Cooperation
"What the... what the hell... how did she survive..."
A girl with red twin tails bit at her nails, wound tight with anxiety. In her field of vision there was only one sight: Lebetri and Sapi, hand in hand.
"They told me all I had to do was kill that bitch Lebetri... If I can't, then I'm finished too..."
Shuddering from head to toe, she crushed even the last nails she had left. If she failed to kill Lebetri, her own life was already forfeit.
For her, the monster's sudden ambush had been a stroke of luck. If that monster died at Lebetri's hands, she would get to live. But the entrance of the blond Sapi had demolished even that possibility.
Which left her no choice but to fight. And now, with not a single nail remaining, she began gnawing at her own fingertips.
"If I fail, I die..... I die if I fail, I said....."
And yet her eyes were not the eyes of someone paralyzed by terror. They were a predator's eyes — so starved they would devour even their owner's fingers.
I took Sapi's hand.
To be honest, I didn't trust this man called Sapi one bit. I'd only grabbed on because it felt like our synergy was good — nothing more than that.
If that man Sapi ever betrayed me, I would kill him. Even if it meant dying and regressing to do it.
—Yank.
The man squeezed my hand tight and pulled. My body toppled toward him like a leaf whirling on the wind.
"What the hell are you doing, you lunatic?!"
Startled and furious at the sudden pull, I shouted at him — and then,
—Whoosh.
A spear from who knows where came stabbing viciously at this exact spot. If I hadn't been yanked toward Sapi, my head would have been pierced through.
The instant I grasped the situation, I dropped into a combat stance and traced the angle of the lodged spear back toward its origin.
The rooftop of a collapsed building. A red-haired girl with twin tails stood there clutching a spear, shaking. Her mouth was smeared thick with blood.
"I can't fail......"
In the next instant, the girl hurled herself off the rooftop—
—CRASH!!
With an impact hard enough to bring the whole roof down, she landed directly in front of me. A leap no human being should have been capable of.
I drew my light saber on the spot and lunged for her throat. The girl slipped past the strike and broke away in the other direction.
"Where the hell is she going?"
She had run to where her spear was embedded. She wrenched it free and readied herself for battle. But I wasn't worried.
Because I had a comrade.
"Huh? Sapi?"
Sapi was gone. And while I stood there, thrown—
the girl came charging, spear out to skewer my heart. Nothing more than a minimal twist of my body was enough to slip the attack.
—Ding.
An unearthly bell chimed from somewhere.
"No... please, just get hit!!!"
The girl wailed — grotesquely, endlessly — clutching her spear and sobbing her heart out. And even through the sobs she kept strength coiled in her legs, ready to spring in any direction at any moment.
"AAAHH!! Get hiiit!!!"
Her twin tails whipped through the air as she came, and I could see it plain as day — the spear going for my heart again, exactly as before. Once more I turned my body and dodged, light as a feather.
—Ding.
The bell rang again.
'She's thrown the same attack at me twice now?'
The question crossed my mind—
"Waaah, please!!!"
—and another spear thrust came flying in, fast. I shoved the question down into the depths of my mind and gave everything to evasion alone. Again I turned my body, and the attack slid past.
—Ding.
"Waaah."
The girl seized her own twin tails, tears pouring down.
"Aren't you someone that bastard hired?"
"Waaah, I don't know who that bastard is, but yeeees, I was hired."
If that bastard had hired her, then she had to be a strong one — that much was certain. Yet beyond that monstrous leap, nothing about her had felt strong. Her attack pattern was far too simple.
And still the girl came running with her spear raised. This time, at my legs.
Probably because all I ever did was twist out of the way. She'd worked out that a strike at the legs was something a body-turn alone couldn't evade. But this much was easy... I was already coiled to move fast, the leg shifting to carry me clear—
"Ding."
The bell chimed — out of the girl's own mouth. The instant I heard it, instinct took over.
My hips turned first. No. My body moved in exactly the same pattern as every time before.
And with my body mid-turn, there was no dodging the thrust screaming in at my legs. No way at all.
—BANG!!
"Damn it, Lebetri... you're underwhelming, I'll admit, but whatever... I came to save you."
Sapi appeared out of nowhere, firing to knock the spear off its trajectory.
"Waaah, that's so unfair!!"
Tears streaming, the girl hugged her spear to her chest, sobbing like a child suffering the greatest injustice in the world. And yet her feet never stopped. Not once.
For all her crying, her footwork was calm.
One step. Another. Measuring the distance.
After a moment — as if he'd pieced something together — Sapi spoke to me.
"Lebetri, don't fight or dodge the same way."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
I glared at him, brow furrowed.
"Trust me."
At that moment, the girl wailed again.
"Please, just diiiiiie!!!"
—BOOM!!
The ground ruptured, and she closed the distance in a heartbeat. This time the spear tip came flying for my side.
I tried to dodge, just as Sapi had told me—
—Ding.
The bell chimed, and my body turned.
"?!"
—SHUNK!!!
The point tore through my side, and my insides came pouring out like a waterfall. My vision fogged over, dim and gray.
As a regressor, I knew this sensation of dying far too well. Warmth spread through my body even as it went cold.
I had regressed to the moment I took Sapi's hand.
I'd set the return point here because making that man into a comrade seemed like it would be difficult — and it looked like that choice had paid off.
Looking straight at Sapi, I said,
"West."
"Hm?"
"Can you snipe the person on top of that building?"
He looked briefly wrong-footed — then silently settled into a marksman's stance toward the direction I'd named. And then—
—BANG!!
The bullet punched through the membrane of air and streaked toward the building.
"Did it land?"
"Yeah. Clean hit."
"Then I'll go and be right back. Cover me, just in case."
"Ha... you exceed expectations."
With those words as my send-off, I leaped toward the building. And there she was —
on the verge of tears, clutching her own twin tails and trembling pitifully. Blood ran down her shoulder. And beside her, the spear.
Without a doubt, the girl who had killed me last loop. I didn't know exactly what her ability was. But there was no need to.
"Sniff, sniff... um... hey... could you treat this for me..."
If I just killed her, this loop would become a comfortable one.
I gave no answer. I simply raised the light saber. Only then did the girl's eyes fly wide open.
"Huh?"
—Shff.
The girl's severed head rolled across the concrete. Her eyes were still crying. Her body convulsed a few times, then went still. I stood there for a moment, staring down at the corpse.
'Feels like an ability tied to that bell sound... Did Sapi figure out what it was last loop? Tch. Not like I can ask him again now.'
But it didn't matter. A regressor has no obligation to understand every enemy. Anything annoying can simply be cut down.
"Ugh, exhausting..."
I thought back for a moment.
The first time, the dying itself had terrified me. The second time, I was lost. The third time, I was furious.
But die and return enough times, and now—
"Remembering is more of a chore than the dying ever was....."
I bit my lip and said it quietly.
"Jim...... whatever you did to us — I will make you pay for it, one way or another."
I simply stared at the building Lebetri had leaped toward. I fished a cigarette from my coat and set it between my lips.
—Fwoosh.
For a brief moment, the flame pushed back the darkness called loneliness. I drew the smoke in slow, then exhaled it toward the sky, as though venting everything that had settled like sediment inside me.
"Hooooo..."
The smoke scattered on the wind. The future that, mere moments ago, had undeniably existed — it had vanished the same way.
Watching it drift away, I turned the whole thing over in my head. The person on that rooftop had been the future in which they attacked Lebetri. In other words — someone lying in ambush, waiting to strike her.
And in the future I'd seen, Lebetri did get ambushed. She dodged the attack, of course...
Then came the same-pattern attacks, over and over, until her guard slipped — and the woman's ability activated. Lebetri's leg was pierced, her mobility stripped away. After that, the thrust through her side, her insides spilling out. Death.
Which is why, had things gone to plan, I would have stepped in before that leg was pierced — blocked the attack myself, and used the moment to hand her a hint about the woman's ability.
Perform a certain action, and the tiny bell inside that girl's mouth chimes. Each time the action repeats, the bell rings with it, again and again — until, at last, the victim carries out the action at the mere sound of the bell. Even without meaning to. Even wanting to stop.
"Lebetri, don't fight or dodge the same way."
That was the line I'd meant to use as my hint. But Lebetri had known before I said a word.
"The building to the west, up on the roof."
She had said it without a single instant of hesitation. As if... she knew everything already.
Gulp...
Was it coincidence? No. A hunch, then? That was the likeliest explanation — and yet it wasn't that, either.
It was certainty. The same kind I carry when I look into the future... no...
Even a man who has seen the future could never speak with that kind of finality. Unless it is fate itself, the future bends at the smallest variable. That is why I move only after every variable has been eliminated — and she had leaped into that building without even stopping to confirm whether my bullet had struck. That is not prediction.
"She... knew..."
She had not seen the future. She had changed fate.
'She twisted destiny itself.'
No words suited her better.
"Lebetri... you are the one I need most in this world... so I have to make certain you live."