School clubs were never something I was interested in. Denki had the judo club; Rito had the gamers club; Chika changed clubs every year, third year was calligraphy. Ino and I didn't belong to any clubs, but she still had other friends that she hung out with after school. Walking home, I started to remember more and more that even though I had friends, I was actually kind of lonely outside of school.

  Maybe that's why I immersed myself in studying, reading, and the like. Maybe that's why I did so well at Makarov Academy: I was already used to being alone. The way home seemed longer than it was in the morning. Maybe because I was so tired, maybe because I didn't have anyone to talk to.

  I passed by an orange cat taking a nap on the top of a brick wall and stopped to try to pet it. I didn't really care for cats that much, but it was something to do for the moment. As soon as it heard me get close, it jumped up, stared at me, then ran away. I guess animals really are good judges of character. Even though I was in my younger body, I was still an assassin drenched in the blood of the innocent. I continued walking home and kept to myself. When I got home, my mother was already awake.

  "Kazuma, is that you?" She called out from the kitchen, "I just finished making a snack, come help me eat it but save some for your sister."

  It was the first time I had heard her voice in almost fifteen years. To her, she had just spoken to me the night before. I started to freeze up, my steps and hands began to shake. I slowly walked to the living room that was connected to the kitchen and saw her there leaning over the counter.

  She was smaller than the average mother of two with long hair the same color as mine. It was pulled back in a ponytail, and she still had on her apron. She had brown eyes that looked like pots of honey in the sunlight. Her face and voice were that of someone who would hold a dying man and tell him that everything would be okay. She brought light to every room she walked into. She was alive.

  "Mom..." I started, but I couldn't get anything else out.

  "What is it, sweetie?" She replied walking over to me. She could see that I was uneasy and shaky. "Are you okay? Do you have a fever?" She placed her hand on my forehead. "Hmm, no, you don't feel hot. What's wrong?"

  My mind was racing. Suppressed memories of her death came rushing back to the forefront. The three of them were going to drive to see me shortly after I had been selected as an assassin. They had no idea of what was happening at the school. They had no idea that a bomb had been planted in the engine of the car. They had no way of escaping in time. All of my training as an assassin - no emotions, no remorse, no hesitation, no mercy - crumbled, and I fell into her arms and broke down in tears.

  "Mom!" I cried.

  I don't know how long I cried, and I didn't care. We knelt on the ground as she stroked my hair.

  "There there," she said in her soothing voice, "everything is okay. I have you. Everything is okay."

  Eclipse had robbed me of the people who were most important to me, and my own selfishness kept me from being with them again. At that moment, however, none of that was true. Eclipse would never touch me or my family again. When I eventually stopped crying, I looked into her eyes, and she smiled back at me.

  "Do you feel better?"

  "Yes ma'am," I responded.

  "Good, now let's sit and enjoy this snack."

  She helped me up, and we walked to the kitchen table. My mother made the best sweets, and she had made a strawberry pastry with a chocolate drizzle for the three of us. My breakdown seemed to already be out of her mind as she poured the two of us a cup of tea and cut up the pastry for us. She smiled whenever she looked and saw me staring at her with my still puffy eyes. The pastry tasted like a mother's love, and the tea, though nothing particularly special, tasted like true peace. We said nothing as we both ate and drank.

  I couldn't find the words to say, and I'm sure she knew that and didn't want to force anything. My mother was always a kind and patient woman, the perfect nurse, really. In my early days at Makarov Academy, I often wondered if I had inherited any of that kindness. When I started working as an assassin, I knew that I hadn't. I was almost completely unlike my mother, and I was only like my father in my drive to be the best at what I did. Eclipse made me into a killing machine that they eventually deemed outdated and marked for removal. I vowed to never be treated that way again.

  Shortly after I finished washing our dishes, the front door opened, and I got a slight chill down my spine.

  From the foyer, I heard it. "Zuzu! Your big sister is home!"

  Before I could even look up, Yui was already barreling towards me. I didn't stand a chance. She dove to hug me, hearts in her eyes. We landed on the kitchen floor, and she held my head next to her chest. Yui was two years older than me. Unlike me and our mother, she had black hair. We both had our grandfather's green eyes. She did, however, have our mother's figure and face. She was the object of attraction for most of the boys in her school.

  "Oh Zuzu, I missed you so much! Why does the stupid student council have to rob me of seeing your cute face when you wake up."

  She was petting and nuzzling my head. My first instinct in my previous life was to struggle and get away; I remembered that much very well. This time was different. Like she was robbed of seeing my groggy face in the morning, I was robbed of seeing my sister ever again.

  "Sis..." I started. This time, I wouldn't cry. I just smiled and hugged her back.

  "Eh?"

  She was no doubt confused since this was probably the first time I had shown her affection like this since we were children. I was very timid and clung to her when I was young, and she vowed to always protect me from everyone. I guess at some point that vow went further and made her pretty obsessed with her little brother. When I became a teenager, it drove me crazy, and I tried to separate us as much and as often as possible. She didn't care, she still got as close as she could. It was only after losing her that I realized how precious she really was.

  "Ohmygosh! Zuzu finally accepted my feelings!" Yui said with tears in her eyes.

  "My my," my mother said, palming her cheek.

  I snapped back into my younger persona.

  "Not in your life," and squirmed my way out of her grasp.

  "Zuzu, that's mean, don't play with your sister's heart like that." Yui whined.

  "What would have been mean would have been eating the pastry mom made for you, but I didn't. See? I'm pretty nice when I want to be." I countered.

  "Strawberry with chocolate?! My favorite! Thank you!" She rushed over and took a bite. "So good!" She looked like she was in Heaven.

  "I'm glad you like it, sweetie," mom said while pouring Yui some tea.

  I was glad that Yui came home when she did: I don't know how she would have reacted to my breakdown. I can only hope that she would have been like our mother.

  We helped mother with dinner after we finished our school work. She made curry, and I remembered why it was my comfort food in my previous life. As we sat and ate, I remembered desperately chasing the moments I was reliving through the dish. I never caught up to them. Yui looked at me with a smirk.

  "Zuzu, did you know? Another boy confessed to me and asked me out today. Of course I turned him down, but you should really ask me out already so I can -"

  "Yui, stop teasing your brother," mother interrupted. "You know it makes him uncomfortable."

  "Yes ma'am," Yui responded, looking defeated.

  "Besides," mother continued, "Mrs. Yamamoto said she saw Kazuma and Ms Chika walking to school together talking and laughing like no one else existed." She glanced at me sideways with curious eyes.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Yui, however, had murder in her eyes. "That little... trying to steal my little brother from me... unforgivable!" Yui seemed to have an evil aura emanating from her.

  "Yui," mother started. The aura disappeared.

  "Yes ma'am," she calmed down.

  "Kazuma, how are things between you and Ms Chika?" mother resumed.

  I froze. Mother probably thought that my breakdown was from something that happened between me and Chika, which given the circumstances could be seen as a possibility.

  "They're the same as always, I guess," I said, staring at my food. "I helped her and Denki study for the biology test today. May I have more?" I was still starving from the days spent in said biology class.

  I went to my room after dinner and got ready for a bath. Exhaustion crept back in, and I slowly stumbled to the bathroom. I drew a bath, rinsed up, and got in. The water was perfectly warm; staying awake would be hard if I stayed too long, but it just felt so good.

  When was the last time I took an actual bath?

  The shower in my apartment was a standing only shower with a head with a handle. Most everything about my apartment was minimalistic: studio layout, small bathroom, one oddly large window. Despite its size, it did its job well. All of my weapons and gear fit perfectly in the closet, my bookcase and desk on the adjacent wall, the kitchen looking out the window, the bed also looking out the window. It was the little bit of peace I got.

  I felt myself start to doze in the tub and pulled myself back. I got out and dried off, but as I walked out, the type of thing one would see in an anime happened. Yui was getting ready to get into the bath, and of course I walked in, or out, on her. Both of our faces went beet red. I covered my eyes.

  "What are you doing?!" I exclaimed.

  "Ah," she said flatly, "Oops." She was pretty much frozen where she stood, fully posed to step into the bath.

  "You're the one that didn't knock," I forced out, "trying to sneak in on me? Are you some kind of pervert?"

  I sidestepped her and ran out and back to my room, forsaking my clothes. I got back to my room, shut the door, and leaned against and slid down it until resting on the ground. The thought then occurred to me that I could have rewound and made noise to let her know I was in there. But would it have worked? I still had the issue of unknowingly and unwillingly freezing time earlier to deal with. It would probably be best to avoid using my powers unless for practice.

  Ironic, all those years spent honing my abilities, all to have it crash down in what everyone else saw as one day. I found and put on some clothes. The exhaustion returned, and I fell onto my bed and fell asleep on top of the sheets. Nothing had ever felt so comfortable in my life.

  The next morning was, thankfully, uneventful. I woke up on time, ate breakfast, escaped my sister's clutches, and walked with Chika to school. Most of my routines had come back from being suppressed, and passing as normal became easy again.

  Morning classes went by without incident as well; lunch was provided again by Ino, although Rito was preoccupied with apologizing to another girl he had unfortunately encountered.

  "I really wish he would be more careful. People already think he does it on purpose," Ino said. "He'll have an angry mob force him out before we graduate at the rate he's going." She looked down with a genuinely concerned look on her face.

  "Are you one of the people who thinks he does it on purpose?" Chika asked. "I mean, the positions he and the girls he gets involved with seem too... erotic to be accidental."

  "No, I want to believe he really just has the worst luck in the world," Ino replied. "Rito isn't a pervert."

  "I think so too," Denki added, "he doesn't intend to end up like he does, and he always apologizes heavily afterwards. That doesn't strike me as perverted behavior."

  "What about you, Kazu?" Chika asked, looking at me.

  I was half engrossed in the rice balls that Ino made. They were somewhat plain, but they had a touch that I never could recreate. The meat she had prepared was juicy and had a full taste as well.

  "Call me crazy," I started, "but I think Rito is cursed."

  "Eh?!" Everyone was shocked.

  "Hear me out." I had to figure out a way to word meta powers so that they wouldn't be scared of our friend. "What if he was cursed, but not in a malicious way? Like he ends up in these situations with girls as a sort of test for him to be better as a person or for someone to prove themselves to whoever cursed him?" It sounded crazy coming out of my mouth, and I could only hope that they bought it.

  "Hmm," Denki sat looking puzzled.

  Chika stared at me like I had just given the first hundred numbers of pi.

  Ino, however, looked almost hopeful. "That makes sense," she said.

  I was worried about my friends: if they had developed meta abilities after I left, they probably met the same fate as those that encountered me. I would find ways to ease them into the reality that I came from and do all I could to help them not meet that end.

  After school, I went through my normal routine, but before I left, Chika and Denki caught up to me.

  "Thinking you can go off alone again, Kazu?" Chika asked in her usual playful voice.

  "Neither of our clubs had activities today, so we thought we'd walk home with our best friend," Denki added with a smile on his face.

  I smiled back, and we set off together. In the previous two days, there had already been several inconsistencies with my previous life. Most of the material I had browsed about theories of time travel agreed that changing one thing could greatly impact the respective future: the butterfly effect, essentially. We walked our normal route and talked about stuff normal junior high students talked about. Club activities. High school dreams. What we were going to do when summer break arrived.

  We weren't too far from where Denki was supposed to split off when I heard what sounded like a couple of delinquents talking tough. We took a few more steps, and I spotted them. Four boys wearing our school uniform; three of them surrounded the fourth. I looked closer and saw that the boy that was surrounded was the same boy who was crying in the bathroom the day before. Without saying anything, I turned and started walking towards them.

  "Kazu?" Chika was confused.

  Denki didn't say a word and walked closely behind me. I could feel his anger. Denki hated four types of people: liars, cheaters, thieves, and bullies.

  We were maybe three steps into walking towards the bullies when they saw us.

  "What do you want?" One asked with a jeer.

  "Go away, this doesn't concern you," the second added.

  He was right. This really didn't concern me, and my previous self probably would have kept walking. Maybe he did, and I either never noticed or made myself forget.

  "Well, it looks like our friend has a couple of buddies to add to his payment," the third finally added after sizing us up.

  The three of them moved away from the boy who sank down. He was probably paralyzed with fear. They came towards us, and I got ready to fight. It would probably be difficult without my powers, but I wasn't going to risk a repeat of the day before.

  As the first one began to run, I felt a rush beside me. Denki moved too fast for me to see again and landed a solid punch to his gut. He went down utterly limp. The other two were taken aback but tried to fight regardless. They were hopelessly outmatched.

  The second one caught a left jab to the nose then a right hook to the cheek. He fell backwards to the wall. The third didn't even have time to react before he found himself with Denki's foot in his chest. When he fully extended his leg, the third one went flying back and rolled once he landed. Denki walked over to the second one and picked him up by the collar.

  "You think it's cool to pick on people?! You think it's fun?! Huh?!" He yelled with a fire in his eyes. "You're pathetic. A disgrace to our school!" He threw the bully to the ground. "Get your low life friends, and get out of my sight!"

  The bully ignored the first part and took off running. He no doubt had a broken nose: there was blood sprinkled everywhere he had been after Denki hit him. I knew in that moment beyond a shadow of a doubt - Denki was a meta, someone who developed a special ability of some sort after the earth got hit with a solar flare mixed with some space dust off of a passing asteroid.

  Pushing that aside to sort out in my head later, I walked up to the boy they had been bullied.

  "Are you okay?" I asked. He looked up at me and teared up.

  "No one's ever stood up for me. Why would you do that? He...," he said looking at Denki, "he put the three of them down so fast. Who are you?"

  The two of us had actually never met this boy despite being in the same class. What was his name? I think it was...

  "Toshinori, we won't hurt you. We're your classmates. I'm Ishigami Kazuma, and over there is Fujimori Denki. We just couldn't turn our backs while our classmate was being bullied."

  I smiled as best I could, but he still cried. "How do you expect him to react? What kind of smile was that?" Chika walked up and helped Toshinori up. "Now, let's get out of here before these goons wake up."

  We got back to the main road, and Denki went off, still visibly upset. I never knew him to have a temper, but I guess when you see something you detest, it can get to you. Toshinori lived pretty close to me and Chika, so the three of us walked for a while. I would say we talked as well, but it was mostly Chika saying random things to help calm Toshinori down. He left me and Chika at his home, and we continued walking.

  Chika went completely quiet after Toshinori left. I felt an obvious uneasy air around her. We stopped at her house, but before she went in, she turned around.

  "Hey, Kazu," she started, "what happened? You two went off, and I heard people yelling. I got scared and ran to see you. I saw Denki holding a guy his size with one hand by the collar." She started shaking and grabbed my arm. "That doesn't seem human, but Denki is human. Right?" She looked at me with fearful eyes. I looked back and smiled.

  "Of course he's human, adrenaline can give us a huge boost in strength when we need it." I had already lied to Chika once, but this lie felt so much heavier.