Her head was spinning. Throughout all of the chaos .. the distant screaming and crying, even the sounds of hurling students that were regurgitating the joy and food they consumed on a high .. the lone witch sat, sprawled on the ground in a puddle of blood after Natsuhiko graciously dropped her off before leaving to go the boy named Mitsuba.
However before he did so, he examined the expression in her face. It wasn't despair, nor was it anger anymore.
Her eyes that were wide, wide open, peering through the crevices of her hands and a figure slouched over in seeming defeat. "If you're not grounded enough, Natsuki-chan .. it won't matter how long or how scary you are, you're going to get swallowed and chewed up by this world." His hand left a burning mark on her shoulder. His blood that proved fatal to apparitions ..
Nora drowned out the sounds of the screaming and crying around her until it had all stopped on its own.
Because of Teru and Kou .. even Tiara, Yashiro, Aoi and Akane .. all of the humans she affiliated herself with allowed her to draw the assumption that perhaps trusting them was the appropriate thing to do .. to rely on them for once ..
Natsuhiko's blood that swirled around the entirety of the clock, acting as venomous poison to apparitions, stinging her just for a mere second before it slid off her skin.
Nora inhaled a breath.
To be inescapable of the change that was humans .. the witch only felt grief. The very notion that the humans she wanted to have faith in continued to have faith in the hideous creatures that kept ruining her idyllic happiness that she'd so desperately reached and protected.
The girl let out a scream that had erupted for not even the fraction of a second before the clock behind her shattered into a dozen pieces.
White noise rang in her ear as the world around them hushed and time came to a halt.
While one opportunity closed, another opened, The witch and her lonesome self stood up with a dead calm in her crimson ruby red eyes that couldn't have been anymore indifferent than a bitter rose that formed on a timid winter evening, blistering the sight of any light.
"What a stupid senpai. I've been grounded for some time now. I have no reason to lose sight of my purpose. In fact .. I have more to gain from it now." Nora scoffed, brushing her hair over her shoulder as she stepped into the void of never ending nothingness. The stillness of time that froze, enveloping the entirety of the school with the exception of few individuals.
That was the last time Nora would trust humans like those. Humans that wavered between life and death, dancing upon it like a game.
But she had already seen this coming. There was no use in being disappointed in the upperclassmen that she once looked up to. It was irreversible now.
That was why to ensure the safety of the person she loved, there was a degree of sacrifice necessary to achieve her goal in the end. It was because Nora was grounded with a purpose that she had a goal to begin with.
The past, the present and the future, Nora always differed herself from both apparition and human—referring herself to the category of a witch, merely being a supernatural. But lately .. she had been delving herself into the matters of spirits, abandoning her former hindsight.
No one foresaw the lengths the witch dared to go for love.
Her composure and her thoughts had never been more clear before.
Yes, the witch would always choose to save one person above all else .. and that person would always be Minamoto Teru. It didn't matter how much her soul had to be sunken into sin for it to happen, as long as his dream and world was able to be salvaged.
Originally, her goal was to fix the clock .. but as it turned out, she had found a more convenient yet vexing solution. Everything had been going in accordance to the past's predictions of the future and the future's anticipation of the past.
Breaking the clock to reach the boundary in which he called for her and for her to fulfill her end of the bargain with time ..
The first sound she had heard besides that of her footsteps were the clanging sounds of metal parts and clattering cogs that followed with a voice. "So the Yorishiro wasn't in there .. Since I couldn't find it in the boundary, I wondered if it could be hiding in one of the school mysteries. If not Kako .. then maybe you?" His eyes locked upon her kouhai whose face began to pale.
Akane withdrew his mask of fear and accepted his role as a cog in their plan. "Yugi Tsukasa .. to rebel in our court of law is a serious offense—for that, I will pass judgement upon you." The gavel in his hands swung as the apparition ducked, throwing a golden clock piece at the boy who narrowly managed to dodge it as it drew blood against his cheek.
It was a clearly one sided fight.
The boy's tsueshiro flew and spiraled, fogging the air as Akane was knocked against the wall with a piece of debris slamming into his ribcage.
The clock keeper gasped for air.
In the hollow gaze of the supernatural in front of him, he grabbed onto its ankle and slammed his gavel into the ground. "Inside our shrine .. I forbid you to use your tsueshiro here!" With his command, the two orbs evaporated, freeing the smallest clock keeper—the future.
"MIRAI! RUN NO—" The boy was cut off as a hand wrapped around his skull, slamming it into the podium. "Hey, so I wonder .. are those inside of you too? The gears I mean..." He reeled his arm back, ready to plunge his fingertips into the humanoid flesh,
Akane couldn't breathe. Not because of the crushing pressure on his lungs .. but because he was holding his breath, waiting for time to align, praying she would be on time as his eyes flickered between conscious and unconscious and the gavel in his hand began to slip.
The black cat that quietly slipped in grabbed the object before it hit the ground.
Yugi Tsukasa hadn't noticed her presence before .. but he certainly was able to when the figure dressed clad in a kimono appeared beside him. "Yorishiro of No. 7, cease your movement .. now." She slammed the object into his head as he became stiff as a board.
"Nora? What are you ..." Teru called out from above as she looked up. He, Yashiro and Hanako all were knelt on the balance beams with restrictions around their wrists behind their back, cutting off all sources of spiritual energy.
His cerulean blue eyes widened as he began to process the witch's uttered words and her action just now. She who had used the power of the clock keepers in their domain .. She who now seemed to adorn a different kind of attire as the kimono around her body began to fade.
"You .. haha! You're the clock keeper's Yorishiro! A witch!" The boy laughed in amusement. He'd never seen of such a thing before.
Hanako froze, turning his head to the Student Council President who was stone faced as a statue. "Nora .. you couldn't have..."
She only smiled before pulling out her wrist watch, clicking the button on its side and freezing time.
Akane's eyes widened as he looked all around them.
Although he had been given the ability to freeze time for a mere fifteen minutes each day .. he'd never such stable use of his own ability, not to mention on a much wider scale.
"We'll meet you inside, Nyx." Kako nodded his head at her before descending down a spiral staircase.
Nora watched and listened to their footsteps until they had faded away.
The witch knelt down beside Teru and cupped his cheeks in her hands. "I know you can't move .. but you can still hear me .." She pressed her forehead against his, breathing a shaky sigh. "This was the only way .. I was backed into a corner with no other options except to become what you hated the most .. so please forgive me."
"Find Akane. When I go down those stairs .. time will change and the only people with the same memories will be those who interfered, the clock keepers, you and Yashiro."
"He'll be in the student council room .. but I won't. I won't be anywhere."
"I'm sorry that I had to do this myself, Teru. But I'm glad that no matter what .. the effect of this new present, you won't be used anymore. You'll get to live the life with your siblings that you always dreamed of .. and you'll be able to live a long life without having to ever meet me in that rainy day."
"Even if I'm the only one that will remember these memories .. it's okay. I was happy they were with you."
She pressed a kiss against his forehead and it seemed to mark him with a symbol that faded.
***
There was the click of the door, signaling the sound of it being locked along with the hardened echos of angered footsteps. The boy—the former clock keeper of the present turned around to be met with a familiar face of both presents .. the one in the past and the one now. His hair that was a radiant canary gold and eyes that pierced the skies .. an expression that showed no remorse.
The vice president had little to no time to react as the fist made contact with the center of his face, sending him backwards into the table. It was hard to tell whether or not the crack sound was from the wooden furniture that'd been knocked over, or his nose .. but regardless, the brewing storm of Teru Minamoto now towered above him as he was sent to the ground.
"I'm deciding whether or not to treat you as a supernatural .. or a human. No matter what I choose, it'll be a violent route."
Akane had never once before seen Teru's eyes so dull. A blue that no longer seemed tantalizing but rather ominous .. a dark incapsulating sea swallowing any primitive instinct whole.
He was furious .. livid beyond anyone's imagination.
"So ... just what the hell did you do, clock keeper? I trusted you."
"I trusted you and yet still .. I'm going to give you one opportunity and one only to start talking."
"Nora. Tell me everything you know about her .. or I'll force it out of you." He picked up the boy, yanking him forward by the collar with his fist reeled back in preparation.
Minamoto Teru, the intensity of his anger radiating off him like waves of heat. His clenched fists and rigid posture warned the boy to choose his next words carefully.
Akane shoved the blonde off of him as they both staggered backwards. "There's nothing to explain. The hag .. she so happened to be the perfect piece to everything. My time as a clock keeper was running out, someone or something was eating away at the academy, the yorishiro, vital to the land were being destroyed, students becoming supernaturals and the alteration of rumors, the near non existent boundary between the near and far shore .. the thing in Yugi Tsukasa that began all of these things .."
"And your lifespan, President." His index finger directed itself to the exorcist.
This was the first he'd ever heard of such.
Akane let out a sigh, readjusting his uniform before continuing. "It was when the fabric of time of the school was beginning to fray near the time of building the festival. It's because it's during that time .. that the flow of time became unstable, so she was able to go into the future momentarily."
"In that future that wasn't very far ahead .. You were already dead."
"So, senpai changed the future for you .. and gramps and Mirai changed the past for the school. She came to us offering a bargain. I don't know what kind of bargain she could have made with the past, but ... she gave up a future with you to ensure that you had a future at all. Natsuki-senpai sacrificed the rest of her current lifespan in order to become a clock keeper, replacing me, and also becoming the guardian of the Yorishiros in this new present, eliminating the need for the Seven Wonders."
"She was the most suited to that position. For who she is—what she is, all of her knowledge, there was no one better than her to become the clock keeper of the present. The witch that didn't belong anywhere in any forms of time .."
And so once again .. Nora's life ended before the age of twenty .. and this time it was because she had gave up her life for him.
"The hag was just a matter of convenience. It's a win win situation for all of us. You have no reason to complain because in the matter of a few days, your memories of her will be gone too, just like mine." Even though the witch had done it to help him as well, her good will and good intent was almost transparent to the boy.
Nora also just wanted Akane to finally have his happy life with Aoi. Being burdened with having to be on the edge of supernaturals and living his life as a human, she pitied him to an extent and relieved him of his burden for her own selfish reasons.
The former clock keeper let out a yelp as a trail of blood trickled down the side of his neck as a result of the katana that lodged into the wall, scraping his skin. "A MATTER OF CONVENIENCE..? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT ... MY MEMORIES OF NORA? ... GONE?"
Akane felt a shiver crawl down his spine as Teru inched toward him, the weight of his anger pressing down like a suffocating blanket. His clenched fists and a chilling gaze that transformed into a dark abyss, swallowing any semblance of warmth or humanity.
Teru was a frequently angry person.
He was well aware that his anger was easily triggered.
But he hadn't felt so resentful and vehemently exasperated since he was a young boy and his father would hit the witch right before his eyes to punish her for not being able to save his mother. It was those times that Teru felt so inhuman .. he felt like a monster looking down at a stain in his field of vision.
The fine point of losing control since those harrowing days of his youth, the memories clawed at the edges of his consciousness, threatening to pull him back into the darkness he had fought so hard to escape. Yet there he stood, on the precipice of that abyss once more, the echoes of the wounds he thought had long healed had been torn open anew, exposing raw, festering emotions that seethed with a potency he could scarcely contain.
"NOTHING ABOUT THIS IS A WIN-WIN SITUATION!" The exorcist bellowed.
He ran his hands through his hair as his eyes darted around, attempting to find a way to undo what had been done.
His vice president only sighed. "You said it yourself before—your goal was to return things to how they were .. to separate humans and supernaturals because they didn't belong together."
"Now we're humans and she's a supernatural. All of this is a result of the butterfly effect. We found out the root cause of the problems in the previous present and the old man and Mirai went back into the past to fix it, and here, a new future was created where it's Natsuki-senpai's duty to protect it and keep it in balance."
"It's almost the end of the day of the festival and things are peaceful, aren't they? No students have been turned into supernaturals and time hasn't stopped. There was a disturbance at the school and now it never happened at all."
"That's the job of the clock keepers — the job of Natsuki-senpai."
"The memories you have of the old world will soon be replaced with the memories of the new. It's because you were an exorcist invited into the boundary that it's taking a little longer to affect you."
"She intended all of this to happen, that's who she is, it's what she's been doing, working quietly, thinking of all the different ways that things could be turned back around, for this present to be better for you, for Yashiro .. even me."
Akane couldn't hope to understand someone like her .. and he couldn't hope to understand the thoughts going through Teru's mind. The thought and reality of Nora essentially being wiped from existence .. it haunted the seventeen year old.
It no longer surprised him. It was like the outburst of a child when the male drew his katana. "Are you going to exorcise me? I'm a human now." The maroon haired boy dully muttered.
Teru cracked an eerie smile. "No."
"I'm going to exorcise this school from the inside out .. and I'll drag out the clock keepers." The static filled the air heavily as it weighed down on his skin.
Akane grabbed his wrist with a stern expression. "If you do that .. Kako will go back into the past again with Mirai. Don't disrupt this peace that she sacrificed herself for."
The male only chuckled, sending a shock of lightning through his vice president's body as he let out a short cry. "You still don't understand, do you, Akane?"
"Nora is my witch. She's my witch and I won't let anyone else have her .. It doesn't matter what present or loop we're in, she's the most important thing in every world to me. If I have to drag every loop of time down into her void .. you can stand there and watch."
As the next heir to the great Minamoto clan .. The first born of the great exorcist, Daisuke, and the priestess, Keiko .. his natural birthright was that of a prodigious power that rivaled all.
The supernaturals that would whisper his name and naturally repelled themselves away from him as a young boy. Even the sky that beckoned to his very calling as though it bent to his free will.
They were the singularities that single handedly regulated the safety of humans from rampant supernaturals.
"So I have three days until my memories get replaced .. That's more than enough time." Teru scoffed as he took long strides. Akane scurried after him, lagging behind as they walked down the hall, people parting to the side due to the seemingly urgent atmosphere they carried with them.
However, in reality ..
"President, don't tell me ..."
The route they were taking, it was awfully familiar.
It was familiar to that of the big clock. The one of the clock keepers.
There were hand signs and sacred sutra that the boy didn't recognize. Afterall, he wasn't an exorcist. He wasn't aware of many of their traditional methods of exorcism. But the chants that Teru said aloud, it was something that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand in an unsettling way.
The maroon haired boy blinked once and jolted, falling to his feet as a loud thunderous sound erupted and a blinding light flashed through the windows.
Akane swallowed the lump in his throat, realizing that this was Teru's infamous lightning cage .. the one that no one had ever escaped from. It entrapped the whole school.
This was too far.
Secretly in the back of the boy's head, he wished he had his clock keeper powers .. but really thinking about it, he took that thought back. To be an ordinary boy was what he always wanted, it was what he pleaded Teru and Nora for when they'd first met years ago.
"President, you can't do this."
Crimson liquid seeped into the floorboards as Akane gripped onto the male's sword with his bare hands. "You can't do this because it's not what Nora would have wanted. She gave her life up for you to have a peaceful one without her—without supernaturals lingering all around."
"I always thought it was weird—why would the hag be coming to the clock keeper meetings? Why would she be roaming at night without your knowledge? And then I realized that it was because she was a supernatural hiding as a human that we all let ourselves be fooled by her."
"This is her repenting for killing human lives. This is also your negligence for voiding that contract you had with Natsuki-senpai." In a battle of strength .. Teru would likely overpower him. But in rationality, perhaps Akane could get through.
"Your brother is happy with his friend in this timeline with no thoughts or ideas about what reckless thing he should do next to surpass you and to become an exorcist—the thing you never wanted him to be. Your sister doesn't have that prodigious spiritual lightning power so the burden won't be placed on her to surpass you. Yashiro's lifespan is restored, Aoi's memories have been erased of her past and everyone treats her normally now."
"Even No. 7 and his brother .. they've been nowhere to be seen. This peaceful present that was made through a sacrifice was all just for you and us. All because she leapt into the future that day and foresaw how you would die."
Akane could feel Teru's grip loosening just slightly. The boy was hopeful, cracking a smile and looking up to the blonde's face until his expression dropped to the ground.
Teru's gaze toward him now couldn't have been described by anything short of hatred. The same way he looked at Hanako. The same way he would look at any creature or person that thought of bringing upon harm to his witch.
"This is what Nora wanted? Is this what she wanted or is this what she was backed into?"
The exorcist retracted his sword to his side, slicing through Akane's palms in the process as the boy let out a pained grunt, clutching the wound to his chest.
Teru Minamoto knew Natsuki Nora better than anyone else in the world—anyone else in any lifetime. "Nora would rather die than be a supernatural .. as is, she despises being a witch. No matter how much she talks down upon humans, there's no one who wished to be human more than her."
She was lonely—so unbelievably lonely, always carrying a burden on her shoulders that she was so tired of, afraid of herself and her own shadow. The cursed witch of misfortune, his black cat that was tired of being a symbol of bad luck.
For her to be a witch, a black cat, a clock keeper, a wonder and a human .. He knew that she couldn't take it.
His witch that never asked him for help .. he could feel her gaze somewhere, reaching out for him. Nora was going to self destruct.
"The clock keepers can manage the present themselves .. and they can create another present. I won't let it happen .. I won't let anyone else use her again."
It was from that declaration that strikes of lightning and thunder began to implode the school grounds from within the lightning cage he had set around the perimeters of the academy.
"I hope you never hate me, Teru."
***
The supernatural continued to weep onto the sleeves of her kimono, the celestial tapestry woven with threads of stardust, shimmering under the gentle caress of light from her puddle of tears. The sleeves, wisps of morning mist, cascaded, adorned with delicate constellations embroidered in silver and gold continue to roll her crystalline tears down onto the floor, the bottom of the void.
"Little witch, little witch, are you still crying?" The smallest clock keeper came flying by her face that still held tears.
"This present is going to come to an end if that boy continues." Kako had entered her void as well.
Her void was tucked in the heart of the clock keeper's boundary, past the foreign town speaking an unfamiliar language, always cloaked in snow. Hers was beneath it. The children of the small town had a well that descended to the deepest part it could go .. and rumors had it that there was the sound of a ghost crying at night.
She was that ghost who had retreated away to the sanctity of pitch blackness.
"Perhaps we should erase him."
And then the hiccuping stopped. "I'll kill you."
"I was merely suggesting. After all, you drive a hard bargain, little witch. Of course I cannot erase him." He wasn't all too concerned of her threat. After all, he had been alive much longer than she had.
"Get out. Get out of my void this instant before I throw you out." Nora's eyes were sunken into her soul as her pale lips drew the words of the demand.
Mirai shot a sly smile before sitting on the shoulder of the man who chuckled. "You shouldn't be so narrow minded .. Nyx."
"I SAID GET OUT!" Her final bellow had forcibly thrown the two out with an invisible force as she clutched her head in her hands, clawing at her chest where the seal ultimately was. The seal that proved she was the yorishiro of the clock keepers.
The deal had laid on the table after she had come out of the Red House. That night when she had brought the half dead Teru home from his fight in the boundary. She hadn't thought of reaching out to it until the future dawned upon her in which Minamoto Teru took his own life due to his unrelenting love for the witch.
It was in that future that Nora had died making a wish to the entity that lived within Yugi Tsukasa—the entity that was the Red House in its faithful form of its believers. It was also in that future that Yugi Amane—Hanako of the Bathroom, he had failed to stop his younger brother who later consumed him and took the life of several dozen students, manifesting the sacrificial kannagi pit into the school, forcing every student to become a sacrifice, just as Akane was meant to be, along with her ancestor.
The former sacrifices all returned and began to condemn the students.
That future was chaos. It was the end of everything as they so knew it.
She had been doing many things behind Teru's awareness to maintain as much of a balance and peace as she could to the full extent of her capabilities without the help of the clock keepers .. but as she realized .. with her power alone, it was impossible.
Nora had secretly taken another trip to the 4PM Bookstacks where she read the future of Teru and Akane respectively. After all, after changing the present, she wanted to assure that Teru's future had also been altered.
However it seemed to have been worse. The result of her sloppy butterfly effect had merely caused his death sooner.
In the original timeline .. The three clock keepers were to hold a trial to see who was responsible for the incomprehensible occurrences in the school. When it was proven to be Yugi Tsukasa .. he went rampant and incapacitated Kako with one tsueshiro to assure he couldn't reassemble himself .. and he had torn the yorishiro out of Mirai, killing Akane who was still permanently injured from his wounds inflicted by No. 2. Teru, who had also been taken to be put on trail with Yashiro and Hanako had been the one to first be sacrificed after Tsukasa had forced Yashiro to tear off the yorishiro from the clock keepers .. along with the final yorishiro being himself.
She wasn't able to read any point past that as the pages were blank. It was a premonition that the school would cause the end of everything once again.
After running through several different simulations in her head of how it all could be prevented .. the clock keeper of the past approached her, well aware of what she had been doing.
He held out his hand and offered her something that was almost treacherous to even consider—to become the new clock keeper of the present, one that would be stronger than Akane and Mirai, capable of stopping Yugi Tsukasa .. capable of helping them create a proper butterfly effect.
It was because Nora wasn't a clock keeper that she wasn't able to properly alter the course of events that would occur.
They had offered her that opportunity.
She couldn't dare to take it and become a supernatural.
But she realized that the course of that current present was laid out intentionally by Kako and Mirai .. just as they had done for Akane—intentionally planning the death of Aoi just so the boy could become their clock keeper.
Nora had also been backed into that corner, faced with no choice.
It was her fault to begin with.
They saw the fault in her weaknesses .. they saw that Nora had begun acting like a human and acting upon her human heart, causing her to become a victim to such vulnerability, just as Akane had been from the start. Except for them, she was a permanent solution in temporary clock keepers.
Thus, they forced her hand.
She thought she could have proved them wrong, instead she had been proven wrong.
And thus came this current timeline where in the span of a few days, everything would settle and Teru's memories of ever having met her would be gone. He would live until he was old—until he was the age of Nagisa, the head of the temple .. and Keiko would be alive due to Nora sapping away Tiara's spiritual power.
She and Teru would have never performed the taboo act of necromancy and his father would have never spiraled.
All would be well.
Now Natsuki Nora didn't exist .. only Nyx.
*I've built a lot of foreshadowing up until this point .. and I'm glad I've finally reached it. I already have an idea about how I want to end the book considering it's heading in that direction now, but the next few upcoming chapters of the manga might change what I have planned.