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The memories of how it all ended come in flashes.
(Which shouldn’t be possible, not for a ghost in a ring on a mimicry of herself.)
She moves in her loop, memory to memory and moment to moment. Only the good times, and she’s an echo, so it doesn’t feel weird. It feels…
Yeah, like this is his hope. Hers too.
But then she starts to notice the loop, is when it starts feeling odd. Each time she loops to the first night, so worried for the future that she and Haruto had slept in the same room, her taking bed and him the floor despite her assurances that for her, it didn’t matter.
“No,” he’d said. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”
Said with the voice of someone guilty, though she hadn’t discovered how much so until later. But still, it was easier for them both, to wake up th next morning with the only other person who could understand them at their side.
But it loops, and so, she dreams.
She dreams of how it begins to end, and slowly, things change.
There are cracks on her hand.
They shouldn’t be here yet. They barely know each other.
Haruto had failed to save a Gate. Koyomi went out on her own, for once. She got a doughnut for him, because he refused to eat, to do anything. She didn’t really know him yet.
He looked at her in surprise.
“What’s this for?”
“To keep up your strength,” Koyomi said.
“I failed,” he said, and Koyomi had shook her head.
“This time, yes,” she said. Because it hurt her too, that someone was forced into despair. “But you’ll do better. People still need you.”
And something bright returned to Haruto’s expression. Ever so slightly.
“…Hey,” he says then. “Why the gloves inside?”
Koyomi clasps her hands together.
“No reason,” she says. “I’m fine.”
And then the scene changes.
It takes her a while to notice the ring. Which is silly, because Haruto gave it to her.
He should have been out, she thinks. That scene felt off. The start, perhaps.
Her dreams only take her to her origin. It makes running through scenes, confused about her past, strange. Because she knows, except she doesn’t. She doesn’t know what to think.
It’s pink. A Connect Ring but different. It feels right on her finger. It feels like a part of her.
She’s starting to wonder where this is, if this is a magical trap.
Or if the ending already came, and she’s just an echo.
Haruto’s arms are around her again. These are the best and worst scenes to relive. Moments of knowing Haruto is his, just like he’s hers.
On the beach, the sound of water crashing on the rocks and sand. She doesn’t shiver. Despite feeling cold to the touch, she never gets cold, herself.
Whenever she’s here, she feels like if she could just look from the corner of her eye, she could know the truth.
But she can’t.
Not all her dreams are memories. Some are closer to visions. She’s not sure what to do with these.
Time passes, in them.
She’s more aware of herself, too. Knows… something. More. Never brings it back with her.
There’s a fight, Riders with strange powers. Not magicians, she somehow knows. There’s another woman watching with her, there. One who ripples at the edges like a film real and watches the fight with sad eyes.
“I shouldn’t be here,” Koyomi says. “I’m in there.”
She points at Haruto’s heart, and she wonders what it means. The words just came. The other woman just takes her hand.
“I’m sure you are,” she says. “This World is strange.”
“Haruto and I went to another World, once,” Koyomi says, walking towards the fight and reaching for him. He was happy, to be able to give all his mana to her instead of fighting. “I wish I knew—”
Haruto’s hand passes through her, and she wakes up.
Time passes. She’s alone in watching, now. Haruto smiling as Shunpei shows him a ring he made. He tests it. It does something minor. Everyone cheers, nonetheless.
Koyomi included.
She wonders what all has changed. She wonders why.
“Hey, Haruto?” Koyomi had asked. He turned. They were out on a date, and he seemed a bit distracted. Probably embarrassment after the last fight, having forgotten his latest Ring’s powers.
But he’d saved the gate.
“What will you do when I don’t need your magic before?” She asked.
Haruto… to his credit, looked thoughtful.
“I guess I’d be happy for you,” he said. “And then keep being a Wizard. There will always be Phantoms trying to steal hope. What will you do?”
“…I don’t know,” Koyomi said.
She breaks script.
“What if the answer is something neither of us understand?” She asks. She looks down at her hand, at the ring. She thinks about being the corpse of a dead girl. She thinks about how something is Off.
She thinks about being in Haruto’s heart.
“Then I’ll just have to figure it out,” Haruto replies. He takes her hand, absentmindedly running his finger over her strange ring.
Koyomi squeezes his hand, gently.
“Are you leaving again?”
Haruto turns.
“Rinko,” he says. “I was going to tell everyone.”
“Good,” she says. “It was kind of obvious.”
Haruto sighs. It feels like a private moment Koyomi shouldn’t be watching.
“I’m not sure what to do next,” he says. “I always thought…”
( “What will you do?”
The question changes shape in Koyomi’s mind. A request.)
Time passes. It’s been much longer. She thinks it might have been a year now.
They’re on the beach, and she sees it. The pictures, the memories, and…
“Dragon,” she says.
“Indeed I am,” Dragon replies. Haruto separates from her.
“Dragon?” He asks.
“…I’m in Haruto’s Underworld,” Koyomi says slowly. “But how…”
“That ring around your finger,” Dragon replies. “He gave you Koyomi’s soul.”
“Then I really am his hope,” Koyomi says. She holds her hands close to her. “But… they couldn’t revive the other Koyomi.”
“Haruto made difficult choices,” Dragon says. “And I wouldn’t call her the other Koyomi. You have the soul, the memories.”
“So what am I, then?”
“I guess you’ll have to find that out for yourself,” Dragon replies before flying away.
Koyomi continues to stare at the ring. The ring which is, supposedly, her soul.
She doesn’t know what to do, yet.
The scene changes.
Is she Koyomi? That’s the thought running through her head. If she’s the Koyomi of Haruto’s Underworld, she’s just an echo, but…
She feels like Koyomi. She thinks she remembers more than she should.
She can even leave, even watch over him, in the scene break where she is asleep.
She looks at her ring, thinks about being a different kind of doll. Except she knows herself.
She supposes she’ll just have to accept it as is.
The scene changes to something unfamiliar. Koyomi wonders until he hears Haruto’s voice.
It’s a slightly different pitch from his own echo. The real one.
“Koyomi?”
“Haruto…”
She wishes she knew what to say. He seems just as frozen. It probably doesn’t help that neither of them are exceptionally expressive.
The other were. They helped in more ways than one. They can be with Haruto now, often. She’s just…
The echo in Haruto’s heart.
He takes a step forwards. She does the same. Another. Another.
They run, and then their arms are around each other, and both are shaking with unfelt emotions. A true reunion after…
Whatever happened.
“This is a dream,” Haruto says.
“It is,” Koyomi confirms. “But it’s not a bad one.”
“No, I guess not.”
She visits him like that more often, after. Never had it in her to explain that she really is all but alive.
Haruto’s echo stops appearing at the beach, and now it’s just Koyomi and Dragon.
“You’re changing this place,” he says. “But then, of course you are. You’re hope.”
“Haruto’s hope.”
“This is true,” Drsgon says. “But perhaps more. You have a power in you.”
Koyomi looks down. No cracks, this loop, but…
“I’m starting to remember,” she says. “I was dying, and Haruto was with me at a lake.”
There’s no way things end happily.
“Is that so?” Dragon asks. “Then I suppose it’s about time for you to remember why you’re here.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll see.”
Haruto kept his promise. She sees it from the other side, now. Placed on her own figure, smiling inside and becoming one with her echo.
With herself.
She knows she’s changing. She wonders if she can find a way out.
She hopes so.