[ Back to Shac's present, continuation of Chapter 7. ]

× × × × × × × × × ×

Once again a new day had come. Even though he was looping, he knew something was different about today. A new email had arrived, something he hadn't received in the past loops, but there was something about it that Shac couldn't quite tell.

[ ××× ×× ××××× ×× ××, ×××××××× ××× ××××××. ]

The screen displayed the message, an email sent by Ivan, censored by ×. He couldn't tell how important it was, but for now, he knew that Ivan was telling him that there was a person who was lying, who seemed to be a girl.

"She is lying to us, everyone got killed," Shac muttered. He remembered the message clearly, but he didn't understand even a bit of what Ivan wanted to convey. "Everyone got killed... who's everyone?" He wondered, having no clue what it was about.

Walking, Shac thought deeply about the message. Although Ivan was clearly telling him that there was someone who was lying, he knew nothing. There wasn't a single person who fit the description of someone who could be lying.

"A girl..." He thought deeply, considering people who seemed to be connected to the ducklings, most specifically, a girl.

Then he suddenly remembered: there was someone who fit the description, a girl, and someone who was connected to the curse.

"The white-haired girl, and the one who Ivan met in the past," he thought. Both of them were people he was not familiar with, but both of them were probably among the people Ivan had mentioned in the message.

While thinking deeply, he bumped into a student, not noticing his surroundings. Immediately, he said sorry, as he was reminded of how he had been too focused on himself and not on his surroundings.

He sighed as he approached his room for the morning. There, he immediately noticed Ivan. As they greeted each other, Ivan noticed Shac's troubled face.

"You good?" Ivan asked, wondering what could be bothering Shac this early in the morning.

"Yeah, just thinking of something," he replied.

"I guess something about yesterday," Ivan commented.

Shac nodded as he tried to sit. "Do you have time later?"

"Sure, there's still a lot to discuss after all."

As they both greeted each other, the homeroom teacher arrived, cutting short their conversation.

× × × × × × × × × ×

"Ah... finally..." Shac stretches out his whole body as the class just got finished. "Let's go grab something." He said, trying to get Ivan's attention out of the notebook. "Forget about that, I'm hungry."

"Wait... give me three more minutes, I need to write up this one." Ivan replied as he continued writing the lesson written on the board. "Shouldn't you be writing this one?"

Shac grinned as he heard Ivan, grabbing his notebook out of his backpack, he showed his writing in front of Ivan's face. "Look who's fast?"

"Impressive speed." Ivan commented, but he noticed something about it. "But the writing, not that impressive." He smiled as he mocked Shac's writing.

"Here I thought our writing was a bit similar." Shac commented, looking closely at Ivan's notebook. "Yeah, it looks similar." He glances back and forth to his notebook and Ivan's notebook.

Ivan grabbed the notebook and compared both his writing and Shac's writing. "Damn, you're kind of right." He chuckled, seeing how his writing doesn't even look better than Shac. " Let me finish this one real quick."

Speed writing the rest of the writings in the board, it took him a mere minute to finish everything. He then looked at his notebook and what's written on it. "This is horrible."

Shac laughed as he take a look at Ivan's writing. "Now I wouldn't even dare to say that my writing is worse than yours."

Ivan sighed as he heard that, he couldn't deny that all this time his writing is a lot worse that he thought. "I'm getting hungry with all this writing, let's go grab something."

"That's what I've been waiting for." Shac replied.

As they gathered their belongings and left the classroom, Shac broke the silence. "Did you check your mail yesterday?" he asked, recalling the censored message he received.

"We did check it together right?" Ivan asked, his eyebrows raised in confusion.

"No no no, not that one." Shac corrected. "I'm talking about he one after we talked."

"No, why?"

"You actually send me another email yesterday." Shac revealed as they walked towards the entrance of the canteen. "It's a bit different than usual."

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"A different email?" Ivan questioned. He grabbed his phone out of his pocket, and looked through his email once again. There he saw what it seems to be the email that Shac was talking about.

Seeing the peculiar email, he smiled, thinking that yet another problem had arisen from out of nowhere. "I see I see, this is unexpected." He added, as he smile through the screen of his phone.

"Don't forget we need to grab something first," Shac said, noticing Ivan's smile, which always appeared when something unexpected happened.

"Don't worry too much, we're not going to lose our lunch this time," Ivan reassured him. "I'll show you something, too. Find us some seats first." he added as he joined the line to grab lunch.

It didn't take too long for Shac to find an empty seat. He waste no time and immediately took a seat on it, waiting for Ivan to finished up grabbing a lunch.

After a few minutes, Ivan arrived at the table, holding two plates of rice with a hard-boiled egg on top of each.

"What..." Shac couldn't believe what he saw. "This is the lunch?" he asked, his eyebrows furrowed as Ivan presented the meal.

Seeing Shac's reaction, Ivan couldn't help but laugh at his face. "For now this is going to be our lunch." He said, looking straight at Shac's face.

"This is not enough for my stomach." Shac replied, looking at today's lunch. "But for you to do this, what's the deal?"

Ivan smiled and asked, "Here's a question..." He grabbed the eggs from both his plate and Shac's plate. Holding the two eggs up to Shac, he continued, "Between these two eggs, which one would you choose?"

Puzzled by the question, Shac responded, "Huh?" He sensed there was something Ivan was trying to convey or an answer he was hoping to hear.

"Let's say for example, the duck lays two eggs at the same time. Which one would you eat?" Ivan asked.

"Would that even matter?" Shac asked. "Then the one on your left hand, since it came from my lunch."

"It would definitely matter a lot," Ivan responded, placing the egg from his right hand onto the table. "The one you pick, someone named it the 'left egg'. Eating this 'left egg', for some reason, turns you into a duck, passing the curse to you. Sound familiar?" He continued.

Shac nodded, quickly understanding Ivan's point. "You mean the duck's egg, right? The one that almost turned me into a duck," he replied, recalling his previous loop where he encountered the egg and ate it. "But why call it a 'left egg'? Who came up with that name?" he wondered aloud.

"Who knows?" Ivan shrugged, then returned the egg back to Shac's plate. He grabbed the other egg, holding it up. "Now this one, someone named this the 'right egg'. What do you think this egg supposed to do?" He asked.

Thinking how the first egg passes curse, then the right egg must be something that do the opposite thing.

"It must be something that has an opposite effect compare to the 'left egg'." Shac responded, uncertain about his reply.

You're probably right about that," Ivan said, tapping the egg lightly on the table, revealing a crack. He proceeded to open it up. "What are you waiting for?" he asked, looking at Shac, who was patiently watching.

Shac decided to follow suit and opened his egg. They both began their lunch, each with only a hard-boiled egg.

While they ate their lunch, Ivan broke the silence by mentioning a name. "Zoyi. She's the one who told me about it, the other cursed person I've met in the past."

"So it was Zoyi... Did she tell you about the eggs?" Shac asked, intrigued by this person named Zoyi.

"Yes, she mentioned them. Like you, I'm clueless about what the 'right egg' is supposed to be. She only said it's supposed to 'end the curse,' but didn't explain further. So, I have no idea," Ivan explained.

"But," Shac noticed, there's something different about a duck laying two eggs at the same time. "Isn't there supposed to be only one egg? Why are there two?"

"You're right, that's what I thought too. I've never actually come across that egg. The only reason I know about it is because Zoyi talked about it," Ivan replied, wondering the purpose of the mysterious 'right egg'. "She seems to be avoiding telling me about the 'right egg', and besides I never actually had a chance again to ask her about it." He added.

"You should have asked her about it. Did you try asking her again?"

"She's dead already."

Shac's eyes widened slightly in surprise, not expecting that news. "Is this something about her being a curse?" He asked, thinking it might be the case, considering that they are talking about the curses.

Ivan nodded in response. "There's something about people being a curse that surprised me a lot. The first thing is that, people became a duckling, I happened to experience seeing someone became a duckling. As you might guess, Zoyi became one, and the worst thing, it happened before me." Ivan explained, his low voice contains sadness and regret.

"The second one, it's something that surprised me the most after you told me everything about your loop." He continued, a hint of smile can be seen on his face.

"What do you mean?" Shac asked, thinking what could his loop meant about the second one. "What about it?"

"A duckling will die of starvation if not fed." Ivan recalled Zoyi's words. "Our experiences confirmed it. Once cursed, a duck must be fed, or it will starve to death, killing us."

Shac nodded as he listened to Ivan. "That's right, this includes them dying from any causes, as long as they are killed, the cursed person will also be killed. Both the duckling and the cursed person are tied together."

"That Zoyi, she was able to kill ducklings." Ivan revealed. "What do you think about it?"

Shac's eyes widened in disbelief. It's something that he thought wouldn't be possible. "How? How is that even possible?" He struggled to comprehend what he had just heard. "Are you sure about that?"

"I was there, she killed them at ease by hitting a rock. But, as you might guess, I am alive and well." He paused, reflecting on his memory. "It seems like killing a duckling didn't seem to kill her, and even me who was watching behind the scene." He continued. "It seems different from yours, where people get killed when a duckling dies. But for some reason, when she killed them, nothing happened."

"You're right, it seems to be a different case than mine. But the thing about the duckling getting starved seems to be the same case as mine. The only difference is that when the duck got killed, mine got killed accidentally, whereas yours, Zoyi killed them voluntarily." Shac responded, worried about the difference between his experience and Ivan's experience.

"That's not the only thing bothering me," Ivan replied. "When she transformed into a duck, a thought flashed through my mind, 'I need to kill her.' What do you think I did next?"

"I don't know," Shac responded, his confusion growing.

"I tried to hit her with a rock," Ivan continued, his voice troubled. "But instead of feeling like I was hitting a duckling, it was like hitting a stone. No matter how many times I tried, it felt nothing like hitting something, but it felt like hitting stone against stone."

Shac struggled to comprehend Ivan's experience. He couldn't believe Ivan couldn't harm the duck at all.

Ivan reflected. "After hitting her multiple times, I realized something. I couldn't kill that duckling, I couldn't kill Zoyi, she is unkillable."

A chill ran down Shac's spine as he processed the information. The thought of an unkillable duckling was beyond anything he could have imagined. Ivan's troubled expression confirmed it for him, that there might indeed be such a thing as an unkillable duckling.