She looked at that body, motionless and silent on the floor. Her trembling eyes, swollen from tears, stayed fixed on it, searching for any hint of movement, any sign of breath. The smell of gunpowder still lingered in the room, mixing with the metallic scent of blood and smoke. The faint ringing in her ears from the gunshots made everything feel distant and unreal. She thought that body — that terrifying, cursed body — was finally dead. The air around her was thick, heavy, suffocating, as though the room itself was holding its breath.
She sat down, slowly collapsing onto the cold wooden floor. The chill of it seeped through her clothes, through her skin, into her bones. Her shoulders shook as sobs escaped her lips, uncontrollable and broken. She cried — she cried for everything she had lost, for the terror that had consumed her life, for the emptiness that surrounded her now. Tears ran down her cheeks and fell to the floor, darkening the wood where they landed. In that moment, she thought she would never have to face something like this again. That maybe, just maybe, the nightmare was finally over.
But then… the body moved.
It was subtle at first — a faint twitch of fingers, the slow shifting of a shoulder. Her eyes widened in horror. Her breath caught in her throat. The air seemed to freeze. Her trembling hands reached instinctively for the gun again, clutching it so tightly that her knuckles turned white. Her heartbeat pounded violently, echoing in her ears. The world seemed to tilt, her vision narrowing as if the darkness itself was closing in around her.
The body — the man — rose again.
Futaba's hands shook so violently that she almost dropped the gun. She tried to pull the trigger, again and again, but the sound that followed was not the sharp crack of a bullet — it was a hollow, hopeless click. The gun was empty. The metallic sound echoed through the room like cruel laughter, like fate mocking her helplessness. Her eyes darted around frantically, searching for something, anything that could save her, but there was nothing. Only the cold, endless silence between the heartbeats.
The mysterious man's eyes glowed faintly beneath the shadow that covered his face. His movements were slow, deliberate — as though every step he took carried a weight far older and darker than the world itself. He reached out and seized her wrist, his grip like ice, unyielding and cruel. His hand was cold — colder than death — and it sent a shock through her body. She tried to pull away, but he only drew her closer. The air around them seemed to tremble.
Then he spoke.
"Will you stay with me or not?"
His voice was low, distorted — a sound that felt both human and inhuman. It carried with it an emptiness so deep that her heart seemed to sink into it. Each word slid into her ears like poison, twisting her insides, making her tremble with disgust and fear. The question wasn't really a question — it was a demand, a curse, a chain waiting to lock around her soul.
She laughed — a laugh that was half madness, half despair. It was a sound that tore through the silence like a blade. Her tears still streamed down her face, but her eyes burned with fury, with hatred, with the final spark of defiance that refused to die even when everything else had been taken from her. Her lips parted, trembling but determined. Her voice came out raw and sharp.
"No."
The word hung in the air, heavy and absolute. It was her final rebellion, her last refusal against the darkness that had consumed her world.
Her fingers tightened around the cold metal of the gun. Her body shook — not with fear, but with resolve. The weight of everything — her sorrow, her loss, her exhaustion — pressed down on her. And then, before he could move, before his cursed shadow could reach her again, she lifted the gun.
She pointed it not at him — but at herself.
The sound that followed was deafening. A sharp explosion of light and sound filled the room. For a moment, she felt nothing. The world turned white — blinding, silent, endless. Pain bloomed in her chest, spreading outward like fire, and then it faded into numbness. The floor came up to meet her as she fell, her vision shaking, her breath shallow. Blood stained her hands, her clothes, the floor beneath her. Everything grew dim, blurred, distant.
Her consciousness began to fade. Her heartbeat slowed, each thump weaker than the last. She thought — she truly thought — that she was going to die. That this was the end. Her body felt weightless, her mind floating somewhere between the edge of life and death.
And yet… she opened her eyes.
The world around her was different. The air felt cleaner, brighter — unreal. She looked around in confusion, her head heavy, her mind blank. She couldn't remember how she got there. The room looked familiar, yet wrong. Her body felt strange, as though it wasn't her own. The memories of everything — the man, the umbrella, the blood — were gone, slipping away like mist under sunlight.
But something deep inside her whispered — this wasn't the first time.
There was a strange sense of familiarity, like she had stood here before, breathed this same air, felt this same fear. She didn't know why, but she felt it — a heavy déjà vu pressing down on her chest. Her body moved on its own, repeating actions she didn't understand. She tried to stop herself, but she couldn't. It was as though some unseen force was guiding her, pulling her through the motions of a story she could no longer control.
This — this was not an ending.
This was a loop.
Her eyes trembled as she looked around, the faint light of morning spilling through the window. Dust danced in the air, slow and endless. Her lips parted as she whispered nothing into the silence, her voice barely audible. Her heart pounded weakly — not from life, but from something that refused to end.
Time itself had trapped her.
The world reset, again and again.
And she — she was caught within it, unable to escape.
Her tears fell once more, silently this time, as she realized the truth:
Every death only brought her back to the beginning.
Every scream, every drop of blood, every desperate choice —
all of it only led her back to that first day.
The day it all began.
And the loop continued.
She could only control herself at the very moment when the mysterious man asked her,
"Will you stay with me?"
That voice — it still echoed inside her mind like a whisper that had never truly left. It was not just a sound she heard with her ears, but a vibration that shuddered deep inside her chest, as though it came from within her soul. It was cold and soft, yet heavy, like invisible hands pressing down upon her shoulders, forcing her to remember that she had no escape. Every time those words reached her, they rippled through her veins like black waves, spreading and filling her body with a numbing sense of dread.
And yet, every single time he asked, in every single loop that repeated endlessly, she gave the same answer — trembling, breathless, filled with terror — but still the same answer:
"No."
Even when her lips trembled, even when her voice cracked, she chose to resist. She refused to surrender. She rejected his offer, his demand, his presence. It didn't matter if death followed immediately afterward — it always did — because her will, fragile as it seemed, would not break. That one word, "no," became the final sound she ever made before her body collapsed, before her soul was dragged once again into the darkness.
Even if she didn't shoot herself, the man would always kill her.
The outcome never changed. It was a circle without beginning or end, a chain of fate wrapped around her neck, pulling her back into the same horror each time. She died again and again, in countless ways. Each time her life was taken, the pain remained. Each death blended into the next until she could no longer tell one from another. And yet, she remembered the agony. She remembered the fear. She remembered the hopelessness that followed.
She had repeated the loop millions of times.
There was no rest between them — no moment of peace, no light to hold on to. The memories of each life melted together into a haze of screams and shadows. The sound of her own crying merged with his laughter, creating an echo that filled the void she could never escape. She felt pain beyond human endurance — not only in her body, but in the deepest corner of her mind, where time itself had stopped.
Sometimes, the loop wasn't the same.
Sometimes, she would awaken in her room, sunlight pouring through the curtains, warm and soft, as if everything had returned to normal. The sound of birds chirping outside, the faint ticking of a clock — it was all so ordinary, so peaceful, that for a brief, trembling second, she believed the nightmare was over.
But when she turned her head and saw her parents smiling at her — the parents she thought she had lost — something inside her twisted. Their eyes looked wrong. There was a hollow stillness in their gaze, an emptiness that didn't belong to the living. Their smiles were perfect but lifeless, like masks worn by something pretending to understand love.
In some loops, her parents really did return.
They spoke to her, held her hand, told her everything would be fine. And then, in the next moment, they collapsed before her eyes. She screamed until her voice broke, until her throat burned. The sound shattered through the air like glass breaking apart. She could do nothing but watch as blood covered the floor again and again.
The world was filled with despair.
She ran. She fought. She begged for it to end. But every path she took curved back to the same place — to him. He would always be there, waiting in the shadows, his voice patient and unchanging.
"Will you stay with me?"
She had long lost count of how many times it had happened.
There were no numbers large enough to describe it. It had gone beyond anything a human mind could bear. Days, years, centuries — all melted into a blur of repetition. She no longer knew whether she was alive or dead. She only knew that pain never left her, and hope had long since decayed into dust.
She prepared to shoot herself again.
Her hands trembled violently as she lifted the gun. Her tears ran down her cheeks in silence, soaking her trembling lips. The metal of the gun felt cold, lifeless, and heavy — like holding a piece of her own grave. She drew in one deep breath, desperate and shaking, as if it might be her last ounce of courage. She closed her eyes.
But this time, the shot never came.
The trigger did not move. The sound of the gun never reached her ears.
Instead, she felt something cold and viscous wrapping around her body — not air, not shadow, but something alive. The darkness thickened around her like a slow tide, seeping into every gap in the air, filling the space between her heartbeats. It moved with purpose, surrounding her in silence until she could feel it pressing against her skin, sliding into her lungs, coiling around her soul.
In the blink of an eye, she was consumed.
He had swallowed her whole into the darkness.
Her body no longer obeyed her. Her breath was gone. The silence was so complete it roared in her ears. The darkness had weight — it crushed her bones, it squeezed her chest until it hurt, and yet… she no longer felt pain. Instead, there was only numbness. Her senses faded one by one — sound, sight, touch, warmth — each peeling away until nothing remained but awareness trapped in an endless black sea.
Now, she was inside his world.
A realm with no shape, no color, no sound. Everything was black — deeper than ink, endless as death. There was no up or down, no distance to measure. Every time she tried to look around, she saw only reflections of herself floating in the void — faces of her own despair staring back.
She didn't know how long she had been there.
Maybe a few minutes. Maybe a thousand years.
Time did not exist in this place. There was only stillness — and the faint sense that someone, something, was watching her from every direction at once.
Then, his voice came again.
It was softer this time, almost gentle. The kind of softness that could make anyone's skin crawl — the calm whisper of a storm before it breaks. It drifted through the darkness like a breath against her ear.
"Stay with me… forever."
Those words moved slowly, sinking into the empty space around her until they reached her heart. She wanted to scream, to run, to say "no" again — but her body wouldn't move. Her limbs felt heavy, her lips frozen. Even her thoughts began to blur, as if her will was melting into his.
She could no longer control herself.
Her body became still, her eyes empty. Slowly, her form dissolved into the darkness around her, her outline fading until there was nothing left but a faint shimmer, a ghost of who she once was.
And in that moment, she realized — she was no longer separate from him. She had become part of that world, part of him, trapped in eternity.
She didn't know whether it was an ending or another beginning.
All she knew was that escape was no longer possible. The word "forever," which once sounded like a promise, had now become a curse — a truth that chained her to him beyond life, beyond death, beyond time itself.
In that endless void, she closed her eyes.
The sound of her heartbeat faded into nothingness, swallowed by the silence.
And then, she was gone.
Gone — but not free.
The last flicker of light within her soul disappeared, leaving only the eternal whisper of the man who had claimed her.
"Stay with me… forever."
And she did.
Whether she wanted to or not, she stayed.
Forever.