decided the fight was a lost cause, and wanted to find a way to contact the satellite for rescue. Some of them left to protect those who wanted to go. But—but…”
“We started searching,” Nozomi said, taking over after Takumi faltered and plunged back into his misery, “after we spotted a mummified husk near the school. If It wasn’t for…the jacket, we never would’ve realized…”
“Takemaru…” Kako whispered, fighting back tears. “I had a vision that V’exhness would return in three days.”
“And she’ll be fueled up on all our dead friends, none the worse for wear,” Ima added. “They might’ve had the right idea leaving. There’s no way we’ll win this, even with all the luck in the world. Seriously, Mr. Sumino, it’s unfair we get presented with these challenges even with all your foresight.”
“I—”
Takumi choked on his words. He breathed deeply, in and out, head down and away from the conversation.
A slack puppet, left behind.
“It does sound hopeless for you all,” Eito said, arms folded on the table as he rested his head. “Is the plan to sit around and wait for us to die?”
Nozomi paled. “We can’t! We can’t, we still—we still need to…”
Despite her best efforts, her energy failed her. She lurched forward, grabbing the table at the last moment and pulling herself up. She donned a bright grin. “I…I’m fine, I promise. I’m just—I need some rest, and—”
“…fault…”
“Ah—Kurara?”
“It’s all your fault!”
Kurara slammed her fists against the table. Though she avoided attacking Hiruko yet again, the agonizing rage displayed over the limited emotions of her tomato mask told everyone she dangled a hair’s breath away from it. “You abandoned us for him!? Are you kidding me!? Why are we even tolerating traitorous, lying scum breathing the same air as us?”
“But, they didn’t—” Nozomi began, but Kurara cut her off.
“You’re going to die!” she yelled. “You’re going to die, that idiot Kyoshika’s already dead, and now—we’re all going to die! I’m not going to sit here and pretend you’re welcome here ever again!
“Whatever your story is, I don’t care—there’s nothing, absolutely nothing you can to do explain why you left us now of ALL TIMES! If I have to hear another word out of your whorish, lying mouth, I’ll gut your tongue and display it on my mantle before I launch the missiles at everyone you love!”
“Will you stop infecting the air with your putrid breath?”
Eito stood up, smiling, a smile that accompanied the rage in his eyes. “Hiruko’s not going to tell you because she’s afraid.
“But I will. I’ll tell you why you should be begging for us to help you.”
Eito cleared his throat, and paused to shoot a warning glance to Hiruko. She grimaced, glared, even—but nothing stopped him.
“We spent the last week stuck in another world against our will. We wouldn’t have stayed there so long if we had any semblance of choice in the matter. And, luckily for you miserable, ungrateful humans, what we did in that world might give us a chance of surviving.”
His words hung over everyone, sharper than any barbs thrown about the past fifteen minutes.
Hiruko’s heart pierced with the weight of them. She thought he’d reveal it all: time leaps, time loops, everything she’d shared with him in her moments of folly. No, even from the beginning, when she decided to choose, to change the course of fate and make it her responsibility…it’d all been her folly.
So she felt.
But even so.
“Won’t you show the least bit of gratitude towards Hiruko?” Eito gestured to the silent, still-as-statue girl next to him. “Despite appearances, she cares deeply about every one of you miserable freaks. She even trusted me as her sole companion throughout our misadventures, and gave me all kinds of interesting, useless trinkets as some worthless sign of affection.
“You’d think, instead of jumping her, someone who has less than zero reasons to run off with a traitor, you’d wait for her to run her mouth with whatever valuable intel she gathered. Honestly, I’m not surprised you’ve all been brutalized so throughly, when you lack the brains to put a modicum of thought into the choices your teammates would make. It’s pathetic.”
Eito put a hand to his chest. His face flushed red as his voice tinged with anger, a sight Hiruko had only seen once before. “I know no one has any faith in me. Don’t see this as me pleading my case. It’s not like I had a choice in following her, with this bomb inside me. Just think before you subject me to more of your whining and screeching, please? That’s all I ask.”
Maybe.
Maybe, it’d been a folly to decide. To act knowing doom awaited, to gallivant around as if anything salvageable existed within this rotted, doomed branch of the universe.
Hiruko made many mistakes.
But for one, fleeting moment, she wondered if choosing to stop Eito in his self-destruction was all that bad, if it brought this side of him out. Ridiculous—that things would go so wrong she’d be glad to have him as an ally.
She shook her head. “…You don’t need to monologue about this, Aotsuki. I’ve already accepted—”
“Okay.”
Her gaze snapped to Takumi, who’d finally pulled himself up after wallowing in his self-pity since Hiruko first walked into the entrance hall. His eyes sparkled with desperate hope as he clenched his hands into fists, planting them on the table.
“Okay,” he said, “If you’re telling the truth, then I’ll accept it.”
“Wh…” Hiruko’s lips flapped open, closed—opened, and then. Then what? “What?”
“I’m not saying this because I trust Aotsuki,” he said, “but because I trust you, Shizuhara. You’d have our best interests at heart.”
Takumi shuddered. He pushed himself to his feet, standing and facing everyone fully with the kind of confidence Hiruko wished he’d had before everything when to shit. “And—honestly, I…don’t think we have much other choice. I want to believe you’ll all survive this. I can’t stand losing everyone after everything I did!”
Several people locked onto Takumi. The odd wording caught the attention of many, though only one mustered the courage to speak.
“Sumino, what…?” Nozomi paled, and with tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, she continued: “’You’ll all’?”
Takumi flinched. Preparing for the consequences of an action not yet performed. That ridiculous groveling of his preemptively up, he hobbled over to Nozomi and grasped both her hands.
“You need cryptoglobin to cure your rejection symptoms. So take mine.”
“What!?”
Nozomi exclaimed first, Hiruko’s similar yell of shock not far behind. Moko jumped out of her seat with a death glare as strong as her muscles, as capable of exerting strength as a several-ton truck speeding down a highway with nothing but a tumbleweed in the way.
“Are you a complete moron!? A pervert who wants to be in a girl’s body that much!?” Kurara fumed, planting her hands on her hips. “I forbid it! We’re not…absolutely not, never letting you do something disgusting like that!”
Takumi closed his eyes, sweat drenched across his face. “Please, let me do this! I came back in time to protect her—all to keep her alive. If this is what it takes, I’ll do it. I can’t—I won’t ask anyone else to do this.”
“Please. Nozomi, please, please, please!
“Please!”
“Sumino!”
Hiruko lunged out of her seat and grabbed his arm. Yet something tugged her stomach—brought her back to the moment she made her choice to intervene. Her only choice. Yet…if it caused all this, would it be wise to intervene again? To twist fate around her decaying fingertips, string the rest into driblets of dead flesh?
Already on the cusp of doom.
What’s another bad choice?
What’s another burden, Hiruko?
…
She let go. She fixed her glasses back into place, if only to hide the tears that threatened to escape. “Do whatever you want. It’s your life—your choice.”
Takumi stared at her, apprehensive. The way he looked at her, then at Nozomi…it hardly compared. Fool’s gold to real, shimmering love.
Transient forgotten memories to a stranger. To another doomed Takumi Sumino.
“We can’t let you do this…” Moko mumbled between tears. Far too late to change Takumi’s mind, but the smile he showed her seemed to bring some comfort. Kurara fumed and kicked Takumi in the thigh, started yet another argument as Ima dragged his sister away from it all. By the time Hiruko went back to take a seat far from everyone, the argument moved on without her.
A gloved hand touched her shoulder. If only for a moment.
“Just promise me,” Nozomi muttered between desperate tears, “that you won’t regret your choice.”
They buried Takumi early in the morning.
Only Nozomi had been there in his last moments. Everyone stayed in the cafeteria for a while, talking and grasping for normality while Hiruko laid out her plan to bring in reinforcements (with the exception of Eito, who left early and claimed his cage as his new room), despite the weight of what would come the next day. Takumi fell asleep against the cafeteria table with everyone else, and by the time they awoke, Kako ran to Nozomi’s room and found her crying and clutching Takumi’s withered husk, his dried hand wrapped around Nozomi’s knife holding wrist.
The Gift-o-Matic produced gravestones. Hiruko knew how many spaces down it was on the list. She knew the exact amount of materials needed to craft it—just how to break the stone to carve a legible name in. How long it’d take them to shovel through the hard, dry soil to dump his body in before giving it a paltry reburial.
This dying planet held more than enough corpses. It didn’t want any more, but it never had a choice in the first place.
“…This is all your fault,” Ima muttered in a low voice, side glare aimed at Hiruko. Everyone showed up, except for Eito. Hiruko wanted to be there no matter how the others reacted to it.
“Believe me, or don’t,” Hiruko said, steady with the experience of facing Ima’s ire more than dozens of time, “but I won’t let Sumino down. We’ll win the next fight against V’exhness.”
“I…I don’t want to think about fighting,” Kako said, shoulders hunched as she trembled. Ima moved in to comfort her, but faltered—as his own facade of calm crumbled into desperate trembling, Kako reached over and pulled him into a hug.
Moko sniffled, caked in dirt as she knelt next to Nozomi right by Takumi’s grave. “But—we have to. We can’t let everyone’s deaths be for nothing! They burned bright, and now we need to keep their flames going! Somehow…
“Some…some way.”
As Nozomi continued to wail, Moko brought her into a hug as well. Though Kurara hung back the whole funeral, triggered by her own anxious trembles, she lurched forward and joined the hug between the two girls.
Hiruko watched their displays of comfort to one another, their love, their affection.
It reminded her of too much.
So she left.
“We’re going already?”
A few whacks to the face with a pillow managed to rouse Eito. It’s not as if anyone bothered to lock his cage, despite everyone’s concerns over his goals and loyalties, so she marched right in and made sure she wouldn’t be ignored, no matter his gripes.
Hiruko frowned. “The next leap window opens tonight for three hours only. We’re guaranteed to spend a third of that on the journey—unless you want to gamble on waiting for the next one and risk being annihilated or having less time, then you’ll be ready to leave in an hour.”
“Urgh…” Eito groaned and turned around in his bed, all to avert his gaze. “If you really cared about me, you’d give me more time to recover from breathing in your putrid scent yesterday. Not to mention needing to touch your grotesque, slimy, viscous flesh—”
“Complain,” Hiruko hissed, leaning down and grabbing Eito by the back of his jacket, yanking him up and pushing him off the bed, “and I’ll remove a finger. I’ll do it each time you grumble from now on, in fact.”
“Hah. You never change, Hiruko.” Eito laughed, looking up at her from the floor. “Well…if you want to be stuck with me so badly, it’s up to you. If your Team Leader gave up already, then someone has to make the choices.
“Right? Hiruko?”
Hiruko left without another word. Left him there—even if unsaid feelings still lingered as they set out from the school that night, hurried steps towards the mysterious lab as the time ticked closer.
Eito kept pace behind her, though about halfway there, he coughed. “There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you.”
“Ten words or less,” Hiruko said.
“Hmmmm. So, you see, you’re trying your hardest to save this timeline.”
“Is this a question or a speech? If it’s the latter—”
“Some things are worth losing fingers for. Anyways, you’re trying very hard, even when the others hate and curse you for it. From their limited perspective, you’re only a step above the ‘invaders’ now, right?”
“…”
“So why don’t you stop?”
Hiruko almost paused in her running to reply, but for whatever reason, she felt as though doing so would lend Eito some credence to his argument. So she replied as she hurried: “Stop what?”
“Stop trying to help this timeline. Throw yourself into the Undying Flames, or kill yourself some other way. If there’s some kind of escape clause for the loops, I doubt you’re anywhere near it. Even if we win the battle and save five people, kill millions more, it’ll all reset in the end.
Hiruko’s pace slowed to a jog. “Even if it resets, the happiness of those in this world while it lasts…that still matters to me. I’m not going to abandon a timeline, especially one I’ve altered, out of some selfish laziness.”
“It doesn’t make sense, though. You’re running a marathon through all these paths. If you’re not careful to stop and rest, won’t you run out of stamina eventually?”
“I won’t.”
“But what if?”
“If this is you trying to skirt your work, consider yourself indebted to me by a finger after the next battle.”
“You’re an exhausting person to be around, Hiruko. Here I am, wanting to have a nice, normal conversation with the only person who forces me to be around them, and how do you treat me?”
Hiruko gritted her teeth. A flash of white filled her head—anger, yes, but something deeper too. A desperate desire, for one second—! “I want you to survive too, you frustrating piece of…!”
…
She huffed, and turned back around, breaking into a faster run. Running from this conversation, and quite well at that, if Eito’s hurried sprint to keep up told her anything. By the time they arrived at the lab, the bloodwaves were minutes from peaking, so they donned their suits. Hiruko prepared the machine and hit the button right on the dot.
As soon as they popped into existence once more, in that other, kinder world, Hiruko ran.
“Before we get there,” she breathed between steps, “you need to listen. Use those ears of yours before I take them away.”
Eito’s mouth fell opened.
“Hm…?”
“Should we start banging pots and pans to wake them up?” Eito asked. Hiruko considered the moral ramifications of going back on her previous stance and leaving him dead here, until she remembered the reasons for said stance and chose to compress her exhaustion into one measly sigh.
“I was thinking we’d go to the War Room and ask.”
“Oh, right. And then we can sneak attack Sirei and—”
Hiruko ignored him. The two went in the school (normally) and Hiruko opened the door to the War Room (with no slicing).
The screen in front of the little robot shut off, and his eyes shot open until he registered the two guests present, and relaxed. Sort of. As relaxed as you could get around nebulous alternate timeline guests.
“We’ve come to make good on our deal,” Hiruko said. “Everything’s been going great for you? Wonderful—but it’s not the same for us.”
Just like the journey to the school, the process of picking members for a secondary ‘loan’ team passed in a blur. Sirei refused to, reasonably so, hand over everyone. Hiruko prioritized making up for lost defenses, grabbing Shouma, Darumi, Gaku, Eva, and Tsubasa.
She thought to claim Hiruko I. For a second, for a brief second, if only to ask her what came next.
But she wanted ignorance, too. She wanted to believe she could be spared the knowledge.
“I promise I’ll bring them back safe,” Hiruko said, mouth thick with dread, tongue weighed down by the same emotion Hiruko felt on the morning of Day 3. “With this kind of fighting power, no one will stand a chance against us.”
She projected the exact air of confidence she knew she needed. The others said things: words of encouragement. Excitement, at seeing what other worlds had to offer.
Some even made promises with those left behind.
“A forgettable background character like me can’t swear to bringing back any amazing stories…” Shouma said.
“Aw, but at least I’ll bring back my dead body as a souvenir!” Darumi laughed, earning a grimace from Tsubasa.
“Please, don’t joke about that.” She put her hands to her mouth to bite back bile. Gaku handed off some cameras to Eva while cradling some of his own, instructing her on picture taking like some kind of annoying tourist.
Really, was was so fascinating about traveling through time?
Hiruko thought it‘d carry more luster. The first time she and Eito leapt, she wondered if she had finally made some kind of breakthrough. That she could use this knowledge and make this loop the last one. The escape.
The end. Credits roll.
She’d stay until the lights came on, until the staff asked her to leave. Rejoicing in the end until it felt real enough to stick to her heart and send her into cardiac arrest on the drive home.
Something sweet and simple like that.
Seriously, what ending was she hoping to find, if she’d even be willing to…?
…
If she dwelled on it too long, she’d slit her throat and let it end here. So she took a deep breath and motioned for everyone to follow her.
Eito’s voice broke through. “I’ll watch the rear. I can’t stand to be near your horrendous forms, so it works out perfectly for us, right?”
“As long as you remember your role, human shield,” Hiruko said, and he only laughed.
As soon as they arrived at the lab, Hiruko spun her tale of how she placed the equipment there upon their arrival, its existence as a relay point between timelines, creations from the Artificial Satellite, whatever excuses it took to get everyone to put their suits on and travel before the bloodspace waves stopped peaking.
They made it, with time to spare. They made their way back to the academy.
They talked.
They talked so much, and Hiruko refused to hear a word of it.
To hear their hopes, joys and promises would be to get attached. It’d mean to regret, to see their bloodied and disemboweled faces every time she closed her eyes for the rest of eternity.
So she shut it out. She shut herself out of this timeline. Whatever happened next, she wouldn’t involve herself anymore.
These people have had enough of her rot, haven’t they?
After bringing the others back bt the later hours of the morning, who were received with excitement and attention from the survivors at this timeline’s academy, Hiruko went back to her room.
She could’ve stayed to hear some thanks, some words of belief in her after being met with scrutiny. But unlike a sensitive red-haired idiot, she didn’t give a damn if this timeline despised her or not.
No, she didn’t care at all.
Not one bit.
So why did she expect a certain someone to—
A knock.
Right on time.
“The door’s unlocked,” she said as she closed the book she was reading and placed it at the foot of her bed. She didn’t remember what it was about—some nonfiction account of some political issue. To say she retained even a smidgen of recollection would be exceeding the truth.
“Ah, so you were expecting me after all,” Eito said as he peeled inside and shut the door behind him. “I’m touched.”
Hiruko stared at him. Eito glanced about, frowning at the lack of furniture beyond a bed. After a beat, he smiled and moved closer, sitting on her bed as well. She wanted to push him off. In every other circumstance, she wouldn’t have hesitated.
“Did you hear?” Eito continued, dragging his feet around the floor. “The others want to hold a fireworks show tomorrow night. Since V’exhness could attack at any moment, they want to hold a morale boosting party while they still can—Gaku’s treat.
“They’re all so excited for it, they’re preparing to get materials even on so little sleep. It’s almost worrying—how are we supposed to use them to win the battle if they’re all so tired?”
“V’exhness won’t be here until the day after tomorrow,” Hiruko said. “We’ll have time.”
“Right, of course. You have this all figured out. It was your idea, after all.”
“I’m aware.”
“Haha, you don’t need to be so tense. I just wanted to remind you in case you felt like attacking me over your choices again.”
She reached for the pillow. He put his hands up.
“Please, Hiruko. I’m only joking! How are you supposed to save my life like you said if you keep threatening it every day?”
Hiruko let out a cold laugh. “You just make it too easy.”
“And the others worry about me. You’re more ruthless than I ever imagined…
“But, that’s why we’re best friends, aren’t we?”
She blinked, long and slow. “Just to be clear, Aotsuki, you’re the furthest thing from being considered a friend of mine. In fact, I’d rank you lower than being a peer to me. You’re the rusty, bent screwdriver at the bottom of the drawer I’ve forgotten about years ago. Not even useful as a tool, but you make for sub-par decorations of time long passed.”
“That hurts, you know!” Eito put a hand to his heart. “I have feelings too. Deep, beautiful feelings, much brighter than your nauseating, grotesque gum-flapping.”
“If that’s the case—” Hiruko grit her teeth and pushed Eito off the bed. He tumbled to the floor in a heap, pathetic and strewn about. “Then go find another grotesque place to be.”
“Ow! My knee…”
Hiruko left after that. Left him there, and returned from the Rec Room with another curtain to hang in the room. After Eito took the liberty of dragging the couch from Takumi’s room in (why his, she didn’t bother to ask) to sleep on, they both drifted off into a slumber.
She did the bare minimum of going out for breakfast and confirming with the others that there seemed to be no signs of V’exhness today—she didn’t linger long enough for anyone to tell her about the fireworks show that day.
Or maybe they never wanted to tell her. What did she know?
Not that she had much of a choice—despite staying in her room for most of the day, reading more words that fell out of her brain the moment they met her eyes, Eito knocked on her door yet again, this time with something in hand.
“Shouma gave me some,” he said, waving the unlit sparklers about. “He also said you could see the bigger fireworks from up here. I don’t care if you want to shut yourself up in there all day, but if we’re going to make this shared living situation work, you’ll need to let the putrid air out of your room at least once before I throw up all over your floor tonight.”
“I don’t remember ever saying I wanted you around,” Hiruko said as she stepped out. He handed her a sparkler, and as the two gathered by the fence on the roof, the first sparks of color invaded the inky black night.
Green—then red, accompanied by a dash of blue. They streaked the skies, comets in transience and burning passion. They shone, they fizzled, they faded and forgot.
Like every timeline, she’d carry this memory, and no one else ever would. She’d seen a show like this, or something similar too many times to count.
But…
She never shared a fireworks show with Eito, of all people. He’d never given her the time of day, much less willingly moved into her room despite all his perceptional issues. She never shared an inch of her pain with him, and he never tried to comfort her through her worst moments.
He never agreed to share in her selfish, cruel mistakes. Not until now. As the lambs to the slaughter played below, Eito existed apart from her cruelty, hand-plucked and spared for all the worst reasons.
At least one spark stayed bright. She lit her sprinkler and held it to the night sky, watched as each light died as the last.
“Once we’ve defeated V’exhness,” Eito said, holding his own sparkler closer by, “I’m going to break into the Defense Room and destroy the baby.”
“You don’t need to do that,” Hiruko said. “There’s a capsule in this timeline. We’ll take him out and—”
“And let him live so the humans can come down, kill us all and use him another day? No—nothing you say can change my mind.”
Hiruko looked to him. He reached her with cold eyes.
“I’m going to take his cryptoglobin and destroy the satellite in all its ugliness. Ever since you told me the truth of this war, I knew that’s what I had to do. You can do whatever you want, but if you get in my way, I’ll kill you.”
She wondered if she should have reacted with betrayal. With some sort of upset, anything mustered towards his words.
But.
After everything,
she felt nothing.
If it was part of the script, she wouldn’t complain.
He made his choice. She made hers. They reacted and intersected into this. She could’ve told him his hatred and his goals existed only as fabrications in his brain. That he’d never touched foot on that damned piece of metal, nor did he know anything about the people there. That his building blocks, his suffering, his anger—all made of lies upon lies.
That if he’d get a damn clue for once, he would’ve figured it out a long time ago.
But it was a part of the script.
She wouldn’t complain.
“Do whatever you want,” she said, focused on her sparkler as it died off, seconds before Eito’s did. The last firework went off and bathed the world around them in red. “Just…follow the plan. Exactly as I told you.”
“Of course, Hiruko. Consider it my parting gift, the last moment of our impromptu partnership. It’s been a pleasure working with you.”
“…
“Likewise.”
She gathered everyone in the War Room on the day V’exhness attacked—or attacks, in this timeline. The worst had yet to come.
“I’ve devised our plan of conquest,” Hiruko began, at the forefront of the group. It’d been a long time since she’d taken this position, but at the very least, she didn’t have to worry yet about anyone figuring out how she knew so much about V’exhness’s weaknesses. “First, we’re going to debilitate her with a blast of Undying Flames. FB, you’ll be ready for that?”
He nodded, having manifested his avatar by the time everyone arrived. “Don’t worry…I’ll do everything I can to protect all of you. It’s the least I can do, after everything you’ve all done for me.”
You all, he said, speaking to more than just the people in the room, if his morose expression told Hiruko anything.
“Good,” she said and nodded to him. “Once we’ve cleared out the smaller enemies, Eva will ingest this pill to boost her fighting strength and use her long-reaching abilities to deal a fatal blow to V’exhness. The rest of the team from her timeline will back her up the second V’exhness goes down and attack.”
She handed the poison to Eva, who held it and smiled weakly.
“And from there—I shouldn’t need to explain anything more,” Hiruko finished. “We’ll strike with no mercy. For the sake of everyone she’s killed, we’ll bring her to her knees.”
Cheers and excitement filled the room to near bursting levels of joy. Only one voice registered to Hiruko amidst the static in her head.
“We’re going to win this fight—not only for the people waiting to return to a safe home above,” Nozomi said, tears pricking, stabbing her eyes out with their despair, “but for Sumino—for Kyoshika, Omokage, for everyone we’ve lost.”
“If you’ve forgotten everyone else’s names, you can say so.” Eito leaned against one of the computers, far away from the group. “When is she going to arrive? It’s rude to drag things out for the losing team.”
“Can you just shut up for one—” Gaku started to yell, only for the one noise they all dreaded most to grind everything to a halt.
“Intruder alert!”
“Intruder alert!”
Before the sight of the invaders so much as graced the screen, everyone nodded and brought up their infusers—except for Nozomi, who donned her armor with the weight of the dead on her shoulders.
The pain seared through Hiruko heavier than ever. Her feet touched the battlefield at the same time Eito’s did, and they lined up next to one another in front of the barrier as invaders positioned themselves at the edge of the field, a lone figure striding forward.
Hiruko faced many iterations of V’exhness, all imbued with different levels of power. She hadn’t faced the Supreme Commander on the original version of this loop, but even from here, she knew V’exhness’s aura of power toppled over whatever strength the pining god mustered consuming the other planet’s heroes alone. Their power rested inside her, their hopes, alongside the despair of her teammates, reduced to pulses through a heart they wanted to stop beating already.
If only hemoanima worked that way. Maybe if we held hands, we could make another miracle, Hiruko thought, guilty at how she spat on what, honestly, was a precious memory amidst all the misery.
If it still worked that way…
No. Better not to rely on it. Something like that required trust, which Hiruko held none of towards the warm bodies she brought to throw at the enemy.
V’exhness stopped in the middle of the battlefield, close enough to speak with everyone as the invaders twitched and teetered behind her. She could feel Eito’s eyes on her as she stared the creatures down, as if he expected something.
“I’ll offer you a choice,” V’exhness said, confident smile armed as purple flames danced around her fingertips. “You can fight, and drag out the pain and suffering my superior self will inflict upon you all, or you can surrender. I’ll drain all of you, as quickly and painlessly as you’d like. Out of the two, there’s only one reasonable option, is there?”
She cackled, expression warped by power, malice, lack of consequences—a smile that almost reminded Hiruko of her own.
“With so few of you—” she continued, only to halt. She failed to notice something off in all her haughtiness. Now that she truly regarded the group, she realized those she killed now stood before her once more.
Just as planned.
“Now, Shion!”
Hiruko didn’t give a damn she used the wrong name. As if he didn’t realize, FB—no, Shion burst from the Wall of Fire, avatar flung towards V’exhness as her eyes widened and she became consumed in the flames. Her pets twitched and lunged for the group.
The signal for the battle’s beginning.
Hiruko raised her axe, razed them all as the team fought as hard as they could to dispel the mooks. They’d cleared out the enemies by the time the Supreme Commander shook off the flames.
Eva strode forward, put the pill to her mouth and swallowed.
Someone said something. Some others. Hiruko’s head filled with static, only focused on Eva and V’exhness as the former ran and launched her weapon—
V’exhness shot a glare and kicked the weapon aside, before leaping forward and wrapping a hand around her sister’s throat. She tore off the headset of the artificial armor and reared her hand back.
Just as planned.
Just as planned—!
Hiruko’s heart leapt with a sick sense of satisfaction, even as others passed her by, running to try and save Eva.
Even though her fate had been sealed the moment Hiruko handed her the pills, the medicine and poison all in one. Even as…
Eva coughed up blood, and V’exhness stopped seconds from plunging her hand into her sister’s chest. She recoiled and dropped her. Eva continued to hack, cough, choke, clutching her throat as the poison took full effect and left her seizing up, her body shutting down little by little.
No. No.
“No…” Hiruko bit her lip. It wasn’t supposed to activate so early! Then again, despite the years she’d spent seeing Yugamu make the concoction, she never had a precise timing for its effects—yet, she relied on it to…
V’exhness looked to Hiruko. Between the shocked faces of her friends? Pawns? comrades and laughed. Sick and heavy with the realization of sacrifice, as she kicked her sister’s body to the side.
Eva convulsed one last time before she stilled.
“So you intended for me to feed upon my sister after forcing her to take a deadly poison?” V’exhness’s voice weighed with honeyed, malicious joy. “Incredible! What a pathetic way for her to go out—and you orchestrated all of it, didn’t you? I know that look in your eye—you don’t need to hide it from me.”
She smiled, and held a hand out to Hiruko. “I don’t know what this is—clones, fodder, or something in between. I’ll feast on you all the same. If you want someone to curse out before you all die, you can blame your wonderful new leader for seeing your lives as forfeit from the start.”
“No way…Shizuhara, why…?” Shouma’s voice echoed out from his mech, heartbreak mixed with a simmering anger. “You—you sacrificed Eva. Our Eva? Did her life mean nothing to you!?”
“Are you gonna use our lives like that, too!?” Gaku snapped, weapon now aimed at Hiruko.
Hiruko blinked—V’exhness cut her own throat.
“Wait, Maruko, watch out!” Tsubasa cried and revved her weapon’s engine, speeding to him as fast as possible.
As soon as a trasnformed V’exhness reached Gaku, she slit his back and absorbed him in a flourish. She claimed Tsubasa, too, not even moments after. More of her pets arrived, and consumed by a flurry of panic, everyone jumped to defend themselves from the monstrous commander. Hiruko dug her fingers into the spikes of her axe
counted her mistakes, all her selfish choices, all the bodies she’s thrown into the fire and watched burn without flinching, even when they bore the faces of the people she loved so much
and joined them. In some sense. In some way, as the world devolved into static. Maybe, in this state, she’d forget how to feel anything at all, focused on the pinprick ideal of a future where everyone smiles.
Sometimes reality suited her better when it didn’t matter. When she only had to raise her axe, and split the skulls of these innocents open. This one, with the beautiful brains—such a small skull. Maybe this one was a child, once? But this one has a much bigger frame beneath its teddy bear appearance.
Right. Maybe they were a family. Parent and child dying together.
That’d be nice. If Hiruko had to die one, final time, dying with those she loved, even if they despised her, wouldn’t be so bad.
She sliced the next few from the torso, first. The first one she killed had a weak-beating heart. It fluttered and sputtered before she slashed its head off too. Almost pathetic, seeing it scramble for life when it was a miracle it survived being mutated at all.
Humans, Futurans—they all looked and died the same.
She smashed in the body of her next opponent with her bare hands, weapon thrown aside. When she looked up, V’exhness clutched someone in her grip.
Eito Aotsuki—his scythe dangled from his fingertips, face purple as she choked the life from him. Mummified husks surrounded the distressed man as V’exhness reared her sword back.
As—
As Hiruko reared her axe back—
What did V’exhness’s hope yell to tell the world?
Hiruko slashed the Supreme Commander’s back. She dropped Eito, turning her attention fully to the other woman.
“So the most wicked invader of them all comes to face me,” V’exhness said, sparing a glance to Eito before turning her attention back to Hiruko, in all her monstrous glory. “So I can mow down all the other pawns you’ve brought, but that one is off limits?”
V’exhness hummed. Hiruko thought the commander focused on her, until she remembered Eva’s corpse sat right behind Hiruko, and for the briefest of moments…she wondered.
“Perhaps I’m not unfamiliar with the urge. I’ll dwell on it more once I’ve absorbed you two and the Second Coming.”
Hiruko brought her axe up as V’exhness swung her blade down. The force of a moon versus the light of the sun—Hiruko’s strength paled in comparison to the one who consumed everything. The blow threw her to the ground the second she faltered. Hiruko clenched her jaw and spun back to her feet, swinging her axe once more.
They locked themselves into a pattern. Having a heavy-set weapon meant Hiruko’s only means of attack were her swings. Long distance attacks only worked if she created distance, but having absorbed the cryptoglobin of so many, V’exhness moved far faster than Hiruko could even sprint. Another swing—another—each time, her axe collided with V’exhness’s blade. Thrown to the ground, risen once more, it became a sort of desperate dance.
Yet Hiruko had her limits.
At the eighth blow, she fell, and crumpled. Her axe flew out of her hands and off somewhere else as V’exhness stood over her.
In a move Hiruko swore she’d seen before, the new god dropped her transformation. She strode towards the collapsed, pathetic woman with the confidence she walked in with, grabbed Hiruko by the throat, and reared her hand back.
A death like Eva’s—if this was where the cycle ended, then maybe…
She’d accept this one bit of cosmic karma. Killing Eva, using her like that—it came easier than using any of the others.
Still, she held out hope. Like last time, V’exhness let her guard down. So, maybe, just possibly…
When the commander froze just as she prepared to absorb Hiruko’s cryptoglobin, Hiruko smiled. She shuddered and dropped her like discarded goods. As Hiruko clamored to her feet, she watched Eito pull his scythe up and deliver another slash to the neck.
V’exness cursed and fumbled for her sword—Eito, acting with a swift executioner’s style, reached for his infuser and shoved it in her throat first.
Her power, the power of the commanders, all of their friends and then some, it flowed into Eito, a red maelstrom. Hiruko’s vision flooded and she stumbled back.
She’d seen before how Eito rejoiced in the power he took, often happily consuming it for the sake of whatever futile goal he’s fixated himself on. Killing humanity, killing Shion, killing the satellite, killing and killing until he only has himself to burn.
V’exhness’s cryptloglobin ran dry, and Eito stood up, with the apprehension of a funeral goer before he locked eyes with Hiruko. His cape’s edges frayed as streaks of light flowed through it—
As he released his transformation. Surrounded by corpses. Blood, viscera, and a war only for killing, suffering, all in an endless cycle.
In the center of the carnage reigned calm. Eito smiled, clasping his hands behind his back.
“You know, Hiruko,” he began, “you decided to keep helping this timeline, sacrificing other versions of us just to keep these ones alive. You failed, but you saw your plan through anyways.
“But, after all this…how do I put it?”
Eito shrugged and closed his eyes. “I think I’ve realized. Nothing that happened in this timeline will matter once we’ve finished this loop. So, I don’t care anymore. I’ll kill the baby…Shion, whatever you called it, and then I’ll kill myself. You can do whatever you want after that—I’m not invested in the fate of a repulsive creature like yourself. In fact, letting you survive and escape onto that pod alone, having failed the mission…that might be better than killing you and leaving by myself.”
“Of course,” he continued, a breathless laugh cutting through his words, “I won’t do that all right away. Now that I’m much more powerful than you, I’ll end this whenever I like. You can…sit around, stare at the wall and contemplate your failures. Whatever you want.
“…
“Or,” he said, staring down at his trembling hands. “We could clean up these bodies, if you’re that bored. Clean them up, and then…read in the library.”
Something stung Hiruko’s cheek. Something numb, full of static.
“So—so…” Eito grimaced, and lurched forward. Despite his displeasure, he put a hand on Hiruko’s shoulder. “Stop making that disturbing face already. Urgh…would you stop if I tried being a little sincere, for once?”
“…Fine.” He took in a shaky breath. Hiruko’s vision blurred, she couldn’t see his face anymore. “I…enjoyed the time I spent with you. Something so hideous and cruel—something so matching what I saw of you.
“A witch of calamity, continuing along this doomed path, if it saves even one life…
“And of all of them, you saved mine. Terrible, isn’t it?
“…but…”
He never finished his thought.
Hiruko choked, and closed her eyes. She became one with the doomed rot of the timeline, and let it carry her legs wherever it wished. To the ground, just the same as with the rest of the corpses she marched to their deaths.
Maybe she didn’t deserve anything good—but she didn’t walk this path alone. Eito reminded her of that, for reasons she feared learning. Reasons which wouldn’t matter once he died and learned to follow the script next time.
Eito and Hiruko settled into a comfortable routine.
Shion never showed his face again after the last battle. Hiruko wondered whether he was disgusted with her, and refused to do anything more than what his life support system forced him to. Nevertheless, as long as he lived, the school functioned, keeping their supply of food safe along with the rest of the amenities.
It took several days to bury all the bodies. Bury, move on, just the same—Hiruko returned to the lab alone when the bloodwaves surged, thought to travel to the timeline she visited and tell them all.
She noticed, then, the new branch. The timeline she stole lives from came before it, diverted from the day she and Eito went to the Academy of that world.
A shaky breath. Rather than travel, she investigated the machine, and found out about its function to lock other timelines from visiting. She activated it before she left.
Eito continued to use her room to sleep in. He woke up earlier than her, but once she finished breakfast, she’d find him either on the roof or the library. Hiruko alternated between joining him and avoiding him, growing a fine-tuned sense as to his limits. In some bizarre form of repayment, every day she got up, she found a freshly prepared breakfast laid out for her from him.
Right. This system worked just fine.
About a week and a half after situating into their new routine, Hiruko looked up from her book. Today was a ‘spending time’ kind of day in the library, even if they only read in silence and almost never carried a conversation anymore.
But today, something bothered her.
“It’s intolerable for me to be around you,” she said. “Despite your clinginess and your thinly-veiled craving for affection, you can only handle a few hours before you need to march off and borrow the nearest toilet.”
“Are you going somewhere with this, or are you criticizing me for something I can’t control?”
“No. I thought this would be a chance for me to ask you something. Why?”
“Why do I try to tolerate the intolerable?”
“Something like that.” Hiruko placed her book down. “Do you remember the timeline I told you about before?”
Eito fixed her with an unimpressed look. Hiruko rolled her eyes, and sighed. “I mean the timeline where you chose to rejoin the team of your own volition. You gouged your eyes out, saying it was the only way you could tolerate being around us. Even then you complained endlessly about our smell, our voices…I doubt you can focus on your book with me here.”
Hiruko frowned. “So, why?”
“…Hm.” Eito shut his eyes. He reached up to one of his eyelids and peeled it back, before letting go.
Considering. Contemplating.
“Let me put it this way—being around humans is hell to me. But…so is not being around them. Even someone like you understands, right?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hiruko huffed. Yet, she understood. Of course she understood.
She remembered all the loops where she tried everything to save the others, clinging to whatever fragments of victory she found. Clinging to the friends she’d lose one day. Trying to find enjoyment in the repetitious husks around her, only for them to instill such a burning emptiness she’d lock her heart away and let it all pass in a blur.
At some point, they became something inhuman to her, too.
That same determination drove her to a new goal—the next day, she set out to search the school. If the Exodus Project created them, then surely within these computers, she’d find even the smallest scrap of information on the process. If she could utilize that alongside the medical technology here, study it and improvise…
If at least one Eito could see people the way they truly were…
Would that ease her guilt? Would that heal the rot that’d overtaken this timeline, even the smallest bit?
Would it make the only friend she had left happy?
She swallowed the lump in her throat and got to work.
Despite her hopes, the computers contained little information on the true origins of the Special Defense Unit. It made sense. The overseers likely wanted to avoid even the tiniest chance of them discovering their origins and going rouge, and the information itself didn’t hold much importance, only their biological make-up did. Hiruko shifted her focus to the brainwashing machine in the infirmary, trying to figure out how similar the process was to what happened to them—then the realization dawned that forcing a supremely powerful branch of Eito into a brainwashing machine of all things would be asking the impossible, and gave up on that too.
Not to mention, considering his previous experience with it…
Maybe he’d accept it, if it meant no longer suffering. Even then, working the damn thing looked to be up to luck in its current state. She couldn’t learn to improve it in a couple measly weeks. And that, too, put aside all the ethical concerns about personhood and sense of self.
But when your sense of self was crafted a measly few months ago, how much of it mattered?
Maybe not at all. Maybe if it meant he’d be happy (in some self-imposed nebulous definition of it) she didn’t give a damn what it took.
Then she thought of the Eito she saw now, and stopped those thoughts. Maybe one day she’d forget about this Eito, too, and nothing would hold her back anymore.
Hm.
There had to be another solution—another crumb of information she hadn’t considered. Something, anything…
“What am I supposed to be looking for, exactly?” Eito said.
Hiruko tapped her fingers against one of the desks in the War Room, where a computer sat, showing a page from a long manual of emergency codes meant only for Sirei’s eyes. This one detailed a Code Extraction situation, and the countermeasures for such an emergency.
Though the page went light on the circumstances needed to trigger the code, it listed the intended treatment in plain letters: ‘Remove subject from cerebral area and insert unit member into appropriate treatment area. Install Cerebral Glitch Repair program into port. All behavioral and perceptional abnormalities will be cleared and unit member will be fit for battle once more.’
“A tiny thumb drive,” Hiruko said, finger jabbed towards the picture at the bottom of the page, which showed a tiny blue device which resembled a USB. “It’s supposed to run a program when someone alive is placed into the Revive-o-Matic.”
“What kind of program?” Voice laced with suspicion, he narrowed his eyes at her.
“I’ll tell you if you fetch it,” she said, a small smile curling on her lips. For some reason, he dropped his glare and went to work, and she joined him in their silent search. They checked every desk, every compartment and drawer and open space possible. Hiruko began to debate its existence after two hours.
Up until she knocked into one of the screens, and noticed how it stuck out. She peeled it away, and it flapped to the side to reveal a secret compartment. Some detonators (which she really didn’t need to guess what they did), documents, and…
A bright blue thumbdrive.
“Here we go,” she said as she snatched it. “Looks like I win.”
“Were we competing? Eito grimaced as he shoved his way in, scrunching his face up like swallowing bile before he took the documents and started skimming through them. “Design notes on Sirei. Interesting.”
Not that interesting, it seemed—he discarded them a moment later. “So, the program?”
“I said I’d tell you if you fetched it,” she said.
“Aw, don’t be like that. Aren’t we best friends?”
Hiruko should’ve refuted that. Yet, she only sucked in a breath. She did owe him a proper explanation, if she wanted to try this. “It’s a program to repair glitches and abnormalities in the brain. The instructions imply its meant for specific afflictions. But…”
That last but hung between them. Eito knew what she meant the moment she said it, yet it took a moment for the implications to process. The heavy, the disliked—he all but recoiled when it sunk in, regarding the device in her hand with derision.
His mouth flapped open, then shut.
He glanced from the device to Hiruko. Back and forth, caught between some budding realization and his initial hesitation.
“This program…doesn’t use that disturbing chair, does it?”
“No. It’s simpler.”
“…Hm. And you think it might work?”
“Why would I bother wasting my time looking for it if I didn’t think there was a chance?”
“That’s fair. And if it doesn’t work? If it kills me or renders me braindead for being used outside its intended purpose?”
Hiruko frowned. “I don’t intend to force you into this. I could always convince another version of you now that I know where it is.”
“Duly noted,” Eito said, a bitter laugh hanging off his words. “Then…let me think about it.”
His ‘thinking about it’ phase lasted for two days of utter isolation. Wherever Eito chose to hide himself while he thought it through, once he showed up at Hiruko’s door at the crack of dawn with a serious face, she nodded—took the thumbdrive with her as they proceeded into the infirmary.
This became the first loop she tried the program on him. It wouldn’t be the last.
She loaded it onto the Revive-o-Matic and had him lay in one of the pods until the process completed. She looked down at him as it opened up.
Waiting, almost hopeful until she saw his deep grimace.
“…The same as always,” he said, averting his eyes from Hiruko. “The instructions said this device works after something is removed from the brain, right? Maybe a skull fracture will trigger the program?”
“Oh, you want me to crack your skull like an egg?” Hiruko smirked, staving off her rising nerves. “Gladly.”
“Don’t get too excited—I might change my mind if you look too happy doing it.”
One transformation later, Hiruko delivered a blow severe enough to leave blood and bits of brain all over. She shoved him into the Revive-o-Matic and started the program once more, waiting for the machine to piece him together again.
The pod slid open about ten minutes later. Eito’s eyes widened, and for the briefest moment, he shot up—only to squint, and fall back in.
“…”
“Aotsuki?” Hiruko said, and Eito stumbled out of his pod, cupping Hiruko’s face for a scant few seconds before she slapped him away.
“Hm.” He looked back at his hands, then winced and shoved them in his pockets. “You got your odor on my gloves. And I washed these this morning, too.”
“I don’t remember saying you could touch me,” Hiruko said, gripping her weapon. “You owe me all your fingers, now.”
“After you bashed my head in for nothing, can’t we say we’ve paid our dues?” Eito laughed, his smiling mask drooping into a more disappointed expression. “…For a second, when I stepped out, I thought I saw it.”
“’It’?”
“What your…repulsive visage is ‘supposed’ to look like. But it didn’t last. Everything’s as hideous as ever, so it seems your little experiment in fixing this failed.”
He barked out a laugh. “I figured it would. That was the only reason I volunteered. I’d never let a human steal the truth from me for their own benefit.”
Even if that truth’s another lie, Hiruko thought. She wanted to say it—wanted to tell him more than anything, if she’d get it through his thick, breakable skull that none of his larger aspirations mattered. That if he just stayed in line, figured out how to handle the worst of it with the help of the others…
Then again, maybe that too was a naive hope. Timelines never worked so cleanly, and without proof, he’d never believe her.
Right.
That was the only reason she didn’t tell him. Surely.
“Hiruko?” Eito said.
“What a waste of time,” Hiruko said, before she turned and left. For his own reasons alone, Eito followed her.
For the next few days after, Eito stayed by her side. He went back to living in her room, and whenever they shared meals or the same space, he’d take pauses where he stared into Hiruko’s face.
She believed him when he said it didn’t work—his winces, labored breathing and occasional sensory isolation breaks said it all. He’d long since stopped hiding his sickness and symptoms of overwhelming disgust. As much as it annoyed her, it wasn’t as if he could control it. At least he learned not to verbalize it…
Still, some moments made her wonder. He’d look up and stare, look back down, up, down—and after so many attempts, he’d pause, awestruck, then droop into disappointment before continuing his routine.
Odd, really.
Maybe the program had potential. If she held more knowledge, more time to figure it out…
Not in this timeline, though. She’d need to get to work during another loop. Though she knew she had to accept it, just the thought of the next loop dropped a pin in her stomach, piercing something deep and vulnerable that she shut up with all the other tragedies.
For their last reprieve, Hiruko and Eito talked often.
Mostly about nothing important, such as…
“Why did you take Sumino’s couch into my room, again?” Hiruko said.
“Mh?” Eito glanced up from his book. “It wasn’t like he used it anymore, right?”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “Why his?”
“Hmmm…” Eito hummed. He folded his book closed and tented his hands over it. “It might have to do with the other timeline’s Takumi.”
“I saw you speaking to him, once,” she said. He nodded.
“Only once? Well, you likely didn’t notice, but when I got a chance to get away from you—” his phrasing earned a glare from Hiruko, “I’d go mingle with the other unit members. Most of them treated me like a circus oddity, but Takumi always had the most guilty expressions on his disfigured little face. Before we left, he even apologized. You know, for killing me in cold blood before I did anything to deserve it.”
She’d mention the serial killings prior to his time in the school, but knowing the false nature of their memories, she couldn’t bring herself to use it as a ‘gotcha’. Hiruko let him continue.
“He said he owed me a special favor sometime in the future—a normal, harmless one,” Eito said, “but since we’ve killed part of their team, I’ll never be able to redeem it. So, taking this Takumi’s couch is kind of like paying it back across time, isn’t it?”
“No,” Hiruko said.
“I knew you’d agree.” Eito flashed a smile. “Besides, I deserve it, after Takumi went and took the coward’s way out by letting that Nozomi girl go and absorb him. He didn’t even say goodbye to anyone. Not even me—what kind of leader does that?”
“I’ll never forgive him for his stupid choices,” Hiruko said, “but since his last conversation with you ended in him being abandoned up a mountain, it’s no wonder he didn’t think of you over someone he knew and worked closely with.”
“Hiruko, now that’s just cruel,” Eito said, wincing as though her words actually hurt. Hiruko knew better.
“If you’re jealous, you can spit it out already,” she said. “Before I make you.”
He sniffled, wiping at fake tears—before he fixed his glasses back into place. “But am I the only one?”
“Wh…huh?” Hiruko sputtered and dropped her book.
Eito’s mouth turned into an ‘o’ shape. “When you mentioned his choices, you just looked especially frustrated. What’s wrong? You can tell your friend if you’re jealous he died for Nozomi and left you to clean up his mess.”
Hiruko took the only sensible path. She picked up her book, and threw it at his head. He winced and ducked, but not before Hiruko reached for the second volume off to the side and pelted it with enough finesse to land a clean hit on the top of his head.
He yelped and collapsed. Armed with a proud smile, Hiruko took in his defeated form.
She sucked in a breath.
One, two.
Right. If things ended like this, then she’d finally be able to leave it all behind without too much pain.
On her knees, she crawled under the table to where Eito laid, sprawled between the legs of the table and surrounding chairs.
“Tomorrow,” she said, voice hushed despite no one left to overhear, “I’ll see you in the Defense Room entrance by sunrise.”
Eito paled. He gave her an answer, the smallest sort of nod which gave Hiruko the chance to pretend she never saw it at all.
If only she’d let herself believe so.
When Hiruko awoke, Eito had already left the room. She stopped by the War Room to retrieve her infuser and put on her Class Armor before she made it to the Defense Room door, Eito standing by with his arms crossed and a nonplussed look.
“Late to your own meeting,” he said, “it’s a bad look for our Team Leader.”
Hiruko huffed. “We’re all that’s left. I’m not about to let you foist onto me meaningless titles to distract from the matter at hand.”
Without waiting, she continued. “I saw on the monitor yesterday. A massive army is descending onto the school at any moment, led by the previous supreme commander. He’s sure to kill us as soon as he can. So, before he gets here, we’re going to kill the baby inside the command room, shut down the weapon of war, and then kill ourselves. That way the Futurans can focus on peace without us lingering around to fuel the battle.”
“You don’t want to try to fight?” Eito said. “…Neither did I. There’s no point, is there?”
No point at all. Before Hiruko answered, a heat pulsed through her body. Some of the Undying Flames coalesced into the familiar form of a boy their age.
He stared into Hiruko’s eyes, as if feeling for her soul, her thoughts. He appeared afraid. Then, oh so gently, he reached out towards her
brushed her shoulder
pulled his hand away
and closed his eyes.
The moment etched agony into Hiruko. A seething judgment, or a desperate truth-seeking—the only solace she grasped was that Shion seemed less enraged and more contemplative.
“FB,” Hiruko called out. “You…I…”
She bit her lip. She knew she’d need to explain and negotiate with Shion before he’d let them in. But considering how their last battle ended, how V’exhness figured out Hiruko’s fatal trap, she wondered if Shion had any reason to trust her.
Eito put a hand to his heart. “You don’t believe in us, do you? We sacrificed an Eva from another timeline to save our own, and it killed everyone. You have less than zero reasons to let us kill you after that.”
“I—” Shion began, but Eito cut him off.
“But we did what we did to protect everyone, even if the methods were vile. And our intention to kill you is for the exact same reason—to protect the innocent people of this planet from the weapons you’re fueling. If you want to enable a genocide because you can’t trust us, then I hope it haunts you for the rest of your short, lonely life. Either way, the commander coming will kill us all.”
“…”
Shion frowned, glancing between Hiruko and Eito. “I actually—I wasn’t going to argue…I don’t mind letting you kill me.”
“—Huh?” Eito’s eyes flew open, and Shion smiled, weakly, but warm with hope.
“You’re right, though…I don’t think I’ll be able to forgive what you’ve both done, even if you only wanted to save everyone.” He put a hand to his chest, as if feeling for something absent in his current form. “But, I trust that you’re doing this for the sake of protecting more lives. You wouldn’t be planning to kill yourselves to end the conflict if you were lying…I think.”
He looked down at Hiruko’s left hand. It held the trigger for Eito’s bomb—Eito followed the avatar’s gaze as he toyed with the scythe he grasped, locking eyes with Hiruko as they both nodded and faced the door.
“If you can make that resolution at the end, then I’ll let you. Thank you…thank you for trying to make things better.”
With those words, Shion’s avatar disappeared. It merged with the flames, which brightened and crawled up the door, melting a hole through before they flickered and died.
Nothing more needed to be said. The duo proceeded inward.
Hiruko produced her axe and stepped forward, a march to the pod in the very center. She’d perform the deed, if only to spite Eito’s words at the end of their battle with V’exhness.
Strangely enough, he let her. She raised the blade and smashed the pod open, before doing the same to the baby’s skull. Its insides resembled those of the battle pets, just like Eito’s, Takumi’s, Tsubasa’s, Takemaru’s…
Too many dead. Too many more left to die.
The flames drained from the rocket as blood spilled everywhere. As warnings about the power system blared, they cut away almost immediately after to the emergency siren of invaders storming the school grounds.
Yet neither intended to return to the war room. Hiruko took slow steps towards Eito, blood stained axe dragged by her side until she got close enough, abandoning the weapon as Eito raised his scythe and tucked it around Hiruko’s waist.
Hiruko held her left arm up, thumb planted on the trigger. The bomb had a delay between activation and implosion, so if she pressed it just as Eito hit her spinal chord, they’d both die shortly after each other.
Eito glanced between the button and Hiruko once more. He also wanted this ending—she knew he would. He felt reassured, knowing no one would be left to finish Hiruko off in some overly gruesome way. In the original iteration of this timeline, he laid there, weapon to his own neck. Desperate for it all to end in a world that only accepted a caricature of himself.
She tried to recall what they did with his body after, and failed to remember.
“You know, Hiruko…” Eito muttered, under the blaring sirens and the footsteps which drew closer with each ragged breath.
“All this time…this terrible time, where you dragged me along and committed so many atrocities?
“I think…it might’ve been the only fun I’ve ever had in my life.”
Hiruko pressed her mouth into a thin line. Eito seemed disappointed she had nothing to say, but no matter how long he waited, she kept it all sealed away.
A bang echoed, pierced through the terse silence. The sound of a bell sealing their time away into the annuls of eternity, of unchangeable destiny. An Eito she finally, truly understood, who understood her in turn—left behind, doomed like all the others.
Eito pulled his blade forward and braced himself. Hiruko pressed the trigger, and he relaxed for a short pause until Hiruko’s severed torso hit the floor.
Click.
Nothing else followed. Nothing but Hiruko’s seeping blood and Eito’s desperate breaths, still in one piece.
His bomb refused to beep. Eito looked himself over as if that’d fix reality, even took the detonator from Hiruko’s weak grasp to press the trigger himself. It clicked—empty, useless. His heart dropped as he looked down at his dying friend.
“You fell…for this fake,” Hiruko coughed out a laugh, smile upturned even moments before death. “I thought…you had enough of a brain to—figure that out…”
“Hiruko…!?” Shock, panic, hatred, and a tiny, single fraction of relief shone through as he cradled her, nails dug into her back as he attuned himself to her weakening heart.
“Why…”
Concern. He seemed concerned for her, tears spilling down his face as he clung, as if that’d keep her from death’s jaws. A shudder—he removed a hand, if only to run a thumb against her cheek.
“Why didn’t you kill me!?”
Hiruko wanted to answer.
She wanted nothing more than to confess that her time with him had been one of her fondest memories in this cursed loop. That seeing him the way he was now affirmed her dream of bringing everyone to the end, smiling happily as they set off towards their new futures.
That as long as they achieved that, it didn’t matter if they found out everything was a lie. As long as they had each other, they’d learn to live with it. With everyone else, relying on friends when things became uncertain.
She wanted him to know that he abandoned the script, and that she’d give anything to continue this story if she could.
She wanted…
To not be left alone, again.
Hiruko yearned for so much, and as her heart beat for the last time, everything she worked so hard to build turned to nil.
Nothingness. All that lasted were the pains in her memories.
Those pains…and Eito’s last, mouthed words.
‘Thank you.’
No one visited Eito after the initial buzz.
Maybe no one was an exaggeration. Shouma arrived every morning and evening to deliver a meal, one Eito insisted could only be from the Ration-o-Matic and not from Shouma’s putrid hands (taking Eito’s insults as normal, the boy agreed to every one of his requests). Much more rarely, Takumi visited.
Well. “Visited”, if you counted lingering glares from a distance as a visit. Otherwise, he managed to shoo everyone else away just fine. A reminder here and there about their putrid natures kept everyone at arm’s length.
So he figured, until one face he never thought he’d see came by. A dark shadow of imposing secrets, Hiruko said little, contributed nothing but a bloodstained axe and a look of fascination only saved for when she tore into those weird technicolor creatures.
Honestly, was she all that different from the monsters she killed? The stench of guts those creatures left behind intertwined with the woman’s own putrid stink. Eito’s nostrils violated, she slinked into view, wriggling mass desperate to escape her own body as she locked her rotting eyes onto him.
“Ah, Hiruko,” Eito said, smiling. “Looking as horrid as always. You know, you should be more careful. Since I’ve already killed you once, odds are good your life will be forfeit if you spend too much time with—”
Huh.
Huh?
He paused. Before he finished his routine threats and insults, he met eyes with Hiruko as well. She looked as disgusting as always—an inflating, rotting mass of flesh, oozing and polluting the courtyard with her sheer presence.
Right, the same as always.
Same…as…
Why did she look so sad?
Eito didn’t care about her. Unlike Takumi, she held nothing that intrigued him. She acted in line with all the other idiots, treating him like another problem to get rid of. He had no attachment to her, nothing tying his concern to her disgusting existence, so—so why?
For a second, he swore, something about the look in her eyes brought an unfamiliar ache to his chest.
But just as the feeling manifested, it passed. Maybe he’d mistaken his nausea for something else.
“Are you trying to mimic Takumi?” he said, sneering. “You’re ruining my view. I guess I’ll go take a nap, since I’m being deprived of my peace despite being such a good prisoner.”
He turned around. Hiruko stepped closer.
“Wait—Aotsuki!”
“Nope, too late. I don’t care about you, Hiruko—in fact, I loathe you as much as any other human here. I’d rather not breathe in your putrid breath more than I need to.”
He climbed into bed, pulling the covers over his head despite the discomfort of having both his jacket and the blankets on. He looked back once. Twice. She watched him for a minute longer, and with a frustrated sigh, turned and left.
When he made his escape much, much later, he wondered about that moment.
Hiruko never visited again.
…
Like it mattered. She never mattered to him. Only one, singular goal ever did. He couldn’t imagine ever seeing her in a different light.