Once Upon the Butterflies' Mind

Before it's too late, I have to state that everything through the linear narrative are the complications of my past actions.

I'm at the end and not the start of the tale.

It was what I realized after talking to the Seven Gods lingering around the mysterious transfer student.

I asked them to stop time at the expense of a memory fragment.

It's not too much of an important clause so to speak─thus the briefness, occurring that I refused when they asked for more.

Ultimately, I crossed out the meaningless repercussion being my memory dilemma as the effect of a past action.

I sold them memories in order to resolve a prior mistake. Somehow, I feel the need to know what it is in order to understand my connection with Miss Ayanami. My dream inside the Snow Globe as the basis.

Of course, it'd be a contradiction pertaining to my refusal in the tour guide role.

If I was the closest to her during her stay at our school─there's no doubt I'd learn more, knowing our relationship could only thrive from hereon.

Heart closing in to honesty, there exists a ripple in being her guide. If I don't, I'd move at my own pace and not exert care for her. For the predestined route I'd be forced to follow, I'll surely be entwined into the student body's pretensions.

Survival is at bare minimum.

Out of all the entities I hate, the Mind Club has it all.

I like to think I learned from experience.

I've no use for dipping myself into the mist.

Also, if possible, I don't want anything to do with those atrocious Seven Gods.

Even if I enjoy the treacherous act of being forgetful.

Kindly enough, my exalted classmate Amaterasu Origami has read my mind. She locked her eyes onto mine, the passionate avatar of the sun smirked, unkind and astute. Connection was established, and a negotiation ensued.

"You'll take the responsibility? Great, I'll treat you to Giorno's later."

Or never mind, the link wasn't installed.

I asked in the open, not minding anyone who can hear.

Mind Club or anyone, they'd only be left wondering about the initiation and not understand the context at all.

I feel sorry for them hearing something futile instead.

"I'm only receiving bad activity over that grin written in your face," she criticized, her smirk intensifying up one level. "Anyphoo, what made you interested in Giorno's gross cuisine?"

No, it's not─and I'd swear to hate everyone who badmouths them!

"You won't understand because you haven't eaten there yet!" Amaterasu filed her complaint─about ready to peel someone's face off. "And besides, you hate everyone."

"Please don't read my mind," I wholeheartedly requested─with all the love squeezed into it. "And I only hate who I hate."

"That statement is false," she rebutted.

"Which is true," I rebutted even better.

Sigh.

Seriously though, it's the first day of second semester.

I already have to go through hell with three mind readers.

Well, it's not like giving it the intensest of fuck would make life better. Mind Mages are fairly common that the complaint doesn't constitute the true state of things. Actually, knowing that there are people who could deal with my erraticism, and I could be friends with them, is not something to complain about.

"You're not making any sense right now."

"Yeah, like how my morning started," I followed upon her comment.

And so─we stared at each other's eyes, grinning from the hell of it.

"Yeah!" Amaterasu pounded her palm, a substitution to the light bulb ideation phenomenon, and tossed for me her intrigue, "You had the weird dream you wouldn't stop bitching about!"

"I don't remember telling you about it," …was what I wanted to say, but not to be improperly defined, I know it's from my own mindless babbler.

"Two weird dreams in a row, too!" She pointed out, and breezed an astute look for me to grudge on. "And not every different sensation is that different from what's normal. Says you, anyway, I don't use twisters."

It does sound like something I'd say, and any objections are absent.

"Good work there catching the gossip…So, do we arrange the investigation team now or wait until the third dream?"

Aside from the Mind Club, I also hate the Detective Club when it comes to solving mysteries.

"Hopping onto a different problem means we're about to forget Sayaka Orihara's case, are you sure?"

I'd take it as incompetence for the Detective Club. When there are only two members though and they agreed, there's nothing to banish said incompetence from play. Our eyes met in an equilibrium, she and I reached understanding far from reason.

I am the detective, she's the assistant.

Holmes and Watson: except we weren't virtually as good as them.

I smirked when she smiled wryly.

And─I smiled wryly when she smirked.

We were kept in lines, divided by sex orientation, boys in left, girls in right─atomically led by homeroom teachers.

My worst enemy in the entire school led our class: duly of service without being doubted by our line.

As a fairly major institution, the crowd was a thicket.

Observably a peaceful environment, it wasn't as if congestion stopped us from movement.

Not that I could have forgotten, but the sudden realization I wasn't going to sleep any time soon hit the nerves.

Sequence comes afterwards, and I don't have the authority to disrupt each and every mage's excitement to know how far they have developed their talents.

Color the Strongest Mage uninterested, I'd like to hit the sack already─and see the third dream. I've been given a pattern to analyze. Please, I'd like an order of minding my own business.

"You might as well forget the Sequence and sleep it out, nii-chan!"

"Seems nice, I'll do exactly as you suggested."

Yawn no longer suppressed, the mind was also unhinged for a second.

Suppose I'd enter the classroom mesmerized by the scenery.

Then─I'd close my eyes to the call of Amatsumikaboshi.

Fweet─! How cumbersome: intuitively, I brushed my sight to the person beside and behind.

"Ha-ha! Seems like we can't arrange the investigation yet, nii-chan."

Yeah, my consciousness admits utter defeat now that it can't feign ignorance for what comes next.

"Huh? As if you can be defeated in any manner, milord," she uttered in disgust, the flippant sisterly act thrown out the window.

Amaterasu Origami shot me an unkind look.

I was ready to sigh when suddenly, a hand touched my shoulder.

"Um…Mister Otogibanashi, what is happening?"

It asked─the fluffed-up stuffed doll behind Amaterasu and me, who had been there the whole time.

Consumed by dread over a feasting crowd.

I do apologize for not giving the ambience what it deserved: heaviness in the atmosphere weighing down the singular.

Once more, our class has become the center of attention─all aggression and weariness subjected against the additional problem child.

Nayami Ayanami has already created enemies, and the Mind Club hasn't been stopped.

She's enduring all by herself─an endless overture of quietness.

Sucks to be her.

Nonetheless, I haven't discovered empath as a hidden skill.

Oddly, the soft voice took me by mischief.

I quickly turned my head, my body following towards the strange ballpark figure.

"Listen carefully, Miss Ayanami." And so, I explained in nonchalance, "We are about to go where the woes and miseries of us, Mages, are brought out."

I, or the dysfunctional dissociative personality known as Snow White, definitely shouldn't have jinxed myself.

Swaying along with the wind, her forelocks down, up, down, up, down: the mesh of wandering souls twirled in dynamism. She kicked herself upwards, and no longer did she step over land. Astounding as it comes for action, thereby triggering Snow White's blood. His body, the blood flow, his flesh waiting to be mowed down.

Drills of fire emerged.

Even if it was in itself, a safe combat experience among Mages where the faculty stood guard.

For when did it threaten his life, it stood on an entirely different logic which Magekind can never match.

One of the strangest people on the planet now came upon us, conducting an open invasion as though we're no match at all.

Psychics, the ones who cast Magic without chants─people who go unpunished by bending the rules. More than a Sorcerer: like his classmates assumed, Miss Ayanami draws power from her mind. More powerful than us, Mages, who have to ask the blessing of the spirits and gods.

Snow White doesn't understand the motivation behind such action, or in this case, an ardent movement towards hate and torment. He could barely stand his ground as she kept closing in and gritted in a strenuous amount of pressure. Gaining speed, Miss Ayanami closed in─palm in the open, thoughts aligned with its unstoppable vibrations.

Her eyes, though covered by her forelocks, smeared in tears and lips bloodied out from endurance.

The crowd─frozen in their places, eyes inanimate from the rather alien scenario.

"Comet Howitzer!"

She murmured in her approach─without a moment atrophied, the strangely aggressive mysterious transfer student leaped for a desperate run for responsibility.

How she wants everything to end, to accomplish the maelstrom, and she can leave with her goals achieved at the expense of blood.

Surely, it can't be something else.

Howitzer blasts straight from a point at her lower body radius.

You have yourself held at gunpoint, where even the oldest models are fast enough to render one reaching for dear life.

How about being as fast as a comet?

Snow White understood the logic.

It must mean a lot of explosive power that could pose a threat to life.

Languidly, a breakneck stance.

Trabeated flaming projectiles appeared out of nowhere, and propeled in the air. Four of them pointed towards his torso, utterly taking him in by a rush of blood. Nothing in mind but to avoid─a magic chain disrupted in the middle of its cast, a point in time where Mages are deemed powerless.

Snow White, the supposed most proficient Mage the world has seen in a myriad, not even being an exception.

Magic Mirror: who's the most foolish one of all?

"Hullo, nii-chan?"

Alas, I was roused awake.

Amaterasu was squinting her eyes as she examined her fake brother's dead eyes.

"Please don't tell me you're already…him?"