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Mafuyu groggily forced herself awake. The heat surrounding her room was stifling, and she could barely move her arm to reach her phone.
It was August 15. 12:30 on the dot.
Ah. She was late for her meeting with Kanade. Honestly, she was surprised that the composer even wanted to meet outside in the first place, citing a very obvious lack of exercise and shut-in problems, not to mention her malnutrition causing… certain health problems about her want to go outside. Overall, it was ideal for Kanade to go outside, but in this weather, it still struck Mafuyu as odd.
Regardless of her thoughts on the heat, and Kanade’s issues with said heat, Mafuyu changed into lighter clothes and prepared to walk the few blocks to the park Kanade said she’d be at.
It was even hotter outside, the stuffiness from inside the house feeling like a full-blown heatwave now that Mafuyu was outside her house. Everything even looked slightly distorted, but she took it as just another effect that the weather was having on her and wiped the sweat already beading on her brow.
Kanade was sitting on one of the swings in the desolate park. It was probably that way because no sane person would ever want to step foot outside in weather like this.
However, Mafuyu noticed a black lump of fur perched on Kanade’s lap, sleepily eyeing her while being softly stroked by Kanade’s long, slender fingers.
Kanade perked up when she saw Mafuyu, although she looked quite dazed already from the pressure the heat was exerting on their surroundings. She motioned for Mafuyu to sit on the swing next to her, and then Kanade started the conversation.
“Hmm, I think that I despise summer,” Kanade muttered, still stroking the black cat.
“You were the one that told me to meet out here, you know that right?” Mafuyu narrowed her eyes, but she felt that she was just squinting so that the sun could filter out of her eyes once more.
“I suppose I did…” Kanade mumbled, looking down.
“But anyways, where did you get that cat from?” Mafuyu pointedly looked down at the fluffball, now that Mafuyu could think a little more beyond the heat, it shouldn’t be so comfortable in the blazing sun out at the moment.
“Ah… Honestly, it was trailing after me when I was walking here, and when I sat on the swings it’s just… sat on me…?” Kanade giggled a little. “...Hey, do you wanna pet it? It’s quite soft!”
Before Mafuyu could respond though, the cat gracefully leaped from Kanade’s lap to the tanbark ground, causing some to fly a few inches up upon impact.
“Eh-! Hey, wait please!” Kanade quickly scrambled off of the seat to attempt a chase after the feline, and Mafuyu really had no choice but to follow her.
They had reached the intersection and the cat dashed onto the street and Kanade rushed after it and the wrong light turned green and the truck lurched forward-
There was red. So much of it. Kanade, lying covered in her own blood from the impact, the truck spattered in Kanade’s blood and more, the streets suddenly not looking so gray and white, everything was red, red, red, fogging over from this daze.
Mafuyu’s body moved automatically towards Kanade, her poor, sweet Kanade, who could never hurt a fly and now the universe had gone and done this to her?! This horrible, gut-wrenching act of murder of her composer…? Ha, the universe truly believes she can’t be saved after all, doesn’t it…
Kanade smiled faintly at the Mafuyu kneeling in front of her dying self, hands stained with her blood, and Mafuyu only saw red within that smile, that sad, hopeful smile that she had seen when they met, now ruined by the sight of gore and rust staining over her senses, clogging everything else out, until she heard nothing but ringing and laughter behind her.
The haze was mocking her, taunting her, and reminding her that it wasn’t a joke, all of it was something that Mafuyu would forever remember, this last still of Kanade’s cracked and broken body etched into her mind.
The heat was too much and Mafuyu collapsed forward onto something soft and hard and warm and cold all at the same time.
Mafuyu woke up in the stuffy warmth of her room in a cold sweat, eyes frantically darting around the room.
Silence.
Her phone rang.
Mafuyu jerked her arm towards the device and shakily managed to pick it up. Kanade was calling. Alright. So she was still alive…?
Yes. She was alright. Mafuyu could hear her soothing voice through her phone, she was still alive and the heat haze was lying.
“...Um, Mafuyu?” Kanade questioned, causing Mafuyu to startle.
“Ah, sorry Kanade, I spaced out a little, what did you want to ask me?”
“I was wondering if you wanted to go on a little walk to the park with me since it’s hopefully cooler during the night then, I don’t know, the middle of the day?”
“Sure, why not,” Mafuyu couldn’t figure out anything else to say, the haze still lingering in her mind.
“Alright, then I’ll come over to your place and we can go from there,” Kanade hung up. The haze receded.
Right. It was 12:30 am on August the 14th.
The two walked to the park together and sat on their respective swings, and the cat hopped up onto Kanade’s lap again.
“Ah! Sorry, about that, but it was following me the entire way here… I’m not quite sure why but I think it’s really cute right?” Kanade beamed when she saw the cat.
All Mafuyu saw in the cat’s sleepy eyes were Kanade’s bloody, freezing body in the intersection, lifeless and distant.
“Yeah,” Mafuyu lied through her teeth.
“...Are you alright Mafuyu? You look paler than usual,” Kanade tilted her head. The haze was slowly creeping back up again.
“I’m fine, just a dream that I had that was similar to this, that’s all,” Mafuyu lied again. “Besides, if anything, you’re the one that’s pale,”
“Ehehe… I suppose that's true, but-!” The cat once again leaped out of Kanade’s lap and away towards that stupid intersection.
Kanade started to chase after it, but Mafuyu managed to grab onto her in enough time.
“Eh…?” Kanade looked at Mafuyu oddly.
“The cat’ll probably be fine. Besides, you don’t look very well, so we should head back to my place to make sure you’re ok,” Mafuyu reasoned, taking note of the lack of color in Kanade’s face.
“Ah… Sorry. But, alright, if you insist,” Kanade smiled, but it was stretched thin across her face, which was beginning to become ashen.
“We really should get to my house before you collapse from yourself…” Mafuyu muttered before stepping off the swaying swing and offering out a hand for Kanade to lean on.
Kanade gratefully took the hand and clasped onto it during their walk back.
The walk was silent, for the most part, mainly to avoid Kanade running into shortness of breath problems. Walking through the night was quite peaceful compared to Mafuyu’s ‘dream’ earlier, and she couldn’t help but feel calm.
The heat haze sneered at her.
Kanade pushed her, and Mafuyu stumbled onto the street when she turned back to Kanade to say something…
Kanade screamed. Horribly. That was the only thing Mafuyu processed before her other senses flooded back to her and she saw the gruesome sight.
Kanade, collapsed into herself on the concrete sidewalk with a long metal pole protruding out from her back, impaling itself through her abdomen. Blood dripped from her wound and even more of the viscous red stained the pole above and below her. A bit of blood fell from her mouth in a short splatter in front of her as she coughed.
Mafuyu felt the heat haze again, burning at her skin, searing through her bones, and stabbing her all over her body. ‘This isn’t a dream, not this time’ the heat haze giggled, before turning into a roaring laughter at Mafuyu’s onslaught of tears.
Even through the blurring and fluttering of her eyes, she swore she saw Kanade smile at her again.
She hated this. All she could see when she woke up was Kanade, broken and bloodied, pungent rust staining the air around them, dark red always misting around her, the worst contrast possible to Kanade’s light.
It kept happening. Every time. No matter what Mafuyu did or didn’t do, Kanade always had to die. Even if she held her back from chasing the cat and they made it back to Mafuyu’s house, Kanade would lose strength in her legs and slip down the house stairs. If Mafuyu pulled her along a different street, then Kanade would get caught in the middle of a police chase and get shot. If Mafuyu just stayed inside, then Kanade would go to her house to ask if she was okay, and when Mafuyu opened the door, Kanade would get stabbed by a stranger stalking her-
In one of the resets, Mafuyu let herself break. Sobbing furiously into her arms, she wiped at her red and puffy eyes, brushing her bangs out of her face. Why did Kanade have to die all of the time, why couldn’t it be her instead?!
Wait… what if it was her instead…?
She composed herself, wiping her face with her sleeve and ignoring the horrible swollen feeling of her under eyes. If she just forced the heat haze to kill her instead of Kanade, then she could stop watching this torture and Kanade could stop living through... dying for that torture. Mafuyu hated even the thought of that.
It was decided for herself. Mafuyu would put her plan into motion for the next reset.
She went to greet Kanade outside her door. Kanade died. Bits of Kanade splattered all over. Mafuyu broke under the heat haze’s mocking laughter.
Mafuyu woke up to the strangling heat.
It was August 15. 12:30 pm.
Kanade and Mafuyu met in the park, sitting on the swings with Kanade’s lap cat, purring quietly from its’ seat. Then the fluffy black cat, as always, leaped off of Kanade’s lap towards that intersection, that intersection with Kanade’s blood always splattered over it like a horror artist’s abstract art piece, that horrible truck, the truck that Mafuyu could see every detail of, from the dents in the off white metal to the sickening crunch of Kanade’s bones when they impacted, Mafuyu could only hear that in her mind as Kanade once more chased after the slinky black cat.
Even if this sort of story was only meant to have one ending to it, Mafuyu broke it the moment she pushed Kanade away from the street and flung herself right into the truck’s trajectory.
Kanade was right beside her in an instant, and Mafuyu could see that even through the ever-increasing amount of sheer red everywhere, warm and running through her fingers.
Everything hurt, from the stabbing of her shattered ribcage puncturing her lungs to the dull pains of bruises exploding all over her body, the fact that likely all of her bones were broken, and the blood pouring from her body like a broken faucet, but Kanade was alive, and surely that was the thing that mattered most?
“Kana… de… I’m… sorr-” Mafuyu’s eyes faded to dull, leaving the heat haze to sneer at her beloved instead.
A girl awoke on August 14, with long, mussed-up silvery hair, curled up in her bed, with a small black cat wrapped in her arms.
Tears escaped her eyes as she muttered a soft, “It didn’t work again…”