[MA 15+ - Contains graphic depictions of violence, self-harm, suicide, and severe psychological distress]
The sensation of drowning without water—that's what consciousness felt like when it returned.
Mahitaro's eyes snapped open, pupils contracting against the morning light that streamed through familiar curtains. For three eternal seconds, his mind existed in a state of horrified suspension, unable to process the impossible reality confronting him.
Then his body remembered what his mind refused to accept.
The convulsions started in his throat, violent twists that forced his torso to curl inward. He rolled off the bed, colliding with the tatami floor with a wet thud. His mouth opened, and what emerged was bile, saliva grossly, and blood from where he'd bitten through his lips that should have been final.
The vomit pooled beneath his cheek, warm and acrid. He didn't move away from it. Couldn't. His body had stopped obeying the basic commands of survival, operating now on pure autonomic function while his consciousness screamed somewhere far behind his eyes.
His face pressed into the mess—mucus, stomach acid, the metallic taste of his own blood. The texture was obscene, visceral in a way that made his skin crawl even as he lay paralyzed within it. Somewhere in the logical centers of his brain that still functioned, he recognized this as shock. Profound, system-wide shock.
I died, the thought arrived with clinical precision. I felt the rope crush my life. I felt my lungs starving for oxygen. I felt my heart stop.
But his heart was beating now. Thundering, actually, a panicked rhythm that seemed to be trying to make up for lost time.
The sound that tore from his throat wasn't quite a scream. It was something more primitive—the noise a trapped animal makes when it realizes the trap has no release mechanism, that struggling only tightens the snare.
His hands moved without conscious direction, clawing at his throat. The skin there should have been raw, rope-burned, bruised purple-black. Instead, it was smooth. Unblemished. As if those final moments of suffocation had been erased from reality.
But not from memory. Never from memory.
"Why..." The word scraped out, barely audible. His vocal cords felt shredded despite their physical perfection. "Why... again?"
He pushed himself upright, his arms shaking with the effort. The room spun. Or maybe he was spinning. The distinction seemed meaningless. His back hit the wall, and he slid down it, knees drawing up to himself in a position that felt both protective and pathetic.
The sun continued its indifferent rise, painting his room in shades of gold that mocked the darkness consuming him from within. Birds sang outside. The neighbor's television murmured through the thin walls. The world insisting on its mundane continuity while his reality had fractured into something incomprehensible.
This was the second time. The second death. The second resurrection into a nightmare that wouldn't end.
The loop had teeth, and it was holding him in its jaws.
School was a waking hallucination.
Mahitaro moved through the halls like a ghost wearing his own skin, each step requiring conscious effort. His uniform felt wrong—too clean, too intact, smelling of detergent instead of despair. Students flowed around him in currents of normalcy, their conversations about homework and weekend plans and exams washing over him like white noise.
They don't know, he thought, watching their animated faces. They can't see that I'm already dead. That I've been dead. That death didn't want me.
In homeroom, the teacher's voice droned about upcoming exams. Mahitaro stared at his desk, at the wood grain patterns that seemed to shift when he wasn't looking directly at them. He'd carved his initials here once, in his original timeline—before the incident, before prison, before everything. They were gone now, erased by temporal reset. But he could still feel the ghost of that action, the pressure of the compass point against wood.
How many versions of himself had sat at this desk? How many would sit here again?
"Mahitaro."
The voice cut through his dissociation. He looked up to find Eruto Kaiju standing beside his desk, one hand braced on its surface, his expression caught between concern and frustration.
Eruto. His best friend. The kid who would die today if the pattern held.
Mahitaro's throat constricted. He tried to smile, to offer some semblance of normalcy, but his facial muscles wouldn't cooperate properly. What emerged was a twisted thing, more grimace than grin, the kind of expression that made people uncomfortable without quite knowing why.
"You look like hell," Eruto said bluntly, dropping into the seat beside him. "Seriously, Mahitaro. When's the last time you slept?"
I can't sleep, Mahitaro wanted to say. Because every time I close my eyes, I feel the rope. And when I open them, I'm back here, in this prison disguised as a second chance.
Instead: "Bad dreams. They're getting worse."
It wasn't entirely a lie. The boundary between waking and dreaming had become porous, reality bleeding into nightmare and back again until he couldn't trust what his senses reported.
Eruto's eyes—dark brown, almost black, but warm in a way Mahitaro had forgotten eyes could be—studied him with an intensity that made him want to look away. Eruto had always been able to read him. It was one of the things that had made their friendship real, substantial, before everything collapsed.
"You're lying," Eruto said quietly. "You always chew your lip when you're lying. Right side, about three bites in."
Mahitaro's hand flew to his mouth, touching the spot where his teeth had unconsciously worried the flesh. The gesture confirmed what Eruto already knew.
"I..." Words failed. What could he possibly say? I'm trapped in a temporal loop where someone close to me dies and I'm framed for murder, over and over, and today it might be you, and I don't know how to stop it?
"Look," Eruto leaned closer, voice dropping. "I don't know what's going on with you. But whatever it is, you don't have to carry it alone, okay? That's what friends are for."
The word "friends" landed like a physical blow. Mahitaro felt something crack inside his stomach—not his heart, which had already broken, but something deeper. Some foundational piece of his psyche that had been holding together through sheer inertia.
His eyes burned. He blinked rapidly, refusing to let tears form. Not here. Not in front of Eruto, who still believed in things like friendship and mutual support and futures that extended beyond the next twenty-four hours.
"I..." Mahitaro's voice came out hoarse. "I've been dealing with depression. It started recently. It's... it's bad."
The lie tasted like copper. Depression—as if that word could encompass this. As if clinical terminology could contain the screaming void that had replaced his soul.
Eruto's expression softened, shifted into something that hurt worse than anger or disgust. Compassion. Genuine, uncomplicated compassion.
"Then we'll deal with it," Eruto said simply. "Together. That's non-negotiable."
Gym class was torture of a different kind.
The gymnasium's polished floor reflected fluorescent lights in harsh glares that seemed designed to strip away any remaining comfort. Mahitaro went through the motions—stretches, warm-up laps, a half-hearted attempt at basketball drills—while keeping Eruto in his peripheral vision at all times.
If I watch him, his mind reasoned desperately, if I never let him out of my sight, maybe I can prevent it.
But he'd thought that before, hadn't he? In the first loop, he'd tried to change things, to outsmart fate. And fate had simply laughed and tightened the noose.
The other students moved around them in patterns that seemed choreographed by some malevolent intelligence. Every configuration, every grouping, felt like potential threat vectors. That child near the equipment room—could he be the killer? The quiet kid by the bleachers? The teacher who kept checking his watch?
Paranoia wasn't the right word for what Mahitaro felt. Paranoia implied irrationality. But his fear was earned, validated by experience. Someone in this building was going to murder Eruto. He just didn't know who.
"Earth to Mahitaro." Eruto waved a hand in front of his face. "Mahitaro, you zoned out again. Coach is calling for team selection."
They ended up on opposite teams—a small mercy that immediately felt like a curse. At least when they were together, Mahitaro could maintain the illusion of control. Separated by the width of the court, he felt exposed, vulnerable.
The game started. Sneakers squeaked against hardwood. The ball's rhythmic bounce became a metronome counting down to catastrophe. Mahitaro moved without thinking, his body operating on muscle memory while his mind spiraled through increasingly dark scenarios.
It'll happen after school, he decided. On the walk home. That's when it happened before—in the evening, when shadows grow long and witnesses disappear.
The whistle blew, signaling the end of class. Students dispersed toward the locker rooms, their chatter echoing off the high ceiling. Mahitaro waited for Eruto, positioning himself at the exit like a bodyguard.
"You're being weird today," Eruto observed as they walked. "Weirder than usual, I mean."
"Just tired," Mahitaro muttered.
Mahitaro searched quickly, hyper-aware of every other person in the space, cataloguing faces, searching for murderous intent in ordinary teenage expressions.
Nothing. Everyone looked normal. Bored. Eager to get home.
That was the horror of it—the killer would look like anyone. Would be anyone. The loop didn't discriminate in its cruelty.
The walk home began in deceptive tranquility.
Afternoon sun painted everything in watercolor golds and oranges, the kind of light photographers killed for. Cherry blossoms—late bloomers, clinging stubbornly to branches—drifted on the breeze like pink snow. It was obscenely beautiful, this world that kept spinning regardless of the suffering within it.
Mahitaro and Eruto took their usual route, the one that wound through the residential district before cutting across the overpass. In his original timeline—ages ago now—they'd walked this path hundreds of times, their conversation flowing easily between comfortable silences and animated debates about manga, soccer, their dreams for the future.
Now, Mahitaro walked in silence, his eyes constantly scanning, his body tensed for violence that could erupt from anywhere.
"You know what I think?" Eruto said suddenly. "I think you're carrying something heavy. Something you think you can't share. But that's stupid, Mahitaro. Whatever it is, it can't be worse than keeping it locked inside where it'll eat you alive."
You have no idea, Mahitaro thought. You have no idea how right you are, or how impossible it is to explain.
They reached the overpass. The sun was lower now, casting long shadows that turned the concrete into a stage lit for tragedy. Below, traffic hummed—a river of metal and exhaust, indifferent to the dramas playing out above.
Mahitaro's heartbeat accelerated. This was it. This was where—
Movement. A blur of motion from the corner of his eye.
Mahitaro spun, his body moving faster than thought, driven by the terror of premonition. A figure emerged from behind a utility box—dark clothing, face obscured, something glinting in their hand.
"ERUTO, MOVE!"
Everything slowed. Mahitaro saw the blade arcing toward Eruto's throat with crystalline clarity—every detail hyper-real, burned into his retinas. He lunged, throwing himself between his friend and the knife.
But he was too slow. Or fate was too fast. The blade found its target regardless, and this time Mahitaro was close enough to feel the spray.
Blood erupted from Eruto's throat in a pressurized arc, painting the evening air crimson. The arterial spray hit Mahitaro's face, his heart, warm and horrifyingly alive even as the life it represented drained away.
"No—NO—NONONO—" Mahitaro's voice shattered into fragments as he caught Eruto's falling body. His hands pressed against the wound, trying to stem the flood, but blood pulsed between his fingers with each weakening heartbeat. "Stay with me—please, Eruto, please—"
Eruto's eyes found his. Wide. Confused. Fading.
His mouth moved, forming words that died before they could become sound. Blood bubbled at his lips. His hand—slick with his own blood—reached up to touch Mahitaro's face, a gesture so tender it destroyed something fundamental in Mahitaro's psyche.
Then the light went out. That indefinable spark that made Eruto Eruto simply extinguished, leaving behind only cooling meat and shattered bone.
Mahitaro screamed. The sound tore from his lungs with such force that something in his throat ripped, his voice going hoarse mid-cry. He pressed Eruto's body to his shoulders, rocking, hugging, his blood-soaked hands leaving prints on everything they touched.
The world returned in fragments. Voices shouting. Running footsteps. A crowd gathering at a distance, phones raised, documenting horror for social media consumption.
"He killed him!"
The accusation came from somewhere in the crowd—anonymous, final.
"The blood—look at all the blood on him!"
"Someone call the police!"
"Murderer!"
Mahitaro looked down at himself. At the blood saturating his uniform, painting his hands, decorating his face. At Eruto's body cradled in his arms. At the knife lying nearby—placed there by the real killer, who'd vanished like smoke.
He'd seen this before. Was living it again. The pattern repeating with horrific precision.
"It wasn't me," he whispered, but his voice was gone, shredded by screaming. The words came out as a rasp that couldn't carry over the crowd's growing hostility.
Sirens wailed in the distance, growing closer. The crowd pressed in, a circle of accusatory faces, phones capturing every moment of his anguish for posterity.
Mahitaro looked down at Eruto's face—peaceful now, empty, gone—and felt the last threads of his sanity begin to unravel.
The police station was a blur of fluorescent white and steel gray. Questions Mahitaro couldn't answer because his voice was gone, destroyed by screaming. Evidence that condemned him—his bloody clothes, his fingerprints on the knife handle where he'd grabbed it in his panic, eyewitness testimony that placed him at the scene holding the victim.
No one had seen the actual killer. Of course they hadn't. That was how the loop worked—perfect crime, perfect frame, perfect damnation.
They kept him overnight in a holding cell that smelled of disinfectant and despair. Mahitaro sat on the metal bench, staring at his hands—still stained brown with dried blood despite the cursory washing they'd allowed him. Eruto's blood. His best friend's blood.
I failed him, the thought repeated on an endless loop. I knew it was coming and I still failed.
Morning brought his parents. Not to support him, but to sever the final ties.
His father's face was purple with rage and shame. His mother's expression held nothing but disgust. They stood on the other side of the glass, and the words that came through the phone were poisoned arrows.
"We have no son," his father said. "Whatever you are, whatever you've become—you're not ours."
His mother spat at the glass. The glob of saliva slid down slowly, leaving a trail. She didn't need to speak. Her contempt was eloquent.
They left. Didn't look back.
The trial was perfunctory. The evidence was overwhelming. Mahitaro—voice still hoarse, barely able to speak above a whisper—tried to explain, but how could he? "It's a time loop and someone is framing me repeatedly" was the testimony of madness.
Guilty.
He should have felt something—rage, despair, the urge to fight. Instead, there was only emptiness. A vast, howling void where his will to live used to be.
That night, back in his cell, Mahitaro stood on his bunk and tied his bedsheet to the bars of the window. The knot came easily now. He'd practiced twice before.
The drop was brief. The pressure immediate. And this time, as consciousness fled, he felt only relief.
Finally. Finally, it ends.
He woke screaming.
The sound that tore from his throat wasn't human. It was the noise of something breaking past repair, of sanity shattering against reality's indifference.
His bedroom. The tatami. The morning sun.
Again.
"NO!" He lunged from the bed, his hands finding the first object within reach—a ceramic lamp—and hurled it at the wall. It exploded in a shower of fragments that rained down like tiny knives. "NO NO NO NO—"
The desk went next, flipped with strength born from desperation. Books flew, papers scattered, pens skittered across the floor. He grabbed the chair and smashed it against the wall, wood splintering, his hands bleeding from splinters he didn't feel.
Glass. There was glass from the lamp. Mahitaro dropped to his knees, his hands closing around a shard. The edge bit into his palm, blood welling immediately.
If hanging doesn't work, his fractured mind reasoned, maybe this will. Maybe if I destroy myself completely, the loop won't be able to put me back together.
He pressed the glass to his wrist, the point dimpling skin. One quick motion and—
His door burst open. His parents stood there, his father's hand already raised.
The slap snapped his head sideways, stars exploding behind his eyes. His mother grabbed his wrist—the one holding the glass—and twisted until he cried out and dropped it.
"What is wrong with you?" his father roared. "Have you lost your mind?"
Yes, Mahitaro wanted to laugh. Yes, I've lost it. It's gone. Can't you see it's gone?
But what came out was just more screaming—wordless, animal, a sound that started in his gut and clawed its way up through his lungs. His body thrashed as they restrained him, both parents struggling to contain their son who'd become something feral, something beyond reason.
The screaming didn't stop. Couldn't stop. His throat tore, blood filling his mouth from damaged vocal cords, but still the sound continued until his mother slapped him hard enough to rattle his teeth.
"You're sick," she hissed. "You're sick and we're done trying to fix you."
The psychiatric facility was called "Serenity Gardens," a name so divorced from reality it would have been funny if Mahitaro had been capable of laughter.
The walls were painted in aggressive pastels—yellows and greens meant to be soothing but instead felt like being trapped inside a dying highlighter. Everything was soft, rounded edges, nothing that could be used for self-harm. Even the windows had bars disguised as decorative elements.
A prettier cage is still a cage, Mahitaro thought as they processed him, taking his belongings, reducing him to a patient number and a diagnosis: "Severe depressive episode with psychotic features."
They didn't understand. How could they? He'd tried to explain—once, in the beginning, to a psychiatrist with kind eyes and a gentle voice. But the words came out jumbled, incoherent, the words of someone deep in delusion.
"Time loops... someone framing me... would probably be different people each time..."
The doctor had nodded, made notes, adjusted his medication.
The medication dulled everything—emotions, thoughts, even physical sensations. Mahitaro moved through the facility's routines like a puppet, strings pulled by pharmaceutical intervention. Group therapy where other patients shared trauma he couldn't relate to. Art therapy where he sat staring at blank paper. Recreation time spent watching television that might as well have been showing static for all the meaning it held.
But the dulling couldn't protect him from what was coming. He felt it building, that sick certainty in his gut. The pattern was adapting, following him even here.
Her name was Najo Hina. She sat beside him during group therapy—thin to the point of fragility, a scarf wrapped around her head to hide the hair loss. Terminal cancer, she'd told him during one of their brief conversations. She had maybe six months.
She didn't get six months.
It happened in the garden—the actual garden, not the facility's name. A small courtyard where patients could take supervised fresh air. Mahitaro had been sitting on a bench, Hina beside him, when someone screamed.
He turned to see a staff member running toward them, and his blood went cold.
Hina slumped against his shoulder. For a moment, he thought she'd simply fallen asleep. Then he saw the blood spreading across her shirt, the small puncture wound over her heart.
"No..." The word came out broken. "Not again... please, not again..."
But it was already done. Hina's eyes fluttered—confusion, then fear, then nothing. Her body went slack against him, deadweight, another corpse in the collection the loop was building.
The staff member reached them, saw the blood, saw Mahitaro covered in it.
"What did you do?" The question came from another patient, a large figure with angry eyes who'd never liked Mahitaro.
"I didn't—I was just sitting here—"
But they found the makeshift weapon hidden in the bushes near the bench. Traced back to Mahitaro's room somehow, though he'd never seen it before.
The pattern had followed him. Would always follow him. There was no escape, not even in madness. And then the gun shot him through the head.
The loop would continue. People would die. Different people, random people, but always someone. And he would always be blamed. Would always be the monster the city needed him to be.
His stomach contracted. He rolled onto his side, dry heaving because there was nothing left to purge. Bile burned his throat, mixed with blood from damaged tissue. His body convulsed, trying to expel poison that existed only in his mind.
When the bile finally stopped, he lay in the puddle of his own spit and blood, his face pressed against the cold tatami mats. His eyes were open but seeing nothing. His mouth trembled, words forming without sound.
Tears came then—silent, hot, endless. They pooled beneath his cheek, mixing with the other fluids, until his face was a mask of grief and waste.
Outside, the sun set. Rose. Set again. Time passed, though Mahitaro had stopped tracking it. Days, maybe. Or hours. The distinction had ceased to matter.
When they finally came to check on him, they found him unresponsive. Breathing, pulse steady, but unreachable. His eyes tracked movement but registered nothing. Catatonia, the doctors would call it. A complete psychological shutdown.
I'm still alive, some small part of him observed from very far away. My body keeps going even though I'm gone. Even though I died three times already. Even though there's nothing left of who I was.
And through it all, that distant part of him waited. Waited for the loop to pull him under again. For death to come and resurrect him into another iteration of hell.
Because that was the truth he'd finally accepted: there was no escape. No solution. No happy ending waiting if he just tried hard enough or made the right choices. There was only the loop. The deaths. The accusations. The despair. Again and again and again. Forever.
TO BE CONTINUED...