legit

wanna meet up?

Guess who's armed to his teeth, ready to fight some witches, and super duper gay?

Is it you? I tried it and I can hit stuff with the arrows, by the by, and met Yamanaka-san.

Ugh Yamanaka.

It's me! And that's awesome! Also I think you're wrong about this power not being good for teamwork.

I am open to being wrong about that! Go on?

Well, it's all about preparation, right? Set stuff up, then get it to all go at once, boom. You're an archer, there's nothing stopping you from shooting arrows in stopped time, and you could shoot one hell of a lot of arrows. Plus there's stuff like tying enemies up and tripping them and what have you, which we can do without them having time to react. And, if nothing else, there's just getting to the main show without having to sit through the ads before it.

...the ads.

Razor petals! Dumb flying squirrels! That weird frog! Did I tell you about the weird frog? It looked like a Pokémon, I tagged it for you and Yamanaka and she said I saved a guy's life, it was so surreal because it didn't feel like a frog could be that dangerous but then I didn't really get on a gut level how bad witches are back then and I am a little bit stupid.

What else can you tell me about what happened last time, it's a little like I'm missing memories.

Ah shit.

Man, I bet it would be, huh. Uh, I can try to remember but no promises I'll get every detail right or, like, the timeline correct. Is there anything in particular you wanna know?

Just the stuff about me, I don't know how much time we actually spent together or how memorable it was though.

Oh, you were memorable alright, I thought I'd been pretty obvious about it? Lessee...

So, like, we met yesterday, right, and I thought you were really cool and cute from how we chatted, and then there was that girl, Yamada Ichino, who outed you to me to tell me to stay away from you. Obviously that backfired because it meant I wasn't worried about you wanting to punch my teeth in if I asked you out, though, like, you didn't seem like the type? But you can't always tell on just a couple days' acquaintance, but you'd seemed to be receptive, so I was pretty sure? Anyway that was moot 'cause you got sent to the hospital right then and spent like a week away or something.

So then there's next week, right, and you came back to school on either Monday or Tuesday? I think it was Monday. And you looked super happy, and it was driving me up the wall because, I dunno, we weren't that close yet so it's not like you could tell me that you'd just gotten magic powers, right? But I was curious. Or I'm actually not sure if you'd already gotten the powers or if you were about to, but that was thenabouts. Anyway you were super cheerful, and you looked a lot less into me than I thought you'd looked before, and I was like, I think by the end of that day or the next I was totally certain you'd gotten a boyfriend in the hospital or something, or maybe someone had confessed, I don't know. And it was like, that's fine, right, I mean we'd only interacted a few days, but I got super hung up on it for some reason so I went to talk to Watanabe-san on the DL, I think I mentioned this part to you already, and she was like, no, I think if he'd gotten a boyfriend he'd have said even if the who was a secret, why, do you liiiiiiiike him and I was like, well, do I? I don't know, I'm just hung up on this for some crazy reason. So she suggested that I ask Ren and I was like I am not about to ask his mother that would be so embarrassing.

I dithered a while but eventually worked up the courage to be like, hey, so, do you have a boyfriend, and if not, do you wanna go out with me? And you looked—surprised, for some reason? Or something? I thought I'd made it pretty obvious that I was into you but maybe that was just in my head, I never really asked why you looked surprised. But you said yeah, so we went out. I took you to this adorable little restaurant—I know you don't wanna go out until we're out of the uncertainty month, and even if you don't want to go out ever I still wanna show you it because I really like it—and we had our date there. I don't even remember what we talked about, there was definitely a bit of oversharing about my tragic backstory in there because clearly I cannot shut up to save my life and it's not like it's a secret or anything, I just liked to not confirm rumours because it amused me for everyone to keep speculating and dancing around the topic, but we just kinda chatted a lot and we—vibed. I dunno, I just really liked chatting to you.

But then we didn't go out any more after that, I assume because you were busy being a cool badass hero. You didn't tell me, anyway, not until next week—I think it was next week? a few days later, anyway—when the witch showed up and, I think it got everyone in the classroom, but I don't know for sure, 'cause it got me bad enough that I just decided to skip class altogether and go jump off a bridge, literally. So I was right there, about to jump off a bridge, when this gorgeous golden vision shows up in front of me and I get so distracted by how pretty it is and then it ties me to one of the beams of the bridge so that I wouldn't kill myself and I only realise that that was you once you've killed the witch and I'm like wait what the fuck was that why did Haru look like that how was he roof hopping what's going on so I go back to school and there you are, looking normal, in our uniform, wearing your splint, and I'm like there is no way, come on, so I ask and that's when you do the telepathy thing at me and you explain what's going on, because turns out that the only reason I remembered everything so clearly is that I had magic potential, right.

...huh.

...did he fuck up already. He has no idea how he could've fucked up already. Nothing he said was particularly bad or weird! He's not gonna ask, though, because that'd be—no, wait, he can ask, that'd be a totally normal thing to do here actually.

—hm? Sorry, am I going too fast, or...?

No, not too fast, I just kind of wish I could ask my original timeline self some questions, I don't usually have to reconstruct my motives from secondhand reports.

...motives. What? Is he—Yutaka will not be able to guess.

I can try to answer from what I asked or you said or I guessed? Though that'll be a bit hard because after that day I, like, uh... kinda freak out a bit? Because, like, yeah, it's cool that you're a superhero but actually I just had a near-death experience and I am having a panic attack about it. And I'm, uh, you know, not the least self-centered person in the world, I'm working on it, but I'm not 100%, there. Like, you know, Kyūbey's like, well, you can make a wish and become a magical boy, too, and I—am not gonna lie, the prospect was not actually as viscerally cool to me as it was to you? Actually for a while I was wishing that magic weren't real because then I wouldn't have to decide on this, I didn't really want to be a magical boy, it sounded scary and stressful and like too much responsibility, but you said a thing that kind of made it work for me, which was that you got something you really, really wanted, the thing you felt most strongly about in the world, and all you had to do in exchange was kill some monsters and be a hero. Picturing it as kind of a—price to pay, for whatever I wanted most in the world—made it make sense. It got me to start thinking about it.

He keeps going, since Haru isn't interrupting him.

And I kinda get really in my head about it, I think I'm—kind of shit company then, honestly. I guess that's making some assumptions about what kind of company I am right now, but I digress. But—I don't ask you out again, Kyūbey's like always there and I just can't think of anything I could wish for. I don't have anything I want. Everything I think of, I clearly don't care enough about, and I'm like, man, Haru didn't spend years dithering about it, Haru knew what he wanted. And then the weather gets awful all of a sudden 'cause of the witch, school gets cancelled, there's announcements saying we shouldn't go out because it's dangerous and we should let the ambulances get to people, and you're out being a big damn hero, and then the witch finally arrives and that's the first time I see you in days and you die twenty seconds after that and I—

—my wish was that I wanted to do everything again, but right, this time. And what I was thinking at the time, specifically, was—I was pretty shitty to some people from my old school. And I couldn't save anyone. And a friend had invited me to go to France with her, and I'd never get to go to France. And I thought of you, and of how I was—not—great, either. It's, uh, I guess it's kind of lame and cringe but when I thought I was about to die and was thinking about all of the regrets I had one of them was that I was so stuck in my head I pushed away and never got to really spend time with the guy I was interested in.

How you were not great?

I don't know. Not really—like I said, I was in my head a lot. So I was not—out there. And—talking to you. Or much of anyone. I mentioned there was that garden party for fancy rich people on the Saturday before everything went to hell? I went to that party and I was kind of a dick to some people for no reason. (Actually the reason is that Yutaka has an inherently shitty personality, but that's details.) I don't—think I was a dick to you, at least not directly? But I was definitely not—doing whatever the equivalent would be of offering to walk you across the ice, once you no longer had dyspraxia. I wasn't being cool.