Chapter Text
MC sat alone by the window of an empty classroom, her untouched notebook open in front of her. She had been on the same page for nearly ten minutes without retaining a single word. The noise from the open window and the hallway echoed in the room. Conversations drifted lazily through the crisp afternoon air, complaints about assignments, friendly laughters… But none of these noises truly reached her as her mind had been away the whole day.
In another timeline she would have been roaming Darkwicks corridors with Kaito and Lucas, listening fondly to their usual squabble. But her mood hadn’t been the best lately, Leo’s words echoing again and again in her mind.
She missed them.
She had made a lot of friends on campus throughout all her missions, but Lucas and Kaito had been the very firsts. As such, they both held a special place in her heart, especially after what had happened before she rewound time. Avoiding them, per Leo’s advice, had sapped her mood so much that she didn’t even feel like hanging out with the other ghouls. She had even refused Lyca's invitation to eat lunch with him and Subaru, choosing to eat alone in an isolated corner of the campus.
Hopefully her next mission with Mortkranken would change her mind, though she doubted it.
A shadow cast over her and she raised her head. As if reading her mind, Jiro was standing right next to her. He had certainly been searching for her to go see Yuri, since they hadn’t crossed paths in the hallway like they originally had.
She prevented a tired sigh from escaping her mouth and gave him a polite smile.
“Hi Jiro.”
“Hi. I’m here to take you to the lab.”
At this moment, Kaito would have grabbed his arm, loudly complaining that he couldn’t just drag me who knows where like this, saying something along the lines of enjoying their lives, or something like that. It had been so long ago, she didn’t quite remember.
“I guess Yuri wants to see me.” She picked up her bag. “Let me pack my things and I’ll be right here.”
The way to Mortkranken was characteristically silent. Neither of them spoke. Under normal circumstances, she would have tried to fill the silence with idle chatter, but the tiredness that had gotten her these past few days killed every word in her throat. Thankfully, Jiro wasn’t the type to be bothered by silence, and strangely enough, she found this comforting.
It had been a long time since she had set foot in Mortkranken, even before her rewind. Everything was just like she remembered. Of course it was. The dusty cabinets filled with medicine bottles, the strong smell of disinfectant, the anatomical models…
Except for one thing.
This time, Jiro didn’t directly lead her to the lab to test the Isoprophene X. This time, Yuri was already waiting for her in the examination room, sitting in his chair with his arms crossed. His finger tapped impatiently against the side of his arms. If the pissed glare he was currently giving her wasn’t enough, this would have gotten her to understand that he was clearly not in a good mood.
She definitely didn’t remember this.
“Sit.”
His voice was cold and low, rumbling with apparent displeasure. MC wasn’t used to this coming from Yuri. When he was angry or frustrated or embarrassed, basically any time things didn’t go as he planned, he never hesitated to show it loud and clear, with that high pitched voice that had quickly become part of her life. She gulped.
As she sat on the chair in front of his desk, Yuri ordered :
“Jiro. The door.”
And without any further command, his assistant locked the door of the examination room behind them. She clutched the hem of her skirt, steeling herself for the storm to come.
“I think you have something to tell me, worm.” The scientist's voice echoed in the room.
She tensed up.
“I-”
“Heart rate,” he instantly cut her, “body temperature, cellular activity, anomalous energy circulation… Every single value Jiro collected during the last two examinations is different. One could have attributed the first time to the after effects of your last missions or a mistake when my assistant tested you, but two times in a row…”
A tired (or pissed) sigh escaped his mouth.
“Did you really think I wouldn’t notice your entire physiology changed ?!” He finally exploded. “Do you know how long I’ve spent studying anomalous biology and ghouls ? How long have I spent analysing your vitals to find a cure for your curse ?! This is an insult to my intellect and work, worm ! How dare you underestimate me ?!”
She shivered on her chair, curling up ever so slightly as if it was enough for her to disappear from his sight.
“I’m sorr-”
“I don’t care for an apology ! I want an explanation ! Since when have you become a ghoul ?”
“Uhm… Something around… Two weeks ago ?”
“How ?”
She hesitated. Could she tell him everything ? About the other timeline, the calamity, her time travel, her stigma… Or was it better to stay on the version she had given to Cornelius some time ago ?
She knew Yuri, in his deep professionalism, could keep the secret, and certainly knowing that the Isoprophene X wouldn’t work on her would help him greatly in his research… But he was also greatly dependent on the Academy and the Institution, especially financially speaking. Not to forget he found great pride in his discoveries and wouldn’t hesitate to boast about it later on, which could put her plan with Leo and Sho in jeopardy.
“I don’t really remember,” she lied. “It just happened. Honestly, I didn’t realize it until the Chancellor called me in his office to tell me I had somewhat become a ghoul.”
“Do you at least know what you received from this pact ?”
“The Chancellor and I think it has to do with my curse. I’ve been in a lot of emotional distress lately, a demon certainly took advantage of this.”
It pained her to lie so blatantly to him when he only wanted to help her.
“Do you have so little trust in my person that you had to ask a demon to help you ?!” He bursted out at her, barely hiding the underlying pain in his voice.
She couldn’t tell him he had actually failed to save her in time despite all his work.
He sighed again.
“I had concocted a new genius remedy to cure curses, but with such a change in your physiology, we can’t know if it will work !” The scientist cursed.
“I doubt it will indeed. The Kyklos is way too powerful anyway.”
He raised an eyebrow but did not comment.
“I’m sorry for not telling you.”
“Enough of excuses,” he refused them with a gesture of the hand. “The important thing is that you don’t hide things from your physician anymore. Besides,” Yuri smiled. “I have no doubt it will be very interesting to study the progression of your curse now that you’ve become a ghoul. Ah, you’ll be such an interesting test subject !”
The following hours unfolded almost exactly as she remembered, as if the discovery of her being a ghoul had just been a mere annoying fly in Yuri’s schedule. She knew it wasn’t, and that it would even bother him more than anything in his research, but he didn’t complain for long, already burying himself in this new investigation.
She waited in the examination room while he and Jiro performed the autopsy of the first victim, only to reach the very same conclusion she already knew awaited them. The cause of death of the student didn’t match with the last time he had been seen, indicating he had somehow walked after his death. The General Hospital, whose name alone was enough to make Yuri click his tongue, was brought up, she was tasked to retrieve the mission records related to the victim’s last assignment, and the professors proved just as uncooperative as before. Dante firmly refused her request, Hyde joked with him, they suggested she ask Vagastrom instead.
Every answer had already been spoken once before.
By the time she crossed the campus toward Vagastrom, an uncomfortable feeling had settled deep inside her chest.
Leo had warned her about changing too much, and she had obeyed.
Yet, walking through memories was somehow even harder than rewriting them.
She remembered all these times growing up where she had this strange feeling of deja-vu, when something happening feels oddly familiar, as if you had already lived through it. As a child, she was convinced she was actually a medium that could see the future through her dreams and just couldn’t remember their content until the event actually happened. Later on, she had discovered that some scientists theorized it could come from delay of signals in the brain, causing this feeling of reliving the same event twice.
Except this time, it wasn’t just a desynchronisation of the brain, as she was actually experimenting this investigation for the second time. A very strange feeling indeed, like a fever dream.
Alan welcomed her with the same composed courtesy she remembered, listening carefully as she explained Mortkranken’s request. The conversation unfolded almost word for word, right down to Leo’s refusal to hand over the original file
“Here, I made a copy of the report. That should be enough, right ?”
She barely exchanged more words with Leo. It would have been difficult, with Alan right next to them. But he didn’t leave without giving her a gaze that definitely meant he was expecting some things from her of this investigation.
By the time she stepped outside, night had settled over Darkwick.
The constant rumble of machinery gradually faded behind her as she walked away from Vagastrom, replaced little by little by the quieter sounds of the campus preparing for the night. At this hour, there wasn’t a single soul left wandering on the campus.
The report rested beneath her arm. She glanced down at it only briefly before looking away again. She already knew every page it contained. Yuri would undoubtedly spend the rest of the evening dissecting his own hypotheses or working on who knows what instead of focusing on the investigation. There was no point in returning to Mortkranken now.
Just like before.
The thought injured longer than she expected.
Since the beginning of the investigation, every event had unfolded exactly as she remembered. Every conversation, every discovery, every conclusion… It should have reassured her. Instead, it left her with the unsettling feeling that she was no longer making choices at all, merely retracing footprints she herself had left behind.
Had she really come back to change the future…
… Or simply to watch it happen a second time ?
The words escaped her mouth on a whim.
“Satlos.”
But the compass stayed silent. It had nowhere to lead her for now.
She tightened her grip on the folder before letting out a quiet sigh.
At least today was over. Tomorrow, the investigation would continue. And tonight… Tonight she simply wanted to return to Clementia and try to rest at least a little, though her sleep hadn’t been the best lately.
She had barely taken another few steps when a familiar voice drifted through the evening breeze. Soft. Cheerful. As though it had been waiting for her all along.
“Dandelion.”