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All around the person was nothing but red. It was an infinite red and black void, yet still active and swirling like the flow of molten magma.
Staring into the void, the person realized that they had no recollection or memories of anything. They tried to look down at themselves, but they were only able to observe themself as a pale blue flame.
Once more, they looked around in the void, but instead of just void they saw a lone thing that stood still against the swirling red: a black kitten with a red scarf.
“Oh, you’re awake,” the kitten ‘said,’ although to describe it as thoughts being beamed into their mind was more apt.
“Where… am I?” the person similarly ‘asked.’
“This is the afterlife,” the kitten replied. “Your name is Mari, a girl who has tragically died. You played that, uh… big black thing with the white lines… I think it’s called a ‘piano?’”
Immediately, the person remembered their identity. As she did, her form automatically changed from a blue flame, to a black-haired girl wearing a white dress.
“Wait… Mewo!?” Mari recognized the cat.
“That’s one of my names—”
“Mewo, you can talk!?”
“Yes,” Mewo smiled a little. “I’m just your friendly neighborhood ghost cat, that’s all. You can call me Mewo if you want, though I prefer the name my old master gave me, Sissel.”
“Sissel? Old master? Ghost cat? And… You said I died? What? I’m confused.” The last thing Mari could remember was being pushed down the stairs, after she was arguing with her little brother… Is that how she died?
“Well, I don’t really have time to explain. Time is of the essence!”
As he said that, the void around them collapsed. Mari couldn’t see her surroundings, but she could perceive that she was in the backyard. Immediately, she noticed her own dead body… hanging by a noose…
“What the…!? I-I didn’t h-hang myself!” (Although, to be fair, with how much stress—)
“Then you probably didn’t,” Sissel replied.
“Well… then that means I’m dead, I guess. Is this… really the end?” Mari said, dejected.
“No, you can still be saved! There’s still one more thing we can do…"
“Huh? But… I’m already dead! What could you possibly do to—”
“Time travel.”
“...You’re joking?”
“No, seriously. Whenever someone dies, I can travel to four minutes before their death, and change the course of events so that I can save their life. Being a ghost cat has its benefits.”
Mari ‘looked’ around the backyard again, and noticed some more details beyond her body. All of her friends were there, mortified at the sight, and she couldn’t blame them. Out of the four, Hero was clearly taking it the worst, letting out a constant stream of tears she didn’t know he had, as he was practically yelling for everything to be just a nightmare. Kel was struggling to stay standing, as Aubrey cried into his shoulder. Basil and Sunny were standing next to each other, on the verge of a panic attack. Meanwhile, a certain black cat was sleeping juxtapositionally peacefully right under her, right next to the toybox.
Mari realized she couldn’t just leave this world yet. Of course, she was going to try to save herself anyway, but knowing that her friends were at stake…
“You know, compared to everything else, time travel doesn’t even sound that unrealistic anymore. Let’s try it, Mew— Sissel.”
Sissel nodded. “Then, let’s travel to the moment four minutes before your death!”
— Four Minutes Before Death: BEGIN —
Mari went back into the red void, and felt vertigo as she fell through it. But, after a moment, she was back in the backyard. Her body wasn’t there anymore, and she was floating in the air, unable to move.
“For this first run around, we should just try to see what happens, so we can plan out what to do after,” Sissel said. “I can rewind time back to this moment whenever I want.”
“Alright!”
Mari was about to question how she was going to get inside the house, before realizing that her ghost-status let her see through the walls. She could also hear the sound of a piano and violin playing — her and Sunny’s performance. She also noticed Sissel in the room, fast asleep. She listened, but just a few seconds later, the performance was cut off.
“You keep messing up measure 60. That second note is a D sharp, not an E natural! That’s like the fifth time in a row you’ve made that mistake! And you messed up measure 41 and 42 earlier, as well!” the ‘real’ Mari yelled. It was odd seeing herself, but considering everything else that’s been happening it’s hardly a surprise.
Ghost Mari quickly decided to refer to herself as G-Mari and her living counterpart L-Mari. It cluttered things up a bit, but she thought that it would help reduce her confusion.
G-Mari remembered what happened next well. (Usually, he would mutter a ‘sorry’ or glare at me, but instead he stayed silent and turned away.) And, as she remembered it, that’s exactly what happened.
“Sunny?”
Without warning, Sunny walked out of the music room, his violin in tow.
“Sunny, come back here! We’re still practicing!”
L-Mari ran after him. Sunny was climbing up the stairs.
“Mari…" Sunny said, voice strained with stress. L-Mari didn’t notice it, but G-Mari saw that his fingers were bleeding slightly — a detail she missed earlier. She knew what was coming next, but her past self was still in the dark.
“Sunny, what are you doing!?”
The two stared at each other. “Mari… please stop.”
“Stop what? The recital!? We’re going later today! We can’t just cancel it now! Sunny, just get down here, and finish up practice!”
Sunny took a deep breath, and gathered his courage. “No.”
“No!? Why not!? We have to practice! We need to be perfect!”
Sunny gripped his violin tightly… and then threw it down the stairs. It shattered into several pieces, right below the bottom of the stairs.
G-Mari knew it was coming, but she still felt furious at him for destroying it! (Sunny, why!? Even though I died… I’m still livid at him!)
“I can read your thoughts, you know,” Sissel said. “It’s hard to keep a secret in the world of the dead.”
“Really—?” G-Mari was interrupted by her own yelling.
“SUNNY, WHAT THE FUCK!?”
It was the first time she had ever sworn to her brother. Why?
Mari was stressed beyond belief, although she made a great effort to hide it. Taking double the number of classes across two different schools — half of which being AP or accelerated classes — made her have to stay at school for about thirteen hours a day, much longer than any human should have to endure, let alone a fifteen year old. Her parents were pressuring her to graduate as soon as possible, ideally during her sophomore year; they and even herself assumed she could handle the increased workload. But, internally, she was being torn apart by the stress. She just faked a smile, and no one doubted her.
The recital also didn’t help with her stress in the slightest. What at first she saw as a respite from the work, an opportunity to have fun and just enjoy herself with her dear brother, slowly morphed into a monster of frustration. Her daily routine had morphed into eat, go to school, practise for recital, do homework, sleep; in the day, she had literally zero time to herself, she was always doing something.
The argument on top of the stairs was the moment she snapped. The piano part of the recital was infinitely harder than the violin, and she had just about mastered it, while Sunny was still missing notes. It frustrated her, and even if her rational mind was able to pass it off as him being a novice violinist who only spent an hour or two a day practicing recreationally for just a month, subconsciously he began to wear on her. All of the stress, all of the built up emotion, all of the frustration…
She directed every ounce of it towards Sunny at that moment. In her eyes, he stopped being her brother, and became the person that just wasted her efforts and gave her undue stress. Now that she was dead, she started to realize that she… overreacted, to say the least. But, it was still him that destroyed the violin. No violin meant no recital. She still felt anger towards him, even into the afterlife.
“Sunny, you…! Do you realize what you just did!? You just stopped the recital from happening! All of your friends saved up to get you that violin, and you just broke it into a million pieces! How dare you!?”
Sunny spoke as Mari ran up the stairs, as fast as her knee could allow. “No recital… is good.”
“You just wasted the past month of practice!” L-Mari had tears rolling down her cheeks, as she let everything out. “The reservation for the recital costs hundreds of dollars! And you just threw it all away!”
“B-But it hurt so much—”
L-Mari reached the top, and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Sunny! You! Just! Ruined! EVERYTHING!”
“S-Stop…"
“How are we gonna tell our parents about this!? They’ll be so disappointed, at YOU! The recital… my recital… you ruined it!”
Sunny tried to run away, but L-Mari grabbed his arm.
“Don’t try to run away from me!”
The two began to fight, and it was clearly one-sided towards L-Mari. Sunny never really ever cared about his physical form, so of course he would lose to his three-years older, formerly-athletic sister. That was, until a few seconds in her bad right knee buckled.
Mari fell to her knees, and Sunny pushed, and… L-Mari came tumbling down the stairs.
“SUNNY—!!”
♫
Sunny reached out a hand, but it was futile. Right as she reached the bottom, and her head hit the broken violin, there was a flash of white. L-Mari laid, unmoving, as Sunny quickly came down.
Everything went silent.
“And that’s the tragic story of how you died,” Sissel said to G-Mari telepathically.
“O-Oh…" G-Mari already knew what had happened, but to see it happen a second time… It hurt. But, then she thought about what happened to her body afterward… “Wait, so h-how did I get hanged, then?”
“Well, we can wait a bit longer. Just because you’re dead now doesn’t mean we have to stop the current loop immediately.”
G-Mari looked down the stairs, and noticed a new figure at the scene: Basil. (Why is Basil here now!?) However, he was shocked silent.
“M-Mari…?” Sunny cried. “Mari, wake up…!"
G-Mari realized she was making an uncharacteristic cry.
Sunny slowly and shakily carried her lifeless body up the stairs, and went into their bedroom, resting her in her bed. “Mari, why aren’t you… waking up?”
Basil walked into the room. “Sunny? M-Mari?”
“Basil?”
Basil walked over to Mari, and looked closely. “Mari, she’s… She’s not breathing.”
Sunny’s upset expression quickly turned into fear. “Wait, Mari… you’re not…"
“Sunny… I… I can’t lose you. If they know you did this… they’ll take you away!”
They both started to become stressed out beyond what G-Mari thought possible.
“I… have a plan. If we… If we hang her in the backyard… then it will look like she d-did it.”
(Oh god no…)
Sunny was too desperate to think anything else, and he barely acknowledged that it was a horrible idea. Him and Basil started to go down the stairs, with L-Mari in tow. They went out into the backyard, grabbed a jump rope, and—
“I don’t want to watch this,” G-Mari said, filled with horror. She knew what was going to happen next, and… Sometimes, the details are best left unknown.
Instantly, Sissel brought back the red void, and she could see him again. “Yeah, that’s understandable. Anyway, now comes the hard part: actually stopping your death.”
“How exactly can we do that?” G-Mari asked.
“Well, I can do more than just rewind time. I can also move some objects around, open doors, et cetera. They’re called Ghost Tricks, and they’re the key to saving you.”
“Ghost Tricks?”
The void collapsed again, and the two were back in the backyard. The piano and violin were playing again.
— Trick Time! —
“Alright, so to use Ghost Tricks…"
Suddenly, the world became red again. But, instead of the recurring, swirling void, it was instead just the backyard, but tinted red. The piano and violin weren’t audible anymore, as well.
“We first have to go into the Ghost World, which is where we are now.”
Mari perceived around her, and noticed two things: instead of there just being air, as there was before, she saw her hanging body, albeit as a blueish-purple silhouette without any details, and without the rope. Inside that silhouette was a point of light that had a blue flame around it. In fact, she could see similar points of light in a few places around herself, but only the one inside her was on fire.
“See those circles, those dots? Those are called cores. Certain objects have them, and they let me move around and manipulate them. For instance, these pinwheels.”
Below her were a few pinwheels, and all of them had cores in them. The blue flame around the silhouette’s core reached out to the closest pinwheel, grabbed hold, and the flame quickly moved to the pinwheel.
“Wait, so that flame is you?” G-Mari asked.
“Yeah. Also, before you ask, time is frozen in the Ghost World. Although, there aren’t enough cores around right now to really do anything. I can only reach so far. We’ll have to pass some time…"
The world’s colors returned to normal, and the piano and violin resumed playing, though it didn’t take long before they stopped.
“In the meantime… I’ll show you a Ghost Trick.”
Suddenly, the pinwheel they were on started to spin. After a few seconds of ramping up, it was spinning extremely quickly. G-Mari was surprised it didn’t fly off of the ground.
“Spinning that pinwheel isn’t gonna save me,” G-Mari said, a dejected and mild smugness in her tone.
“I know, I’m just demonstrating. A pinwheel can’t do much, but—”
Suddenly, they went back into the Ghost World. Mari noticed an autumn leaf flying by, which conveniently had a core in it. It was also just in reach!
“I almost missed that leaf! We need to look out for opportunities if we want a shot at saving you.”
“Good catch, Sissel!”
Sissel jumped to the leaf, and switched back to the Real World. It flew towards the house, slowly but eventually, and reached the glass doors in the back.
Inside the house, there weren’t that many cores, however; all they could reach from there that had a core in it was the floor lamp on the other side of the wall. So, they went back into the Ghost World and jumped through the wall to get to the lamp. But, once they were inside, there was nowhere to go. The hanging flowers above the lamp as well as the TV were both just barely out of reach.
“Wait, are we trapped here now?” G-Mari asked. “There aren’t any cores to grab onto…"
“Well, I have an idea…"
For the umpteenth time in just a few seconds, they went back to the Real World. (Real World for tricks and timeflow, Ghost World for movement and thinking. Got it.) The lamp began to shake back and forth, before gaining enough momentum to fall over towards the TV. Surprisingly, the lamp only cracked, and did not shatter, and thus did not make much noise at all. Her mom must have gotten a durable one after the last one was knocked over.
“Woah woah, hey! That lamp was expensive!”
“Eh, what’s some property damage to save someone’s life? Don’t forget that we’re trying to save you, here.”
“Yeah, you’re right…”
From there, the trip from the lamp to the tv to the fireplace photos to the clock to a cane leaning on the opposite side of the wall. G-Mari was too distracted solving the ‘puzzle’ to notice that Sunny was already at the top of the stairs, just about to throw his violin.
“Well, what now?”
“Well, let’s try to get to the top of the stairs. Maybe we can do something there.”
Sissel knocked over the cane, landing next to a table. They went to the lamp, to a photo on a shelf, to a pencil on the railing next to the stairs. But, after that… There was nothing to attach to. The closest thing there was the violin.
Reluctantly, time resumed, and the violin was destroyed. L-Mari was running up the stairs. There was no way to stop the fight, it seemed. The end was near.
“Uh, we’re running low on time! We have to do something!” G-Mari panicked.
“We can try again after this, but… Maybe this is still salvageable.” Sissel went down the way he came. He jumped to a lamp. “Well, I’m good at knocking things over. So…"
The lamp began to sway side to side, as the fight between L-Mari and Sunny began. It took a second, but the lamp fell, making a loud sound as it broke on the wood flooring. On top of the stairs, Sunny was startled by the sound, instinctively taking a step backwards towards the stairs to see what happened. L-Mari, still livid, saw it as a chance for him to escape, so she pounced on him. But, she tried to grab him a little too hard…
Before anyone realized what was happening, Sunny started to fall down the stairs.
“SUNNY!!” L-Mari reached her hand out, but it was too late.
The sickening crunch of the violin greeted him at the bottom, as the world went silent once more.
— Fate Averted…? —
♫
“O-Oh no…” G-Mari mumbled, a sick feeling entering her gut.
“...Sunny? Sunny!?” L-Mari yelled as she descended the stairs.
She held him in her arms. A second later, she checked his pulse, and the expression on her face…
“NononoNONONO!! SUNNY!! T-This… This isn’t happening! Sunny, please! W-Wake up! I’m sorry! I-I didn’t m-mean to…!”
G-Mari knew that Sunny was dead, and that it was her fault. Even if she’s a ghost of herself watching events unfold, it was still Mari who pushed Sunny. The veil of dissociating that being dead provided ultimately proved thin, failing at protecting against the pierce of seeing herself becoming a killer.
She killed Sunny.
It was her fault that the fight began. Even if it was Sunny who was too stubborn to improve, even if it was Sunny who threw the violin down the stairs, it was Mari’s fault for trying to restrain him, trying to fight him.
It was her fault. She didn’t deserve a chance to save herself from herself. She was a monster, who should just stay dead—
“Mari.”
G-Mari turned toward the voice, and saw the avatar of Sissel.
“This doesn’t have to be reality. Even if it did save you… I know you wouldn’t want to live in a world like that. You’re too kind, too pure to handle that guilt. We can easily go back to before, and try something different, so that both of you can be saved. I’m sure it’s possible.”
“Sissel…"
“But, before we go back, there’s one more thing I want to do.”
The world became visible again, with L-Mari still crying over Sunny. They went into the Ghost World, and G-Mari noticed something strange: Sunny had a core now, when she was certain he didn’t before. “S-S-Sunny, he has a…?”
“Oh, forgot to mention that! Whenever you die, you get a core that I can attach to; that’s how I can talk to the dead. That core is actually why I haven’t reverted the timeline yet; if we get Sunny’s spirit to talk with us, then go back in time, he’ll stay with us. Maybe he’ll have some ideas to get you two out of your situation…"
“Wait… Are you saying I can talk to Sunny?”
“Yeah. It might take a minute for him to wake up, though.”
Mari didn’t know what to think. She knew that what happened was reversible, could be undone and unwritten from history, but it didn’t stop her from feeling guilty. So, she questioned if she deserved to talk to her brother, the brother she was capable of killing.
But, before she could say anything, Sissel traveled to Sunny’s body, and interacted with the core.
Back in the void, there was now a third figure: a blue flame, that was seemingly still asleep. It looked identical to how G-Mari looked when she first woke up.
“Unfortunately, we kinda just have to wait for him to wake up.”
And wait they did. In their loosely-defined sense of time, about three minutes passed before Sunny mumbled something. “W-Where…?”
“Sunny?” Mari said.
“...Who’s Sunny?”
(They lose their memories when they wake up,) Sissel’s thought to Mari. “Your name is Sunny. You are a boy that played… Mari, you called it a ‘violin’ earlier? But, Sunny… You are dead, at least for now.”
“Wait… Mewo? Mari!?” Sunny’s form became himself, a black-haired pre-teen.
“Sunny, I… I’m so sorry. It’s my f-fault!”
(What do I tell her?) Sunny thought, seemingly unaware that he was being heard.
“Y-You don’t… have to say a-anything… All of this b-because I tried to push you…!”
“Mari… B-Blame me…"
“Sunny, don’t! I k-killed you! W-Why don’t you hate me!?”
The few cried for a few seconds.
“Alright, this is going nowhere fast,” Sissel interrupted. “Maybe, you two will… cheer up if you go back to life? I’m not good with people—”
“R-Really? You can do that?” Sunny asked.
“Well, it’s a long story…"
Sissel (and later Mari after she calmed down a bit) explained to Sunny how they were from a ‘different timeline’ where it was Mari that died instead of Sunny, Mewo’s true identity as a ghost cat named Sissel, everything about Ghost Tricks and the Ghost World, and how it’s possible for the two to be saved from their fates and come back to life.
“This… This sounds like one of my dreams…" (Especially that one with Captain Spaceboy and black holes…)
“Well, the alternative is d-death, so we kinda just have to accept it as reality,” Mari said. She calmed herself down during Sissel’s explanation, at least enough to not destroy herself with guilt.
“Well? What are we waiting for?” the cat said. “Instead of reverting back to your death, Mari… I think it would be better if we start from four minutes before Sunny’s death. It’ll let us start in the house, at least, and I’m not sure if Sunny could come with us if we went back to the original timeline.”
“Good idea,” Sunny said.
Time rewinded to pretty much the exact same point as to where they started.
— Trick Time! —
“Maybe we can do something in the music room?” G-Mari said. “We weren’t able to get there earlier.”
“Maybe,” G-Sunny replied. G-Mari thought, (Oh no, I’m gonna have to start adding the prefix to Sunny and Sissel’s names too!)
The path to the music room was simple; thankfully, there was a plant on the other side of the wall that had a core in it that was easily accessible.
“You know, I always liked this song,” G-Sissel said suddenly. “It actually sounds… normal. Everything else you two’ve played has just sounded like an earthquake with how low it sounded.”
“Hm?” G-Mari was a bit confused by the comment. (Wait, I remember hearing somewhere that cats like high-pitched music. Sissel, is that true?)
(...I guess?)
(Wait, am I hearing your thoughts?) G-Sunny thought.
(Yeah. It’s a perk of being dead, I guess.) G-Mari replied.
(Weird.)
Looking around in the music room, G-Mari only saw a few cores: one in the piano, one in the violin, one in the grandfather clock, some in the chairs, and some in the photos on the opposite wall, which she quickly figured to be inaccessible. L-Sissel was in the room and was fast asleep, not suspecting anything, just as before. However, looking closely…
G-Mari saw an odd, pale gray flame around a core inside the cat.
“What’s that flame…?” Mari asked.
“Oh?” G-Sissel looked genuinely surprised. “I guess that’s what my ghost looks like when viewed from a different timeline.”
Out of curiosity, G-Sissel tried to move to the flame, but he couldn’t reach it; there weren’t enough cores in the room. The farthest he got was to the piano.
“Darn it. Once again, it doesn't look like we can do much here. But, I’ll try something…" G-Sissel said as he moved to the violin in L-Sunny’s hands. Suddenly, the violin was nearly yanked out of his hands, creating a screech as it slid against the bow. L-Mari instantly reacted to the screech.
“S-Sunny!?” L-Mari yelled. “What was that!? That’s one of the easiest parts of the song right there! The recital’s later today!”
L-Sunny made an exhausted face, and walked out of the room as per usual, inadvertently taking the three ghosts with him.
“So, with the violin… I think it needs the string thing to make sound, so I doubt I can make any sound with it…" G-Sissel said. G-Mari knew that plucking the strings also made sound, but she didn’t mention it. “But, it’s a pretty light object, so I can move it around a bit!” G-Sissel said.
“I have a plan,” G-Sunny suddenly said. “I think the strongest part of the violin is the neck? Maybe, if you rotate the violin so that it lands there instead of on the body… something might happen?”
G-Mari understood where he was coming from. As far as she could tell, the main body of a violin was hollow, to allow the sound to reverberate, while the neck was solid wood. Now that she thought about it, when the violin was hitting the ground, it was landing on the main body and shattering. Maybe, it could survive if it hit the solid neck instead. “That… might just work.”
“Well, it can’t hurt to try,” G-Sissel said. “It sounds like a good idea.”
Time passed to when they were at the top of the stairs, and as the violin was being dropped time paused again.
“Alright, I just realized a really big issue. How do I perfectly adjust the violin to land the right way?”
“Well, we could just rotate it now, and have a chance of landing on the neck. Or, we could try to be more consistent, by letting the violin fall a bit then rotating it near the bottom.”
“Well, it can’t be that hard,” G-Sissel said. “I’ll try the latter.”
Time resumed. The violin fell down the steps, and about a quarter-way from the bottom G-Sissel paused again. At that moment, the violin was right-side up in its rotation, and was about two rotations away from hitting the ground, G-Mari figured.
“So…" G-Mari knew that G-Sissel, being a cat, probably didn’t understand math… but a cat also can’t talk, and yet he was. She made the assumption that the beamed-thoughts thing would let more abstract ideas like percentage changes be understandable to him. “I’d say either rotate it to be spinning 25% faster or slower. There’s about two rotations left, so adding half a rotation more either forwards or backwards will make it land on its tip.”
G-Sissel seemed to understand her. “Yeah, that sounds right. I’ll try it.”
Time unpaused, and G-Sissel immediately began rotating the violin forwards. As he quickly found out, G-Mari had made a mistake: she assumed that the rotation could happen instantly. Even pushing as hard as he could, it wasn’t until halfway through what was supposed to be spinning time that he got it to a roughly 25% change. So, knowing that he’s undercompensated, he continued to rotate, hoping that he could go fast enough to hit the right spot on time.
It worked. The violin landed on the neck, thankfully. The neck bent, and some of the strings snapped, but it was in far better condition than it had been when it was being shattered.
Although, it still had a lot of forward momentum… The violin actually bounced, and nearly hit the back wall before hitting the ground again, shattering just as it did before.
(Darn it, it still broke…) G-Sissel thought.
“That’s actually really good that it broke farther away from the stairs,” G-Mari said, “because—”
“Wait a second!” G-Sissel interjected. “Something tells me… that fate has changed.
— Fate Changed! —
“Hm?” G-Sunny grunted.
“I have a vague sense of how much time’s left until the victim’s death… and that sense tells me that their lifespan has been extended by a few minutes.”
“Wait, so… Sunny’s still going to die?” G-Mari asked.
“That seems to be the case,” G-Sissel said.
Meanwhile, L-Mari and L-Sunny were arguing again; while the violin bouncing was a major victory for the ghosts, it was totally inconsequential for the two arguing siblings.
“Wait, so… Now that the violin is out of the way, whenever someone hits the bottom… I think they’ll live?” G-Mari was skeptical of herself. “I mean, why else would fate be changed?”
Time continued, and eventually the fight happened. Interestingly, G-Mari noticed that the lamp was starting to sway. Looking into the Ghost World… She saw a second flame on the lamp.
“Oh hey, that’s us from this timeline!” she said.
However, said flame looked a bit different. Like the flame in L-Sissel, it was also gray and pale. G-Sissel tried to reach toward it — and successfully reached the lamp — but nothing happened; G-Sissel made an expression that G-Mari interpreted as him expecting something to happen.
“Usually, us ghosts can talk to other ghosts like this. But, since this is us from the past… I guess we’re not allowed to talk? I’m surprised I’ve never run into a situation like this before. I mean, I’ve talked to other ghosts during a four-minutes-before before, but I can’t talk to myself?”
Then, something unexpected happened: the flame moved away, toward the living room. It didn’t do that in the last timeline.
“That’s weird,” G-Sunny mumbled. “The lamp fell before.”
“I wonder if they saw us or not,” G-Sissel said. “Even if we can’t directly communicate, maybe we can see each other? That might have made them not want to knock over the lamp.”
“Maybe,” G-Mari said.
After what was previously a final time continuation, L-Sunny and L-Mari fought. Without the lamp creating a distraction, it was Mari that fell.
G-Sunny’s expression was horrified. (Oh right. This is the first time he’s seen my timeline…)
“Wrong,” he quietly mumbled. “That’s wrong.”
“Sunny…" G-Mari whispered, although it was no less audible than anything else.
“I… I really did that…" G-Sunny began to cry.
“Sunny, deep breaths. I know… I know that this is hard. I reacted the same way when I saw myself push you. This isn’t real, we can undo this. Focus only on what’s important.”
He listened to her diligently. After giving him a second to calm down a little, she gave him one of her famous hugs as the two began to sit on the ‘floor.’
“Everything is going to be okay.”
“M-Mari… Thank…" He didn’t finish his sentence.
As Sunny began to calm down, Sissel joined in and sat on his lap.
“I don’t mean to ruin the moment, but… Something weird is happening. What I said about being able to tell how much life someone has left. Usually, that is for the person who I am currently rewinding to four minutes before the death of. But, that person is Sunny, and he just pushed Mari, and I’ve already seen this timeline, so Sunny lives. So, did it change my ‘perspective’ from Sunny to Mari’s life?”
“I thought you knew everything about being a ghost,” G-Mari commented.
“Eh, not really. I’ve only had to use my powers a few times. Anyway, things are still happening, pay attention.”
L-Sunny rushed down the stairs, and begged L-Mari to wake up. However, this time, she was still alive… just unconscious. He took L-Mari up the stairs again, tucked her into bed again, talked with Basil again…
There was just one small issue, though. Basil looked over her body, and said, “Mari, she’s… She’s not breathing.”
But she was breathing. (Basil, are you blind!?)
“Hard to tell under the blanket,” G-Sunny mumbled.
“Wait, so… now, it’s going to be the hanging that kills me?”
“The… hanging?” G-Sunny asked.
“Oh, uh…" G-Mari realized that the fact she was hanged was never explained. “Yeah, in this timeline… you frame my death as a suicide…"
“O-Oh…"
“So, now we just have to stop them… But how?” G-Mari wondered.
“Why not knock over the lamp again?” G-Sunny asked.
“Try it, Sissel.”
He moved to the lamp, and began to tilt it. L-Sunny and Basil were carrying L-Mari down the stairs when it fell.
The two were initially startled, but they didn’t slow down.
“Darn it, that didn’t work.”
G-Mari wondered where their past-selves went. With her omnipresence, she looked for them… but they were just gone. No hint of their existence, other than the cracked floor lamp in the living room. She was hoping to somehow communicate with them to come up with a plan, but that wasn’t happening. Did they rewind their own time, or something?
G-Sissel followed the three into the living room. They just moved the floor lamp out of the way, and went out of the door.
“Wait, the TV!” Sissel realized. Quickly, Sissel tried turning on the TV… but the ensuing static got fully ignored. “Darn it…"
“We’re nearly out of time!” G-Mari panicked.
She made one last observation of the house. When she did, her eye was caught on the still-sleeping L-Sissel, peacefully laying in the music room.
“W-Wait! I just got an idea!” G-Mari called out. “Sissel… You can save them!”
“What?” the cat asked.
“I mean… the real Sissel! The one sleeping in the music room!”
“Oh, I see where you’re going…"
Quickly, he made his way to the music room.
“Uh, mash the piano keys!” G-Mari ordered. G-Sissel obeyed.
Dissonant sounds filled the room, as random keys with no harmony were played. G-Mari would have preferred if G-Sissel could play faster, but knowing how hard it was to just knock over a lamp, it made sense he would play somewhat slowly.
But regardless, the sudden and horrible audio woke L-Sissel. The cat saw the piano playing by itself, with its player nowhere in sight. Assuming he had the same ghost powers while alive, G-Mari thought he probably observed around himself, and found the commotion coming from outside. Immediately, the cat shrieked, and he ran past the ghosts, quickly letting out a mew as he passed them.
He ran out of the room and into the living room. The three ghosts watched as he ran out of the glass door to the backyard — thankfully still open — and ran towards L-Sunny and Basil, who were preparing the jump rope.
“Go, me, go!” G-Sissel cheered cornily.
G-Mari couldn’t be certain of what L-Sissel was thinking, but she knew he had to realize he had to stop them. He wailed at the two boys, startling Basil and barely eliciting a response from L-Sunny.
“Mewo, n-now’s not the time!” Basil chastised, but ‘Mewo’ was unrelenting. He jumped and knocked the jump rope out of Basil’s hands, scratching him a little in the process. Basil tried to shoo him away, but was very unsuccessful.
“Mewo, stop! Please! We… We need to do this! Mari’s s-she’s… dead! They’ll take S-Sunny away if we don’t do this!”
G-Mari could have sworn she saw the cat shake his head. He walked over to L-Mari’s body, and laid next to her. L-Sunny took notice, and looked closely…
And realized how big of a mistake he and Basil had just made was.
“Mari…" L-Sunny whispered, barely loud enough for Basil to hear, “Mari’s… still a-alive.”
“Sunny, she isn’t—”
“She’s breathing.”
“...But I checked, she wasn’t—”
Basil looked at her again, and noticed the slow rise and fall of her chest.
“Wait… she is! I… I was just about to… No… I’m so stupid…"
— Fate Averted! —
“We… did it!” G-Mari cheered.
“Phew! I was getting worried by the end there,” G-Sissel said.
“Cool. We’re going to be alive again,” G-Sunny said. His eyes began to water, betraying his stoicism.
“Sunny!” G-Mari went to embrace G-Sunny again. Mari didn’t realize she was tearing up as well until she felt the shoulder of his avatar getting wet.
“Well, you two’ll have plenty of time to be emotional later,” G-Sissel interrupted. “How about I see you off, and let you two return to the world of the living?”
“Wait…!” G-Mari yelled. “Will we… see you again?”
“Of course, of course! In fact… I have a bit of a surprise for you two once you’re back!”
“Cool,” G-Sunny said.
“Well… see’ya later, Sissel!” G-Mari smiled to the cat, her eyes still watering.
“It won’t be long, I’m sure,” he replied. “See you soon!”
And then, darkness.
♫
Mari didn’t know where she would wake up. In her bed? On the ground by the tree?
For some reason, she didn’t consider the possibility that she was going to wake up in a hospital bed.
She was clearly in a hospital room. The room was filled with a pale white light that hurt her eyes, with shiny tiling on the floors contrasting against the matte ceiling panels. Around her, she saw several flowers, with labels too small to read adorning most of them. Around her was a lot of visual noise and clutter, but more or less everything in the room was on the far side away from the door; about half of the room was completely vacant of anything.
Mari tried to get up, only to immediately give up from the pain. Being a literal ghost sort of ruined her sense of tactile response, so she wasn’t expecting to feel such a visceral response to such a slight movement. She had a horrible headache, her bad knee felt like it was almost broken, and the rest of her body just felt sore. Considering the fact that falling down the stairs with enough force that — with just a violin at the bottom — could kill her… Yeah, it made sense that she would be pretty badly hurt by it.
But hey, at least she was alive.
Eventually, she spotted and managed to press a call button by her bedside. Not even a dozen seconds passed before she was answered by a doctor.
The doctor told her that she had been out for about 24 hours. Apparently, the fall refractured her already-damaged patella. She would need an artificial knee surgery if she ever wanted to walk again. She was also concussed badly, and while she managed to avoid any severe brain trauma she still needed to rest for a few days. They slated a tentative discharge date of just a few days after, although if they went ahead with the surgery she would have to stay for a lot longer.
Then, the topic of visitors was brought up. They had already sent out a call to her household, and she was almost certain that Sunny (or their parents) called the others.
She was right. Just a few minutes later, several familiar faces came to see her.
Her parents, who were feeling a hurricane of emotions towards their daughter, not knowing what to say to her.
Hero, who looked relieved to see her again, betrayed only by a worried expression Mari briefly spotted when he first walked in.
Aubrey, who had faintly tear-stained cheeks, after having seen the girl she considered her sister nearly die.
Kel, who grinned more genuinely than usual, glad to have Mari ‘up’ and ‘running’ again.
Basil, who turned away in shame, filled of guilt for what he was about to do to her.
Sunny, who made a rare smile, letting go of his stoicism for the occasion.
“Hey,” Mari weakly said.
Immediately, she was swarmed. Sunny hugged her, as he and her were comforted by the others.
“Mari, don’t do that again!” Aubrey pouted. “You had me so worried!”
“When I saw you on the ground like that…" Hero mumbled.
“S-Sorry about that,” Mari whispered.
“M-M-Mari… I’m so sorry!” Basil stammered. “I-I nearly—”
“Basil,” Mari turned to him, “what you did was an accident. No harm was done.”
Basil looked confused. “...Mari? How d-did you—”
“Wait wait wait!” Kel interrupted. “So, what exactly happened? Sunny said he was going to wait for you to wake up before saying anything, so now that you’re up…"
“Oh right,” Mari said, considering what to say next. “So, uh… Do you believe in ghosts?”
♫
After the most boring week of Mari’s life — doing little more than listening to music in a hospital bed for seven consecutive days (oh, and also getting her knee replaced with a metal one) — she was finally discharged and sent back home.
She already knew that there was going to be a welcome-back party. However, her parents got her home an hour earlier than expected, so no one except Sunny was home. Perfect.
She got out of the car, limping to the door on her crutches as her right leg was hovering above the ground in a cast. It was either that or a wheelchair while she waited for her new knee to recover from surgery.
“Hey Sunny, we’re home!” her mom yelled through the doorway, as she opened the door. “Mari’s home early!”
No response. Mari limped her way in, and as her parents went into the kitchen she headed towards the staircase room, thinking it as the most likely area Sunny would be in. There, she saw Sunny, slowly climbing down the stairs. (Right. He mentioned being afraid of the stairs after… everything.) He looked to be in too deep of concentration
“Sunny… You can do it,” Mari said. “It’s not as scary as you think.”
He descended the stairs quicker yet still carefully. In time, he made it to the bottom. When he did, Mari immediately went to hug him.
The two stayed in silence, until Mari spotted something black heading their way: Sissel. That’s what his name was officially changed to after Mari explained him to everyone in the hospital.
Mari smiled at him. He did save her life, after all. She didn’t expect an answer back from him.
(Hey, Mari.)
(Wait… I can still talk to you!?) Mari thought back.
(Yeah. Once you die once, you permanently gain a core that I can use to talk to you like this. That’s actually the surprise I was talking about earlier: you now have a talking cat!)
(That’s cool! Oh, and uh… thanks for everything! You literally saved my life, so—)
(Eh, I’m just doing my job,) Sissel said. (Also, I’m pretty sure Sunny is also listening in on us. He died too, so he should have the same abilities.)
(Yeah,) Sunny thought. (Telepathy is cool.)
(Surprise number two: you two can now telepathically talk to each other!) Sissel cheered.
(Hey, Mari.)
(Hey, little brother! I guess dying has its benefits, huh?) Mari joked. (Anyway, it’s good seeing you again, Sissel!)
After what Mari realized to be an oddly long time spent hugging Sunny, she separated from him, limping backwards with her crutches. He looked at her, and gave another wholehearted smile, a rare treat that could warm the soul of anyone who witnessed it. He picked up Sissel, who thought to her, (It’s nice having you back home, Mari.)
Mari was glad. Even if they missed the recital, even if Sunny wasn’t going to play violin anymore, she still had herself, her brother, and her ghost cat.