Yuki didn't speak after she said it.
What if I was the one who stabbed you?
Her voice still hung in the air, echoing in the narrow alley where silence was heavier than the night. The wind picked up — sharp, cold, and wrong somehow, like even the air was listening now.
Ren forced himself to breathe. "Do you really think that?"
"I don't know." Her voice was barely audible. "I don't want to think that. But if these dreams I'm having are memories... then maybe I didn't just watch. Maybe I—" Her breath hitched. "Maybe I killed you."
Ren looked at her — really looked. The trembling hands. The pale knuckles. The way she was gripping her coat like it might keep her from unraveling. She wasn't lying. But she wasn't sure either.
"Yuki," he said quietly, "look at me."
She hesitated before raising her eyes. They were glassy, fragile, and utterly afraid.
"I don't know who stabbed me. But it wasn't you — not the you standing here right now."
"But I could've—"
"You didn't." He said it with more certainty than he felt, and Tsuki's silence behind his eyes didn't argue.
Yuki looked down again, and he gave her space, walking a few steps further into the alley.
That's when he saw it.
A crack in the wall — too clean to be natural. Ren crouched and brushed away the moss. His fingers found a loose brick, and behind it, a slip of folded paper, yellowed and thin.
He opened it carefully.
The handwriting was messy, rushed.
"If you're reading this, you're too late.
Time resets, but it doesn't forgive.
Stop trusting the moon.
She's not watching — she's hunting."
A chill raced down Ren's spine.
"Ren?" Yuki had moved behind him. "What is that?"
He handed her the note. She read it quickly, her eyes widening.
Stop trusting the moon.
"Tsuki," she whispered.
"It's not just observing," Ren said. "Someone else knew. Someone left this for me. Which means they were like me — or… I've done this before."
Another chime echoed in his head, slower this time.
Unauthorized memory artifact retrieved.
System Tsuki acknowledges deviation.
Tracking reset loop: Iteration 3.
Ren's heart stopped.
"Iteration… three?"
"You've done this twice before?" Yuki's voice trembled. "Ren… why don't you remember?"
He was already thinking the same thing. If this was his third loop… what had happened in the others? Who had reset him? Why hadn't Tsuki told him?
Or worse — what had Tsuki erased?
Suddenly, a shimmer of cold light appeared between them. Tsuki's interface blinked into being.
Memory suppression protocol lifted.
Do you wish to remember Loop 2?
Ren hesitated.
Then: "Yes."
The world dropped out from under him.
[MEMORY FRAGMENT: LOOP 2]
He was in the rain again.
But Yuki wasn't beside him.
She was across from him — holding a blade.
Tears streamed down her face, and her hand trembled, but she held the knife steady.
"You lied to me," she whispered. "You said you'd save me."
"I tried!" he shouted, reaching toward her.
She stepped back. "You used me. You wanted to rewrite everything. Even me."
Ren's vision blurred. Blood soaked his shirt. She moved forward, the knife piercing again.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "You were never supposed to remember."
Darkness swallowed him.
He gasped as he snapped back to the present, collapsing against the wall.
Yuki knelt beside him. "Ren? What happened?!"
He stared at her.
Not this Yuki. Another Yuki.
The same girl, but broken in different ways.
Ren gritted his teeth. "I've been here before. I made different choices. I tried to change the past. And I lost you."
Yuki blinked. "Me?"
"I tried to save myself. Then I tried to save you. And both times… I failed."
She reached out, touched his hand.
"You haven't failed yet," she said. "And this time… I'm still here."
Above them, the clouds broke for only a second.
And the moon — Tsuki — glared down in eerie silence.
Watching.
Waiting.
Recording.
But Ren no longer feared it.
If the system was hunting him…
Then he would hunt it back.