Aster trembled next to me, tightly squeezing the limp hand of the little girl who could have been mistaken for his reflection, were it not for the collection of ugly bruises on her tiny arms and the stark blotches of crimson seeping through the bandages wrapped tightly around her head. "The—the blacksmith's kid," he stammered anxiously, "was p-picking on me, a-and Anise got mad and—"

...Of course.

I crouched down and clasped my hand over Aster's and Anise's, resting my forehead on the edge of the bed.

"...You damn brat," I murmured tiredly. "How many times do I have to tell you to stop getting into fights?"

The floor behind me creaked slightly and a soft, worn hand lightly patted my head. "She'll be fine," Nassia reassured me. "She didn't get seriously hurt."

I glanced up at the older woman, then worriedly back to Anise. "But the blood...?"

"Head wounds just bleed a lot," she said kindly. "It's not nearly as bad as it looks."

An involuntary sigh of relief escaped me, and the tension drained from my muscles. "That... that's good."

"...She didn't get knocked out during the fight or anything, either," Mirea spoke up quietly from the corner of the room.

I turned to look at her, though she just stared idly up at the ceiling rather than meeting my gaze. "...Oh? What do you..."

"S-she only fell asleep once we got here," Aster answered instead.

Mirea gave a small nod. "She's a spunky little one," she said with the barest hint of a smile. "Was incredibly tense and protective of her brother the whole way back, even though she's the one who got hurt... I think she passed out from sheer relief once she decided they were safe here."

"...That's the Anise I know, alright." I gently ruffled the sleeping girl's hair. It was still just as short as Aster's, at this point, and purposefully so—the two of them certainly weren't identical, but they looked similar enough that anyone who wasn't particularly familiar with their faces would have found it difficult to distinguish one from the other. In a year or two, I knew, the differences in their physiques would start to become more apparent, and Anise would finally allow her hair to grow out—though to my knowledge, she only ever let it get just barely down to her shoulders. 

...That's how long it'd been when I had to leave Silent Falls, and that hadn't changed when I found their lifeless forms slumped in an alley under that damned rust-red sky three years later.

"You... ran into them and recognized them, then?" I asked Mirea, a little surprised. I knew she and the twins had met once before, when she visited the town previously, but I was pretty sure it had been an incredibly brief and not particularly memorable interaction.

She shook her head. "No, actually. Aster recognized me. Apparently saw me passing by and came running after me down the road to ask for help since he knew I knew you."

I turned back to the boy, eyebrow raised in an unspoken question.

Aster's face flushed red and he looked awkwardly down at the floor. "I... I just remembered her 'cause I thought—I thought she was really pretty, that's all."

Nassia chuckled. "Pretty, hmm?" She eyed Mirea. "Now doesn't that word sound awfully familiar today."

The young woman rolled her eyes, but otherwise ignored the comment. Stepping closer, she knelt slightly and smiled warmly down at the kid. "Thank you, Aster." 

His face reddened further at her close proximity, and without speaking he nodded hurriedly.

Mirea went to stand up straight, but hesitated. "...Though honestly," she stage-whispered in mock conspiratorial fashion, "as far as being pretty goes, it might be true that your brother has me beaten these days."

Aster spun to look at me, confused disbelief written all over his face. "Huh? You... think Sil is that pretty?" He stared for a long moment, but understanding only seemed to escape him further.

'Ouch,' Mirea mouthed at me with a smirk.

I gave her an exasperated look. "I only just recovered from being sick and then I ended up crying. Of course I'm a mess right now."

"...He didn't deny it, though," Nassia noted amusedly. "That he's prettier than you."

"Oh, shut up," I muttered, though unsurprisingly the only reaction that earned me was a laugh. "...Anyway," I turned back to Aster, "why was, uh... the blacksmith's kid picking on you in the first place?"

Somewhat startled, Aster broke eye contact and looked intently at a random spot on the floor, fidgeting. "Um... well, I don't... I don't know? H-he just... doesn't like us."

My eyes narrowed. "...Does this happen often, then?"

He seemed to squirm slightly under my gaze. "W-well... no... not—not really..."

"...What are you not telling me, Aster?"

The boy shrank back uncomfortably, biting his lip.

"It's 'cause... no one's come to check on us... these last few days," a small, hoarse voice joined the conversation without warning, drawing my full attention in a heartbeat. Anise was squinting dazedly up at the ceiling, obviously still half-asleep. 

In my peripheral vision, I faintly noticed Aster flinch. 

"Most kids... leave us alone 'cause they're scared of Kerr. You and him both didn't come for a few days, so that... that stupid idiot thought he could get away with it." Anise flashed me a weak, exhausted, but nevertheless proud grin. "But I beat him, Sil! I beat him up and now he won't mess with us."

...Damn. My heart sank. It's my fault.

I kept my expression frozen in a smile. "Just to be sure, he... the blacksmith's kid started it, right?"

"Yeah!" Aster and Anise chimed in unison.

"Then you did good." I gave Anise an affectionate kiss on the cheek and stroked her hair. "I don't like seeing you hurt, but I'm proud of you for protecting yourself and Aster. I'm... I'm really sorry I haven't been around." My eyes stung as fresh tears threatened to spill over the edge.

Aster hesitantly reached up and clasped my hand tightly in both of his. "It's... it's okay. You're always busy, Sil."

"We know you come see us whenever you can," Anise added.

A spike of icy guilt pierced my chest.

"...You're both too sweet." Swallowing a hard lump in my throat, I gently extricated my hand from Aster's grasp. "I think I need to get some rest myself, so let's talk later, okay?" I reached out one hand to each of the twins and ruffled their hair before they had a chance to respond. "Take it easy for a bit."

Without looking Mirea or Nassia in the face, I left the room as quickly as I could manage without making it too obvious I was rushing. Once through the door, I closed it quietly behind myself and leaned exhaustedly back against it, overwhelmed.

Idiot, I berated myself. I'm such an—

"Well... I can go take a look, I suppose," Rosch's voice faintly reached my ears. "Ask around a bit."

"That would be much appreciated," Lirelle's voice answered him. "There probably won't be much we can learn from them, but every little bit of information helps."

The room I'd been using earlier in the day was right across the hall, and part of me desperately wanted to go collapse onto the bed and pass out right then and there, but...

With a reluctant sigh, I followed the sound of conversation to the main room of the house.

"Right," Rosch said. I turned the last corner to find the tall man just standing up from a seat at the dining table, wearing a serious expression. Lirelle sat across from him, back turned to me. "I'll—" Rosch cut off as he noticed me, prompting Lirelle to look over her shoulder and spot me as well.

"...Hey," she said simply.

"How's the little one?" Rosch asked.

I made myself smile. "...She's okay. She woke up."

Unmistakably genuine relief lit up his face. "Good to hear." As somewhat of an afterthought, he gestured to the chair he had just vacated. "Feel free to come take my spot; I've got to step out for a bit."

Although I went ahead and took him up on his offer, neither Lirelle nor I spoke as her uncle took a moment to throw on a worn brown overcoat and opened the door. From outside came the murmuring of a passing couple's idle coversation, the distant sound of raucous, probably drunken laughter, the faint but resounding clang of a smith's hammer—and then Rosch pulled the door closed behind him, and the two of us were left sitting across from one another in an awkward near-silence, broken only by the soft, indistinct hum of quiet voices coming intermittently from the room I'd just left.

"...You don't look so good," Lirelle observed coolly after an indeterminate length of time.

Staring absently at the wood grain of the table, I tried to formulate a response of some sort, but words failed to come to mind.

She gave a small sigh and changed her approach. "Those kids," she began, drawing my gaze up to meet hers. "They said they're your siblings."

"Not by blood, if that's what you're getting at." It was the natural question to ask—the twins and I did share very similar hair colours, but my own skin tone was a few shades darker and there was little to no real resemblance between us otherwise.

There was an uncomfortable pause. Lirelle's expression as she continued to silently watch me betrayed neither a reaction to, nor any interest in what I'd just said.

Finally, she spoke. "They died, didn't they?"

I felt my face go pale.

"...And so did my sister," she continued. Her voice was flat—it wasn't a question this time. "They're still alive right now, though, so why haven't you gone to see them at all?" She waited a few moments, but I couldn't find the words with which to respond. "...Were you afraid of remembering? Afraid of how your memories would affect your current relationship with them? The other way around, maybe?"

"I just—" My voice came out purely on impulse, without any plan as to just what I was going to actually say, and I froze, not knowing how to continue.

Lirelle tapped a finger against the table several times, seemingly thinking. "How exactly did you end up coming back in time seven years, anyway?"

I blinked, caught somewhat off-guard by the abrupt shift in topic, but at least this was something I knew how to respond to.

"The archmage..." I hesitated, unsure where to start my explanation. "...Around half a year before I came back in time, the archmage announced that she was giving up all other work in favor of developing the theory for time manipulation magic."

Lirelle raised an eyebrow, clearly intrigued.

"Everyone thought she'd gone crazy, but supposedly she thought it was a more practical idea than trying to fix all the damage the collapse had done."

"And how was it supposed to work?" Lirelle eventually prompted when it quickly became clear I wasn't going to continue. "Why did you, specifically, keep your memories?"

I grimaced. That was the all-important question—and the one I didn't have an answer to. "I... don't know."

She frowned. "...What?"

"That was the last I heard about it," I explained. "I was kicked out of the capital shortly after the announcement, and after that news about it never reached me. I have no idea why it's just me who remembers—I'd never so much as glimpsed the archmage in person, and there was absolutely no reason for her to know I even existed."

Across from me, Lirelle rested her chin on her hands, staring absently at one of the intricate little wood carvings on the other end of the table—this one depicting small, bell-shaped flowers growing around an animal skull—in thought. "...Isn't it possible that there are others, then?" She gazed at the carving silently for a while longer, then finally turned her attention back to me. "You aren't just... assuming you're special somehow, are you?"

I smiled bitterly. "No, this... this is one kind of 'special' I want no part of. I've been listening in on gossip at the tavern in the hopes that maybe there'd be rumors of someone knowing the future or news that events were unfolding differently than I remember, or... something. No such luck as of yet."

"...I see."

A faint echo of laughter, probably belonging to Nassia by the sound of it, made it through the small bedroom's closed door and down the hallway to reach us.

Lirelle glanced in that direction thoughtfully. "So from what you've told me... before time reversed, I did everything I could to dig up proof of that piece of trash commander's betrayal, but it was either too little or too late and Ellis died anyway. Does that sound about right?"

"...Yeah," I forced out in something in between a murmur and a whisper.

"And since I don't remember any of that, were it not for your input I most likely would have ended up unknowingly repeating the exact same failure."

I gave a slight, uneasy nod.

"That means you—or your memories, at least—are the only reason that could change." She leaned forward and looked me dead in the eyes. "So long as there continues to be no evidence of others, you have to act on the assumption that you are the only variable in a world doomed to ignorantly travel an already-charted, dead-end path." She paused to let that sink in. "...Just as I can't save Ellis without you, your siblings are going to die if you don't do anything about it—so let me ask again, then: why the hell haven't you gone to see them these last few days?"

Feeling sick, I broke eye contact. "...My mind has been a mess," I began, voice strained, "and I knew I wouldn't be able to maintain composure around them. I thought that if I just... gave it some time, then eventually I'd be able to look at them without that nightmarish scene surfacing in my head."

"...And because you didn't, the girl—Anise, was it? Anise got into a fight and got hurt."

I bit my lip hard. "I... recalled vaguely that I used to stop by to quickly check on them every couple days, but I... I forgot it was also to keep the other kids in the town in line. If I'd remembered, then I would have—"

"—And so you made things worse, rather than better," Lirelle interrupted.

...I fell silent. There was nothing I could say to that.

"...Look," she said, and I reluctantly met her gaze once again. "Sitting around feeling sorry for yourself or being too afraid to act isn't going to help anyone. We both have family to protect, so pull yourself together and work with me." She offered a slight smile. "I have an idea."