Takane's knuckles whitened around the fragment of lace in her fist. The room had reset, again. The sunbeam through the window hadn't moved an inch. The desk beside her was neat, untouched.
And yet… Kaito was the same. Unmoved. Unshaken. Still there.
Her lips parted. "…Why? Why are you not bound by it?"
Kaito studied her in silence. His expression was unreadable, but his gaze… his gaze cut through her. Slowly, he exhaled, then spoke:
"You can rewind mistakes. Rewrite moments. Fool everyone."His voice was calm, but each word landed like a hammer."…But you can't rewind truth."
Takane's breath hitched.
Something in the air shifted. For an instant, she could almost see it, an echo of something ancient and immovable behind Kaito's eyes. A weight older than her ability, older than her pride. She shivered, her perfect posture faltering.
"You wanted me to be your closet," he continued, voice low, even. "To hide your weakness. But hiding it won't change it. No matter how many times you erase, it's still there. And I'll still see it."
Her chest tightened, a coil of fear and fascination twisting within her.
What are you? The thought screamed inside her head, but she couldn't force it past her lips.
Kaito turned, sliding his book bag over his shoulder with mechanical calm. "…Stop running from the cracks. Or one day, they'll break you completely."
The words weren't a threat. They weren't even advice. They were a judgment. A truth spoken as if it had always existed.
Takane's nails dug into her palm. She wanted to scream, to lash out, to claw her pride back into place. But instead, her shoulders trembled. For the first time, she felt like a child standing before something vast and unyielding.
"…I…" The word fell weak, pitiful, dying on her tongue.
By the time she found her voice again, he was already at the door. His hand rested on the frame, his profile half-lit by the fading sunlight.
"Takane," he said without turning. "…You can rewind time all you want. But you can't rewind me."
The door closed behind him with a quiet finality.
Takane slumped into her chair, her golden eyes wide, her chest heaving with shallow breaths. For the first time, she was afraid, afraid not of losing her perfection, but of him.
And worse… a part of her was drawn to it.
"…What the hell?" he muttered under his breath, stopping mid-step.
A faint shiver crawled down his spine. His heartbeat, steady a moment ago, now felt wrong. His chest tightened, his palms damp.
"I don't… talk like that."
He pressed his fingers against his temple. The memory of his own voice, calm, unflinching, absolute, wasn't his. He didn't remember choosing those words. They had just… come out. Like a reflex. Like they belonged to someone else.
The world tilted for an instant, like a picture frame knocked askew. His knees nearly buckled before he caught himself on the wall.
Kaito blinked hard, shaking his head, breath slow and deliberate. "…No. I'm fine. Just tired."
But he wasn't fine. The truth sat in his gut like lead. For those few moments in that classroom, he hadn't been Yūki Kaito, the quiet second-year with a habit of fading into the background.
He had been something else.
Someone else.
He adjusted his grip on his bag and forced his steps forward, his face resettling into its familiar mask of indifference. To anyone watching, he was back to normal. Just Kaito again.
But in the back of his mind, the echo lingered.
You can't rewind truth.
The words didn't just sound like his. They felt older. Heavier. Like they belonged to another life entirely.
And the worst part, He didn't know if he was afraid of it...or if some part of him wanted it back.
Later, the evening air was cool, cicadas humming faintly as the three walked side by side. Riko bounced on her toes with her usual restless energy, her schoolbag swinging against her hip. Haruna walked a step behind, polite and quiet, her gaze flicking now and then to Kaito as though measuring his silence.
Kaito's eyes, however, weren't on either of them. They were on the street. On the way shadows stretched too long. On the flicker of movement in the alley that disappeared when he looked straight at it.
Most people would dismiss it. Just tricks of the eye. But Kaito knew better.
For years, the government had worked to bury the truth: monsters weren't fairy tales. They were real. Flesh and blood.
Four years ago, that truth could no longer be hidden.
Centaurs pounding across rural farmlands. Mermaids glimpsed in harbors. Harpies wheeling above city skylines. Lamias coiled in the mountains. Elves with bows. Succubi with hungry smiles. Catgirls sneaking into shops.
They had always been there, lurking in the blind spots of human society. And when the veil was torn away, the world had no choice but to face them.
The "Cultural Exchange Between Species Act" followed soon after. An elegant phrase for something awkward, dangerous, and chaotic. Liminals, the word the government settled on, were no longer myths, but "guests."
They lived in human homes like exchange students. They walked the same streets, sat in the same classrooms. There were rules, of course. A liminal could not harm a human, and vice versa. Enforcement was strict, penalties harsher still.
And yet… procreation, once an unspoken taboo, had been legalized three years after the announcement. A detail the media spun into comedy. But for those who lived it, the weight was far heavier.
Riko's voice cut through his thoughts.
"Kaito-nii, are you even listening? I was asking if you think the new program will be weird." She tilted her head, pouting. "Like, tomorrow's the start, right? The school said so."
Kaito blinked once, pulling himself back to the moment. "…Species Integration Program."
Haruna nodded. "They'll be placing liminals into student classes. As… trial coexistence partners." Her tone was careful, almost rehearsed, as if repeating the government's line.
"Partners," Riko repeated, half skeptical, half curious. "So like, we'll have catgirls and harpies as classmates? Isn't that… kind of awesome?"
Kaito's eyes lingered on the darkened windows of a shopfront. For just a moment, he thought he saw a silhouette, wings, stretched and curling, but when he blinked, it was gone.
"…Awesome, huh." His voice was quiet, unreadable.
Riko grinned, oblivious to the weight in his tone. "You don't sound excited at all. Bet you'll just end up paired with some boring elf who talks about trees all day."
Haruna gave her a look. "Riko…"
But Kaito said nothing, only adjusting the strap of his bag. He didn't bother to explain what he felt, that liminals weren't just curiosities or classmates. They were shadows in the corner of his vision. A reminder that the world wasn't what it pretended to be.
And tomorrow… those shadows would step into the light.
The steam curled around Kaito like a living thing, thick and warm in the dimly lit bathroom. He sat submerged up to his shoulders in the tub, the water still and quiet, his dark hair slicked back. His right hand, that hand, rested on the edge of the porcelain, fingers twitching faintly.
You can't rewind truth.
The words echoed in his mind, not as his own, but as something older. Something heavier. He exhaled slowly, watching the ripple disturb the water's surface. The memory of his voice, calm, absolute, not his, lingered like a ghost.
"I don't talk like that," he muttered, pressing his fingers against his temple. The words had slipped out earlier, directed at Takane, with a weight that didn't belong to Yūki Kaito. They'd felt like a reflex. Like muscle memory.
His chest tightened.
For a moment, the bathroom blurred. The tiles melted into cold metal, the steam into the sterile air of a spaceship. A throne room. A war. His hand clenched, phantom pain lancing through his palm, a scar that wasn't there.
"Kaidō."
The name tasted like ash.
He shook his head, forcing the vision away. The water sloshed, pulling him back to the present. The present, where he was just a high school boy in a bathtub, not a king drowning in the weight of a galaxy.
That was when the air above him… split.
A blinding flash. A hum, like glass shattering across dimensions.
"Waaaahhh!!"
Something pink and naked tumbled straight out of thin air and crashed into him with a splash that nearly emptied the tub.
Kaito found himself nose-to-nose with a girl. Pink hair floated around them in the water like silk, emerald eyes wide, tail flicking wildly. Her soft body pressed flush against his chest as she scrambled, gasping.
"Ahhh...! Where am I?! Peke!?"
A tiny, half-fried robot bobbed in after her, sparking faintly. "S-sorry, Lala-sama… warp miscalculation…"
In the chaos, her tail coiled around Kaito's wrist like a reflex. His arm was yanked forward, and before either of them could stop it...
His hand pressed against her breast.
Both froze.
Her eyes went wide, cheeks burning. "E-ehhh?! Y-you… touched my...!"
Kaito's face remained completely blank. "…You fell on me."
The girl, still tangled against him, stammered, "Th-that's not the point!" Her tail flailed, splashing water everywhere. "I-I mean, y-you're supposed to at least blush or something!!"
Kaito withdrew his hand with deliberate calm, leaning back as though she were nothing more than another stray thought. "Then don't fall out of the sky next time."
She gawked at him, stunned by his lack of reaction. Then, puffing her cheeks, she managed a sudden, dazzling grin that seemed to light up the steamy room.
"I like you! You're funny! I'm Lala! Lala Satalin Deviluke, Princess of the whole Deviluke Empire!" She thumped her chest proudly, then realized she was still completely naked. "Ah! Uh... Peke, clothes mode!"
The little robot sparked once, then flickered, barely managing to project a makeshift outfit around her.
Kaito simply rose from the tub, water cascading from his shoulders, grabbing a towel without a word.
"W-wait, hey!" she splashed after him, her voice rising in protest. "You didn't even react! You didn't even say anything about my boobs!"
At the door, Kaito finally paused. His dark eyes met hers, unreadable, heavy with a weight that had nothing to do with the present.
"I've seen worse."
And he left, leaving the princess sputtering in his bathtub.