Chapter 49: I Don’t Understand a Lady’s Heart

I snapped back to reality with the taste of ozone and failure on my tongue.

The awful party music thumped against my skull. The enchanted globes overhead pulsed with garish, spinning light. Nothing had changed. I was back at the exact moment before the end of the world, a loop within a loop that was my own special kind of hell.

Across the grand hall, Lilith stood by a marble pillar.

She stared at her teacup as a faint, pink mist began to rise from it, swirling like a bad omen.

Her gaze kept snapping back to the center of the dance floor.

Back to Eksu and Elizabeth.

I had to stop her.

I took a deep breath, straightened my uniform, and began to walk toward her. My steps felt heavy, like I was wading through mud. My plan had to be different this time. No more clumsy distractions. No more brute force logic. I had to be smart. I had to be chill.

I could be chill.

I leaned against the pillar next to her, trying to look casual.

My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.

“Hey, Lilith. Cool party, huh?”

She turned to me slowly.

Her eyes were wide and strangely blank, but the pink mist from her cup was getting thicker. It was starting to sparkle. That was a bad sign.

“Siegfried-san. Yes. It is a… festive occasion.”

Her gaze drifted past me, locking onto Eksu again. Elizabeth was now guiding his hands to her waist. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else on the planet.

A familiar, painful jealousy flared in my own chest for a second.

Not for Elizabeth, but for Eksu’s obliviousness. He had no idea the fate of the timeline rested on how he handled this dance.

I cleared my throat, forcing a laugh that sounded more like a cough.

“So, uh, that thing. With them. It’s, you know, just a thing. People dance at parties. It’s a… a human custom. Totally normal. Nothing to, uh, read into.”

My words tumbled out of my mouth, a clumsy avalanche of nonsense. I was already failing.

The pink mist swirled faster. It was starting to smell like burnt sugar and ozone.

“I have read seventeen books on human courtship rituals. This is classified as a Tier-Three Intimacy Display.”

I had no idea what that meant, but it sounded bad.

My brain scrambled for a new tactic. Logic was my only weapon.

“Okay, look. Think of it like an experiment. Right? You love experiments. This is a social experiment. The hypothesis is: can two people who are completely wrong for each other maintain a Tier-Three Intimacy Display for more than three minutes? My data suggests no.”

She tilted her head, a gesture that was once cute but was now terrifying.

The mist was now a churning vortex in her tiny cup.

“The variable is affection. It complicates the data.”

“Right, affection. But see, that’s where you’re wrong. There’s no affection there. It’s… uh… a strategic alliance. For… school politics. Yeah. That’s it.”

She didn’t look convinced.

Her eyes were starting to glow with that hard, fuchsia light.

The temperature in our little corner of the hall dropped. A couple of students nearby shivered and moved away from us. They could feel it too. The impending doom.

“He is smiling.”

Her voice was dangerously quiet.

“It is a new data point I have not previously observed.”

I glanced over.

Eksu was, in fact, smiling. It was a tiny, pained, awkward smile, but it was there. Elizabeth had said something, and he was smiling.

Damn him.

My own survival instincts screamed at me. I was losing this battle. I had to do something drastic. I had to change the narrative.

My mouth opened, and the stupidest idea I’ve ever had in my countless miserable lives came pouring out.

“You know, in some cultures, it’s actually a sign of great honor for a hero to have… multiple partners. It’s like… a harem. Yeah, a harem. It means he’s so cool that everyone wants to be his friend. And his girlfriend. All at once. It’s not about jealousy, it’s about… sharing the friendship. It’s a good thing.”

The silence that followed was deafening.

The music seemed to fade away. The party, the lights, the entire world narrowed to the space between me and the ticking time bomb that was Lilith’s heart.

The fuchsia glow in her eyes intensified, burning like twin supernovas.

The pink vortex in her cup exploded outward.

“Harem?”

The word was a whisper that cracked the very air around us.

The world bleached into fuchsia light and then vanished into absolute white.

The smug capybara was waiting for me.

It was lounging in a beach chair this time, sipping from a coconut with a little paper umbrella sticking out of it. An invisible mariachi band seemed to be playing somewhere in the infinite white void. The audacity of this creature was staggering.

I stood before it, my arms crossed, my teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached.

I didn’t say a thing.

“Kukukuku, you’re horrible, seriously. I’m no good with women, but you, Siegfried, are worse than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

The author’s voice was full of a lazy, infuriating amusement. It took another long sip from its coconut.

I finally found my voice.

“Send me back.”

“What for? So you can suggest a polyamorous relationship to a reality-warping yandere again? Your tactics are a work of art, my boy. A disasterpiece.”

My hands clenched into fists. I could feel the phantom burn of fuchsia light on my skin.

“What do I have to do?”

The capybara sighed, a long, theatrical sound that echoed in the nothingness. It set its coconut down on an invisible table.

“Why don’t you take your girlfriend Sophia and have her talk with Lilith? Nothing better than a woman to talk to another one.”

The suggestion was so simple, so logical, it made me even angrier. Why hadn’t I thought of that? But the thought of dragging Sophia into this mess, into my cursed existence, made my stomach clench with a cold dread.

“She’s not my girlfriend. Not yet.”

“Stop talking nonsense. You know what I mean. She has emotional intelligence. You have the emotional intelligence of a brick. She’s your only hope.”

“I don’t want her in this mess.”

The words were quiet but fierce. I would not let my curse touch her. I would rather die a thousand more times.

The capybara shrugged, picking up its coconut again.

“Fine by me. Keep coming back here to talk with me. I get lonely. We can play video games. I can create a really good one. We can chat about our feelings.”

It wiggled its furry eyebrows. The image was so profoundly disturbing it broke through my anger.

This was my fate. An eternity of therapy sessions with a lazy, omniscient rodent.

“You bastard.”

It just chuckled, a low, rumbling sound.

“Look, I’ll sweeten the deal. You get Sophia to help you, you solve this little jealousy apocalypse, and then you can go on a date with her. A real one. No monsters, no timeline collapses, no drama. I’ll make sure of it.”

I stared at the creature.

It was a bribe. A cheap, manipulative, but devastatingly effective bribe. A normal date. With Sophia. The thought was a spark of brilliant, impossible light in the darkness of my existence.

“You said something worthwhile.”

The capybara just smiled.

“I’m the author. I know how to motivate my characters. Now get back in there. And for my sake, try not to be an idiot this time.”

A flicker of real hope ignited in my chest, and I hated him for it.