[MA 18+ - Contains graphic violence, severe psychological trauma, gore horror, and suicidal ideation]
Consciousness returned like a drowning person breaking the surface—violent, choking, wrong.
Mahitaro's eyes snapped open to a sky too blue, clouds too white, air too clean. His lungs expanded with a gasp that felt like swallowing glass, and immediately his body rejected everything. He rolled onto his side, small hands—too small—clutching at grass that was too green, too real, too impossibly present.
The vomit came in waves. Bile and acid and something darker. His stomach convulsed with such violence that his ribs screamed, his spine arching as he expelled everything—not just the contents of his bile, but the memory of the red haired kids blade opening his throat in that other timeline, the sensation of arterial spray painting the concrete, the way his vision had tunneled into a pinpoint of red before darkness swallowed him whole.
He heaved until there was nothing left, until his throat was raw and his mouth tasted like a wound. When he finally lifted his head, the world tilted.
He was in a park. Not the park—not his park from memories he could barely access—but a park. Swings creaked on rusty chains. A slide reflected afternoon sunlight in painful glares. Sandbox. Jungle gym. Normal. Too normal. The kind of normal that existed before despair had teeth.
And sitting on the bench beside where he'd collapsed, watching him with eyes that held too much knowledge for their age—rded hair. Impossible, flame-bright red hair that caught the sunlight like arterial spray.
Mahitaro's body locked. Every muscle seized. His child's heart hammered against ribs that felt too fragile to contain it, and for several eternal seconds, he couldn't process what he was seeing. Couldn't reconcile the wrongness of it.
Gekidō, his child mind suddenly processed the name. But he didn't want to understand why.
Not the teenage Gekidō who'd tortured him through loops. Not the demon consciousness wearing a human body. But child Gekidō—eight, maybe nine years old, small and thin and vulnerable in a way that made Mahitaro's brain fracture trying to understand.
The child tilted his head, and his smile was soft. Genuinely soft. Warm in a way that didn't match anything Mahitaro remembered. "You okay?" The voice was softer—stripped of the cruel edge Mahitaro had learned to brace himself against.
"You just… collapsed," they continued quietly. "For a second I thought you were sick or something. I panicked." A pause, hesitant. "But then I remembered who you are, Mahitaro. And I figured… I didn't really have the right to step in."
Another pause. Smaller this time. "I'm sorry. If that hurt you. I didn't mean for it to."
Mahitaro's mouth opened. No sound emerged. His throat was still coated in bile and blood and the ghost-sensation of a blade that had killed him in another life. His hands trembled against the grass, nails digging into dirt, trying to anchor himself to something solid while reality bent around him like heated plastic.
This wasn't right. This was wrong. Gekidō shouldn't look like this—young and concerned and almost... innocent. The child who'd smiled while Mahitaro's friends died. The architect of his suffering. The red-haired devil who'd orchestrated every loop, every death, every moment of despair calculated to break him.
But those eyes. Those too-knowing eyes that didn't match the child's face. They watched Mahitaro with an intensity that made his skin crawl, like being studied under a microscope. Measuring. Waiting.
He knows, Mahitaro's fractured mind supplied. He knows exactly what he's doing. This is another game. Another layer of torture. "Hey, seriously, are you—" Gekidō started to lean forward, hand extending.
Mahitaro lunged.
His small body moved on pure instinct, rage and terror fused into motion faster than thought. His hands found Gekidō's shirt, twisted into the fabric, and he shoved with everything he had. The red-haired kid toppled backward off the bench with a surprised yelp, hitting the ground hard.
"SHUT UP!" Mahitaro's voice tore from his raw throat, primal, resonating with the weight of someone much older. "Don't—don't look at me like that! Don't pretend! I know you! I know what you are!"
His fists were already swinging, small and weak and pathetic but driven by accumulated lifetimes of suffering. They connected with Gekidō's face—once, twice, ineffectual child's punches that barely had the force to bruise. But Mahitaro didn't care. He hit again, tears streaming, his vision blurring with salt and rage.
"You killed them! You killed everyone! Eruto—Barisu—you made me watch them die over and over and you smiled—!"
Gekidō's eyes went wide. Not with cruelty or satisfaction, but with genuine shock and something that looked horribly like hurt. His hands came up—not to strike back, but to defend, covering his face as Mahitaro's fists continued their assault.
"I don't—what are you—Mahitaro, stop!" The voice broke, actual tears forming. "Why are you hitting me?! What did I do?!"
The words pierced through Mahitaro's rage like cold water. He froze, fist raised, his whole body shaking. Because the confusion in Gekidō's voice was real. The hurt in those too-knowing eyes was genuine. This wasn't the mask he'd seen before—the cruel smile, the calculated cruelty.
This was a person. An actual person who didn't understand why his friend was attacking him.
Mahitaro's breath came in ragged gasps. His raised fist trembled, then slowly lowered. The rage drained out of him like water through a cracked vessel, leaving only exhaustion and confusion in its wake.
What is this? What timeline is this? Why doesn't he remember? Or is he... is he acting again? Is this performance too?
Footsteps on pavement made both boys freeze. Adult footsteps, urgent and worried.
"Mahitaro! What on earth—?"
The voice cut through Mahitaro like a blade made of memory and impossible recognition. He turned, slowly, his neck creaking like rusted metal, and saw—
His mother. But not his mother. Not the hollowed-out alcoholic with contempt in her eyes and poison on her tongue. This woman was younger, her hair darker, her face less lined. She wore a sundress that Mahitaro had never seen before, and her eyes held something that made his chest constrict painfully: concern.
Genuine, maternal concern.
Behind her, jogging to catch up, was his father—also younger, also different, the perpetual disappointment in his expression softened into something approaching actual worry.
"What happened?" His mother knelt beside them, hands fluttering between Mahitaro and the still-prone Gekidō. "Did you two have a fight?"
Mahitaro couldn't speak. His throat had closed entirely, his tongue thick and useless. His mind was fracturing, trying to process too many impossibilities at once. Parents who cared. Gekidō who didn't remember. A timeline that shouldn't exist.
Gekidō pushed himself up, rubbing his cheek where Mahitaro's fist had connected. His eyes were wet, lips trembling, and when he spoke his voice was small: "I... I don't know what I did. We were just sitting, and then he got sick and then he..." The boy's voice broke. "I just wanted to make sure he was okay."
The hurt in those words was a knife between Mahitaro's ribs. Because if this was performance, it was perfect. If this was manipulation, it was flawless. And if it was real—
Then I just attacked my childhood friend for crimes he hasn't committed yet. Crimes he doesn't even remember.
His mother's hands cupped his face, forcing him to meet her eyes. "Mahitaro, sweetheart, what's wrong? Why would you hit Gekidō? You two have been inseparable since—"
"Since what?" The words fell from Mahitaro's lips before he could stop them, desperate and broken. "Since when? I don't—I can't—"
He couldn't finish. Because the memories were there, suddenly, bleeding through like watercolors in rain. Not his memories—or were they? Flashes of red hair and laughter. A smaller version of himself holding hands with this boy, walking to school. Sharing lunches. Drawing pictures together. The weight of friendship, of connection, of something warm and pure that his adult consciousness couldn't reconcile with the torture he'd endured.
False memories. Implanted. This is another layer of the loop. It has to be.
But they felt real. They felt more real than the isolation he remembered, more substantial than the loneliness that had defined his original childhood. And that was the horror—that this twisted past felt better than the truth.
"Come on," his father said gently, helping both boys to their feet. "Let's get you home. I think you might be coming down with something. You're burning up."
Mahitaro let himself be guided, his legs moving on autopilot while his mind spiraled into chaos. Gekidō walked beside them, casting worried glances that Mahitaro couldn't meet. Every time their eyes threatened to connect, Mahitaro looked away, his stomach churning with confusion and residual rage and something worse—doubt.
What if I'm wrong? What if this is real and I just hurt someone innocent? What if the loops broke my mind so thoroughly that I can't tell reality from torture anymore?
They reached a house Mahitaro recognized and didn't recognize in equal measure. The structure was familiar—same street, same neighborhood—but it was different. Maintained. Warm. Light spilled from windows that should have been dark. The garden was tended, not overgrown with neglect.
And standing in the doorway, waiting with a smile that made Mahitaro's world stop—
"Welcome home, little brother."
Tall. Older. Strong. Features that Mahitaro knew intimately from loops of watching them contort in suicide's final moments. Hair dark and messy, eyes warm, posture relaxed and open in a way Mahitaro had never seen before.
Yasuke.
Not the Yasuke crushed by parental expectations. Not the Yasuke who'd stabbed his teacher in desperation. Not the corpse that had haunted Mahitaro through countless resets.
Yasuke alive. Yasuke whole. Yasuke happy.
The name fell from Mahitaro's lips in a whisper that was half prayer, half accusation: "...Brother?"
Yasuke's smile widened, and he ruffled Mahitaro's hair with easy affection. "Of course. Don't tell me you've forgotten me already." The teasing tone held genuine warmth. "Come on, dinner's almost ready. You too, Gekidō—you're staying, right? Your usual spot's set."
Usual spot. Like this is routine. Like Gekidō eats here regularly. Like we're... family.
Mahitaro felt his knees give out. His father caught him, concern deepening on his face. "Okay, definitely sick. Let's get you lying down."
They guided him inside, through a living room that smelled like home cooking instead of stale alcohol, past walls decorated with family photos that Mahitaro had never seen—pictures of three boys, arms slung around each other's shoulders, grinning at the camera. Himself, Yasuke, and Gekidō. Inseparable. The trio the whole neighborhood knew.
This is a lie. This has to be a lie. I would remember this. I would remember having a brother, having a friend, having a family that smiled.
But the memories kept bleeding through, each one sharp and detailed and wrong. Birthday parties. School festivals. Gekidō sleeping over, the three of them building blanket forts and telling stories until dawn. Yasuke teaching them both to ride bikes. His mother making extra lunches because she knew Gekidō's family situation was "complicated."
No. No, this didn't happen. My childhood was empty. I was alone. I—
They laid him on his bed—his bed, in his room, decorated with posters and books and evidence of a life lived with love. Gekidō hovered in the doorway, still looking hurt and confused, while Yasuke pressed a hand to Mahitaro's forehead.
"You're really burning up. Want me to stay until you fall asleep?"
The question was so gentle, so genuinely caring, that Mahitaro felt something crack inside his chest. A dam he'd built from thirty-seven years of isolation and suffering, crumbling under the weight of impossible kindness.
"Why..." His voice came out hoarse, damaged. "Why can't I remember you?"
Yasuke's expression shifted to concern. "What do you mean? Mahitaro, you're scaring me. Should we call a doctor?"
"I should remember." Tears burned in Mahitaro's eyes, hot and unwelcome. "If you're my brother—if Gekidō's my friend—I should remember. But there's nothing. Just... just holes where you should be. Just emptiness."
From the doorway, Gekidō spoke softly: "Maybe the fever's making him confused? Delusional?"
Or maybe the loops broke me so thoroughly that I erased my own past. Maybe I'm the monster. Maybe I destroyed my own memories to cope with trauma and now I can't tell what's real anymore.
The thought was worse than any torture Gekidō had inflicted. Because if it was true—if this warmth, this love, this family had existed and Mahitaro had somehow forgotten it—then everything he'd suffered, every death he'd witnessed, every moment of despair had been built on a foundation of self-inflicted amnesia.
I could have had this. I could have had them. And I lost it. Or worse—I threw it away without even knowing.
His mother appeared with water and medication, her touch gentle as she helped him drink. His father stood in the hallway, discussing calling the doctor in hushed tones. Gekidō sat on the floor beside the bed, no longer hurt but worried, watching Mahitaro with those too-knowing eyes that now held only concern.
And Yasuke stayed close, one hand resting on Mahitaro's shoulder, grounding him to this impossible reality with warmth that felt like salvation and damnation in equal measure.
"It's okay," Yasuke whispered. "Whatever's happening, we'll figure it out. You're not alone, little brother. You've never been alone."
The words broke something fundamental in Mahitaro's soul. He turned his face into the pillow and sobbed—deep, wrenching sounds that came from somewhere beyond his eight-year-old body, echoing with the accumulated grief of someone who'd died countless times and never found peace.
Because the cruelest torture wasn't the loops. It wasn't the deaths or the betrayals or the endless suffering.
It was this: the possibility that he'd had everything he'd ever wanted, and somehow lost it without even knowing what he'd lost.
Yasuke held him while he cried, whispering reassurances that felt like knives. Gekidō's hand found his, small fingers interlacing with his own, offering comfort that made Mahitaro want to scream.
And as consciousness began to blur at the edges, fever or exhaustion or the loop's mercy pulling him toward sleep, Mahitaro's fractured mind whispered one final, terrible question:
What if I'm not the victim? What if I never was? What if I'm just a broken thing that destroyed its own happiness and called it fate?
The answer, if it existed, dissolved into darkness as sleep claimed him. But the question remained, burning in the space behind his eyes, waiting for him to wake and face the truth:
That sometimes the cruelest prison is the one you build from your own forgotten memories, and the only way to escape is to remember what you spent lifetimes trying to forget.
TO BE CONTINUED...