It's the last Monday of February, and it's chilly the way late February in Tokyo tends to be. His bedroom is how he remembers it when he went to bed last night: he's in his bed, there's his window, there's the door, there's his desk with his computer and a handwritten note next to it...

...maybe something fell out of a notebook last time he reviewed something. He picks it up.

That's... definitely not his handwriting. Also, it's entirely in Japanese, and written in teineigo.

Please don't freak out.

Magic is real.

I'm from the future, something awful is going to happen, and I need your help to fix it.

I can't read your mind, but if you think loudly in the direction of Iwasaki Yutaka, I will be able to hear you. I would prefer to have this conversation in person, though.

I can be invisible to Ren but not you, and last time you told her about the magic but not about the time travel.

I can stop time and include you in stopped time so you don't need to worry about missing school. It costs me magical energy, but very little of it, and this is the kind of thing I'm glad to spend it on.

That's a very cheap hard to fake test.

Testing.

Good morning, Haru. I'm sorry for the very surreal feelings you must be having right now. I really can't read your mind, I swear it on my ancestors.

How did you get in my room? Are you still in my apartment?

You told me your door's passcode. I'm not in your apartment anymore, I'm on the rooftop of your building. I only entered to drop the note and left. I didn't know of a better way to tell you all of this, just using telepathy directly would have scared you very badly.

I would really prefer to have this conversation in person.

Can you do telepathy to Ren? I don't have another obvious way to prove anything to her.

I don't need to be invisible to her, but I can't do telepathy to her. You are also able to get magic but the means to do so and pros and cons are the kind of thing I would like to discuss in person, and they might influence your decision to tell her.

We could wait until you're at school; I'm a student there, too, transferring today. This isn't urgent in the scale of hours.

No, no, I definitely want to talk about this, just, I ride to school with her. ...you maybe already know that. Uh. Give me a minute.

"Mama, I, uh, got my YA novel call to adventure or something, can you bear with me for a minute while my, uh, mysterious wizard, proves that?"

"...does your mysterious wizard want any toast?"

"...sure, why not, put an extra couple toasts in for him. Should I like, tell him to come to the door? - he's telepathic and made a point of telling me he could not read my mind."

"Go ahead." She's smiling, she thinks this is a buildup to some kind of elaborately godawful bilingual pun, but that's cooperative enough for government work.

Haru decides he'd rather not meet his mysterious wizard in pajamas and takes a moment to get into his uniform for the day.

Closer to ninety seconds later:

Can you like, come knock on our door.

Half a second later: knock knock.

Haru answers the door and offers his mysterious wizard a plate of toast. "Good morning."

His mysterious wizard is a boy the same age as him, wearing the same uniform. Whatever he had been about to say seems to die in his throat and for a moment he looks like he's about to start crying but he regains his composure quickly enough to accept the plate of toast with a bow and a, "Good morning, Swan-san. Thank you for having me."

Swans look at each other trying to figure out which of them he's talking to (Ren thinks it's Haru since Haru handed over the toast, Haru thinks it's Ren since his mysterious wizard addressed him familiarly earlier) but it's Haru who says, "You can come in. Your note said 'Iwasaki Yutaka'?"

"Note?"

"My call to adventure came in the form of a note on my desk!"

"Yes. You can just call me Yutaka i-if you'd like." He clears his throat then steps inside and closes the door behind himself, then takes his shoes off.

"Okay, Yutaka. Can you show Ren the disappearing real quick please?"

"Yeah." He sets the plate down then holds out his left hand, palm up. The silver ring he's wearing on his middle finger flashes white and is replaced by an egg-shaped silver gem encased in a golden setting. Then that glows white, too, alongside Iwasaki himself, and from Ren's perspective he disappears.

From Haru's perspective, though, something altogether different happens instead: his uniform gets replaced by a magical outfit. White tights with silver streaks down the sides going into boots; something that looks like a robe if robes were made to look sexy, also in white and silver, tight on the torso but flaring out at the sleeves, with the sides of the stomach area missing and the coattails starting above his navel so that his side abs and navel are exposed; white gloves with a diamond-shaped silver gem on the back of his left hand; a black choker with a gem that glows silver attached to it; and a buckler attached to his left forearm with a clockwork design.

Then, after a couple of seconds, he allows himself to be visible to Ren, too.

Ren sits down abruptly. "My goodness."

"- oh wow that's so cool!" exclaims Haru.

That... seems to upset Iwasaki for some reason. He fidgets in place and doesn't say anything.

"Is it perhaps not so cool? You don't have to be magical right now if you don't want to, she's seen it..."

He shakes his head. "It doesn't feel bad or anything, it is pretty cool, but there's caveats and all."

"Okay. Uh, you wanted to... stop time so I wouldn't be late for school...?" Haru takes a bite of his own toast.

"Yeah." He starts to extend his hand, stops himself, and withdraws it then turns to Ren. "Apologies, Swan-san, I'm being terribly impolite," he says, grabbing the plate of toast again. "And I must continue doing so and abusing your hospitality: do you by any chance have a piece of string or a measuring tape or similar?"

"I have... pipe cleaners? Oh, I have embroidery floss -" She goes and gets a skein of it in bright orange and hands it over.

He bows as he accepts it. "Thank you." He unspools enough of it that, when he offers the skein itself to Haru, there's enough slack that they could sit across a table from each other.

Haru is starting to get the sense that this guy does not want to give Haru amazing magical powers at all and it's pretty hurtful. He takes the string end.

His buckler splits in half and "opens", revealing clockwork gears that start rapidly spinning and then—stop, along with everything else. 

Iwasaki releases a breath, then takes another deep one, and says, "You've died three times and Tokyo has been destroyed twice, so far."

"...okay, that's bad, I'll give you that. What's the plan?"

"I wish I knew. I didn't even know we'd get this extra chance, and maybe we have as many chances as we might like, but—we tried, and we failed, and I—am kind of not extremely okay, right now, and having some trouble thinking objectively about any of this and not despairing. You d-died just about an hour ago, from my perspective." His voice grows very thick at the end there, and he clears his throat and looks away, covering his eyes with one hand. "I'm sorry."

"Were we friends, or -"

"We, uh. Y-yeah. Uh. We were, uh—close. P-pretty close." He swallows dryly and turns his head more but it's not particularly hard to guess what exactly it is that he's trying to hide with his hand.

"I'm sorry. ...I assume that merely trying really hard not to die won't do the trick. What's killing me?"

"The first and third time you d-died to the monster that destroyed Tokyo. The second time you died to a smaller monster that you and I were hunting together. 

"Magic is somewhat personalised, though there are some shared things." He sniffles and clears his throat again. "In addition to stopping time, I can rewind it, but only my own mind and whatever I'm carrying in my magic bag comes back. And I—just discovered an hour ago that I can also apparently go all the way back to, uh, earlier today. Specifically."

"Why earlier today specifically?"

"I'm not entirely sure. There's a whole lot—sorry, I made a list, I wanted to go over the list at least once before breaking down but clearly that was optimistic. C-could I—I'm sorry, I know you don't know me, and you have no obligations towards me, but if—it would be okay—could I hug you?"

"Yeah, of course." Haru opens his arms.

Iwasaki hugs him. Iwasaki hugs him kind of tight, and rests his chin on Haru's shoulder, and—breaks down, sobbing and hiccuping and shaking. "Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Sorry..."

Hug. "I wish I remembered."

Perhaps predictably that makes him cry harder.

...pat pat.

He seems to be trying to stop and then failing, and eventually he just gives up and pulls away while he's still crying. He tries to wipe his eyes with the back of his sleeves so that he's at least not too blind, and he looks away again, but he reaches his right hand behind (or into?) his buckler and fetches a sheet of paper with a lot of stuff written on it. 

"D-do you want to—you m-might want t-to, u-um, get your n-notebook? T-to write things down a-and, stuff? Y-you know."

"Did I write th- no, you didn't know you were coming back - yeah." He goes and gets his notebook.

"Okay. A-and if, if we—f-fail again—I could bring back anything y-you write. That'll be—easier than me trying to f-figure out what you'd want to kn-know f-from just kn-knowing you."

"...okay. ...do you read English."

"I d-do but I'd—I'd never—they're your thoughts—" He stops, then shakes his head. "You have no reason to trust me. Maybe you could shorthand it b-but—might b-be best to not keep your—you know. One of your real notebooks. With me."

"I have no specific reason to be suspicious of you, I just - don't usually - hand them over - but I'd want them, if you - have to go back again -"

Sniffle. "I know. I'll just—do whatever you want me to do."

"We were just... friends?"

"No."

"I, I'm not, e-expecting anything. You d-don't know me." He scrunches his eyes tightly shut when he says that. "But n-no. We, we w-were. More. Than just friends."

Haru hugs him again.

That seems to surprise him, but he wraps his arms around Haru again and continues to cry. Less badly and violently than he'd been earlier, but still a lot.

"I'm so sorry. I wish I remembered. - this is probably all in the letter and I should just read it, isn't it."

"...no, it's not. There's—the letter has stuff about—magic, and related things. There's—a different letter with the personal stuff but—some of that I should tell you with my mouth and not with the letter."

"Okay. What do you need to tell me?"

"...I could tell you that now but—it's—could we start with the magic? I—prepared myself for—and it's—harder—"

"...okay." Haru unhugs to pick up the letter and get his notebook open to a new page to take down the important parts.

It's somewhat long, and is pretty dry and to the point. 

To use magic, you must make a wish, and it must be something you care very deeply about. The last two times you wished for malaria to be gone. You tried to make yourself care enough about other, worse issues, but couldn't do it, whereas with malaria you cared enough about it from the get go.

You make this wish to a magical creature that looks like a foxlike plush toy called Kyūbey. He is the one enabling our telepathy, and is aware of everything we say. My trust in him is somewhat shaken recently due to his failure to inform us of some pretty important things.

Once you have made your wish, you become a magical rock, and you pilot your body remotely. Subjectively, it doesn't feel any different from normal except your dyspraxia will get fixed. If your magical rock gets farther than about 100m from your body, you will lose control of it. It is possible to build a new body, but it's very magically expensive. If your magical rock gets destroyed, you die. You can turn your magical rock into a ring, and wear that ring in order to carry it around unobtrusively.

Magical rocks have numerous powers, some common to all of us, some specialised which depend on the wish we make. Most powers require you to "transform" to use them, which replaces your clothes with magical clothes that fit you and turns your magical rock into jewellery attached to the outfit. It is possible to alter your outfit to some extent, as well as the position of your gem on it, but that latter one is needlessly annoying to do. By default yours goes on your glove, and the second time you died was by being too slow to react to a monster that took your arm. 

Your personal power from your wish is healing yourself and others. Shared powers include minor telekinesis, the ability to summon and use a personal weapon (yours is a bow plus magical infinite string and arrows, and you got the associated skill to use them without much training), energy beams, minor low-complexity conjuration of temporary matter typically used as shields or platforms to jump on or off, strength and balance and resilience sufficient to hop between the roofs of buildings, self-healing and modification of our bodies (including the ability to temporarily or permanently dull or turn off senses such as pain), and minor mind control. Yes, that's fucked up.

After you become a magical rock, you become dependent on these monsters called "witches" to live. They prey on and cause suffering and despair—the first time around, one had mind controlled me into almost jumping off a bridge, but you saved my life. They are invisible to non-magical people, and hide inside pocket dimensions they have a lot of control over. They vary a lot in power, and typically have minions (familiars). When a witch is defeated, it leaves behind a dark gem called a "grief seed" which is necessary to recharge our magical powers by serving as a dumping target for the darkness that accumulates in our magical rock. After a grief seed gets full, Kyūbey needs to eat it; otherwise, it can hatch into a copy of the witch it came from.

A single witch fight, on average, covers more than the magic spent in it. However, just being alive costs magic, and furthermore, those "familiars" can escape and outlive their witches, attack and kill people, and will not drop their own grief seeds until they've killed enough people to technically become witches, themselves, usually a copy of their parent witch. Witches become more powerful, not just in numerical terms but also in abilities and complexity to fight, as they eat more people.

In a month, a huge witch, powerful enough to be famous and have a name and to not need to hide in its pocket dimension, destroys Tokyo.

The death rate of magical rocks is very high. If I had not been able to rewind time, you would have been dead, and that would have been it.

Availability of witches is inconsistent and spiky, which causes magical people to be very territorial, to the point of fighting each other if they intrude in each other's territories.

You used to call magical rocks "superheroes", but we aren't. Some of us flee the scene rather than try to save people. Some of us purposefully let familiars grow into witches (which kills people) so that we can get the grief seeds at the end once enough people have died.

Kyūbey is not very forthcoming with information unless directly asked. He never told you about the mind control abilities, despite having told other people about it. He never saw fit to bring up the death rate when offering us our wishes. He never saw fit to bring up the territoriality of other magical people, or the spikiness of witch availability. He was very unclear in his answers about how much magic tends to cost and how much we tend to regain from grief seeds, though admittedly that does have a reasonable amount of variance.

Kyūbey will hear it whenever you try to use telepathy, and seems able to hear it whenever you want to talk to him. He has the ability to appear next to you out of nowhere, even if you were alone in your room, if he wants to talk to you, or you want to talk to him. He does not seem to have a voice, and speaks only telepathically.

Wow. That's a lot.

"...okay. I've read it."

Iwasaki's managed to regain his composure by then, and nods. "Do you have any... questions, or was there anything I was unclear about...?"

"...what'd you wish for that lets you rewind time?"

"That's... part of the other letter, but—the first time, after you saved my life, Kyūbey told me I had magical potential. I didn't know what to wish for, and I dithered for a long time, and then the big witch that came to destroy Tokyo killed you and the magical rock you were working with at the time, and then—killed me, I was going to die there. So I wished I could do everything right this time, that I could redo it all and fix it. And I woke up earlier today, a month ago, in my body, as a magical rock. You were still alive, we had a month to figure it all out. It felt—doable, then."

Nod. "- who was I working with?"

"A magical girl called Yamanaka Junko. We're in her territory, and last time around the three of us worked together, although she is often out of town due to being a very famous pop star, so it was just the two of us a lot of the time."

Nod. "...should I read the other letter now or do you want to tell me stuff out loud."

"I... want to tell you it. If that's okay."

"That's fine."

Iwasaki nods, takes a deep breath, and closes his eyes. "My name is Iwasaki Yutaka. My father is Iwasaki Iemasa, current CEO and majority shareholder of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. My many-times grandfather founded the Mitsubishi zaibatsu in the late 1800s. My father is very traditionalist, and a lot more homophobic than even most traditionalist exceptionally wealthy Japanese families. When I was a kid, I tried to please him with everything I did, and got at best cold indifference and at worst physical abuse. When I became a teenager and realised I was gay, I gave up on wanting his approval.

"I'm telling you this because it's relevant context about the person I am and was and how I've related to you and to him and to myself.

"I said I gave up on wanting his approval, but everything about me was still about him. I started to want to spite him, to hurt him, to make him angry, to make him react. So I decided that if he was going to hate me for being gay, I was going to be the gayest son he could possibly have. If he wasn't ever going to love me, I was going to make sure he hated me. I went out with boys, I fucked them, I caused rumour and scandal to follow me in the posh rich person school I used to go to, I made him have to spend money on lawyers and PR people so that his name wouldn't appear on any tabloids. And then, a week ago sidereal, I was caught in bed with two of my schoolmates, and Iwasaki Iemasa decided to pull me from Nada High so that I would stop embarrassing him in front of the rest of the Japanese elite. Today is my first day of school at Shimamoto High."

"I decided I was going to be just as much of a pest here as I was in Nada. I met you, and I thought you were gorgeous, and you seemed to be into me, and I flirted with you. I also flirted with a lot of other boys, but you were sufficiently disconnected from school rumours that you didn't hear about it.

"Tomorrow, in between classes, you tripped when walking down some stairs and spent a week away from school. When you came back, you looked incredibly cheerful in a way you hadn't today and tomorrow. I thought it was because you'd gotten a boyfriend—you also became a lot less receptive to my flirting then—but after talking to your friends I decided to shoot my shot and ask you out anyway. The reason you were cheerful was because Kyūbey had contacted you, though I think you weren't a magical boy then, quite yet, so you didn't refuse me.

"We went on that date, I told you a little bit about my tragic backstory, up to the part where I said I was going to be a slut and go after lots of boys. You were, of course, immediately turned off, and said you didn't want to just be a notch on my bedpost. I hadn't been thinking of you that way, but that wasn't... a bad description of it, either. So that was that, for that evening."

...nod nod.

"We kind of—became cordial, then, if a bit distant. You were still really happy all the time, being a superhero really suited you. I was having a bit of a rougher time, for absolutely no reason. I kept thinking about you all the time, and I still don't know why. I don't think I liked you then, yet, but maybe I did. I'd been rejected plenty of times, it made no sense for me to think so much about you.

"The week after that, I was nearly killed by a witch, and you and Yamanaka saved my life. You told me a little bit about magic, Kyūbey told me more, and I kept not having any wishes I cared enough about to actually give me magic. I resented you for—being such a better person than me, in everything, for getting to go out and save people and be happy with it while I couldn't even figure out anything I wanted.

"Saturday—three Saturdays from now—the rain started. It got bad enough Tokyo went into a state of emergency. A week from then, something non-magical people thought was a cataclysmic typhoon appeared and started destroying Tokyo. Kyūbey said you needed me, that I needed to figure out something to wish for so that I could get magic and help destroy the wish. I still couldn't think of anything, but I asked him to take me to the fight, so that maybe I could feel strongly enough about it to make my wish. But I still didn't, not until Yamanaka died, and then you, and then me.

"You were on my mind again, then. I wished I could've done everything right, I wished I were less fucked up, I wished I could do it all over but right this time. And then I was back."

"...so that was the first, uh, March 2026, but in the second one we were - closer?"

"Yeah. In the second one, I—contacted you immediately. As soon as I realised I was back. You freaked out, obviously, to get someone speaking in your head in the morning like that. I actually hadn't even known you weren't a magical boy yet, I thought you might've been one already. So I was the one to tell you about magic, then. You were—" His breath hitches, and he clears his throat. "So cheerful about it. And I kept thinking about you, and I—walked you from your mum's car to the school doors, and I was trying to be seductive and gentlemanly and make you like me.

"I also lied to you."

"...what about."

His eyes are still closed, and he's trembling a little bit like he's cold. "About—how close we'd been, the first time around. About the order of operations. I made it seem like we were closer friends than we actually were. Like we were friends at all. And you said something about—your notebook, I think, and I was surprised, and you made a face like, oh, I guess we weren't that close after all. And you were right, of course. But I hated that. I don't know why. I don't know why I was already so—focused on you. But I wanted you to like me. So I rewound time and said the right things rather than the wrong things instead."

"I was trying to be—cool and suave and sexy and someone you could like rather than pity. I was trying to flirt with you, to be a gentleman, to look like I really liked you. I'm pretty sure I did, by then. I'm not sure what changed. No, I'm certain I did, and I'm certain I don't know what changed, because I thought, at the time, that it didn't make any sense for me to be so focused on you, for me to be so obsessed with never, ever coming off badly. I failed, obviously. No one can never come off badly. —I felt tempted to say 'no one but you' right now but we've had this conversation before and concluded that it's just because I am incapable of ever seeing you as anything but the best, coolest person ever.

"We went to your place after school that afternoon, and you tried to notebook yourself into wanting something more than you wanted to get rid of malaria. You eventually gave up in frustration and we decided to do some power testing of my powers. I only knew about the rewind, at the time, but after a bit we figured out that I had the time stop, and also the magic infinite bag in my buckler. And I was absolutely certain you thought I was irrelevant at best and kind of unpleasant at worst. I didn't sleep very well that night.

"The next day, you were a magical boy. Malaria was gone. That was—when I'd been thinking about my wishes, an altruistic one like that never even crossed my mind, I'm just, I'd never, I'll never be as good a person as you are. Even if it had occurred to me, I wouldn't have felt strongly about it. Not strongly enough. I'm selfish, I'm too selfish and self-centered for that.

"Seeing you so happy made me want to see you be that happy forever."

"We pretended you still needed help walking across the ice. Just for appearances, and because I wanted to be next to you, and even pretend gentlemanliness was still—something. Better than nothing.

"Later, I—the first time around, tomorrow, these girls outed you to me. They told me not to hang out with you otherwise people would think I was gay. The first time around, I said something ambiguous, which started but never confirmed the rumour I was gay. The second time, I was very unambiguous about being gay, and about being into you personally. It wasn't a rumour when I literally confirmed it. We hung out some more, and later I—I don't remember what we were talking about. Something about how the first time went? I think I did some testing of my rewinding abilities and that was when I found out I could duplicate things in my buckler? But something about it made you—really wary. It made you realise that if I wanted to I could just rewind as many times as I wanted to get exactly the response I wanted out of you. You were, again, right, of course.

"And in the afternoon, we talked about some more stuff, and you asked me more about how the first time went, and I—didn't say anything that was false, but I lied to you anyway. And you noticed. Or—you noticed that if everything I said was true, that meant that you couldn't possibly have been that into me the first time around. And you said that you didn't want to tell me what it was that I had said that tipped you off, because you were acutely aware of the fact that possessed of that knowledge I would be able to make the conversation go right, if I cared enough, which, I probably didn't, but—

"I did. Obviously. I cared so, so much about you liking me. I stopped time, and I freaked out, and I thought about it a long time, and I couldn't escape the conclusion that I liked you, and that that made no sense, and that the thought of you hating me was the worst thing in the world.

"So I rewound time, and I told you about how the first loop went, and this time I didn't lie. I just told you everything, that we'd gone on that date and you hadn't liked me that much because I was too—you know. And then I said that I'd changed my mind. I said that the first time around, I didn't think that you were my type, but now I did. That was also true. So you asked me if hunting witches was my idea of a date. I said yes. We kissed for the first time that night."

"But you rewound to do it, so you - came clean but went further into deception anyway -"

"Yeah. Exactly. Which was the stupidest thing, wasn't it, I could've literally said exactly the same thing without the rewind, but I—felt like you'd never forgive me if I did, if you knew I'd lied. I don't know. I don't know why I was so freaked out. I don't know if you'd have forgiven me, and I also don't know if you should have."

"I—didn't really have much more to lie about, after that. I genuinely liked you. I was into you. I wanted to be with you, and no one else. I was kind of cringe and embarrassing at times in front of you but it was fine because it was you and if anyone got to see me be cringe and embarrassing it'd be you.

"But... there was one more time. ...there were a few more times. Of, because, I—"

"Iwasaki Iemasa came to visit me next week. Showed up at my apartment, more like, because he owns it, and he can do whatever the fuck he wants, of course." Iwasaki is squeezing his hands into fists, and it doesn't seem like he's noticing it, the way he's fidgeting. "He'd heard the rumours. Because I was being out and proud, for the first time in my fucking life, and how pathetic do I have to be, right? I thought I'd been sticking it to him all my life, I thought I'd been rebelling, but even when I was being as much of a fucking faggot as I thought I could be I still never—ever—confirmed it, did I. I still cared enough about my name, about his name, that I kept it to open secrets rather than actual openness. It took liking a boy, liking you, for me to be completely out in the open and shamelessly gay, for me to actually just say I was gay to whoever asked.

"So he heard about it, and he showed up at my apartment, and he—belittled me, he's so fucking good at finding exactly the things to say to trigger me, I'm not—I'm not trying to excuse it. There isn't any excusing it. But I was—seeing red. I hated him. I was scared of him. And he said he was pulling me from Shimamoto and sending me to Kaiyo, to a boarding school, where I'd be away from—everyone, but mostly, you. And I—changed his mind. I made him not care so much about me. I made him fucking stop ruining my goddamn life for five minutes—" He stops himself, and leans forward, hiding his face in his hands, taking deep breaths.

Haru can't think of anything to say, to that.

"I tried—just saying different things. I tried rewinding. A few times. And it just—nothing worked—I wasn't trying very hard. Or very well. And he just kept—calling me disgusting. Saying I was shameful. Saying maybe I'd learn my lesson if I was away from everyone I'd ever known. That was the last straw, was when he said that. I gave up, and I changed his mind. I made him stop caring about it, I made him not—think it was that big a deal. I didn't, didn't make him love me. I didn't want his love. I didn't want his approval. But I made him feel the same way about it as he used to feel about my previous indiscretions.

"Then I told you about it. I told you about it, and you freaked out, and you said that I still had time to go back, to undo it, that you'd help me workshop solutions.

"I was angry with you, then. I, I shouldn't have been. But I was. I felt like, like you—it doesn't matter how I felt. I was angry, and so I rewound again, and I never told you about it. I never told you about it then, and I didn't tell you about it the next two times Iwasaki Iemasa came to visit me that month, when he'd realised that it made no sense for him to not care, when he realised that actually he did care. I made him not care both times. And I didn't tell you about it, because you'd have hated me, you'd have broken up with me, and you'd have been right to.

"Or, no. Not exactly. After the last one I—decided I was going to tell you. I was going to confess, to tell you everything. No, I think maybe I decided that even before that? I knew something was going to give. But I was going to tell you after we saved Tokyo. I was going to tell you after everything was okay, because I knew that when you hated me and broke up with me, I wouldn't be okay. I knew it would fuck me up so badly I wouldn't be able to fight the witch. And I couldn't afford that. I needed to save Tokyo. We needed to save Tokyo. If I was going to break down and become a mess and be unable to help anyone, that had to happen after we saved Tokyo.

"I think that was a little bit self-serving, but not entirely. I think I was right that I was going to be useless if you broke up with me. I think I am right that I'm going to be—ineffective, and broken, and fucked up, now. But I decided to tell you after we saved Tokyo, and we didn't save Tokyo, and we died instead, so I'm telling a version of you who didn't tell me he loved me back, so hopefully it won't hurt you as badly as it would've, and you won't feel as betrayed. I'm just some guy. You have no reason to care about me, and you shouldn't."

He reaches into his buckler and gets a different letter, a much longer one. "The rest of last month is here, too. But I—wanted to tell you that part, myself. It would've been cowardly not to, and I'm tired of being a coward. I'm tired of being small and selfish. But I'm still me, and I never deserved you, and I never will." He places the letter on the table, then draws his hand back.

Haru actually nods along at the part about putting it off till after saving Tokyo. And he breathes in sharply a little bit, at the part about telling him he loved him back. But he still doesn't say anything.

He takes the letter.

"I'm sorry. I know this is a lot to dump on you on a Monday morning. I know I said we'd be able to be in time stop and you wouldn't be late for school, but—I can't put you in time stop without being in it. So—I can be as far away from you as this string will go, if you want to be in time stop for longer. Or I can leave. Or I can—do anything you want. I will never deserve you, but I am entirely and wholly yours, and that is not going to change, even after you throw me out. Whatever you tell me to do, I'll do. Whatever you want out of me is yours." He finally opens his eyes then pulls his gem, shining with tarnished silver light, out of his choker into its bauble form and places it on the table. He pushes it towards Haru. "The entirety of me is yours."

"I - what am I supposed to do with that," says Haru.

He laughs a little despairing laugh. "Nothing. It's symbolic. I know there isn't anything you would do with it. But I need you to know that if there was, you could."

"I think probably the thread is long enough and skinny enough that I could - go in my room - but I'm probably going to think of questions as I write anyway."

"Telepathy won't work in here because Kyūbey isn't stopped. You could go in your room, and pass me notes. Or just shout through the door or, or something."

"Yeah."

Haru lays a hand on the gem for a moment, contemplative - then collects the letters and notebook and spools out thread till he's back in his room. It's not very far. The apartment is little.

Iwasaki shivers a bit when Haru touches his gem, but doesn't do anything more, and doesn't follow Haru with his eyes. He just stays there, and doesn't do anything.

Okay what the fuck is he supposed to do with this. So being a superhero who can ANNIHILATE MALARIA which - he checks - kills hundreds of thousands of people annually, is dangerous, fine. Haru was not particularly expecting to have the opportunity to do it but he would in fact straightforwardly die to put malaria in the ground, and if he gets to go down swinging so much the better, gets to go down saving more people so much the better, gets to go down with magic of his own and insight into the masquerade so much the better.

But it can't be that simple, apparently, because he has this - boy - who he fell in love with, reportedly, he underlines "reportedly" a couple times, over the next month, that's so fast, what were you doing, other-timeline-Haru - no, he can guess. He was high on being a magical superhero, he was implicitly limiting his dating pool to his fellow magical superheros a little bit maybe and this one was so cute and so sweet and so magical and superheroic and went to school with him so conveniently and really really wanted him, wanted him with an intensity that Haru's kind of tempted to swoon about even getting only the corners of it through a tearful confession of wrongdoing. You learn something new about yourself for the second or third time every day, apparently, and Haru goes for, what, lunatic stalker energy - that's not fair. That is not reportedly fair. Underline.

And also Tokyo has millions of people in it. You can't let Tokyo go down to get malaria dead, even notwithstanding that if it blows through Tokyo there's no particular reason to think it'd stop there. Pin in that, what's the upper bound, is there one.

Can he just wish to kill the big witch, now that his wish is a free agent? With enough time to get worked up about it, maybe? Is that even conceptually a thing. Pin in that. Little highlighter marks in fluorescent green.

Would the creepy-ass mind magic allow for... lie detection. Used consensually, but like, that seems probably likely. Yutaka just handed Haru his SOUL. Highlighter mark.

He's going to need to do even more notebooking about this Kyubey character once he meets him but he doesn't want to spend a lot of "time" on it before that.

Is it going to compromise their ability to save Tokyo if Haru doesn't bonsai himself into dating this guy. ...he might not even have to try very hard what with the things he has learned about himself today, but he might have to try at all, does he need to do that. Highlighter.

What does he need to extract from these letters to send himself a summary if they need to go around again... he does that next, it's more likely than not premature but if he's butterfly-effected into an open manhole and dies on his way to school Yutaka can have annotated note-to-self letters for Haru attached to Yutaka's own versions. Rip rip staple staple.

He comes out of his room again after about a subjective twenty minutes.

Well, it's been twenty minutes for Iwasaki, too. He's still sitting exactly where Haru left him, but now he's holding his head in his hands, resting it on his elbows, fingers interlaced with his hair looking like he's been pulling it.

He doesn't look up when he hears Haru come out.

"...so I have some questions though I don't know if you know the answers to all of them."

He lets go of his hair, smooths it down (to the extent it'll go, since it's poofy), straightens up, and looks at Haru. "I will try my best to answer them." He doesn't look like he's been crying any more since Haru went into his room, at least.

"If the witch rolls over Tokyo - then what. Does it just keep going? Do they have a natural lifespan or something?"

"They do not have a natural lifespan. I don't know what actually happens, I as-well-as-died both times, but witches keep going until someone kills them."

Haru jots that down. "Can I just wish to kill the big witch, or witches in general if I'm dreaming bigger."

"Kyūbey said that it is theoretically possible to wish to kill witches in general, if you feel strongly enough about it, but you didn't, at the time. It must be possible to wish to kill just the one witch, though."

"Geez, how many times do I have to die to feel strongly enough that I want that to stop happening," he mutters, writing that down.

He winces but doesn't have an answer for that one.

"Once I have magic, would it, hypothetically, let me - verify your honesty, if you were inclined to invite me to do that -"

"—with, like, the mind magic? I don't see why not. Yamanaka seemed to think it was possible, but none of us tried it. ...Yamanaka was the one who originally told me about the mind trick, and later when she told you about it she acted a lot more contrite about having ever used it than when she told me."

"...gosh." Write write. "How... badly out of commission, are you, emotionally -"

"I don't know. I want to not be pathetic, but I am. I think I will not have much—initiative—for the foreseeable future. Or ability to want things."

"But you can, like, hunt witches enough to be self-sustaining for the month, you can - self-maintain and function to a basic level and show up for the big witch fight and stuff -"

"Yeah. I think so."

Scribble scribble. "I wrote myself some letters and attached them to yours, in case you need to go back - unexpectedly - and expect to update them periodically." He hands them over.

Iwasaki accepts them and puts them in his buckler. "Should I just hand you them first or should I—explain everything again—" He talks about it like someone who is asking if he should go jump in front of a train for his cause would.

"...I think if you leave them on my desk like you did with your initial note they will suit."

"Understood."

"Is there... anything else I should know before time goes on."

"I think that was all. How should I—behave in front of your mother, or should I just vanish? Is there anything you want me to do at school, should I avoid you, should I not go?"

"- I think you should go to school probably, and be, uh, less out than you were last time if that attracts attention from your dad, and otherwise act basically normal in most ways most of the time? You don't have to avoid me, I will probably ever have questions for you that I don't want to share with the critter and that'll be less weird-looking if we are observed to have, like, met. Ren's probably going to offer you a ride to school, you can accept that if you want or not, I don't know what your default transportation plan was."

"Roof-hopping. I can—try to act normally."

"I mean you can also act depressed, but -" Shrug.

Another little despairing laugh. "Yeah, I can."

"Do you want another hug?"

That startles him badly enough he physically starts. "I-I-I mean, I—why? I thought—"

"Thought what?"

"...that you'd never want anything to do with me again beyond the bare minimum."

"...no, not especially. If you're running a weird con I don't think I can protect myself from it by asking you nicely to go away, and I don't actually think you're doing that, and in the world where you are not doing that, I want to give you a hug because you look sad and because -

- it sounds like I would've loved you."

He draws in a sharp breath that mutates into a sob halfway in and covers his mouth. So much for that whole "stopped crying" thing. "I, I, I, I—"

Haru decides not to ask for permission again and just hug him.

Iwasaki hugs him back, and this time doesn't hold back on the crying, at all, doesn't try to stop himself or abort it prematurely or regain his composure.

It might take him a while.

Poor guy.

He cries himself out, then keeps holding Haru for a bit while he waits for his breathing to get stable again, and then finally, after what feels like an eternity, relaxes his hold, though he—doesn't quite pull away, exactly, so much as make it possible for Haru to do so.

Haru pulls a napkin out of the napkin holder and offers it to Yutaka.

That makes him laugh again, and it's still not a happy laugh, but it's the closest one to that Haru has seen on Iwasaki's face. "Thank you, Haru."

Weak smile. "You're welcome."

"I suppose I can—resume time, then?"

"I think so."

Iwasaki lets go of the string—

—and isn't looking puffy and like he's just bawled his eyes out anymore. Also, the toast is gone.

Sorry, I just felt really embarrassed to look like I'd been crying in front of Ren so I spent a while washing my face.

Ren startles. "Goodness." Then she checks the time and resumes eating her toast. "Iwasaki-kun, do you want a ride to school, if you go to the same one?"

—sorry. Shouldn't I have? I'm sorry—

His face is kind of frozen for a second while he telepathies that but then he turns his smile to Ren. "I couldn't possibly continue to impose so much."

"Up to you!"

I'm maybe hypersensitive at the moment? There's nothing wrong with washing your face I just didn't know to expect it.

I'm sorry, I'll tell you in advance if I think about anything like that ever again— His mind voice isn't quite hysterical but that's definitely the axis it's travelling in.

"I think it might not be a great idea for me to be seen walking out of the same car as Haru, at least for now. It might invite some questions."

"That makes sense. Well, have a lovely day at school anyway!"

...hug goodbye.

He hugs back and his face even looks normal while he does it. "I'll see you at school, then." He pulls back from the hug and bows to Ren. "Sorry I couldn't stay much longer. Have a lovely day, Swan-san." And he's off.

And Haru... finishes his toast, and goes to school.

They don't have their first class together, though Haru might catch a glimpse of Iwasaki in the hallway talking to a couple of other people, looking like a completely ordinary student. They do share their second class of the day, though, and the teacher has him introduce himself to the class. "My name is Iwasaki Yutaka," he says, smiling and bowing. "I'm a new transfer student. I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone; it's nice to meet you all!"

He looks around at places to sit and seems to decide to go for the spot behind Haru's. "Hello!" he says, bowing. "Is it okay if I sit behind you?"

"...yes, that's fine."

"Thank you!" He takes his seat, dropping his bag next to it, and grabs a notebook to start "taking notes".

That's how nondepressed you look when you're acting normal?

I can't promise I'm not overacting but I can't promise I'm not underacting, either. I'm at least not obviously trying to bias myself one way or the other.

Gotcha.

Iwasaki sits back and pretends to pay attention to whatever the teacher's saying.

Haru thinks of questions about magic, occasionally, and sometimes includes Yutaka when he's asking them especially if Kyubey doesn't know something.

Yutaka answers them to the best of his ability and literally nothing else. He does not initiate any conversations nor ask any of his own questions; he is purely reactive.

...he must have been REALLY different before the whole Haru dying for the third time thing.

Haru waits till lunch, to ask - It didn't fuck you up this bad the second time I died, did it?

...the second time was... I figured out how to solo the witch, rewound to before you died, cried on you for fifteen minutes, then placed you out of harm's way and killed it. Then I physically held onto you for the rest of the evening until the next morning. ...I guess there was a pause while we were microwaving food. But it was only a few minutes you spent dead, and—

This time you said it was like an hour?

I—didn't have enough magic to rewind anymore, when you died, but I noticed a different magic thing I could do, and I didn't know what it did, but anything would've been better than you being dead. It was an hour subjective between that and—when we talked. And I—already knew you wouldn't remember me, and that I was going to tell you everything so you wouldn't be with me. It was—pretty much the same as you breaking up with me, plus-or-minus some anguish and despair. But you're alive, and that's the most important thing.

...do you get a refill on magic when you reappear this morning?

Seems like it. But not a full one. It wasn't as bad as I was at the end of the loop, but it wasn't pristine, either. I don't know how it works. It felt like using any other magic, but it was also—necessary, otherwise my wish wouldn't have been fulfilled, if you were dead and Tokyo was destroyed anyway. I think. I'm just guessing, I don't know.

Kyubey, d'you know?

No, if anyone else has ever made a time travel wish I do not remember it.

It could be related to the way it works with regular rewinds. If I put a grief seed in my buckler, it doesn't stay there when I rewind, it's rewound, too. And if I used it before I rewind, it gets unused, and the darkness returns to my gem. So maybe this big rewind undid all of the power use of the entire month, but then cost some amount by itself?

That could be!

Does it work like that with short rewinds? If you do something power intensive and then go back to before you did that?

If I rewind to a given time, I will have the amount of darkness I had at that time plus an extra from the rewind itself plus an extra if I used my powers during the time I rewound but that extra is only a small fraction of the cost of the original power use. And rewinds stack.

Haru writes that down and then resumes attending to his lunch. Where is Yutaka even sitting...

He's sitting with a group that seems like it's mostly composed of people from the AV club. They seem to be having a friendly and somewhat animated chat.

Huh. He's... a good multitasker? Or he's just had that conversation three times now.

After school Haru shuffles laboriously across the ice out to Ren's car, and falls.

No he doesn't. Here's Yutaka appearing out of fucking nowhere to catch him, trying to look chill about it and almost succeeding.

"- yeep!"

He pulls Haru to his feet gently then takes half a step back and folds his arms behind his back. "Are you hurt?"

"- no, I'm fine -" Did you rewind that, did I fall and then -

—no! ...I stopped time and ran here. I'm not going to rewind, I don't want you to miss any memories. 

"Would you like help walking the rest of the way?"

"...sure."

So he offers Haru his arm and walks with him the rest of the way.

I am not going to miss the dyspraxia.

I'm not going to miss it either. I spent the entire day anxious that you might fall and hurt yourself again. ...sorry, I don't know if that's okay—

...how would that not be okay, I'm not in the business of declaring thoughtcrimes.

I mean the—I guess not.

The what?

The—like—that's not acting very normal. If I'm thinking about you all the time.

No one at this school knows you, I think you have some slack in what your... new normal... is.

Yeah. I've been using it. I don't know what a Yutaka who isn't a slut and isn't pursuing or dating Haru is like, so I'm making one up.

WHY is Haru into this. This is an objectively embarrassing thing to be into.

Okay he knows why it's because he has an ego the size of the fucking Sun. That's why. It's still embarrassing.

—sorry I know I'm a bit too much. I'll—try to dial it down, but I know I'll fail.

It's, uh, it's fine? I -

- do you need to go witch hunting or something or can we talk more this afternoon -

I—should go hunt a witch, my gem is pretty dark, but I can be done in ten minutes sidereal.

I'm not in so much of a hurry you should use extra magic to not keep me waiting, just - I want to hear more about everything I don't remember, you gave me a summary but normally I would also remember details.

Okay. If I don't rush it it'll still be half an hour at most, maybe an hour if the witch I killed tomorrow isn't around today and I need to find another one, but it's most magically efficient for me to spend most of a witch fight doing setup in stopped time and relatively little time letting the setup pay off, so.

Okay. You know where to find me.

He gets into Ren's car.

I do.

Yutaka bows and walks off.

Half an hour later sees Haru at home in his room, arguing with Kyubey.

"How do I have enough magical oomph to kill every malarial parasite in the world and not to kill one witch that has already offed me twice."

I don't understand enough about human feelings to answer that.

"Uuuuuuuugh."

His doorbell rings.

Is that you? You can come in.

He does, then, and stops at the door to Haru's bedroom and knocks on the doorframe.

"...I said you can come in!"

"Your bedroom isn't the same as your house," he says, but he does come in and then... stands around looking awkward.

"So, bad news, apparently I do not have the oomph necessary to kill the big witch."

He nods, not looking very surprised.

"You said it didn't work trying to work myself up about getting a different disease or something, right?"

"Yeah. You did manage to get a better reading on a couple of them but not by enough to actually make it wishable."

"Am I close," Haru asks Kyubey immediately.

No.

"Fuck."

"Would it, hypothetically speaking, work, if I were, fucking, mindcontrolled into -"

No.

"Well, I have mixed feelings about that," Haru mutters.

"...you okay over there?" Haru asks Yutaka.

"...I am slightly relieved that that doesn't work because I would have hated to do it to you and hated it even more to let someone else do it."

"Believe me, I didn't ask recreationally." Sigh. "Kyubey, can you clear out, we were gonna talk about what I oughta remember from previous Groundhog Days."

Kyubey hops off Haru's lap and sees itself out.

Haru takes a deep breath to collect himself a bit and looks expectantly at Yutaka.

Blink. "Uh..."

"...not sure where to start, or you don't know what Groundhog Day is?"