Loop

As soon as I woke up, I immediately shot up out of my bed and headed to the nearest mirror that I could find.

The result was not at all what I’d been expecting.

I was a middle aged man. No, not a random one, I knew exactly who I was.

I’d taken Emmett’s body.

But Emmett was still a teenager…so that could only mean one thing: Instead of going back to the past, as Maria did, I went back to the future.

I immediately sprinted out of the house, heading to the first place I could think of.

The place I’d first woken up to in this world.

I headed to the Barnaby mansion.

But what I found there shocked me. At first, I thought I’d taken a wrong turn, so I tried again. Yet every time I returned to the same place, and every time I’d found the same thing. I was so sure that this was exactly where the mansion should have been….yet it wasn’t. I had been greeted by empty land, large eenough to fit a mansion….yet no mansion was anywhere to be found.

How could this be?

But then I remembered that it had been years, anything could have happened. They most likely moved away and had the mansion completely destroyed. I had been expecting to meet Arthur, but it seemed like that wasn’t going to be the case. Then, one more place came to mind, and I thought to try and look over there, since I had nothing to lose.

I headed once again to that dreaded meeting place. I had seen it as it evolved through the ages: With Arthur as a child, then as a teenager, and now in Emmett’s body as a grown man, most likely decades had passed since then.

I didn’t hope for anything. As soon as I realized where I was, all hope had instantly died within me. It was far too late to try anything, after all.

And then, as I arrived, right outside the door stood a woman. A very young one, might say.

Esmeralda.

“What the!” I couldn’t stop myself from yelling. “You’re supposed to be dead!”

“Who the hell are you?” She immediately got into a defensive position. “And what the fuck do you mean, by I’m “supposed to be dead”,huh? I don’t recall dying!”

I see. I had been wrong. Completely wrong. I wasn’t in the future, and never had been. Instead, I’d been sent so far back into the past that I’d mistakenly assumed I had been.

It would be impossible for that plot of land to be there after a mansion was built, even if it was demolished. It had to have shown signs of that, but it didn’t. It was too perfect. The man I had transmigrated into wasn’t Emmett….It was his grandfather. Well, I assumed I was, but it couldn’t be his father because I knew what he looked like.

All hope wasn’t lost! I could still change things! I could still change everything!

I didn’t explain anything to Esmeralda. I knew I would just sound crazy. I simply placed the palms of my hands on her chest and temple, too fast for her to react.

“You fucking creep!” By the time she reacted it was too late.

All my memories of the void flowed into her. Including the memory of me delving into Arthur’s memory.

Esmeralda witnessed her own future through young Arthur’s eyes.

By the time the memory finished and we returned to reality, tears were flowing down her face. Esmeralda’s knees buckled.

“That-That was…”

“Your future.” I explained. “I’m sorry, this was the only way I could show you. If I simply told you, who knows how you would have reacted.”

“It-It’s fine…” The memories had softened her up, or else she would have probably killed me. But now, she knew everything. And she knew why I had to do that.

“I need your help. You know what to do.”

I found it funny. I never really wondered about how Esmeralda had come upon the truth of the world, but it seems like I had given it to her myself. But I was only able to do that because she founded the masked order due to her wanting to escape this prison chaining her. So the real question came here, was…what came first? Was I truly the one who had set this all in motion? Was this a never ending loop?

Either way, I stopped thinking about that for now, as it wasn’t important.

“What…what are we supposed to….I can’t do this…knowing that I die, at the end of it all!”

“Who says that you die?”

“But…We saw it! We saw my dead body through Arthur’s memory!”

“Exactly, we saw it from Arthur’s point of view. But just because Arthur views that as the truth, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the actual truth.” I said.

“What do you…What are you even talking about?”

“You saw the memory, didn’t you? Arthur never even bothered checking the corpse, right? He just left it there. But no one knew about the meeting place. So who took it?”

Esmeralda was left speechless.

“You won’t die, because that body isn’t going to be you. We’re going to plant a fake, to take your place. And we already know it’s going to succeed.”

“Yeah…that could…that could work!” Her face lit up, as if she was allowing herself to hope.”

And thus, I waited and watched, as Esmeralda created the original masked over from scratch and built it up over years.

I watched the days pass by, waiting impatiently. Maria had waited a few years, but this would be different. I would be waiting decades, at the very least.

But it was worth it. I had no other choice, this was the only way to win. And this time, I would win, and I would save her from Frawa’s clutches. Because I refused to accept any other way.