My heart still raced. I still saw her bloodied corpse as I looked down at my trembling hands. I tried to smile at the second chance I had to save her, but all I could do was blink and stare blankly at my hands. Before I fully realized it, sunlight was filling my room. I snapped out of my daze and got ready. Just as before, I grabbed my bag and rushed out to meet Chika.

  "Good morning Ka—" she started.

  In a sudden burst of emotion, I interrupted her with a hug not unlike what my mother and sister had received when I first came back. I knew she would tease me, but I didn’t care. She was alive again. I held her slender figure in my arms for only a short while, I pulled back to see her face still trying to process what had just happened. When she finally did, her face went beet red, and she cracked an embarrassed smile.

  "W-well, someone's feeling bold this morning," she stammered. "Did you miss me that much?"

  "Call it a nightmare," I smiled and pulled her back into another hug.

  I felt her face heat up the longer I embraced her. I heard an occasional whisper by passing housewives, but it hardly mattered to me. I could tell that it mattered to her, though. The longer I held her, the more she began to fidget trying to get free. After a minute, I finally snapped out of my trance and pulled back. Her face was the reddest I had ever seen, and she struggled to keep her smile as she looked at the ground clearly embarrassed.

  "S-so what's your game here?" She finally spoke up. "Did you f-finally give up trying to fight your feelings for me? B-because after this long, I think you should have to chase me a b-bit."

  "You're right," I smirked. "Maybe I should chase you to a chapel in a white dress."

  Did I really just say that? What the hell came over me?

  Her eyes looked like swirls as she tried to process the words that came out of my mouth. Out of a knee-jerk reaction to such an outlandish string of words, she swung her bag and hit my chest before turning around and quickly walking towards the school.

  I definitely deserved that... shit.

  The walk to school was silent once I finally caught up to her. We passed by the same scenes as the day before — the construction workers changing shifts, the angry shopkeeper half yelling into the phone, the birds singing. The school was coming to life when we arrived just as before. The classroom was untouched once again.

  "What the hell?" Kaori let out, her expression was more fear and shock than anger. "There's no way we can get this ready before opening."

  "Do you forget who you're friends with?" Denki smirked as he nudged me. "We'll handle it; you girls go get changed."

  Unlike before, Denki gave me a hand setting up. It took much longer since I wanted to save my ability for what was coming while he refused to activate his. After we got the lighting set up, Rito and a couple more students arrived and wasted no time joining in to help out. As the five of us got closer to the finish, Kaori and Chika returned.

  Kaori wore confidence as usual along with her mummified Cleopatra outfit. Chika, however, hid behind her in a gorgeous... white... dress.

  There's no way I can even get her attention now after that stunt I pulled this morning. Why did I let those words come out of my mouth?

  Enough students eventually showed up, and we were able to rotate out to get changed. Denki and I left the room with only the finishing touches to add. As we made our way to the locker room, we passed by two shady-looking upperclassmen, one handing on the shoulder of the other with his hands in his pockets. As we entered the locker room, I remembered their faces — the two from the day before.

  There was a pounding coming from the far locker. Denki ran over to the frantic voice coming from inside. The jerks not only had shoved him into the locker after stripping him down, they had locked it with a padlock ensuring that they were the only ones who could release him. Denki's face went dark as he lowered his head. He placed one hand on the locker and the other on the lock before ripping it off. The door flung open, and the almost feminine-looking boy fell out.

  "Thanks," he muttered as he fought back tears.

  "I-I'm sorry," Denki said as he struggled to hold back his anger.

  "It's okay," he said in a sort of defeated voice. "I'm just glad you guys came along long before they were planning on coming back."

  "Do you need help finding your things?" I asked.

  "No, if it's like the other times, they stashed them in one of their lockers. I already know the code."

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  To that, Denki's eyes flared like a furnace. His fists shook, and his knuckles turned white. I reached over and touched his shoulder. We exchanged long glances, and he seemed to calm down a bit. After a minute of tinkering, the boy got the locker open and grabbed his stuff. He got dressed in a fantasy outfit and opened the door to leave.

  "Thanks again," he said over his shoulder on the way out. His tears had dried, but his eyes were still puffy and red.

  Changing into our costumes went by quietly. Every so often, I looked at Denki who seemed to be a million miles away. We finally got back to the classroom just in time to take our places before a delayed opening. I caught Chika looking at me before she turned away as red as before. There was no telling what was going through her mind after what I had done.

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  The day dragged on. Chika looked at me a grand total of two times even when she had a lull between customers. Denki, on the other hand, got sent to the host table due to his constant spacing out and the issues that came with that. Through it all, Kaori kept a cheerful attitude, and even Rito didn't have any issues with his ability throughout the day.

  When the day ended, Chika all but vanished, and Denki disappeared as I glanced around the room for her. I struggled to choose which one to follow after; I froze time, only for a moment, to try to find them both. Chika was in the middle of walking into the girls' locker room, and Denki was seemingly wandering the halls completely lost. I chose to wait on Chika by the shoe lockers.

  She eventually came down the stairs. Her demeanor was skittish, and she kept a distance between the two of us. Scared for what would come, I tried to close that distance, but she made sure to stay away. We made it all of ten steps out of the school before I broke the silence.

  "Chika, I-I'm sorry," I blurted out. "I went too far this morning, and I made you super uncomfortable. I'm not asking for everything to instantly go back to how it was, but I am asking for your forgiveness." I bowed to show my sincerity.

  She was silent, probably from shock, but she had turned back to look at me at least. I raised my head a bit to see if I would get a response, and everything slowed down to slow motion again.

  A shadow appeared over her head which grew as the inbound thing grew closer. All at once, the student collided with my childhood friend's head and shoulders, taking her with his momentum. The two of them crashed and rolled about five meters backwards from where she stood as shards of glass flew after them. I rushed to check on her, but it was already too late. The impact had snapped her neck; she was dead before she hit the ground.

  Filled with rage, I grabbed the collar of the student whose body had killed her, but it was pointless for him too. His face had been completely caved in at multiple points. A single bloodied brown eye bulged out of the crater that was once his left eye socket. Blood barely flowed despite the level of trauma. His jaw hung off of his head like a door hinge on its last leg of life. An opaque yellow fluid seeped from what I could only infer used to be his nose. The sight filled me with disgust.

  The damage was hardly contained to his face. I began to feel more of where I had grabbed. His collar bones were shattered, and there was a gaping sunken hole in his chest — something had caved it in with monstrous force. As a shard of glass fell by my leg, I looked back to where I thought he had come from.

  The window was shattered outwards, and inside stood a blond student holding another in his grasp. The holder pulled back from punching through the other student's head, and our gazes met. Where the sky blue eyes of my best friend should have been sat the black orbs of the monster that had just murdered two students with his bare hands.

  He froze when he saw me, and it all made sense. Denki was searching for the bullies that had shoved that student into a locker earlier. When he found them, I was unable to pull him back, and he snapped. Without restraint, he all-too-easily shattered their bodies out of anger. The black and red faded away, and his blue eyes returned. An initial look of shock and confusion covered his face, but it was quickly drowned out by remorse and lament when he looked at the weight he bore in his hand.

  My vision went hazy, and my head pounded again. I staggered and crawled over to Chika's lifeless body desperately trying to hold her as the tears flowed from my own eyes again. Before I could wish for anything, I heard an alarm through the droning, and I launched myself up in my bed once again.

  "Are we having fun yet, Kazuma?" his voice came from the foot of my bed.

  I leaped up, my knife in my hand ready to meet him, but he simply stood across from me. The Mask of Comedy sat on his face with the same twisted smile that had haunted me since New Year's Eve. He unfolded his arms and pushed off of my wall, squaring off with me.

  "What the hell do you want, Damien?"

  "Only what's best for you, specifically an education. If we're going to continue working together, I need you to learn an important lesson: you can't save everyone."

  "Fuck you, I never agreed to work with you."

  "Oh, Kazuma. Regardless of if you agree or not, everything you do comes back to helping me."

  "Go to hell," my knuckles were white as I gripped my blade.

  "As stubborn as a child, I see. Fine," he put up his hands and cocked his head. "We'll do it the hard way, then." With those words, he was gone, and my alarm continued to sound.

  * * * * *

  I won't let him win, and I won't keep living today over and over.

  That day, I kept my interactions with Chika very mild; I guided her sleepy self to school, and I made sure she stayed by me on the walk home. The delivery truck rushed by us with a couple of meters to spare, and no one came flying from the sky.

  I froze time and made sure the boy was absent from the locker before helping Denki set up the room. He looked nice in his outfit, a sort of holy knight in a renaissance style class project. I made a note to go check on him once I got a break.

  The day went by without incident. Kaori's friend came by and begged her to say yes to the pageant. She reluctantly agreed on the condition that the cafe was doing well when auditions came around. Rito once again didn't have any incidents. Hiro had stayed home due to not feeling well just as before. I finally made it to the end of Tuesday and went to bed. When I awoke, it was finally Wednesday.