Chains of a Time Loop

There was knocking and maybe voices. Myra sat up in her bed, heart pounding and gasping for breath. She rolled out like she always did, and she found it hard to stand. For a second, she thought she was going to vomit, then for another second, she thought she was going to faint. She had to sit back down, hold her head for a few moments.

Oh, god.

She thought about getting dressed or brushing her teeth, though none of it reached the parts of her body that were needed to actually move.

The knock came a second time, but Myra noticed it only for the first. Startled, she noticed that her clock read only 7:54 A.M., and she realized her alarm hadn't gone off yet.

She had to get her brain in order much more quickly than usual, all while in the worst possible state of mind. She found her face was wet, and she wiped it off. She checked out the peephole, then grabbed her staff, and finally cautiously opened the door. She came face-to-face with the head of security, Hachirou Iwasaki.

Iwasaki was standing calmly, hands behind his back, together with another student who lived down the hall, looking uncomfortable. "Good morning, Myrabelle. Are you well?"

"Whatareyoudoinghere?"

He held up a hand. "I don't mean to alarm you, I just want to ask you a couple of questions." His meaning was irrelevant. He shouldn't be here. He was very much alarming her.

He shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be here.

"What kind of questions?"

"Do you know a student named Benkoten Talzatta?"

"…"

"Myrabelle?"

"Yes—I know him. I'm friends with his brother, Nathan."

"Alice reported that he was behaving strangely here." Alice was the student who was with him. Myra didn't know her that well. "I wanted to know if you were expecting to meet him."

"No, I wasn't. Why? What was he doing?"

"Alice, would you mind telling Myrabelle what you told me?"

"He was, ah, just kinda pacing back and forth, but he looked really angry, I thought he was gonna burst a blood vessel… so I asked why he was there, and he just ignored me like I wasn't there. I know he lives just a few floors up, but… the whole thing gave me a really bad vibe."

"He didn't—he didn't try to enter?" Myra asked, her mouth dry save for the morning mucus she could taste around her gums.

"It looked like he was deciding whether to knock, or to enter, but he kept hesitating. He looked so mad…"

"What's holding him back?" Myra asked both of them, but really she asked no one.

"I… I don't know?" Alice asked.

"Does this behavior mean anything to you, Myrabelle?" the head of security asked.

No.

Not at this fucking stage.

"I need to determine if this student poses a safety risk," he continued.

Of all the lines to cross, why stop at this one?

"We haven't been able to locate him, and I'm growing concerned."

"Ah…" She tried to get her head into the present conversation. "When was this?"

"It was around 6…" Alice said. "Then he left around, like, 6:20 or 6:30. I thought he was waiting for you and you were late or something? Or he had somewhere else to be… What really spooked me was when he left, he put on some kinda mask."

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"Over his whole face?"

"Yeah, like a… balaclava. But it's not that cold out…"

"And where'd he go?"

"He ran outside and teleported."

"We were hoping you might know something," Iwasaki said.

"Sorry, I'm just… caught up in this. I don't know anything. Sorry…"

She brushed past them, wanting nothing more than to get far away from her room.

"Myrabelle, if you feel unsafe, please come find me—" The head of security called after her, and she mostly ignored him. Of course, Myra very much did feel unsafe, but event hall guard Hachirou Iwasaki was very far down on the list of people she wanted to see about it.

"I'm sorry," she whispered again.

She didn't care much that she was still in her pajamas as she walked out into the cold air. She hardly registered that she was a few minutes early, and that that was why Cynthia wasn't waiting for her yet. She only cared about the one person she wanted to see. She had to see her okay. She had to see that she wasn't in his clutches.

Ben, where did you teleport off to?

Because if you touch another hair on her fucking head—

Actually, no. Scratch that. You've already gone too far, Ben. You've gone far too far, and I'm going to tear you limb from fucking limb.

God, I just need to see Shera, please, please, please be okay—

"Shera. Shera!"

"E-e-eh?" The girl with the mismatched eyes looked at her blankly, all with the usual mild confusion.

"I—" Myra started.

Any relief was short-lived, giving way quickly to other emotions.

"I didn't know what else to do," Myra said to a girl who wouldn't know what she was talking about.

"What?"

Of course, that was for the best. For once, Myra was glad of it all. Whatever had happened in the last four hours of Loop 15 was best forgotten by everyone.

How convenient, really.

How convenient!

She didn't need to make anything right, because it never could be made right! There was no Shera to apologize to. The Shera that had spent four hours with Benkoten's potato peeler was gone.

She couldn't even bring herself to hug her.

So while the girl still waited for her to explain herself, Myra just hung her head and moved on.

"Be careful, Shera," she said as she turned away.

"Wh-what?"

"I'm—I—Just, be careful."

She found Isadora by the fountain, as always, her mind somewhere else, lost in the pages of a book. Myra quietly approached and sat beside her.

"Hey, Myra." She was briefly surprised by Myra's appearance, but she recovered. "I'm sorry about what happened. Are you doing all right?"

The question threw her through a loop, and she had a momentary flight of panic, the idea that Iz could have remembered what had happened. She had to calm down and remember what she was talking about.

When she finally got around to saying something, her own question was a surprise to herself. "Iz, do you respect me?"

"Huh?" She blinked and looked up from her book. "Of course, I do… You're my best friend."

"If I told you something ridiculous, would you believe me?"

"Absolutely."

"I'm in a time loop. I've relived this day and the subsequent month 15 times already."

"Um…" The skeptical girl's eye twitched. She'd been cornered, and she was deeply uncomfortable with it. "You're joking, right…?"

"Yeah," Myra said listlessly. "Yeah, it's just a joke. It's more like a puzzle… role-playing thing. I'll give you another clue in a couple of days."

"Oh. Okay," she said, brightening slightly, if only that. "Do you wanna get together and bake something?"

"Yeah, later…"

Myra walked off, berating herself for even feeling disappointed. There was no reason to be disappointed, not when it had obviously just gone entirely as she'd expected it to.

What the fuck do I even do now?

How do I get "serious" about solving the mysteries and fixing all this shit?

What does that even mean, to be "serious"? I'm trying my best!

But just thinking such a thing triggered a knot in her stomach, the same kind of knot that came from telling a lie.

Obviously, I'm not.

Obviously, I could… I could go see papa.

Just like Iz and Shera wanted.

He could help her acquire some funds, like they suggested. The fact that she hadn't even asked… it was like Shera said, she was screwing around. Hell, there were even more important things he could theoretically help with, things she hadn't even suggested to the others for fear of having them badger her. God, she was a fuckup.

Yet even now… admitting this to herself… she still wasn't being serious because there was a much more immediate problem: I can't keep ignoring Ben.

After all, it was only a matter of time before Ben got over whatever it was preventing him from ambushing her in her sleep, wasn't it?

And then it would all be over.

So what was she supposed to do?

Figure out how to wake up early?

But that was easier said than done. She'd woken up from her alarm at 8 A.M., the fluke earlier being the singular exception, from which she'd won a whopping six minutes. Sure, she'd had a couple of bright ideas to change the situation, but she'd blown through all of them in Loop 3.

Yeah…

I really need to talk to…

Since leaving Iz, she'd wandered aimlessly for a few minutes. Having made up her mind, she reversed course, trying to walk with her head a bit higher, and headed back towards the training gym. If she was quick enough, she could intercept her target before class started.

"Nathan!"

Her friend seemed to be in good spirits, so he either hadn't heard about Ben or Ben had reassured him somehow.

"Hey, Myra—why are you in pajamas?"

Myra grabbed him by the collar, originally meaning it to be friendly, but then, feeling it was too aggressive, moved to grab his shoulder instead. "Nathan, I—I need to talk to you about your brother."