...hug goodbye.

He hugs back and his face even looks normal while he does it. "I'll see you at school, then." He pulls back from the hug and bows to Ren. "Sorry I couldn't stay much longer. Have a lovely day, Swan-san." And he's off.

And Haru... finishes his toast, and goes to school.

They don't have their first class together, though Haru might catch a glimpse of Iwasaki in the hallway talking to a couple of other people, looking like a completely ordinary student. They do share their second class of the day, though, and the teacher has him introduce himself to the class. "My name is Iwasaki Yutaka," he says, smiling and bowing. "I'm a new transfer student. I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone; it's nice to meet you all!"

He looks around at places to sit and seems to decide to go for the spot behind Haru's. "Hello!" he says, bowing. "Is it okay if I sit behind you?"

"...yes, that's fine."

"Thank you!" He takes his seat, dropping his bag next to it, and grabs a notebook to start "taking notes".

That's how nondepressed you look when you're acting normal?

I can't promise I'm not overacting but I can't promise I'm not underacting, either. I'm at least not obviously trying to bias myself one way or the other.

Gotcha.

Iwasaki sits back and pretends to pay attention to whatever the teacher's saying.

Haru thinks of questions about magic, occasionally, and sometimes includes Yutaka when he's asking them especially if Kyubey doesn't know something.

Yutaka answers them to the best of his ability and literally nothing else. He does not initiate any conversations nor ask any of his own questions; he is purely reactive.

...he must have been REALLY different before the whole Haru dying for the third time thing.

Haru waits till lunch, to ask - It didn't fuck you up this bad the second time I died, did it?

...the second time was... I figured out how to solo the witch, rewound to before you died, cried on you for fifteen minutes, then placed you out of harm's way and killed it. Then I physically held onto you for the rest of the evening until the next morning. ...I guess there was a pause while we were microwaving food. But it was only a few minutes you spent dead, and—

This time you said it was like an hour?

I—didn't have enough magic to rewind anymore, when you died, but I noticed a different magic thing I could do, and I didn't know what it did, but anything would've been better than you being dead. It was an hour subjective between that and—when we talked. And I—already knew you wouldn't remember me, and that I was going to tell you everything so you wouldn't be with me. It was—pretty much the same as you breaking up with me, plus-or-minus some anguish and despair. But you're alive, and that's the most important thing.

...do you get a refill on magic when you reappear this morning?

Seems like it. But not a full one. It wasn't as bad as I was at the end of the loop, but it wasn't pristine, either. I don't know how it works. It felt like using any other magic, but it was also—necessary, otherwise my wish wouldn't have been fulfilled, if you were dead and Tokyo was destroyed anyway. I think. I'm just guessing, I don't know.

Kyubey, d'you know?

No, if anyone else has ever made a time travel wish I do not remember it.

It could be related to the way it works with regular rewinds. If I put a grief seed in my buckler, it doesn't stay there when I rewind, it's rewound, too. And if I used it before I rewind, it gets unused, and the darkness returns to my gem. So maybe this big rewind undid all of the power use of the entire month, but then cost some amount by itself?

That could be!

Does it work like that with short rewinds? If you do something power intensive and then go back to before you did that?

If I rewind to a given time, I will have the amount of darkness I had at that time plus an extra from the rewind itself plus an extra if I used my powers during the time I rewound but that extra is only a small fraction of the cost of the original power use. And rewinds stack.