"No?"

He looks up at his father.

"No."

He doesn't need to take this. He's a magical boy. He can kill monsters. He can stop and rewind time.

He can trick the mind.

So, fuck that. What levers does he have to solve the problem that is Iwasaki Iemasa?

Does he want him to just... change his mind? Forget something happened and fail to form a memory of the next few seconds (like Yutaka having transformed and then reappeared)?

It's not even expensive.

"Excellent, father, why don't we start this again?"

Yutaka tries a few rewinds, first, to see if it'll work, but nothing does. He doesn't try very hard. He has this other tool, this better tool, and in the end, it's not hard. Why did Iwasaki Iemasa come visit? Why, he didn't. He never came. He didn't even send a text yesterday, not as far as he can remember anyway. Yutaka is out of sight and out of mind. What he's doing at Shimamoto High is none of Iemasa's concern. The rumours around him are just rumours, and certainly don't matter any more than the rumours that used to follow him before.

Yutaka perhaps does more of it than was strictly necessary, but can you blame him? If you had been there, if you had seen it, he bets you you would've done the same.

Hey, handsome.

Hiiii.

Whatcha up to?

Thaaaaat is none of Kyubey's business.

Haru gets a call.

Is that you on the phone -

Yes it is.

You're alone, right, like, your dad's been and gone -

I wouldn't be calling if that old bat was still here. I made sure he won't come bug me again for a long time; he won't even remember he was here at all.

you what

Oh one of the powers everyone has is this "mind trick", you can make people forget some stuff or change the way they feel about it or whatever.

Anyway, let's talk about something else—

No, absolutely not, Yutaka, what the hell -

—he wanted to enroll me in Kaiyo! That's a boarding school!

So you - okay, look, you can still fix this, rewind to before he showed up and tell me what happened and I'll workshop something but not that, okay -

I tried that! And, and why are you even concerned for him he spent my life abusing me—

That could excuse a lot of shit but mind control crosses the line!

I didn't mind control him I just—tricked him...

...but that distinction feels kind of hollow even to his ear.

You understood when I was spooked about missing memories even when I went into the situation knowing that you can rewind time, and it doesn't sound like you stopped there either!