Nexus Re : Time

Nexus Re : Chapter 3A

🌌 Nexus Re:Time - Light Novel
Chapter 3A -

When the city resumed, it didn't heal. It stuttered.

Neon signs blinked the wrong slogans-ads for soda playing backwards, models on billboards smiling before their mouths opened. A bus lurched a meter forward, then reversed as if remembering it hadn't moved. Rain ticked like a miswired metronome, droplets rising and falling out of sync.

Yuna pressed the shard to her sternum until the pain steadied. "I can feel it pulling harder."

Stella paced the lip of a shattered awning, five tails cutting pale crescents in the rain. "Then don't fight the rhythm. Match it."
"That's not how hearts work."

"It's exactly how hearts work." Stella hopped down to her shoulder, her voice flattening for a moment into mechanical cadence. "Calibration... nominal."

Yuna frowned. "You keep saying words like that."
"Like what?" Stella blinked, all innocence.

Yuna let the pull guide her, step after step through alleys where puddles lagged a half-second behind their reflections. Pigeons flapped once, then froze, wings mid-beat. The ribbon on her wrist twitched toward an unseen tempo, straining like it wanted to lead instead of follow.
They turned a corner-and almost walked into nothing.

A whole block had been bitten away. Asphalt ended mid-line, leaving steel rebar jutting into open white static. The air hummed, memory smoldering in the bones of the road.

Yuna swallowed. "We're close to one of its paths."

"Or it's close to us."

Then came the laughter. Faint. Children, overlapping. But not here, not now. The sound leaked from the shard itself-a splice of stage audio, distorted, like a dream trying to wake.
Yuna froze. She could almost hear her name in the laughter. Almost.
"Find the beat," she whispered to herself. "Don't let it carry you."
When she opened her eyes, the sound had thinned to a thread.
Stella's ears flicked. "You heard yourself again."

"You heard that?"

"I hear you," Stella said simply. Then her tone sharpened: "Left."

Yuna moved without thinking-just as a Draftling tore itself from a wall seam. Static edges, unfinished teeth, body glitching between frames.

The ribbon snapped, unraveling into a blade of silver fire along Yuna's forearm. She slashed, but the Draftling bent wrong, her strike glancing off as if it had learned the angle already.

It lunged, jaws gaping with no face. Yuna staggered, the shard's pulse rattling her ribs. For a heartbeat she thought it had her-until Stella's tails whipped, scattering violet flame across its frame.

"Don't swing cleaner," Stella barked. "Swing uglier."

Yuna obeyed. A messy, desperate arc tore the creature open. It unraveled into snow, dissolving against the streetlight glow.

Panting, she stared at the falling static. "Incomplete?"

Stella nodded once. "It wasn't assigned a face yet."

Yuna's grip tightened on the ribbon-blade. "Assigned by who?"
Stella's gaze tipped toward the broken sky. "Keep walking."

The pull tightened again. Yuna matched it, each step syncing closer. For a breath-just one-the city's stutter smoothed, and her heart beat in perfect time.

🌸 Button - Direction of Travel

At an overpass, the shard flared. A ghost-map crawled across the underside of the bridge: seven points, one brighter than the rest-

Chrono-9.

"Same sector Minji saw," Yuna whispered.
Stella's tails arced like antennae. "Then we're not alone."

Yuna's jaw set. "Good."

The pull tightened. Yuna matched it, and for a breath the world and her heartbeat aligned.

Above the broken skyline, a faint pulse blinked-03:03:03-pointing the way forward.
Chrono-9.

Yuna's jaw set. "Then that's where we go."
Stella's tails flicked once, scattering rain. "Not just us. Someone else is going there too."
They ran.

---

Afterwards: Nexus Coffee ☕ - 3A
Scene: The café exists outside time again, warm lights and steam curling into impossible shapes.

Yuna: (drops into a chair, ribbon trailing like it's tired too) That was way too close. Seriously-streets erasing under our feet? Not fun.

Stella: (perched smugly on the table, sipping someone else's drink) Correction: you almost tripped twice. Graceful, but clumsy.

Minji: (leans back with her boots on the chair) You should've seen Jiwoo. "Don't fight the rhythm, match it." Real poetic. For a guy who nearly faceplanted into a puddle.

Jiwoo: (grumbles into his tea) I didn't faceplant. That was... tactical balance correction.

Ara: (soft smile, fox spirits curling around her cup) Mhm. Tactical.

Jiwoo: ...You too?!

Yuna: (laughs, then sighs) But that vision-seeing the Core-gave me chills. It felt like... something watching us back.

Minji: (mocking) Aww, scared already? I thought the idol was supposed to be brave.

Yuna: (puffs her cheeks) I'm brave! I just don't like giant broken clock-spheres staring into my soul!

Stella: (tails flick) No one does. Except maybe Rho. He'd probably flirt with it.

Jiwoo: (chokes on his tea) ...Don't give him ideas.

Ara: (hesitant, but firm) ...I liked the three beats. Yours, mine, and his. It felt like... music.

Yuna: (blinks, smiles slowly) Yeah. Even in the chaos, it synced.

Minji: (rolls her eyes but hides a grin) Don't get soft on me. Next fight, I'm still aiming for the kill shot.

Yuna: And I'll sing louder.

Stella: And I'll supervise, obviously. Someone has to keep this squad from tripping into puddles.

Jiwoo: (sighs, finally smirking) ...Guess it might as well be you.

Narration: The mugs clink together. For a moment, time is quiet, the Nexus stilled outside the café window. Laughter flickers, warm and fragile-but it holds.