Hard impact!

…or so it seemed.

The cold burning sensation running down my neck—wasn’t there either.

“……Huh?”

That was Ayabe Yuuma’s first voice, bringing his consciousness back to reality.

“Guh… ugh…!”

A groan escaped from deep in his throat. His heart thumped with an unpleasant sound and a sudden cold sweat poured all over his body.

Instinctively clutching his neck, Yuuma suddenly jumped up.

“What the—! It doesn’t hurt?! Why?!”

The sensation of the guillotine blade falling. The murmuring of bloodthirsty crowds. The merciless metallic sound that severed everything.

The hallucination still clung to his mind. And the head that should’ve been chopped off was, somehow, still attached to his shoulders.

But the place he was now in was not the cold stone execution square.

He was lying in a fluffy feather bed. What’s with this luxury-hotel level comfort!? The unfamiliar softness only pushed his confusion even further.

“…Where…is this…”

His whisper turned into white breath. It’s cold. An unbelievable chill that freezes to the bone.

In this extreme cold, maybe even my water-like, easily-pushed-around nature will finally freeze stiff.

Such a ridiculous thought briefly crossed his mind.

Slowly looking around, he saw an unfamiliar wooden ceiling pattern. Elegant ceiling lights. On the walls hung tasteful landscape paintings.

It wasn’t his room. It was nothing like the messy apartment where he lived in Kumamoto.

A roaring sound like that of a beast continuously echoed.

When he turned his gaze toward the source of the noise, there was a thick double-glazed window. Beyond it raged an intense blizzard that stole his vision.

“Blizzard?! Why?!”

Such scenery couldn’t be seen even if you stood on your head in Kyushu. Is this Siberia!?

Cautiously getting out of bed, he looked toward the student bag carelessly placed on the desk. He stretched his trembling hand toward the top of the pile of textbooks beside it.

The back cover of a math textbook.

There was my familiar, yet slightly more mature handwriting.

“2nd Year Class B Ayabe Yuuma”

“Hokkaido Azumibetsu Prefectural High School”

“Hokkaido…”

Just that single word delivered an impact like a megaton punch to his brain.

The northernmost part of Japan. A snow country. Too far away from Kumamoto.

What’s going on? Wait wait wait, calm down, me. Reincarnation… no, has the loop law changed?

Life in Kumamoto, adventures in another world, two deaths. Was all that just a dream…

“No, that’s not right.”

Yuuma unconsciously touched his abdomen and neck.

There wasn’t even a scar—neither on the stomach Akane had stabbed, nor on the neck the guillotine had severed.

But…

“Uh? Something prickled around my stomach…”

“My neck feels itchy too… maybe mites?”

Not serious phantom pain, just a slight sense of unease. Yet his body clearly remembered two deaths. That was an undeniable reality.

The situation was slowly becoming clear.

It seems I’ve been reborn for the third time in modern-day Japan, in Hokkaido.

My appearance, name, and memories remain exactly as they were.

But there are still missing puzzle pieces.

Why Hokkaido? What should I do here?

What is the “punishment” and “executor” of this loop…

At that moment, he thought:

BANG!!

The silence was shattered as the room’s door violently opened.

A shock like a cold knife tracing his spine made his heart jump. When he turned around, a strange girl stood there.

“Onii, it’s morning! How long are you going to sleep?! You’re making that weird face again! You’ll be late!”

She looked to be around the third year of middle school.

Her shoulder-length black hair swayed as her large, slightly upturned eyes pierced straight through him. Her face still held a trace of childish innocence, yet the sharpness in her gaze was striking enough to make his heart jump.

What she was wearing was an unfamiliar sailor uniform design.

But the problem wasn’t that.

It was what she just called me.

“…Onii…”

With a hoarse voice, Yuuma echoed it like a parrot.

The girl placed her hands on her hips in disbelief.

“What are you saying, Onii. Are you still sleepy? Honestly, you’re no different from before. Come on, hurry up and get dressed or your breakfast will be cold and Mom will be really angry!”

No different from before?

That single phrase froze Yuuma’s thoughts.

(Since when does she know me? The me from Kumamoto? Or—no way, even the me from the other world too…!? )

Onii.

Mom.

Those words rang alarm bells in Yuuma’s head.

The Ayabe family was supposed to be a three-person household of father, mother, and me, their only son. At least when I was in Kumamoto.

Who is this girl standing before me?

“Um… who are you…”

When Yuuma hesitantly asked, the girl furrowed her brows with genuine confusion.

“Huh? That’s what I said! You’re still sleepy, right? It’s me, Mirei! Your cute sister!”

Ayabe Mirei.

Sister.

A sudden rush of blood drained from his body. A chill like being submerged in icy water ran down his spine, raising goosebumps.

She wasn’t there.

I didn’t have a sister.

Neither in Kumamoto nor in another world was such an existence present anywhere.

A shiver ran down his spine.

The rules of the loop had changed.

It wasn’t just the stage that was different. The fundamental setting of my relationships with people around me had been rewritten.

“Mi… rei…”

His tongue almost tangled on the name he spoke for the first time.

Mirei, who claimed to be his sister, carefully observed her brother’s strange behavior.

Her cold gaze overlapped in his mind with a certain person’s expression.

Yes. It resembled Himemiya Akane’s piercing eyes.

Those eyes that saw through everything and sought to dominate it all.

“…Onii, something’s wrong. Did you hit your head yesterday?”

“I-I’m fine. Nothing. Just had a bad dream.”

Desperately pretending to be calm, Yuuma shook his head.

If he revealed anything here, he didn’t know what would happen. There was no guarantee this girl wasn’t the “executor” of this loop.

“Haa…”

Though Mirei seemed unconvinced, she didn’t press further and simply said, “Come down soon,” before slamming the door shut with a pat.

Left alone in the room, Yuuma stood motionless for a while, stunned.

Eventually, he let out a deep, heavy sigh as an overwhelming sense of emptiness rose within him.

“Why am I like this…”

His habitual phrase slipped out unconsciously.

…and then, he clutched his head for three seconds.

“No! This isn’t the time to lament!”

After two deaths, this was his third life.

The stage is Hokkaido. And the addition of an unfamiliar “sister.”

Family—the most troublesome and inescapable relationship. The possibility that this existence could be more terrifying than Akane or Lady Liliana made Yuuma shudder.

But precisely because of that, his resolve hardened.

That decision he swore on the guillotine platform as he was dying.

Yuuma approached the window again.

The blizzard slightly weakened its intensity, revealing through the gaps a gray sky and a white-painted cityscape.

Contrasting sharply with Kumamoto’s fiery sunset or Albion’s shining sun, this was a quiet, cold world.

No more will I be swept away.

The result of having conformed to the desires of others—Akane’s possessiveness and Lady Liliana’s rational temptation—was those two pitiful deaths.

I’ll stop trying to become what someone else wants.

That life of simply flowing downward like water is over.

Yuuma glared at his reflection in the window glass, lighting a deep fatigue and resignation in his eyes, along with a firm resolve.

“This time…”

He wouldn’t let the two deaths be wasted.

“I will become 【Solid Self】!”

Yuuma declared to no one in particular, but toward the snowy landscape before him.

Suddenly, he thought he heard a cheerful laugh from somewhere far away.

That voice carried an oddly familiar intonation, like singing—such a soft girl’s voice.

Even when he strained his eyes outside the window, there was only a white world spreading before him.

How long would this iron-like resolve last against Hokkaido’s extreme cold and the new troubles yet to come?

Well, probably about three minutes, thought future him—but at this moment, Yuuma still had no idea.