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Nene woke to the eerie quietness of the basement under the Red House. The air was damp and musty— suffocating to say, at best. She found herself laying in the waters pooling on the floor, soaking her wet and causing scales to form irritatingly on her skin. Her eyelids were heavy and her head was thumping, making her groan as she pulled herself up to sit.
As her vision cleared, she found red staining her clothes and hands, just before the foul stench reached her nose. Panic started to bubble up in her chest as she fully registered the scene around her. Images from last night’s nightmare came rolling up in her head, playing its horrific scenes one by one: a knife in her hand, blood spurting and falling into the water, her friends looking at her in horror. Nene frantically crawled and scurried backwards. Her sudden movements sent red water splashing all over her before her back crashed with a sturdy wall. A lock of purple hair floated just beside her hands, its ends tangled messily around the fingers.
Nene screamed and pulled her hands from the water, using them as a shield to cover her eyes. Knowing full well what scenery awaits her if she ever looked up, she kept shaking her head in agony, refusing to believe again and again that this is her current situation. Tears began to fall staining her cheeks as she sobbed, realizing that whatever she saw in her head was not a nightmare and instead a memory of what really just happened.
She’d killed her friends. With her own hands. And then there was—
“Ah, awake already?”
She dared not to open her eyes to see whose voice was talking to her. It came right from behind her back— the well.
“Don’t be that way. Come, look at me.”
The sweetness of the voice almost fooled her into thinking that she might be in safe hands; that she was finally rescued from this horrible dream. And if she was allowed to be entirely honest, she wished she could say that she’d missed that voice very terribly. The thought brought deeper grief into her chest and made her sobs grow louder.
Instead of safe hands, she felt slimy tentacles crawling all over her arms. They looped and gripped onto her skin tightly before forcing to separate her hands from her face. Still, Nene stubbornly kept her eyes shut and hung her head low, refusing to see everything that was in front of her.
Perhaps realizing that it was impossible for her to cooperate while in that state, the monster behind her chose a different approach . This time, she felt rough and calloused hands reached for her face and turned her around, forcing her body to face backwards rather uncomfortably. Nene grunted to the sudden force and gripped the hands to pry it away from her face, though to no avail. One of the tentacles slipped between her underarms and lifted her. After getting her to kneel in front of the well with her back now turned towards her friends’ rotting corpses, his ‘human’ hands then moved to hold her cheeks once more and lifted her face.
“Come on, I promise it’s not as scary on this side.”
Nene knew she had no choice but to oblige. She eventually let her eyelids slowly flutter open and was met with an unexpectedly soft expression from the man above her. No blood. No intestines spilling out. No floating heads. Just a rather disturbingly handsome face with a kind smile—A smile she had grown to be familiar with; to be in love with. Yet it was important to note that the warmth of his smile did nothing sort of to diminish the chill that came upon contact with his skin— crawling all the long way from her face to her spine.
“Now, there’s a good girl. See? Better view, right? I assume you’d prefer to speak to this face instead.”
“Why are you doing this?” Nene mustered up her courage to ask even when she could do nothing to hide the shake in her voice. “How could you—“
“Do what, exactly? Those kids? You were the one who killed them.”
“You lured me into this! You lured him into this! You ruined his life and made him into a serial killer!” Nene screamed, growing frustrated. She trashed and shook violently to pry the tentacles away from her.
“Who, me? Which one are you talking to, little girl? The teacher— me, the pawn? Or the thing I’m feeding?”
“Th- The thing… You’re feeding,” Nene answered nervously. “What are you, exactly?”
The teacher laughed. “And here I thought you’d prefer to speak to the boy instead.” Just as he finished his words, the handsome face distorted in a disturbing manner, swallowing all of the beautiful features of his face away like a black hole. A hole-faced monster emerged before her. She tried not to tremble at the sight; disgusting tentacles wriggled out of the hole, reaching towards her face as if it could pull and gobble her whole any time.
“There. You wish to speak to me instead, right?” The voice had also changed to a terrifying raucous voice— nothing like what was speaking to her earlier. The voice was unclear, though it echoed throughout the basement. It sounded like how you’d hear distorted things from being deep underwater.
Nene asked her question again. “What are you?”
“I’m a hungry god, child. Always feeding, and is always served. Humans have been serving souls to satiate my hunger for thousands of years. Surely you know that by now. You did it yourself, didn’t you?” It let out a creepy laugh that bounced off the cold walls of the basement, sending a fierce chill through her spine.
Nene refused to let that faze her. She forcefully swallowed her fear and let anger arise instead.
“You’re nothing more than a terrible entity. No one worships a horrible being like you,” she screamed at the monster before her. “You don’t deserve to be called a god.”
“And yet they all came to me with a sacrifice for a wish!” The entity laughed, sending the water in the basement to ripple violently. “You, the teacher, his little brother- everyone, everyone!” The entity continued to laugh, its tentacles began to grip and trap Nene again. “Everyone wished for happiness. And I gave them the happiness they so desperately wanted, a wish for a sacrifice. A wish for a price. Fair and square.”
“Nothing that you gave them has led to happiness,” Nene began crying in frustration. “Look what you’ve done to my friends… to the boy that I like…” she sobbed.
“Ah, you mean him? You know him?” The entity pondered a bit. “I’ve been wondering why you felt so out of place, child. You’re not from here, aren’t you?”
Nene refused to answer and only hung her head low. A tentacle reached for her face and lifted her chin upwards again.
“This thing… What is it for?” The entity asked as one of the tentacles came up to her face and held up the hourglass that she had almost forgotten about. Nene let out a gasp and immediately tried to snatch it, though the entity was faster to pry it away from her reach. The tentacles pinned her down onto the ground, not letting her to stand.
“I had my suspicions. You’ve been here multiple times, haven’t you? This is a time-warping tool. You’ve been stuck in this endless loop of trying to save the people you care about.” The hole slowly distorted back into the teacher’s face, his wicked smile once again appearing to greet her. “Who are you trying to save, exactly? Those friends you’ve murdered with your own hands? Or me, Yugi Amane?” he spread his arms wide, grinning- before crouching down from the well to meet her at eye level. He took her hand and brought it to his chest, where Nene could feel nothing underneath it. Not warmth. Not even a beat. It was emptier than what she remembered with Hanako.
“Tell me, Yashiro Nene. Do you wish to save me?”
Her heart sank to that question.
“Yes,” she answered, surrendering. “I want to save you.”
“That settles it, then.” He brought her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles before pulling her up with him.
“You did give me quite a meal this time, so I let you have this one big wish.” Icy hands clasped around hers, Nene felt him slipping something into her palms: the hourglass. Lowering his voice, he spoke again— and this time the voice made Nene’s heart sink further into her stomach.
“Save me, Yashiro. You want me back, don’t you?”
—Because it sounded so close to Hanako’s voice.
***
The script in her hand was better off being left on her bedroom table because she was definitely not reading them. It was a day before the school festival and Nene was rehearsing the play with her classmates. They had decided to take a 30-minute break after completing multiple run-throughs (in which most of them Nene had messed up pretty badly, so much for the star of the show.) Her friends collectively decided to go lunch together, but Nene insisted on just staying in the auditorium by herself.
As they all left, Nene took a seat at the edge of the stage and mindlessly flipped through her script. She had little to no interest in the show anymore. Not when the person that she had wanted to watch her perform no longer existed in this world.
She sighed and brought her knees together. Her mind wandered off to the conversation she had in the Red House just before going back in time–
—As she flipped the hourglass, a strong gust of wind and sand came spiralling all around her, ready to claim and swallow her whole to a new timeline. Nene hated this part of the time travelling process; the sparkling sand was blinding her, its coarse texture always irritated her skin. Before her, the image of the older Yugi Amane— with both hands behind his back and a wide, friendly smile— began to slowly fade from existence.
But just before he fully disappeared from her sight, she heard him speak to her one last time.
“I can’t wait to see how you’ll play this game, little girl. Show me how far you’ll go with that time-warping tool. Run away as far as you want— I’m sure you’ll come back to me, anyway.”
Nene didn’t manage to reply to him as she was completely submerged into the glittering sand—
—“Nene-chan!”
Nene jumped in surprise when Aoi suddenly came from behind her. A packet of sweet melonpan was presented right in front of her face.
“You won’t be able to focus without eating something,” her best friend said softly, which made Nene almost tear up at her kindness. Nene took the bread and they sat together to eat.
“I know it’s hard being the main lead, Nene-chan. But don’t push yourself too hard,” Aoi spoke as she lay her hand on Nene’s. And that only made Nene feel a deeper kind of guilt, because the performance was currently the least of her worries.
Seeing Nene still in a rather sour mood, Aoi decided to use another tactic. “Listen, Nene-chan. Do you wanna know this one rumor I heard recently?”
Nene smiled at her friend’s attempt to cheer her up. Even in this new timeline, her best friend still cares about her a lot. She took another bite of the melonpan— sweet and soft and deceitful— before answering cheerfully, “Ooh, yeah, sure! What is it?”
“I heard a bunch of kids from the middle school division tried this urban spirit-calling ritual at school, and the next day, they all went missing.”
Nene stopped eating and looked at Aoi worriedly. “That’s actually scary... Are they still missing?”
“Well, luckily the Minamotos found them all and brought them back home that night. Some said they were possessed by the spirit after doing that ritual,” Aoi said in a gossipy manner, whispering to Nene as if they weren’t the only ones currently in the auditorium.
“Did you know this from Minamoto-senpai?”
“Yeah, Teru-kun filled me in on some things. He warned me not to try it- Do you know the ritual, Nene-chan?” Aoi asked as she finished her melonpan, bunching its plastic wrapping into a ball and keeping it in her skirt pocket.
“No, I don’t.” And she wasn’t sure if she wanted to. Her current horrible situation alone was already giving her quite the headache.
Aoi however, kept talking. “They say in order to call the spirit, you need to prepare a bouquet of white chrysanthemums. Put it on a desk in an empty classroom. And if there’s multiple people, you need to hold hands together, circling the table with your back facing it, and finally chant— ‘Tsukasa-kun, Tsukasa-kun. Come play with us.’ They said that if you play with the spirit, he’ll tell you anything you want to know!”
Nene froze when she heard the familiar name. Tsukasa-kun? Could this be connected to the Red House? “The spirit…” She started asking nervously, not really knowing if this could be the answer in order to save everyone from this timeline. “…What is it?”
Aoi tilted her head to the question. “I heard they said that it’s a little boy. If that’s what you’re asking.”
“And… He’ll answer anything?”
“Yeah… Wait, Nene-chan, you’re not thinking of it, are you? This might actually be dangerous since Teru-kun specifically warned me about it,” Aoi said worriedly, before grabbing Nene’s hands in hers. “I know you love these things, Nene-chan. That’s why I told you the rumor since you seemed a little down lately. But you have to promise me that you won’t try this one.”
Nene took a solemn look at their hands, before smiling and giving Aoi an assuring squeeze.
“Yeah, of course! I mean— The rumor sounds waaaay too scary for me, Aoi!”
“Isn’t it? So you have to stay away from it, alright?” Aoi reminded her again, this time more serious than soft.
“Yeah,” Nene nodded.
“Promise?”
“…Promise.”
The sound of their classmates entering the hall cut off the silence of the auditorium. Aoi let go of Nene’s hands to let her finish off her neglected meal before they continued their rehearsal again.
Nene took one big final bite of the melonpan— sweet and soft and deceitful.
***
The new building’s hallways were already empty as Nene quietly crossed it after somehow managing to sneak back in just before they locked the front gate. From the wide windows on the hallways, she got a clear view of the sun setting in the late evening; huge, bright and golden. The floor was splashed with deep orange hues; Nene’s footsteps echoed throughout the hallway as she walked alone, carefully cradling a vase of fresh white chrysanthemums in her hands. There was literally no one there except for her own shadow trailing behind her.
Their rehearsal ended around a few hours ago, and Nene had to take extra walking to convince Aoi that she was indeed going home and not staying at the campus to try anything funny. They walked home together, said their goodbyes at the bridge near the intersection and Nene pretended to continue walking home before taking a detour to the nearest flower shop once she was sure that she was out of her best friend’s sight.
Not wanting to waste any more time, Nene chose the closest classroom and slid the door open. The door slid loudly as she pushed it a little too hard, and she almost had a heart attack when seeing two black figures standing at the end of the supposedly empty classroom, shadowed by the evening sun. One of them scolded her.
“Hey, don’t you know how to open a door carefully?! You almost gave me a heart attack,” said an annoyed voice, which Nene then recognizes as Mitsuba's. It took her another second to register that the other figure was Kou.
“Mitsuba-kun, Kou-kun…” Nene started, still cradling the white chrysanthemums in her hands. She walked into the classroom and slid the door close behind her. “What are you two doing here?”
“Huh, do we know each other?” Mitsuba raised an eyebrow. He squinted and tried to remember if he had forgotten someone. Nothing seemed to come to his mind.
Kou also stepped forward from the shadow and sheepishly smiled. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we’ve met before. How did you know our names?”
“Right, we’ve never met…” Nene said dejectedly and placed the flowers on an empty desk. “Never mind that. What are you two doing here at this hour?” Nene walked closer towards them and noticed a set up on a desk at the end of the classroom: a sheet with oujia characters, a vase with a single sad stalk of white lily.
It occurred to her immediately: they were about to do the ritual too.
“Are you trying to call the spirit?” Nene asked worriedly. She crossed the classroom and took the vase with the white lily. “You really shouldn’t! I heard it’s actually dangerous.”
Mitsuba pointed towards the chrysanthemums that she left behind near the door. “You have the same thing. You’re trying to do it.”
“I have my reasons!” Nene replied immediately. “You shouldn’t be doing it for fun!”
“It’s not for fun, senpai.” Kou said between them. He took the vase from her hands and set it on the desk again. “We were only investigating.”
Nene remembered the last time she had asked them to leave the school in the previous timelines. That time she didn’t know what they were really up to, she just wanted to make sure they stayed away since it was what brought them to the Red House and got them killed the day after.
“Was this what you were up to before?” Her voice shook as she asked them, finally understanding how the occurrences were all connected.
“Before?” Kou and Mitsuba asked together.
“You have to get out of here!” Nene said almost hysterically, startling both of the boys. She grabbed their hands and pulled them away from the desk.
Mitsuba was the first to yank his hand away from her grasp. “Whoa, relax! We weren’t actually gonna do it, we were just checking the scene! Geez, you’re crazy!”
“Neither of us should be here, anyway. We probably need to get going too, it’s getting late,” Kou said as he began pulling Mitsuba with him. “You should leave too, senpai.”
But Nene was not leaving. Especially since this might be the only answer that she needed to save everyone.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered softly, which made them both turn around.
“What did you sa–”
Before they even finished their sentence, Nene lunged forward and pushed the boys out of the classroom. Kou and Mitsuba tripped, limbs tangled together as they tumbled onto the hard floor.
“Hey, what gives–”
SLAM!!
The door was immediately shut in front of their faces. There was a click heard from inside.
“I’m sorry! But I had no choice!” She said to them apologetically before running towards the front door to lock it too.
“Senpai!?”
“Are you out of your mind!?”
The boys kept banging on the door, shouting and asking her to change her mind. But Nene’s mind was long made up. She ignored them and took her freshly bought white chrysanthemums to the back of the classroom.
The flowers that were used before had begun to wilt; brown and death slowly claiming the once white petals. Nene took out the old flowers from the vase and replaced them with her new ones. She then turned her back towards the setup and closed her eyes. Unlike the rumour, she had no one to hold hands with or circle the desk. But she hoped that the ritual would work even with her alone. Her heart was thumping loud; it matched rhythmically with the constant banging on the door. Nene took a deep breath and chanted—
“Tsukasa-kun, Tsukasa-kun. Come play with me.”
The banging on the doors stopped. The air felt still and empty, too empty— that it made her a little breathless. She blinked her eyes open and found the classroom shrouded in pitch darkness, as if it was already nighttime and wasn’t late evening just a few seconds ago.
Nene fumbled for the light switch at the end of the classroom. Just as the lights were switched on, she heard the desk behind her move. Nene instinctively backed away and turned around.
And there he was, little Tsukasa— smiling as he looked up at her from under the desk. But different to what she imagined, this little Tsukasa looked odd. Wrong in so many ways. His pupils were void in black and his smile stretched longer from what she remembered. When he trotted and held her hands, Nene flinched to his cold and clammy fingers.
“Onee-san, would you play with me?”
His little voice echoed in the whole classroom; it was both so loud yet so unclear at the same time. It sounded like a distortion, as if she was underwater— and to her disdain, it immediately reminded her of the basement of the Red House.
“Onee-san,” the little boy’s voice grew louder and impatient. His grip on her hands tightened so much that it was leaving red handprints on her skin. “Would you play with me?” He asked again.
“Yes!” Nene immediately answered this time, all the while trying to loosen his grip from her hand. “I’ll play, but will you answer anything that I ask you after that? Like how the rumours said it?”
Tsukasa smiled and let go of her hands. He jumped up and down in excitement. “Of course! I’ll tell you any secret you want to know! Just play with me!”
Nene crouched down and asked him with a sweeter voice, shaking away her fear, “What should we play then?”
“Hide-n-seek!” He answered excitedly, very excitedly—his black pupils grew larger; the void in his eyes looked like it could shallow her whole. Nene instinctively looked away.
Little Tsukasa grabbed her face and pulled her closer to him. With a whisper, he said, “You hide and I seek. If I catch you, you lose. And if you can hide until I give up, you win! But I'll keep my promise either way. I'll tell you anything, Onee-san.”
“O-Okay!” Nene answered. “You count and I'll go hide.”
Tsukasa covered his eyes with his hands and started counting. Nene tried her best to tiptoe around him and decided to just hide under the teacher's desk. There was nothing to lose, after all. She just needed to get this done and get her wish.
Tsukasa finished counting with a gleeful “10!” and didn't even bother to ask whether she was ready or not. He immediately trotted around the classroom searching for her.
At first it was normal. She heard desks and chairs moving around, the steel cupboard at the back of the class being opened, the curtains being pulled over and over again. But then it got weirder. She heard the desks falling over with a loud clang. The book lockers at the back being opened and shut simultaneously— loud and horrid like a raging storm.
His supposedly tiny footsteps grew louder that she felt it thumped in her chest. More desks and chairs were being toppled— no, thrown all over the classroom. Nene flinched when she heard a loud bang on the door. When she peeked from her hiding spot, she found the locked door was opened after seemingly being crashed by multiple desks at once.
“THAT'S NOT GOOD, ONEE-SAN,” a sudden raucous voice came from behind her. Nene screamed when she saw Tsukasa's face was no longer there and was replaced by a void— a void she'd seen before.
His little hands grabbed her tightly and pulled her out of her hiding place. She felt her hands go numb and cold, and her mind went into full panic when it was because of black, thick veins had started to seep into her skin.
“IT'S NO FUN THIS WAY, ONEE-SAN,” Tsukasa— the entity, giggled. He grabbed her face with his little hands; it was so numbing that it brought tears to her eyes. Her vision blurred. Her head was spinning. Nene felt as if she was losing all of her senses; except for the feeling of the cold, sticky veins that had crawled up to her cheeks.
“How about we play tag next?” the entity suggested. “But I'll answer your question first. What do you want to know?”
Her throat was so tight she wasn’t sure if she could speak any coherent word. With tears trailing on her cheeks, she spoke with her mind instead— wishing for it to be loud enough for the entity to hear her.
“I want to know where it'd started to go wrong in this new world,” she thought desperately, sobbing as her throat felt tighter.
Not a second after, her whole body tensed to the point it hurts. Eyes wide, gasping for breaths— visions from a familiar house with a red roof came gushing into her mind.
A red photobook sat on top of a table in a room. There are images there, but they were blurry.
“It’s there. You’ll find something there.”
The vision ended and she slumped to the floor, her hair curtaining her whole face. From what little vision she had— she could still see Tsukasa's socked feet in front of her.
Suddenly, he crouched down and pushed her hair aside; like opening a curtain on a sunny morning. The little face with black, void eyes filled her whole view. He smiled, and said—
“RUN.”
What happened next was like a storm of blurring images. She recalled the classroom being toppled over; the walls becoming the floors, the floors becoming the walls— she recalled frantically scrambling away on all fours while the entity chased her along the corridor outside of the classroom— but whatever happened to her onwards became a mystery to her too.
***
“...chan!”
“Nene-chan!!!”
Her eyes flew open. Aoi was right beside her, clutching her hand with tears in her eyes. Nene’s head was still spinning. She could hardly remember where she was.
“Nene-chan, why did you do that?” Aoi cried and hugged her tightly. She sounded angry, but somehow not at her. Nene felt her cheeks getting wet from her friend's tears.
“I wish I never told you that rumour…” she sobbed uncontrollably while still hugging the confused Nene.
She remembered a bit. About the ritual. About the Hide-n-seek. About the tag.
And then the vision.
The key to her answer.
“Aoi, what happened to me?” Nene asked as she loosened the hug from her friend.
“You didn’t remember? Teru-kun's little brother found you doing the ritual at school. Then they said that you– you were possessed and were crawling all over the walls! I-I came a little late, but I still- I still saw you screaming and thrashing while they held you from running away,” Aoi answered between sobs. “We brought you here to Minamoto's Residence after Teru-kun exorcised you,” she began crying again.
Nene’s heart sank to the fact that her recklessness was the cause of her best friend’s tears. She took Aoi's hand in both of hers. “I'm so sorry, Aoi.”
“I shouldn't have told you that rumour.”
“No, I knew you only wanted to cheer me up,” Nene said with a soft smile. “And I appreciated it so much! I never intended to make you worry. I just— I had no choice. I had to do it.”
“What do you mean?” Aoi asked with a more serious note. She wiped her tears with her free hand.
Nene didn't answer her. Her gaze cast downwards towards their hands, avoiding direct contact with Aoi's.
“Nene-chan… You need to tell me if there’s something troubling you.”
“It's… Complicated,” Nene answered with a sigh. “And I don’t want to drag you into it because it's too dangerous…”
“...Then you don't trust me?” Aoi asked, her voice shaking. She didn't sound sulky. Just plain disappointment.
Nene immediately lifted her gaze and gripped her best friend’s hands tighter. “No, that's not it! I just—”
“You're all just the same,” Aoi said with a harsher tone as she snatched her hand away from Nene’s grip. It brought genuine shock to Nene to see her best friend’s like that. “Are you also gonna say that you want to protect me? Because everyone says that. Teru-kun kept me in the dark most of the time because he wanted to protect me. Akane-kun stayed away because he wanted to protect me. And now you… You hide so many things from me these past few days.”
“Aoi…”
“Tell me, Nene-chan. Am I just not capable as a friend to help you?”
Nene was reminded of the first time she had escaped the Red House. When everyone was severely injured, Aoi— smart and pretty and popular queen Aoi— had bravely picked up Minamoto-senpai's blade and fought the entity. Aoi was the reason Nene got to escape in the first place.
Aoi was the one who had hugged her despite knowing she would have a knife stabbed into her stomach.
Aoi died because of her. And Nene couldn't have another timeline where she had to witness her best friend’s demise again in the same hands— whether hers or the entity's.
But in the end, Nene couldn't have her best friend being disappointed in her more.
Despite the lump in her throat, Nene mustered up the courage to tell her. “I saw you die before, Aoi. And it was all because you protected me.”
The look on Aoi’s face upon hearing that was impossible to discern. Still, Nene saw her effort to make sense of what she's about to tell.
Nene told Aoi everything. From the altered timeline, to the hourglass she had been using to fix things. Everything got so overwhelming at one point that Nene buried her face into her hands to calm down. That was when Aoi noticed a strange mark on her arm.
“Nene-chan, what's this?”
Nene also turned her arm to look at it, and wasn’t surprised to see black veins on her skin.
“Aoi, do you really want to help me?” Nene asked, grasping her friend’s hands again. Her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. It was the same feeling as when she was possessed back at school. And maybe this isn't the first time she had been controlled by the entity after having contact with baby Tsukasa. Who knows how many times she had tried the same thing?
But this time, it's going to be different. She had a lead. She knows what to look for.
And if Aoi is really willing to help her, then maybe this time… Just this one last time— maybe she'll take the courage to see her best friend die again. Just once more to get out of this timeloop she had created herself.
***
“I knew you'd come back,” the entity said as he twirled Nene in his arms, sending ripples of water following behind every graceful turn they took in the elegant waltz. “Though I'm surprised that you did something different this time.”
Nene saw a lock of purple hair from the corner of her eyes. It was hard to remember anything as she was being twirled again and again.
But she did remember Aoi asking her after they closed the door and pushed Akane and Teru out of the house. They were walking towards the basement, Nene leading the way as she pulled Aoi with her.
“Hey, Nene-chan. Were we happy in that other timeline you mentioned?”
Nene couldn’t remember her own answer. She hoped that she had at least nodded to that. Maybe she did, because she recalled Aoi smiling and continued, “Then I'll meet you back there, I guess. Thanks for believing in me, Nene-chan.”
Yes, she did something different. She sent Akane out and decided to stay here with Aoi this time. And while that doesn't guarantee anything, Nene felt a tiny bit of hope that this will create a different outcome.
This might’ve been a bad end. But maybe in another timeline, this will all be nothing but a long nightmare that she'd be able to wake up from; safe and sound in someone’s protective arms. Perhaps then, the other her can finally confess her overdue love for him since she didn’t have the chance to before. And then, maybe she and Aoi can continue their gossip again while they enjoy the bonfire during the closing ceremony. Everyone will be there; safe and happy and alive.
Perhaps then, there will be nothing to change or fix anymore.