"Gone off the deep end and talking to yourself already?"

Yutaka puts his cigarette out, hops off the railing, walks over to Toshiki and hugs him.

Toshiki freezes in place. "What. Are you doing."

"I'm hugging my childhood friend I haven't talked to in over a month." He looks up. "Huh, you were faster than I expected," he says, releasing Toshiki from the hug and hugging Akira.

Now it's Akira's turn to freeze. "Is he drunk?" he asks his twin.

"No idea."

"Is it that weird for you to hug them?"

"Didn't I tell you?" he says, releasing the hug. "I hadn't given anyone a proper hug in months, not until I hugged you."

"Your 'drunk' theory's getting traction, or maybe high."

"What's up with your verb tenses?"

Yutaka grins and hops back onto the railing.

"—hey, Iwasaki, you should not sit there while drunk."

"Should I appear? Is that how we're playing this?"

"Part of me wants to be a bit gremlinous and see how long it'll take for them* to catch on."

* Japanese allows him to say this sentence without actually using pronouns so he could've been interpreted as saying "you" rather than "them", here.

"Okay, seriously, Yutaka, you're kind of freaking me out."

"But since I've become a better person I don't think this would be a good idea, actually. I'd feel super guilty, and I just... really like the two of them* and want the best for them and this is going to be difficult enough without making light of their* feelings. You got any good ideas for how to broach the subject?"

"You what."

"You what."

"You are very very obviously the social skills spec guy of the two of us, all I've got is 'so I'm in a time loop'."

"Yeah," he sighs. "Okay. Um. Toshiki, Akira, could you guys grab those chairs over there? This'll get really surreal for the both of you and might take a minute, there's no reason for you guys to stand there."

"Iwasaki what the fuck did you smoke."

Akira pulls up two chairs and takes one.

Toshiki looks at the vacant one then tsks and takes it.

"I should probably have had a separate conversation with each of you beforehand like I did last time around, it kind of sucked but it at least gave you guys space to breathe and let your emotions out. Sorry, I didn't really think this through. Hopefully this'll be the last time."

"You two are probably my best friends. We've known each other since we were kids, I'm like totally certain if I or one of you had been a girl our parents would've wanted to set us up—"