Now, it could be said that it was extremely boring playing Chibi-Robo Park Patrol on your Nintendo DS while waiting for the dryer to get done at the laundromat. But Budou was used to it by now, seeing as he and Kiwi had been trapped in a time loop inside this Soul Palace by complete and utter accident.

“Who knew that Soul Palaces could be so AWESOME?” Kiwi asked in excited exclamation.

“Sometimes it feels like you’ve been caught in the loop too,” groaned Budou.

“This is what it feels like to be living in blessed time,” Kiwi said. “We are improving ourselves in all of the best ways by reliving the same one hour at the laundromat over and over again.”

“I know. It’s the worst and my clothes won’t even dry, and I’ve almost completely run out of Nintendo DS games to play because I didn’t think to bring that many with me,” Budou whined like a stupid baby.

“We should think of this rationally!” Kiwi exclaimed. “Like rational thinkers taking great advantage of this time loop we have somehow been trapped in.”

“Five, four, three...”

“We can figure out all sorts of stuff, like—“

“two, one... Poof.”

Poof.

Back to the beginning of the loop. Kiwi and Budou reappeared back in their regular spots where they were when the loop began, just as Budou was loading his wet washed clothes into the dryer and just as Kiwi was intently watching the CRT television playing an episode of Avatar on Nickelodeon. Avatar as in the show, not Avatar as in the type of system user.

Budou sighed, as he always did every single time the time loop reset itself each hour. He was not entirely sure whether this was simply a sigh that carried over from the point of loop and the exact moment he found himself in, or if he genuinely created a brand-new sigh every time he was transported temporally and spatially back to this point, his hands cold and wet as they carried bundles of boxer briefs and tunics. His DS was in his pocket, at least, so at least something carried over between loops correctly. Sort of.

“The worst thing about this loop is that every game NOT in my DS loses all its save data as soon as we reset,” Budou said. “I think I’d be kind of fine with life if at least there was permanent proof that anything I do in life matters.”

Kiwi did not make a chipper positive response to his gloomy complaining.

That bastard was smarter than he looked.

“Haha, Jake Sully tripped over a vine in the ground and stumbled all or the place!” Kiwi burst out laughing. “Gosh, that never gets old.”

“You say that LITERALLY every single time we reset.”

“It really never gets old!”

“We’ve got to find a way out of here...” Like every single time, though, Budou still put his wet clothes in the dryer, inserted the dollar coins, and let the thing start. So it wasn’t like he was much better than Kiwi.

“What I’m saying is that we DON’T need to find a way out of here,” Kiwi told him. “We have basically been given infinite time to do whatever in the world we want! Just the two of us!”

“Infinite time...”

“You’ve beaten all those video games, right?”

“Well, yeah...”

“And you know what I’ve done in all these loops so far?”

“Not really, because I try not to pay attention to you.”

“I’ve started studying fashion,” he said. “Taking out people’s clothes from the washers and dryers, examining them, trying them on, that sort of thing. I’ve written a ton of stuff in my notebook—“ Kiwi pulled out a legal size memo pad and showed it to Budou. “—and I think I’m going to start designing outfits. It’s really something interesting that I never would have thought of if we weren’t stuck here. A brand-new interest!”

“That’s... actually really interesting.”

“I figure eventually we can discover the reason for the time loop and deactivate it or something, but for now, we’re basically getting free time to do whatever we want with no consequences. Let’s try a lot of stuff out!”

“I guess you’re right. I could stand to start working out, I guess, though I’m not sure how much that carries over, if at all. Cultivating would definitely be good, too. And maybe you can teach me about fashion sometime?”

“I can teach you a lot of things,” Kiwi said.

...

The two stared at each other and looked deeply into each other’s eyes for some time.

But because they were both heterosexual, that was the end of that line of thought and it of course never came up again (unless the fans demanded it enough... but then the story will get a lot of 0.5 ratings so I hope they don't demand it).