The first sign was the dream.
Yuto stood in the middle of a vast, endless sky, floating among shattered clock faces and ink-black stars. Time moved in every direction—forward, backward, sideways. He was surrounded by fragments of moments, echoes of things he'd lived and forgotten.
But in front of him stood someone impossible.
A boy his age. Same messy black hair. Same uniform. Same tired, world-worn eyes.
"...Me?" Yuto whispered.
The other him nodded, solemn. "I'm the version of you that never forgot. The one who looped through everything and remembered it all."
The dream shattered.
Yuto shot awake, gasping for air, heart hammering.
"Welcome back, future vegetable," a voice said dryly.
He looked up to see his little sister, Yuzu, leaning over him holding a hairbrush like a sword.
"You were twitching in your sleep and mumbling something about bananas and timelines," she added. "I assumed you were either looping again or possessed. Again."
Yuto groaned. "Just... give me five minutes of normal. Please."
"You used up all your normal three loops ago," she chirped, skipping out of his room.
---
At school, things felt… off.
Aira caught up to him near the gates, casually flipping a piece of toast in her mouth like some cliché anime protagonist. "Hey, looper. Dream anything dramatic last night?"
Yuto hesitated. "You ever… meet yourself? Like, from another loop?"
Aira blinked. "Once. He was super dramatic and kept quoting Shakespeare. Might've been a theater kid version of me. Why?"
"I saw him. A version of me who remembers everything."
She stopped walking. "That's… new."
Before they could unpack that thought, Hiro—the school's overenthusiastic track star and Yuto's unofficial best bro—ran up to them, out of breath and holding… a microwave?
"Guys," Hiro gasped. "Don't ask why, but I'm 97% sure this microwave is sentient. Also, it talks in Morse code."
Yuto stared. "Hiro, did you fall asleep hugging electromagnetic appliances again?"
"It blinked at me," Hiro insisted. "Don't disrespect its journey."
Aira snorted. "Okay, now that's the energy we need in Arc 2."
---
Later that afternoon, the dream returned—only this time, it wasn't just a dream.
Yuto found himself alone in the gym storage room after school. The lights flickered, and suddenly the walls warped into the same star-filled realm as before.
He stood on a floating gear.
The other Yuto waited.
"You're waking up," the silver-haired version said. "The loop is losing control. You're gaining abilities—awareness."
"Awareness of what?" Yuto asked, trying not to sound terrified.
"Of time. Of choices. Of people. You're not the center of this story. You never were."
He waved his hand, and visions appeared: Aira crying alone on the rooftop in a loop Yuto couldn't remember. Kana, staring at a broken pocket watch. Hiro sprinting into a collapsing hallway, holding back tears. Yuzu… whispering to someone in the shadows.
"They're all remembering pieces," the older Yuto said. "Some fragments survive across loops. The more you awaken, the more dangerous you all become. The system won't like that."
"System?"
"You'll see. For now, remember this—your power isn't just remembering. It's connecting. You'll need them. All of them."
The vision collapsed.
---
Yuto awoke—again—this time in the library, face pressed into a book titled "Basic Chronophysics for Teenagers Who Might Accidentally Break Time."
Kana was beside him, nonchalantly sketching diagrams of the school's fire escape routes. "Looped into a nap again?"
He sat up. "Did you know we've met before? Like… before the first loop I remember?"
Kana paused her sketch. "Yuto. There's a reason I carry twelve pencils and sleep with earplugs made from grounding wire. I knew something was weird with us."
He smiled faintly. "I think you're more involved than you realize."
She handed him a thermos. "Then you better start remembering fast. Because I think we're all about to get very involved."
---
Back at home, Yuto found Yuzu sitting at his desk, flipping through his old sketchbook.
"Hey," she said quietly. "You drew her again."
Aira's face.
Same page, every time.
"Why do you always draw her with wings?"
Yuto shrugged. "I don't know. It just… feels right."
Yuzu looked at him. "You're changing. Like… glowing-slightly-when-you're-annoyed kind of changing."
Yuto laughed. "That obvious, huh?"
"You're remembering things you shouldn't. Loops that no one should remember."
She stood, facing him.
"Just promise me something," she said. "When things get weird—weirder—don't shut us out. Me, your friends. We're not background characters in your time-travel anime, okay?"
He stared at her, and something inside clicked.
"You're right," he said. "You never were."
---
That night, he wrote a single sentence in his notebook:
"They remember too."
And beneath it:
"Awakening has begun."