A soft ray of lampshade light hit Brown’s eyelids. He lay motionless in a warm bed, his chest slowly rising up, then back down again. He couldn’t remember his dream.
A shadow intercepted the light, looming over the boy. The figure leaned in and violently shook his body, bundled in a large puffy blanket. Suddenly, Brown awoke. Skyber was the first thing he saw.
“Ah, you’re finally awake. For everything you’ve gone through you sure sleep like a damn rock.”
“Hey don’t shake him too hard! He might have a concussion!” A familiar femenine voice called at the goddess, to which she only responded with an indifferent shrug.
The dragoness moved back to give Brown room to sit up. His blurry, sleepy vision eventually found the embodiment of the void sitting on their own bed next to the right, excitedly wagging their tail. Pearl and Saki were sitting on the bed to the left, holding hands. Saki’s phone was playing another song… a different song. He hummed along to the melody to calm himself down.
It was the heat of the moment,
Telling me what my heart meant!
The heat of the moment,
Showed in your eyes…
Nova wasn’t quite back to their colorful self, but they definitely looked better, and they were awake to boot. “Howdy Brown!”
The riser-and-shiner rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, opening up the strange world around him once again. This definitely wasn’t his dorm; the walls were covered in a fancy wallpaper and all the furniture was outsourced. The divine duo and Pearl’s dorm without a doubt. As he tried to get up he felt a sharp pain in the back of his head. His body fell back to the bed with a pained wince. “Ugh…What happened?”
“Long story short, after you seemed to have broken the time loop the exertion of skipping in time six times over finally got to you, and you collapsed. Long story really short: you fell on your head,” Skyber said, leaning to a wall and crossing her arms as her tail coiled around her leg. “But nevertheless, you did it. The loop is broken.” The goddess whipped out her pocket watch and opened the lid. “It is 9:00 PM. You’ve been out cold for twelve hours.”
“I guess you could say you leaped a day!” Nova zinged, which garnered a light chuckle out of the blue haired girl.
Brown only frowned. “I’m sorry, Nova. It should’ve been me in that machine, not you. I-I never expected this would happen…”
“Don’t sweat it! The most important thing is that you saved me, and everyone else too!” They smiled sweetly to him, only for them to be obstructed by Skyber’s scowl leaning in. “The most important thing is that we don’t let this sort of thing happen again. Both you and I fluked, I’ll admit. I can’t remember what originally happened, but the mere fact it did happen means I messed up too.” She sighed. “I suppose I do owe you one though, you did manage to get us out of that mess.”
“It wasn’t just me, It was Lucas who came up with the answer. Speaking of, where is he?”
Pearl and Saki looked at each other in a confused manner and turned back to Brown.
“Who’s Lucas?”
Brown jolted out of his bed like he sat on a needle. “WHAT?!”
Skyber rolled her eyes with a groan as she went over to the two and smacked their heads. “Idiots. Ugh, don’t worry Brown, he is just fine. He went to recover his energy as well—after all, he was traveling in time like you were. I don’t quite understand how he knew he was stuck in a loop with you, but the boy works in mysterious ways. I am not surprised he is just as exhausted as you are.”
The couple busted up into giggles as Brown sighed in relief. “Well, since you got my attention, how’d your date go?”
“Pretty awful, honestly,” Saki lamented. “Skyber just commanded us all day to check if anything in the academy was affected by the machine while she yelled at Ernst, and I quote, ‘Play God again and I’ll show you the wrath of one.’ She got really scary about it, too.”
“Hey, at least we were together,” Pearl smiled and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “I had fun.”
He blushed.
“So now that you saved everyone, whaddya plan to do now?” Nova tilted their head.
“Oh, me?” Brown lay back down on the bed, his head resting on the pillow. “I’m going back to bed. I’ve had enough of this holiday for at least a good four years. Wake me when it’s March.”
Nova giggled, somewhat expecting that answer. Saki kissed Pearl on the cheek before heading back to his own dorm, relieved his best friend was okay.
Brown turned the lamp off. He closed his eyes and sighed.
“What a day.”