“I need to go…” Shiro jumped out of her bed, knocking over the chairs in the kitchen as she ran through the house and out of the front door. She desperately sprinted towards the School, the streets still mirage by the heat, cicadas screeching. As she arrived at the school there was once again panic over Emilia being missing. It appeared the first timeline was happening once again. Shiro ran back to the gate and grabbed Kurono who had been waiting for her.

“Shiro? Aren’t you usually later than me?”

“I’ll explain this to you after we get Ren… Where is he…?”

“Ren? I think I saw him panicking in the courtyard.”

Pulling Kurono by the wrist Shiro ran down to the courtyard, Ren had been walking around in circles panicking at Emilia's absence.

“Ren.” Kurono said seriously and stopped Ren halfway through his circle.

“H-huh? Kurono? Shiro? What do you-”

“Come with us to the basement, Emilia is there…” Shiro cut Ren off.

“Why would you know that if no one else does?”

“Time Loop…”

“What!?” Kurono and Ren both looked at her with confusion.

“No time to explain…” Shiro grabbed both of their wrists and pulled them along until they reached the basement door.

“If I’m correct then outside should be- There it is…” Shiro picked up the key to the basement.

“Why is the key..?” Kurono looked around for any people nearby but there were only students panicking in classrooms.

As Shiro opened the basement she started to explain the situation. “I’ve looped twice, the first time Emilia was dead in this basement, a weird eel looking creature came out of her body, which had been vertically stitched from her head to her crotch and killed another student…”

“Are you s-saying she could be dead?” Ren looked sceptical yet fearful.

“You looked worried, Shiro.”

“Wait, you can actually see that in my face..?”

“From a distance no, but your eyes look terrified.”

“I-I am? I think I am…”

Ren interrupted the twos idol chat. “Emilia!!” He screamed, starting to run towards the girl.

“WAIT! REN!” Kurono grabbed Ren’s arm, almost tripping him over.

“What?”

Shiro turned her head away from the two and towards Emilia. “Stitches…”

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“I don’t even know what to say.”

Ren’s eyes darkened “If what you said is true… then.”

The stitches started to slowly come undone as blood leaked out of Emilia's body.

“Run! It’s been impaled by Emilia’s bones, if we can close the door on it, it will eventually die of blood loss…” Shiro ushered Kurono and Ren through the door, slamming it shut as the creature extended towards them.

“I-Is she dead…?” Ren was frozen in fear. “I’m going to throw up.”

“Wait. We’re not completely sure she’s dead yet, right, Shiro?” Kurono also seemed to be in a panic.

“She’s dead… In the first timeline there was a uniform in her house that was blood stained, someone tore her insides out and stitched her skin back together, somehow putting that thing inside…”

“So you didn’t find the culprit?”

“No…”

“I refuse to believe it.” Ren turned back around to the basement.

“Ren…” Kurono and Shiro looked at Ren with guilt as he went back through the door.

The creature was lying lifeless on the floor. As Ren walked past it towards Emilia, Shiro crouched down to get a closer look at the creature. Before she had been in too much of a panic to get a good look at it, at first when emerging it looked similar to a piranha but eventually grew into this eel thing as if something was speeding it’s growth, the bloodied body underneath was a ugly shade of green.

“Just what is happening?” Kurono was also looking at the creature's body.

“I don’t know, everything that’s happened feels unreal, but it can’t be a dream. I can feel pain, somewhat emotion and heat. Dreams have this weird feeling where you feel like you’re there but you can’t physically feel anything unless it’s a sort of lucid dream or some form of sleep paralysis. During the second timeline, the last one I was in, I felt pain when I was stabbed in the intestine…”

“You were stabbed? I’m assuming you don’t know who, or you would be after them.”

Shiro nodded her head silently, turning towards Ren who was now at Emilia’s deflated body. “Whoever it was was probably responsible for this…”

The two walked over to Ren who had been crying over Emilia’s body.

“Dark blood… Is this..?”

“Shiro, that isn’t her blood. A few weeks ago I ran into her in the infirmary. She was there because she grazed her knee pretty badly during sport and the blood was a much lighter shade of red.”

“It’s poison… During the second timeline Ren had been poisoned and his body had the same dark liquid through it, which means that either the murderer put the poison in her or… ”

“It was something to do with that creature.”

“Check her left hand for a cut, she got poisoned as well in the second timeline…”

Kurono turned Emilia’s left hand over, Ren still weeping in front of it. Sure enough there had been a knife cut on her left hand.

“If she had a cut in both timelines, then before you looped can’t be changed.”

“So Ren was murdered in the short time that it took me to get to school…”

*But how was she murder in such a short time as well…* Shiro thought to herself.

“Shiro, the blood on the creature was the exact same black colour.”

“So the blood of that thing is the poison, but what is it…”

The basement door swung open, Robert and Ena slowly walked down.

“W-what happened here!?” Ena looked towards Ren crying in front of the body.

“What the fuck is that thing!?” Robert looked at the creature with terror.

Ena started to move back slowly, she was on the verge of throwing up at the site.

“I-I feel sick.”

She fell onto the ground. Out of her pocket, a vial of black blood rolled onto the floor.

“Ena…” Shiro’s eyes were filled with fear. "Why do you…?”