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."