Martin woke up to the sound of his alarm.

He groggily fumbled his way out of bed, his hand searched for the snooze button.

Then the hand stopped.

Martin’s eyes snapped open and frantically held up the alarm clock, searching for the tiny date in the bottom-right hand corner.

It was Tuesday.

Tuesday, October 15th.

Martin fell back on his bed with a plop, staring up at the ceiling with somewhat contradictory feelings welling up inside of him.

On the one hand, it really was something special. Magic was shrieking in joy. On the other, he had the distinct feeling of stepping in a pile of crap he was fully unlicensed to deal with.

‘Alright, alright, let’s sort this situation out,’ Ration said in an attempt to calm Magic down.

‘The way I see it, there are two possibilities for this happening. One, there really is some sort of magic-’

Magic’s happiness grew mentally louder.

‘Or, we are simply dreaming this. Honestly, I find this incredibly unlikely. I don’t remember ever having a lucid dream before, and our cognitive abilities seem perfectly fine. So, this is magical bullshit.’

‘You-you admitted it! Finally admitted it!’

‘It might have been a scientist messing with quantum physics. We don’t know this is something related to science outside of our realm of understanding, but I don’t know. I feel like we would have known about it on the news, and besides, why were we the only ones affected? I don’t know much about quantum physics, but considering we were the only ones to be affected in this entire town, I think we can rule it out. So yes, it probably is magical.’

‘We HAVE to investigate!’

‘Maybe. Do you think we should head back to the forest, or make use of this time loop thing?’

‘Huh? What do you mean by making use of it?’

‘Think about it. We have literally all the time in the world, as well as a chance to erase our mistakes every two days. We could learn so much! If we ever get out of this, or if it naturally ends, we’d have everything we’d ever need!’, Ration exclaimed.

‘That’s true…’

‘And we could get along with more people!’

‘Hah?’

‘Improve our social skills, read situations, and also have a chance to reset everything?! It’s like this time loop was made for us!’

‘Oh … uh …’

‘This is incredible! We could literally do anything!’

‘Um, Ration?’

‘Hm?’

‘You do realize we have two days, right? Even if we made any progress at all in social relationships, we’d lose it. There’s a limit on how much we can interact with others in two days.’

‘Well … we could at least practice getting started?’

‘I still think we should investigate the forest.’

‘I don’t know … We could be doing so much more.’

Martin groaned and rolled over.

This problem was … vexing.

Did he go back to the forest?

Or did he make use of this ‘time loop’?

“MARTIN!”

He winced as the shout interrupted his musings from below.

“GET DOWN HERE!”

‘Erk…’

He still had to pretend to go to school.

Martin tucked away his thoughts for later, and glanced at the time.

His eyes bulged.

It was 7:50 AM.

School was in ten minutes.

He couldn’t even catch the bus.

Of course, school didn’t really matter anymore, but his mom certainly didn’t think the same way.

“MARTIN!”

If the last shout was normal, this one was a roar by comparison.

He didn’t even know his mother had that much lung capacity.

So, before his eardrums burst from the progressively increasing shouts, he ran to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and washed his face, before scrambling down the stairs, hoping to avoid an angry mother.

That hope was in vain.

Martin sat in the four-seater family car, the only one his parents owned.

He was shrinking into his shadow, attempting to make himself as invisible as possible.

Every once in a while, his mother shot him an angry glance from the driver’s seat.

His mother wanted Martin to succeed in all the areas she didn’t, a desire Martin did not replicate.

His dad was more about enjoying life. His dad wanted Martin to have more… balanced fun throughout his life, as opposed to going wild in his early years and paying for it later.

As such, both of them agreed on one thing: school was very much a priority.

Martin, or at least Ration, usually agreed with that statement.

School was a stepping stone for later careers.

However, he had just discovered a fucking time loop.

School wasn’t the priority right now.

At least, that was what he had been thinking while his mother was preaching to him about the virtues of school and how important it was for the seventy-first time.

And then he inadvertently told her that he didn’t care about school.

She did not take it well.

Even now, as he looked at his mother, her anger was nearly visible.

So, he opted to remain silent all the way through the car ride.

When he got to school, he muttered a quick “thank you” and dashed out as fast as possible.

He could feel his mother’s eyes trained on his back up until he made it through the doors.

Instead of heading to A block class, however, he simply went to the bathroom for a couple of minutes.

Once he thought the coast was clear, he grabbed the backpack and ran out the back door.

His school did not care if people skipped. They simply notified the parents of their overall attendance at the end of every semester, and believed that the best punishments were always meted out by the parents.

So, as he walked into the forest, he was smiling.

That smiling abruptly turned into a frown.

The problem of boredom had struck him again.

Was he simply to wait until night?

‘Yes.’, Magic said.

‘Hm?’

‘Last time, we didn’t wait because we didn’t think that time loops actually existed. But now we know. So, we wait.’

‘But still, we could be doing so much more-’

‘Nope. We have a clue. We are going to follow the goddamned clue.’

So Martin sat near a tree.

And he waited.

And waited.

And damn, was he getting really good at waiting.

And then, at around 4 PM, he felt his eyes closing.

‘Just a little bit of sleep,’ he drowsily thought.

He woke up later.

He looked around for a bit.

And he saw them.