Hug. Shiver. "I'm -" Scared, but is that what Yutaka needs to hear to get through this? "I love you."

"I love you too. 'Ts been thirty."

"Okay. I'm gonna go, uh, thataway, and - hopefully that's a better place to be standing. Clear your gem." He kisses the top of Yutaka's head. He platforms up, about a hundred meters.

Three arrows. Nock, aim, loose.

And he goes.

It's a better place to be standing in the sense that it's survivable, but Haru has to hop around a lot to get to a new vantage point where he can shoot anything worth hitting, and wastes a lot of telepathic bandwidth on explaining why he apparently teleported. Shigematsu loses a leg and Haru dives, falling rather than platforming to reach him and fix it, and then he's not sure that was even the magically efficient thing to do; regaining the height and the time might be more costly than the extra magic Shigematsu would have spent putting his own leg back. Whatever. Rolling back to fix it would be even more of a waste. Ichinoya shears off tendrils of yarn with bright sky blue telekinesis, the only sky blue thing in this wretched sky. Ueda's naginata slices through a tendril, slowed enough that he can slash it by means of a wall of rainwater. Haru shoots, and platforms, and shoots, and tries to keep half an eye on the strategic picture -

How's everyone on seeds?
Team three is out.
So are we.
Shit, I thought you had another one?!

Haru swears under his breath, unleashing another three arrows. Yutaka, do you have any?

But before he's finished saying that Yamanaka says:
Egawa's down! Hanyu's almost out of magic getting her up, I'm calling a tactical retreat -

Mrs. Minorikawa: Double checked and we're out. Iwasaki, can you bring us something - Tazuko's been running herself ragged -

I'm—

—fuck!—

—we're all out.

DO YOU HAVE ENOUGH TO GO BACK Haru exclaims, dropping toward the sea to get away from the witch - if he gets hit, and Yutaka does a short rewind and doesn't have enough for the long one -

I—don't know—it's—

Come here and take what I've got. We can't win this from here, it's not even slowing down, there's gingerbread everywhere, it - I'll top you off and it doesn't matter, if I'm out or not at the moment when this all never happened -

—Haru—

—understood.

And then he's by him.

Haru catches himself on a golden platform. He baubles his gem, (keeps half an eye out for yarn) and presses it to Yutaka's throat, gold on silver.

"I love you," he murmurs. "I - it's all written down, everything important, you just - give me that and -"

And he breaks down. "I love you. Haru, I love you. I love you so much. I'll, I'll make it worth it, I will, I promise—"

Yutaka has to go back.  That's definite, that's all there is to hope for at this point; Haru might still be breathing but he can't go with Yutaka back to February.  This Haru's dead.  Dying.  Will have been going to die.  A writeoff, whichever verb tense you go with, a loose end discontinuous with April.  These memories will not be written down; there is no time to scrawl a few characters on a notebook page and shove it at his boyfriend and hope the rain doesn't run the ink unrecognizably.  And maybe one day he'll remember this, maybe he'll make a wish right before hopping a plane to Australia and he'll remember exactly how it felt to give Yutaka the last of his magic - it feels like it's trickling out of his gem so slowly and relucantly, like he's scared to die even now, for some reason, flinching at the self-harm, but shouldn't he know well enough by now that he's already dead?  Maybe one day he'll remember this, on the beach down in the southern summer, drinking something fruity and lounging on a beach towel, but that recollection won't last either.  They won't keep any of those loops.  The only memories he gets to keep are the ones where he gets it right, and he will not see April, he will never see April, still knowing what it was like to die.  He is alone without even himself for company, here.

He pushes harder, the magic from his gem to Yutaka's, because no matter what his hindbrian or his hindjewel or his hindsoul or whatever has to say about it, he's already dead, there is nothing for this version of Haru besides dying right here right now.  Does he die beloved, at least?  Sort of?  Yutaka's not distinguishing Harus.  Haru's twins, forks, alternate universe versions, they get a share too; this one is nobody special, just one of the many dead ends.  It's going to be so, so many, they're not about to figure this out in two more tries.  Dead, dead end.  This is - he can't tell himself it's a good way to die, but it's the one he's picked, that he's committed to, out of the options, the one where some other Haru who isn't, not perfectly, him, might possibly get to have most of what matters, one day.  Till then - all he's for, now, is to be a symbol of the drive to save other people, a conscience for Yutaka, a shiny prize for Yutaka, who's the only person who can actually change anything.  But can he, even?  If Yutaka dies, if Yutaka takes an unlucky blow to the gem - if that doesn't reset him - it's looking quite a bit likelier, now, that Yutaka will manage eventually to do what Haru has now done four times, and there's no reason magic would be so kind as to let him survive it - they don't know -

It doesn't matter.  Haru doesn't care anymore; caring, now, doesn't affect the odds.  He's doing the thing he decided to do.  He's making it so that Yutaka can go back and put malaria back where it was, because his wish never mattered and he was a moron to think it could.  Push and push, faint gold going dull brass, then weary bronze, then tarnished yellow-black.  Will it hurt?  It doesn't hurt yet, not physically, he's absolutely miserable but that's probably just because he's already dead, that's the sort of thing that would make a person miserable.

He has the flicker of a thought of kissing Yutaka goodbye and then he forgets it as the light goes out.

There is a sound, a sound like tearing paper, a sound like a million mosquitoes buzzing, a droning ripping screaming noise, and it's coming from somewhere inside of him.

The bauble bursts and the shards disintegrate and the metal casing snaps into a new shape under the pressure, matte black and sharp and with no hint that it ever used to be golden.

Haru has the flicker of a thought of drawing breath to scream and then he forgets it as he forgets everything else.