After literally repeating all the shopping as if it were the first time, it's time to leave, and now I must act.
"Ayane, before we go home, could you tell me if you need anything else?" I ask, wanting to know why she took that route.
"Oh yes, I need to stop by the grocery store to buy some cleaning supplies for the house, I usually use the same brand out of habit, but they don't have it here," she says without hiding anything, though a little embarrassed to mention one of her habits.
'I understand, it must be the same as in the past,' I know well the nearby stores that might have what she wants.
"I can recommend a great store that possibly has what you're looking for, it's not too expensive, and about 1% to 5% of all the money is donated to various charities," I say, mentioning something that might make her want to shop there.
"Wow, there's a store that does that?" she asks, impressed.
"Yes, they don't usually make it obvious that they do this, nor do they advertise or do anything similar to attract attention, they do it without telling anyone, so if you look around, you'll find it," I tell her about it.
"That's incredible," she says with a smile.
"Yes, the route is not far either, if you go down two blocks to the left and then straight for 8 blocks, you should get there safely," I give her the location, and she nods.
"Okay, thanks for the information," she says with a smile as she changes her route, and with that, I've prevented her from going the path where the monster is, so I activate the magical girl outfit and jump onto the rooftops, running at high speed to the location where the monster attacked her.
And in a short time, I arrive above the building where the location is, and I prepare to send this motherfucker back to the hole he came from, while I'm on top of the building, Hexael appears in a black mist.
"..." I point my weapon at this manipulative vermin who knew my sister was being raped by a damn monster, but didn't warn me.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, are you going to try to kill me?" Hexael says sarcastically.
"You remember, don't you?" I question.
"Of course I remember, we're connected by a contract, and that means that even if you go back in time, I still remember everything," Hexael says as if it's nothing.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I ask, irritated.
"Why should I tell you? What happens to that girl doesn't matter to me, I don't owe you any explanations, and I'm not your servant to tell you these things," he says with irony and mockery.
"..." I grip my weapon tightly, so much so that it trembles, I feel bothered by everything, and this damned one still amplifies any bad feelings I have.
"Hexael, I swear that if Ayane was caught by that monster because of your fault, I will make you regret it dearly," I say seriously, pointing the gun at him.
"Don't worry, Setsuna, I would never harm or attract harm to your beloved 'sister,' I just didn't do anything even though I knew she was being raped," he says as if it's nothing.
"After all, it's not my duty to tell you when that girl is in danger or not, I can only know that she's in danger and not say or do anything," he says provocatively as he approaches.
"But hey, Setsuna, did you know your sister moans like a prostitute?" He says, which is the last straw, and I shoot him in the head.
The shot pierces his skull, causing his body to fall momentarily, but of course, he doesn't react and just gets up and sits on the edge of the building, he doesn't seem to care about the shot and the hole that's dripping blood and a bit of brain matter.
"Filthy demon," I say, insulting this bastard.
"Hahaha, thank you for the compliment, but think of the bright side, Setsuna, feeling bad things still counts as feeling emotions, I'm doing you a great favor."
"And also think of another bright side, your sister is beautiful even when she's being fucked by monsters, I think even you would get excited if you saw the scene," he taunts me, but I just take a deep breath and calm down.
"I would never feel pleasure in seeing my sister being violated, I'm not a disgusting being like you," I say to him, paying attention to the street below.
"Really? Well, in that regard, it may be true, you're too obsessed and jealous to feel aroused seeing your sister with another being, but what if it was you raping her? Would you get excited then?" When he says that, I freeze.
Not because I consider this a valid idea, but because it's such an absurd thing that my mind doesn't comprehend the moment it's said.
"Have you gone completely insane?" I ask with disgust at this malicious, repulsive cat.
"Hmm... think what you will of me, Setsuna, but that's an interesting option, don't you think? And hey, if you want, I can make that happen in an interesting way without you even touching her body."
"Hexael, shut up, every piece of trash that comes out of your mouth hurts my eardrums," I say, impatient with this demon, he's distracting me, and the street is strangely quiet, with no sign of a monster or even people.
Okay, it's pretty late at night, so it's normal for the street to be empty, but there's nothing and no one, so I wonder when the monster will show up.
"...Hexael...why are you here?" I look at Hexael, noticing the strangeness of the situation.
"..." Hexael just gives me a malicious smile.
"Setsuna, you've already deduced that your ability to go back in time has a weakness, but what weakness would that be?" He changes the subject, but without losing his disturbing smile that becomes even more bizarre because of the blood dripping from his head.
"..."
"I'll give you that as a gift because I love your funny reactions, every time you go back in time, the cause and effect will be amplified so that a certain thing happens as it should at that moment."
"You know what that means, right? You're smart, you must know about how a cause always results in an effect, and how that's a standard thing in things like chemical reactions."
"But here we're talking about destiny, time, and space, they're more complex than simple chemical reactions, like a big domino effect, and if you try to stop it by removing a piece, the other pieces will just 'grow' to make up for the lack of the previous one," he speaks without really explaining much.
But just that is enough to make me desperately jump off the building and go to where I sent Ayane. If I understood correctly what he meant, it means that if an event happened and I went back in time to change it, destiny will realign to force the event to happen or even worsen the event.
In other words, if Ayane was raped today and I went back in time, even if I send her a different way, some universal force or something similar will force this event to happen, but even worse because I interfered.
So not only will she be raped now, but Ayane may go through something even worse, and in the worst case, to try to fix my interference, Ayane may even die.
"HEXAEL, YOU MISERABLE SON OF A BITCH!" I scream at him, who is following me. He is strangely fast for someone in a cat's body and with a hole in his head.
But I don't have time to be impressed, if I don't find Ayane now, she may be in even greater danger because of my fault, and Hexael knew that.
And yet he came to make me waste time talking to him, he's really a bastard, he knows that the more Ayane suffers, the more degraded my mind will become.
Because in the end, I'm human, I may not have as many feelings as most, and I can only express good feelings with Ayane and bad feelings with Hexael, increasing them.
However, the human mind has various limits, if I continue to fail to protect Ayane and it slowly accumulates, my mind will break, imagine what will happen to me if I repeat the same months for years.
I know I would do that, and Hexael also knows that I'm willing to get stuck in a time loop just to protect Ayane, but the point is that each time loop will make my mental state worse.
And that's what bothers me, after so many failures, will I still be myself? Will I still be this person who only wants to protect my sister, or will I become an irreparable kind of monster who wouldn't even care about Ayane's happiness as long as I keep her safe?
This is what disturbs me the most, one day I may become so crazy that I'll trade protection for happiness, and instead of seeking Ayane's happiness along with her protection, I may just try to seek protection and take away all her happiness.
'I need countermeasures, I can't let this happen... I have to somehow get ahead of Hexael, I need to stop being so predictable to him.' I've fallen for his tricks again.
It's so frustrating to be so predictable that he can always overcome what I do, I bet even telling the weakness of my power now is part of his strategy to drive me insane.
'If the cause and effect only increases during the situation, if I save Ayane today, the cause and effect should go back to normal for now, so I should save Ayane and avoid going back in time as much as possible.' This will clearly put more mental stress on me.
But if it's to avoid problems, so be it.