He's alive? Was it a dream? How much of it was a dream? The past week? Or just yesterday? He's, he needs to press the button that opens the blinds so that he knows if it's raining—

Something falls off his lap onto the floor with a soft clinking noise.

—huh? What is it?

A beautiful egg-shaped gem, silver coloured and inlaid in gold.

The. 

That's.

Him. That's him? The new him? He's a magical rock now? 

...

He picks the rock up and... taps it with the tip of a finger.

It feels like a gem. It's solid. Doesn't look particularly magical, beyond the inherent glow.

Oh okay. New him. Is a rock. He's a rock.

...

Wait.

He's at his place. And he's a magical boy. But his wish was—

His phone. He grabs his phone. Is it...?

End of Feb. Monday. First day at his new school.

He. He time travelled? Before—everything? 

Haru? Are you alive?

WHAT THE FUCK

Holy shit! You're alive! What the fuck! You're alive!!!!!!

Who are you and what is this? Are you reading my mind? Don't fucking read my mind! What is going on!

What? Wait, what? I'm not reading your mind, it's just—wait, hold on, was it just me? Of course it was just me—wait hold on number two, are you not a magical boy???

Did he become a magical boy after they first met???????

WHAT IS GOING ON?!

—okay! Magic 101: it's real! It's like Sailor Moon but boys can do it too! It's facilitated by this really cute fluffy guy called Kyūbey who is the one mediating this conversation actually so uh hi Kyūbey!

Hi!

I haven't seen Sailor Moon but wouldn't I like, know about it, if I were a magical boy -

Yep, you totally would! Uhh okay I'm explaining everything out of order because I almost died just five minutes ago. Important context: I just time travelled from the future, a future in which you were dead and I was about to be. And I thought by now you'd be a magical boy already but apparently it was meant to happen over the next two weeks or something.

—oh, my name is Iwasaki Yutaka, I'm a new transfer student, I was going to meet you today. Nice to meet you.

...also you know what? He should multitask. He should, uh, well get up and go to school but also figure out this magic thing. Is transforming into a magical boy intuitive at all?

Yup, very intuitive! He's just gotta go like so -

Magical boys can TIME TRAVEL?

OH COOL HE HAS A TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE THAT'S AWESOME!

Oh, he also digs his magical boy outfit so much. White tights with silver streaks down the sides going into boots; this cool weird-looking robe thing that's also tight on the torso but flares out at the sleeves, with the sides of the stomach area missing and the coattails starting above his navel so his side abs and navel are exposed, also in white-and-silver plus a clockwork clock design on the back (which he can see on his bathroom mirror); white gloves with a diamond-shaped silver gem on the back of his left hand; a black choker; and a shield thingy attached to his left forearm, also with a clockwork design.

It's so gay he loves it.

Um, so, the way you become a magical boy is that you tell Kyūbey about a wish, it has to be something you desire with all your heart, and then he grants your wish in exchange for turning you into a magical boy. There's, like, a lot of caveats, you gotta fight evil monsters called 'witches', and we died to a huge one that was big and strong enough to destroy the whole city. I spent weeks dithering about my wish and when I was about to die I wished I could go back, and so now I'm back. I don't know if I can do any more time travelling than that, though, but my magical boy outfit has some clock themes so maybe I can?

- what, when is Witch Godzilla going to come destroy Tokyo -

Iiiiin about a month. There's this really weird unseasonal typhoon-like thing in three weeks which gets worse over the following days and then, Witch Godzilla. But we're gonna stop it this time.

He can fix EVERYTHING. He's going to do everything right! From the start!

"About a month" give me a DATE please! Can we evacuate?

So, like, I don't know exactly when it appears out in the ocean but the rains start three Saturdays from now, and then the big fight against the witch is two Mondays after that. I don't know if we can evacuate, by the time people notice how bad it's getting the streets are getting flooded and it's really bad. Since the weather forecast people didn't see it coming there isn't a lot of advance warning, and I don't know if people would believe us. And also witches feed on slash cause despair so if we evacuate everyone it might go somewhere else instead?

But we should try anyway.

Yeah. Ugh, nobody's going to believe us. I wouldn't believe you if you weren't talking in my head. You'd BETTER not be reading my mind. - sorry. It's nice to meet you, Iwasaki-san.

I am not reading your mind. I can only hear what you're sending. I assume you also can only hear what I'm sending? And, uh, nice to meet you too, for the second time. You can just call me Yutaka, I hear you don't like honorifics.

Did I tell you that in the, uh, missing month? Were we friends or something?

...yeah, um, ah... He can do EVERYTHING right this time. EVERYTHING. One person should not have this much power. We, um, actually went on a date? And then, you know. Died. With a few weeks in between but who's keeping track, really.

Oh. I. Well, obviously I don't remember that, sorry, and we might be a little busy with saving Tokyo? Rain check?

Yeah, uh, legit. Just, uh, you know.

Goddamnit. And he can't even argue? Haru is, in fact, correct? They should not prioritise this? Except, uh, if he spends the entire month celibate he might in fact die anyway, so.

So I'm supposed to be a magical boy soon? Is there a reason I should not be one today?

If you already know what the wish you wish with all your heart is (ugh) then not really. Just tell Kyūbey what it is and you can become the magical boy of your dreams.

OH WAIT HE'S A MAGICAL BOY THAT MEANS HE CAN ROOF HOP TO SCHOOL AWESOME!!!!!

—oh! I should tell you more about the caveats though. It fixes your dyspraxia, but that's because you become a magical rock that remotely controls your body rather than residing in your body per se, but also it doesn't feel any different from being in your body, except if you, like, lose your body somehow you can make a new one. You need to be within one hundred meters of the soul gem—I mean, I guess since you're the soul gem you need to be within one hundred meters of your body?—or you can't control it anymore.

Is it, like, hard to keep track of, or can I just wear it?

Its normal form is egg-shaped but you can turn it into jewellery somehow—I haven't tried it yet because I've been a magical boy for like ten minutes and I just did my transformation sequence into my magical boy costume so now the gem is part of it? Oh also you can only use your magic when you're in the magical boy costume but— Ugh he really should think before he speaks, he always gets ahead of himself and says everything wrong and then has to start over—

—wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Now hold on just a second.

Yutaka looks down at his gem, then at the magical shield on his arm.

He has a clock-themed costume. His wish was to be able to do everything right, this time. But he's doing this conversation wrong.

What... if he...

The "lid" of his shield splits in half and "opens" to reveal the clockwork mechanism inside. The gears start spinning and spinning and then—

So I'm supposed to be a magical boy soon? Is there a reason I should not be one today?

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

He CAN do everything right. He can do everything right. Everything!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mankind was not meant to wield such power. Yutaka was not meant to wield such power. He's going to anyway but he wasn't meant to.

Not directly but there are still a few aspects of it that I should cover and you should make sure you know what you want to wish for, with all your heart. You'll be fine with all of the caveats, empirically, especially since you were the one who told me about most of them in the first place, but, are you going to school or, do you want to hang out somewhere so we can talk about all of it without getting distracted?

I'm on my way to school. Is there a skipping-school amount of stuff to cover?

I'm—honestly not sure, I don't have it written down or super organised in my head or anything. But a lot of it will probably need, like, thought? Like for instance, one thing that I think is pretty important is that once you're a magical boy your very existence is magical and you consume magical energy, and the only way to replenish it is to defeat a witch and use the "seed" it drops, and that seems pretty, uh, it seems like it and things like it might be things you'll want to think about? You thought it was really cool to be a magical superhero the first time around, but you know.

Okay, time to go roof hop to school. ...though he will take the lift to the ground floor, first, because he does not know if the roof hopping is rated for jumping off the penthouse window.

It does sound really cool. I guess I can talk to - Kyubey? - about the details? Since you're new?

Can I listen in? I'm sure you'll ask questions I didn't think of that you didn't tell me about the first time around, and maybe I'll remember some things that you didn't think of, too? Who is he kidding, Perfect Swan Masaharu-sama wouldn't benefit from his presence, but he's curious, okay?

Okay. Do you know what I wished for last time, like, evidently I didn't pull off 'end noncon mortality' but how high can I swing here.

I—don't actually know. Kyūbey said that you were particularly well-suited for healing, and I'm getting the impression that powers are themed around the wishes pretty strongly? More strongly than I thought? Is that right, Kyūbey?

Most everyday uses of magic, any wisher can perform! But things that would be too expensive for an ordinary magic user are easy for someone whose wish related to that thing.

Healing, okay, what did I do, did I whack a disease - did I get malaria - I should actually do research and make sure malaria's the best one, I've just been internally using it as metonymy but maybe it'd better be tuberculosis or something -

Magic is powered by emotions. Your emotions about malaria are stronger than your emotions about tuberculosis.

It would be really satisfying to put malaria in the ground but if tuberculosis is better I bet I can get worked up about that!

Let me know when you are ready to try!

...oh. Was his wish... to end a whole disease?

It didn't even occur to Yutaka, not until the very end, to wish for something for other people, and even when he did it the most worked up he could get was about Haru personally. And yet Haru can just—feel so strongly for other people that he could wish to end a disease?

This guy really, really is better than Yutaka along every single dimension. Like it's not even embarrassing at this point it's just depressing. 

—I think I did see something online about malaria inexplicably being eradicated the first time around? Maybe that was you?

That is so cool. Wait, no. That is Probably Suboptimal. I have to feel disgruntled about it so I can be smug enough about tuberculosis or dysentery or something. I will need to spend some time on Wikipedia.

He's so much better as a person than Yutaka could ever hope to be, it kind of hurts a little, lol.

What's the day to day of being a magical boy like, Kyubey, like, what's the modus operandi for witches that aren't destroying Tokyo?

You will be able to transform and while transformed use magic! You will be able to summon a magical weapon, and use your soul gem to dowse for witches to find them even when they are hiding inside barriers. When you kill the witch in the center of its labyrinth after fighting through its familiars, it may leave a grief seed, which you can use to recharge your magic.

And Yutaka already mentioned that just existing consumed magic, so that's one important caveat out of the way. The familiars that bud off witches can grow into full witches if they're left unattended for too long and eat enough people. Before they do that, they're still dangerous but don't drop grief seeds. Which means you need to budget your magic not just for taking down witches but also their familiars. There, that was a smart thing to contribute to the conversation, even though Haru would've probably thought about it in ten seconds.

And it'll cure my dyspraxia but will I be able to fight competently with my magical weapon? What weapon do I get, Yutaka?

Magic bow and arrow. The arrows and the string are made of energy and you can also unspool the string for infinite magically strong string. When you saved me from a witch once you tied me to a post so I wouldn't succeed at killing myself, which is what it had been trying to make me do.

Whoa. And I can hit things with it without having to practice a ton?

At least you were pretty capable with it by the end of the month, you and Yamanaka-san—that's Yamanaka Junko-san, you were teammates—were managing to hold off a horde of familiars pretty competently the day we died.

Should I know who that is?

She's a famous singer. Like, really really famous. I was shocked to see her with you.

Oh. I don't really keep up with the music scene. Cool that she's also a superhero though! If we work well together I'd like to be introduced, can you do that, Kyubey?

Yes, I can tell her about you.

Yeah it seemed like you did work pretty alright together.

Okay. To-do: research diseases, meet Yamanaka-san, and contemplate evacuating Tokyo in advance of Typhoon Godzilla.

And here's school. Is Haru anywhere to be seen?

Yup, he's wobbling across the ice.

I'm invisible to normies but I'm gonna land next to you, don't be startled into slipping and falling, he says, and after taking a moment to make sure that Haru listened does just that.

Haru listened but unfortunately fails to execute on this instruction. His feet go out from under him.

Yutaka reacts quickly enough to catch him in his arms.

"Thanks. - what does this look like to regular people -" He manages to stand up again, leaning on Yutaka.

"Probably like you just did some kind of Michael Jackson stunt or something." Are there onlookers paying particular attention?

Nobody's looking.

"Well, that'd be remarkably implausible." Wobble wobble step.

Yutaka untransforms, then, so that it no longer looks like Haru is leaning on nothing at all. "Yeah, so I've heard." His gem became a ring on his finger, which is pretty cool, too.

"What did that look like!"

"Me appearing out of nowhere, probably! But no one was looking."

"What were you going to do if somebody you didn't notice was looking?"

"Nothing much? I don't actually know of a good reason why magic should be secret and you didn't either, when we talked about it."

"...oh. Well, I guess that could make evacuating Tokyo easier."

"Oh yeah that's a good point. Might be a lot more doable to convince folks if they can personally see supernatural stuff."

"And it sounds like Yamanaka-san's got an audience, I'll ask her when I meet her." He stops walking to pull out a notebook and add this to his to-do list.

"Might be hard to convince people that it's not just special effects, on a stage and all. ...you write things down on a physical notebook?"

"Yes? I do that with school stuff, too, did you somehow never see...? Do we not have classes together?"

"We do, a few, but lots of people write stuff on notebooks for class, I didn't know you wrote, like, reminders and stuff on notebooks, too."

"Huh. Well, I do." He pockets the notebook and resumes his slow advance.

Yutaka doesn't like how this went. At all.

He holds his hand out, palm up, so that the ring becomes his gem again, and, will he have to let go of Haru to transform, seems like he can just skip the transformation sequence actually, here he goes he's in costume again. So now he can rewind to...

Would you like help walking? It—kind of worries me, watching you wobble on the ice like that. —I'm on the roof but I'm invisible to normies.

Help how, like, with magic? He looks up at the roof and spots Yutaka.

He waves.

No, just, like, walk with you to support you.

What would that look like, if people can't see you?

I'd untransform first so I'd be visible, but also, like, when we talked about it the first time around we didn't really have a good reason why magic should be secret.

Oh, well, that should help with evacuating Tokyo. People're going to ask how we know each other if they see you helping me across the ice though.

Yutaka hops off the roof somewhere out of sight, untransforms, then jogs over to Haru in civvies. People are a lot less curious than you think. I guess maybe Watanabe-san might be curious, if she saw. Maybe I just happened to see you across the parking lot and wanted to be a gentleman about it? Which isn't, you know, false. He offers Haru his arm.

Haru leans on the offered arm. Step step wobble. "Anju? What, does she ship it?"

"She does. Tomorrow you fell down the stairs—the Japanese language is not equipped to handle time travel—anyway, tomorrow you were going to fall down the stairs, and you were gone a week, and then next week you were super cheerful, and I was, like, certain you had acquired a boyfriend, somehow. So I—later on I kind of, ah, you know. Wanted to know. But I was embarrassed to ask you. So I asked her. And she said you hadn't told her anything about it and she'd have expected you to. She actually suggested I speak to Ren about it but that would have been even more embarrassing. I just, you know, eventually gathered enough courage to ask you out anyway." He's looking resolutely away, because he needs to make sure to pay attention to the ground so that he doesn't trip and fall. Nevermind his normal reflexes or his renewed magical boy body. Mmhm mmhm.

"...well, I guess I'll be careful on the stairs tomorrow but I am always careful on stairs so I don't know how much it'll help. Maybe I'll finish my tuberculosis research tonight and be cured tomorrow."

"And if you aren't, I'm happy to support you until you are."

"—I, I mean, if you're fine with that."

"Don't you have to hunt witches and save people?"

"Yeah but I need to figure out how to do that and I think I don't actually have a weapon? I seem to have a shield. So I'd probably benefit from being with someone else. Plus they mostly appear at night. And I'd need to practise some."

"What's Yamanaka-san's weapon?"

"Huuuuge sword. Like, taller than she is."

"Good combo with my bow 'n arrow. Should work all right with your shield too?"

"Might indicate I have defensive powers? Or whatever my time powers will turn out to be, I need to figure those out." Ahahahah he sure hopes he has something more useful for combat than just rewinding.

"Do only magical weapons work against magical enemies or could you just, like, buy a sword. I guess I don't know how expensive they are." They reach the entrance, where Haru can proceed a bit more confidently on the salted ground.

"—my father's, uh, actually," my father's the CEO of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, I can buy a sword. I don't know how susceptible to normal weapons they are, I wasn't brought on witch hunting dates due to how they could eat me. Kyūbey?

Magical enemies are pretty tough, but you could still defeat them with a normal sword! It just won't appear by magic.

So you can probably afford a sword, though it might be inconvenient to carry it around.

Could I hide a sword in my magical boy outfit? Like, untransform while holding it so it goes wherever it is that the costume goes when I'm not wearing it? —wait, hold on, where does stuff go when I'm not wearing it? Like both magical and mundane.

Yutaka's kind of thrown by how easily he's taking to playing this character of a kind of dumb boy with a crush. Like, he's usually a lot more confident and suave, and he guesses he's not not confident, here, he's been such a gentleman, but still. Maybe his subconscious is learning some wrong lessons here from seeing Haru be all happy near him while he's playing this character, even though Haru's clearly happy about the magic not him.

It isn't anywhere until you de- or re-transform. You can modify your outfit, but it might be expensive to make it include a sword by default.

Once they're off the stairs Haru disentangles from him.

Awwww mannnn stop that right this instant, you fool.

...but he'll let his face show a moment of disappointment in Haru's view right before he "manages to school it". That's good, yeah.

So there isn't, like, a bag of holding with infinite storage anywhere or anything we can make use of? 

That's not how transformations work, no.

Damn. Okay. So maybe a gun or something, instead. Maybe I'll get time powers that let me reuse the same bullet every time? Although that'd be more like duplication powers.

Maybe!

Seems like Haru isn't being affected, like, at all by Yutaka's act, though, which sucks because he doesn't know what other act to use. He guesses he'll be able to figure it out. "Not a slut" seems to be part of it, but that's gonna be not that hard, actually, he's still kind of shaken by the Kobayashi twins and it's made him a bit wary of casual sex. Maybe Ueda Masashi from the baseball team and maybe this time he'll manage to get in Tarō-kun's pants but his heart isn't into it.

...though in retrospect it might be because subjectively he almost died, uh, less than an hour ago? That could have something to do with it. And also with how clingy he is around Haru. Because, uh. Yeah Haru kind of died an hour ago, too. And so did Yamanaka.

Uh. Uh. Uh. He'll. Stop thinking about that, actually? He's gonna stop it and do it right this time and he doesn't need to focus on how he almost died because he didn't die. And it'll be fine. It'll be fine.

Classes ensue as normal. When he has one with Haru he can see that Haru's sneaking peeks of Wikipedia pages about diseases and taking notes on them.

Yutaka's already watched all of these classes, though, so it feels pointless to pay any attention. What he does instead is research of his own, and at lunch he sends Haru a collection of links about tuberculosis, plus a gift epub of John Green's "Everything Is Tuberculosis" as well as a summary review of it he found on a blog.

It looks like TB is really treatable, so there's a solid chance normal medical approaches could wipe it out soon, I might want to go for some kind of cancer or something instead, but thanks!

Yeah. There was also GiveWell's recommendation list, which is, you know, focused on tractable problems, so maybe not the ones that'd benefit most from magical intervention, but malaria's on there, so. He's banking on Haru already knowing about GiveWell but if he doesn't Yutaka can be the cool senpai who will tell Haru about it even though he only just heard of it!

Yeah, it's kind of orthogonal to what I want here, although Kyubey's been telling me repeatedly that I still care more about malaria so perhaps I have to settle for malaria.

Settle for, he says. Just malaria. Which has had serious estimates as having maybe caused half of deaths in the history of humanity. Really, it'll be such a disappointment if you can only fix that, tut tut.

It'll be incredibly cool! Which is half my problem here!

Sorry about that. If I could help you feel the right way about other things I would so let me know if you think of something.

Will do.

Do you wanna hang out after school while I try to figure out what my powers are?

Sure!

Is Yutaka going to join the school paper this time? It'll feel kind of boring to do the same things again, but maybe that means he could just half-ass is and have more time to himself?

But, hmmmmmm. He... could also join the translation club instead. That way they could spend more time together.

Yeah, he thinks he might do that, actually? Yeah. Yeah, okay.

The translation club contains Haru! And also Watanabe Anju.

"Have you translated anything before?" Haru asks Yutaka.

"Only as part of English class."

"You probably want to start with, like, a song, something very short. Don't try to make it rhyme or anything at a first pass. And probably go English to Japanese, not the other way around, unless you're better at English than you sounded in English class."

"Oof, ouch."

"Sorry!"

"That's okay, you're not wrong, but I'll get there. Maybe you could help me, I hear you're pretty good at English."

"It comes of growing up in Canada," Haru says in English.

"You've been in Japan longer than you were in Canada!"

"But I've spent my entire time in Japan already fluent in English!"

"Have you two met before?"

"Slightly."

Oh whoops. Sorry, slipped. Not all that sorry though. 

"Anyway, let's put me to work, why don't we," he says. "Got a suggestion or should I just Google-fu a song?"

"I think it's ideal if it's one you know so you can keep more of it in working memory."

"Fair enough." What's Eve put out recently, oh Sayonara End Roll is good and relatable. 

...

Look, shut up.

Haru doesn't comment. He's working on translating Pride and Prejudice, he's been at it for months.

...wow. That's. 

Okay.

Occasionally somebody asks the room what they think the difference between two possible words or phrases for a concept is and they all talk about that but it's mostly a pretty quiet club.

Yeah that's valid. Also Eve puts out official English translations of his songs so Yutaka should not look at those while translating lest he bias himself but at least then he has the official answer at the end and he can ask the better English speakers in the room why he chose whatever he did instead of what Yutaka did.

"Wow, that's a pretty depressing song," Watanabe remarks after he's mentioned a few lines.

"—yeah. It's, uh, kind of following a storyline from previous songs about a character."

"Oh, it's like a concept album?"

"More like a concept loose collection of songs across lots of albums? Some of them are their own thing but some are set in this shared universe and about specific characters in it."

"Cool cool." She goes back to working on her fansub of Murderbot.

And he goes back to his song. (And to occasionally stealing discreet glances at Haru. That boy really is unreasonably gorgeous.)

He continues being unreasonably gorgeous. He is not working very quickly on his translation today and might be telepathing Kyubey.

Without Yutaka? What is wrong with him today. Is he feeling lonely because of the death and feeling like he needs to make sure he's still alive and this isn't all a dream and the world is solid and not going to turn to water under his feet? 

...he needs to learn to stop having thoughts.

Eventually Haru does ask him what transforming is like! When the club's winding down and people are starting to pack up.

There's a little routine that supposedly happens a lot more slowly for me than to external observers, it's very magical girl-coded.

Can I see?

Soon as we're not in public!

Are your folks home?

I live on my own. I roof hopped here but I can grab my car and take you there if you want? Or we could go in yours. He doesn't actually know for sure that Haru has a car but he'd have no reason to be walking down the parking lot otherwise, with the dyspraxia.

...did I have a car last time? How'd I get a car?

Shit. Why would—his mother works at this school. It was probably Ren's. Ughhh if he makes the wrong guess here he's gonna have to rewind again and he doesn't wanna, stuff is going so well!

I meant your mother's, he "clarifies". I guess you—wouldn't have had time to tell her about it, right, because I just told you earlier today and you don't even have a way to demonstrate like last time yet.

I can ask her if I can bring you home if you don't mind her maybe being around, she often has plans out of the apartment but not always.

Up to you, I'm fine with whatever.

NICE save.

So Haru texts Ren, and she agrees to bring his new friend home with them from school.

Okay! Cool! Totally what he planned for! He really was in fact 100% okay with this! Totally!

"Good afternoon, ma'am. It's nice to meet you," he says, bowing.

"Hello there, Iwasaki-kun! I'm Swan Ren."

"Thank you for allowing me to come over today." Does Haru want help with the walking?

Sure, if he's offering. "He joined translation club today," Haru mentions.

"Aha," says Ren.

Of course he's offering, he's not a monster. "I was made to face the fact that I am really not as good at English as I thought I was, so that's an opportunity for growth."

"Oh, I'm sure you're fine! But there's always room to improve."

They make their way to Ren's car and she hops in the driver's seat.

Presumably Haru will go in the passenger seat? Yutaka will open the door for him.

"- thank you!" says Haru, and in he goes.

He is getting such a good grade in gentleman.

Into the back he goes.

Ren drives. It's not very far, but it's enough that Haru would probably have fallen over three or four times in the course of taking two hours to walk that far, in the winter weather. She parks in the apartment building's garage and there's an elevator ride up to their little Tokyo shoebox apartment.

Oh wow this place is minuscule. Yutaka is now feeling guilty for living in such a huge place on his own. He walks in after the other two and leaves his shoes in the genkan.

And once everybody's shoes are off Ren grabs herself a protein bar out of the kitchen, drops her bookbag in her room, and leaves again with a "don't do anything I wouldn't do!"

How the fuck should he know what it is that she wouldn't do. He grins anyway.

"Ittekimasu!"

"Itterasshai!"

"Itterasshai!" he agrees, and then, "Transformation sequence?"

"Hell yes."

Transformation sequence! And then he is a magical boy.

"I did not get a sequence, you just - flashed. Did you design that outfit?"

"I didn't! It just kind of happened. I'm very happy with the result, though. I—actually never asked if you designed yours, it was this gorgeous traditional Japanese archery outfit in blue and white and gold and you looked very fetching in it."

"—er, I mean, you looked good in it, ah."

"Well, you'll have to tell me if I get the same one - do you want to help me any further with the disease research -"

"Yeah!" He is now openly simping for this guy. What is up with him.

They can research diseases! Eventually Kyubey walks right out of Haru's bedroom having been in there for who knows how long and sits on Haru's lap and informs them periodically that alas Haru still has more emotional resonance with malaria.

Yutaka isn't jealous anymore. He is not jealous because he has made peace with the fact that he will never be as good a person as Haru is. He might as well just stick close and learn how to be like that.

Eventually Haru is able to get Kyubey to put low-granularity numbers on things, and he disappears into his room for twenty minutes and comes out with a number that is one higher than it was before for dementia and the flu but still not as high as the one he gets for malaria, and he throws up his hands in frustration.

Blink.

Blink blink.

"Wow uh. That's." Did he just manually make himself want those things more?????? Like—wow. What the uh. What the fuck.

Yutaka wants that superpower.

"Still not good enough uuuuuuugh."

"I feel like I may be insane for offering a hug but, uh, do you want a hug?"

"- sure."

Hug.

Oh okay that worked. Cool. Noted.

Also oh he hasn't hugged another human being in a while, huh. Even the last couple of times he had sex, he snuggled a bit but didn't really hug so much. He's having some complicated feelings about it, which he should shove in a box and ignore.

"Thanks." </hug>

"Yeah, sure." Turns out that even if your body is mostly fake your heart can still beat a little bit too fast and loud for your liking. Who knew. Now Yutaka knows, that's who.

It is rare to have a wish strong enough to do something like remove a whole disease from the Earth.

"I get that, but if I'm the guy who can do it I want to get the right disease, and -" Gesture.

Yutaka is going to continue to shove his feelings into a box because they are not the important ones, here. "—has it happened before? Eradicating a disease via wish?"

Smallpox escaped the lab once and was prevented from spreading further by a wish.

"Oh holy shit what the fuck thank you that person!!!!"

"Yeah, fuck, wow. - that would have been like, curing a handful of people, though, right? So it's actually quite a lot if I can get malaria. Lots of people have it, lots of mosquitoes carry it..."

Yes.

Yutaka has been deep in the Wikipedia mines and he read a few too many horror stories about smallpox while getting distracted from his homework this morning and he had a very very vivid image of something quite horrifying. "Why do we still even have that in a lab," he mumbles to himself.

"Same reason you have anything in a lab, I guess. ...I need a break from this, I'm not making any more progress in the next thirty minutes on wanting something as complicated as heart disease gone. You wanted to test some magic?"

"—yeah. I should probably figure out what-all I can do." He looks at Kyūbey. "If I had a weapon other than this shield would I necessarily know how to summon it, like, intuitively? Or could it just be hidden somewhere until I press the right button somewhere?"

It might just be the shield. Some weapons are not very weaponlike. If you have another weapon it should be intuitive to summon.

Yutaka thinks about it for a few seconds then shakes his head. "It's not coming to me." He pushes himself to his feet and detaches the shield from its strap. It's more like a buckler, really. "This is really heavy and—thick, though?" He flips it over to show how it's kind of domelike in a way that suggests an internal mechanism. He brings it close to his ear and shakes. "There's something inside..."

"May I?" Haru asks, reaching for it.

"Sure," Yutaka says, offering it to him.

Poke poke prod.

It seems pretty solid overall, but rings like it has some hollow parts inside. Also there's this small aperture near the edge on the inner part of it.

Pooooke?

His finger can go inside the aperture if he wants it to. There's nothing there.

"Maybe it only works if you do it but there's some kind of hole in it here." He hands it back.

He accepts it then pokes a finger into the hole. Then two fingers. Then his whole hand. Then his whole arm. 

"...I think I came with a bag of holding of my own," he says, his right arm disappeared up to the elbow into the shield.

"- oh wow that's so cool! Definitely makes up for having to buy a sword."

He pulls his arm back out, checks that it's undamaged, then taps the other side of the shield again. "Still feels like there must be something else inside. If I just try doing things should I be able to figure them out? Like for any kinds of personal powers and stuff."

Yes.

"Okay well I can try doing..." He's being such a lying liar who lies but if he'll rewind—

Yes.

—wait hold on he didn't know his shield had a cool clockwork thing that activated when he rewound time! That's so aesthetic! 

"Okay I can rewind time! Like less than the whole month apparently!"

"Well, that's good, you wouldn't want to scrap a whole month every time something bad happens."

"Well worst-case scenario I'll be able to just see how a fight will go and report back on it. I just wound back to my own body though, I wonder if I can do more time travelling than just that."

"Like a time-turner in Harry Potter?"

"—oh I hadn't even thought of that possibility. Uh, okay, so if another me appears in the bathroom right now then I'll go in the bathroom after he leaves to turn back time?" he suggests, and looks at the bathroom door hopefully.

Well, bathroom door?

"Okay guess not then," he says, pouting a bit.

"Maybe you can do it but you didn't successfully initiate a stable loop and have to avoid your other selves till you know you're capable of it?"

"Oh good thinking. Okay I'm gonna go... uh... oh I know, I'm gonna go out and roofhop in one direction for thirty seconds then try to go back in time and drop down to the street level and come back—no, and keep running in the same direction for thirty seconds, and then double back. So I should be back in a minute and a half if I succeed?"

"Have fun!"

"Thanks!" He totally should be able to hop off this apartment's window, though, so he'll do that instead. Hup.

Hop hop hop wheeeeeee roof hopping is so much funnnnnn! Honestly he doesn't know why he was so lukewarm on the idea before, being a magical boy is turning out great for him. He counts up to thirty, then he tries to do—some kind of motion in his mind, it actually feels really weird how he can tell there's a thing he can do that's different than the rewind thing, and if he tries that—

His clockwork buckler activates again and then everything stops. The cars, the birds, the clouds, the people. The entire world freezes around him, and he's the only one moving.

...okay, that's. Not a time-turner, which is a bummer, but maybe practically speaking this is better? He hops down to street level but rather than running he starts making his way back at a walk, looking at everything and everyone.

Everything and everyone is frozen in time. It looks kind of how one would expect it to, if this were an anime: drops of water floating midair, people and things in the middle of movement, unable to continue their trajectory. What's weirder, though, is that the world looks... bluer? In whatever direction he walks in, and redder in whatever direction he walks away from. It's subtle, but it's there.

Is that a physics thing? Yutaka thinks that might be a physics thing.

Wicked.

Now if this were an anime, he'd either be completely unable to affect anything, or stuff he touches would start moving with him. Which one will it be? He'll walk until he finds a pebble or something and try to pick it up.

He can do that.

And if he drops it?

It starts falling but rapidly slows down as it does, for about a second, then stops again.

...huh. So it's not, like, if he releases it it just stops exactly where he did? Interesting. What if he throw the pebble rather than dropping it, how far will it go?

About just as far! It slows down a lot more quickly to compensate for the extra speed from being thrown rather than dropped.

He feels like that's probably going to be useful for combat somehow but he's not sure how. Or, hm, well, he supposes that'd make using guns a lot easier, actually? If he can shoot a bullet and it doesn't get stuck in the gun's barrel and actually goes a way out. Yeah, this is wicked, he digs it.

Yutaka's gonna walk back to Haru's place, then—wait. Actually. He's been doing a lot of magic, today. How's his gem doing?

It might be somewhat darker than it was this morning? But not, like, so much so that it's immediately obviously dangerous. And it's darker around the edges of the diamond than near the center.

Hmmm. Okay. He's gonna watch his gem as he walks and see how much darker it gets.

If it's getting darker over time, it's not doing that so quickly that he can notice it by the time he's back near Haru's.

Huh. That's. Strange? Or maybe it's just too subtle and he'd notice it if he hadn't been watching it directly.

Well, he'll unpause time before he gets in because it would be dickish to suddenly appear at Haru's without warning.

That makes the gem get noticeably darker, resuming time.

—oh, the fuck, does it only cost magic once he's back in real time? Does it cost more magic the longer he's been paused? He's not sure how he'd test that, the change is so minor.

Well, whatever. He'll jump up and knock on the window when he does, since he shut it behind himself as he was leaving.

Haru opens it for him. "How'd it go?"

"No time-turner but I can stop time!"

"Oh cooool!"

"I think I might be able to bring other people with." He offers Haru his hand.

Hand!!

Click, the shield does its clockwork thing and then everything stops. "I think if I let go of your hand you might get frozen too but," he can grab a pen and drop it midair.

"Oh that's going to be so useful I bet!" He bounces a little bit, still holding tight to Yutaka's hand.

Oh no he's so cute Yutaka wants to kiss him. 

All in due time.

...he doesn't want to let go of Haru's hand now to test what happens, but he will stop being such a fucking simp and do it anyway. "I'll let go of your hand now to see if you stay with me or get frozen, okay?"

"Okay!" Haru relaxes his grip so Yutaka can escape.

Escaped!

And yeah Haru's frozen.

Yutaka waits a couple of seconds, waving a hand in front of Haru's eyes, then take Haru's hand again. "Verdict, you do get frozen."

"- but then you can pull me into your time stop again? Cool!"

"—oh, yeah, the reason I thought I could in the first place was that I could grab some frozen stuff outside and interact with it and stuff. I think anything I'm touching will be unfrozen with me."

"It's involuntary? You can't like do platformer jumps on frozen autumn leaves?"

"Haven't tested it." He'll try to poke the pen but, like, willing it to stay frozen?

It gets unfrozen when touching him and freezes again when not.

"Seems involuntary, yeah."

"Less versatile but still cool."

"Yeah! But," and he lifts the hand with his gem then unstops time. "I only pay the cost in magic when I unpause time. I dunno what kinds of things could be more or less expensive."

"Oh that seems dangerous, if you can rack up a lot of expense without noticing. Do you have to do it subjectively or could you get some kind of - light measurement thing -"

"...hmmm." He wills himself visible to normies then grabs his phone to point it at his gem. Does the camera see him?

Yup!

"Probably a light measurement thing would work fine, then."

"And if you can afford a sword you can probably also afford a..." He detours to jisho.org. "Luxometer," he reads off.

This guy and his complicated words.

...

Why did he find it endearing this time. Yutaka needs to stop simping so much, it's unbecoming. He has had this exact thought like twelve times over the past hour, it's a problem.

"Where would I even find one of those," he says, mostly to himself, Googling it.

There are actually pretty cheap ones online, though it's anyone's guess if they're calibrated appropriately for souls.

Well, he can grab one that is not pretty cheap and that is pretty sensitive instead, probably.

"Will it fit in your bag of holding?"

"No idea, but I can always carry it around the hard way instead if not."

"I mean, you might want to buy one that definitely will."

"Well, fair." He can buy a second one, too.

"What else do you wanna test?"

He thinks about it for a second. "I think I don't have any other obvious powers? The place in my head where it felt like I could do things doesn't feel like it has other things in it for me to do."

"Aren't there things anyone can do?"

"Yeah, I think so? But it feels like somewhere else. ...I don't know how to explain it. But I think I can," make his buckler disappear?

Poof.

"You probably want that to exist most of the time but it's still abstractly cool."

👏Haru👏needs👏to👏be👏less👏kissable.👏

"Yeah." He brings it back. "Let's see what else... Ummmm Kyūbey?"

Yes?

"What else's in the shared power list?"

It's not really a list. Some common things people do are shoot beams at witches, make platforms to stand on, or move things around with telekinesis.

"Oh right Haru mentioned the platforms. —uh, last time around, I mean." Can he make a pen float? How badly does this affect his gem?

He can and it's pretty cheap! Haru tries tugging on it.

Does it feel like anything? Is there some kind of proprioception for the teekay? Or is it purely intellectually that he has to resist it?

He needs to see what he's doing but he can keep the pen from moving when tugged!

"Coooool."

"SO cool, I can't wait."

He is going to just stop looking at Haru's face. Or, like, he's not, but he's going to act as if he is.

"If I can shoot beams at witches, though, is there even a point going after a mundane weapon?"

Just magical efficiency.

"...legit. I really should figure out how this fighting thing is going to go."

"Yeah, I want to know more about that too though I guess it's less pressing for me."

"Well, my gem still looks pretty alright," he says, peering at it. "So it's not too pressing yet..." Also he's feeling pretty reluctant for some reason. Well, he guesses it stands to reason that he would, actually? He's never gotten into a fight with a regular human, he has zero fighting instincts or practice.

"Maybe Kyubey should introduce you to Yamanaka-san and she can show you the ropes?"

"—oh, yeah, that'd probably be useful." Why didn't he think of that? That's such an obvious idea. He might be stupid. He briefly considers rewinding and redoing the past three minutes or so of conversation but he's not sure Haru wouldn't notice the darkening of his gem—it's a very short amount of time, but they are all kind of paying attention right now—and he doesn't want to risk it, it'd mean he'd need to go back even further to fix it. "Could you do that, Kyūbey?"

Sure, if she would like to meet you!

"Thank you!" Pause. "Should I tell her about the time travel, too?"

Maybe!

"It seems, you know, relevant."

"—right, I didn't mean I was thinking of hiding it, just, I know her less well and if I open with 'hey by the way you die in a month but wanna come kill some witches with me?', that might not go over great?"

"Oh, yeah, just, if you are in fact going to work with her."

"Yeah. But she should know, too. ...everyone should, honestly, even the dickish territorial magicals over in, where was it, Harajuku? But that seems even more fraught."

"The who in Harajuku?"

"Oh. Right, that was one of the things I needed to mention. Apparently some magicals get very territorial and you and Yamanaka-san butted heads with them and almost came to blows? Because you found a witch there but they didn't want you two to take it."