May 10, 5:12 am, Tokyo, j.a.pan

Drip. Drip. Drip.

"Breathe. In...out...in...out..."

No. Focus. G.o.d, she was finding it hard to focus these days. She needed to find the monster.

Soon, she was at her destination; the alleyway between two stores, where a couple had taken a selfie in full cosplay. She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, causing the people around her to walk around her without a second glance. She looked at the picture on her phone, comparing it with the location in person.

In the back of the picture, on the other side of the alleyway, the monster's back side and tail were clearly visible.

...

For some reason, Sakura felt like she had to say something. She grit her teeth, a sudden flame of defiance burning up within her, surprising her. Along with the desire to say something rose an equally powerful desire to say nothing at all. For a moment, both desired fought with each other withing Sakura.

"What the h.e.l.l is going on...?" Sakura ended up saying, giving in to both desires.

As she stepped into the alleyway, Sakura staggered. She grabbed the wall to steady herself, panting. The thought that something was wrong slowly floated up to her mind.

Sakura blinked. Why had it taken so long for her to realize that?

When she left the internet cafe, she had been clear-headed and driven. When had she become so muddled? And how?

Something was wrong. Something was very wrong with her.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

And what was that incessant dripping sound? Sakura frowned as she looked around for the source. It sounded like water from a drain leaking onto the floor or something but...there was nothing like that around.

Where was that noise coming from?

"I know you're in there!" Sakura shouted into the alleyway, causing a few people around her to look at her strangely.

"I know you've been trying to get me to look away!"

But as soon as she said those words, she narrowed her eyes. Something about these words...they felt very familiar.

This whole situation didn't feel right. It felt more like she was in a play, rehearsing lines she had practiced for weeks. And something about that feeling really p.i.s.sed Sakura off.

She glared down the alleyway, still panting as she slowly steadied herself. Fine. If...whatever was down there...didn't want to come to her, Sakura would have to go down to get it herself. She walked into the alleyway without a second thought.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Instinctively, Sakura slapped her upper arm. She stopped walking and frowned. She took away her hand, only to find there was nothing.

What she expected to find? A mosquito?

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Once again, Sakura narrowed her eyes. There was something she...something she needed...

...

Of course.

Why didn't she just...check with her illusions?

She frowned again. On the one hand, she was mad that she hadn't thought about this before. She blamed the fog in her mind for that.

Sakura closed her eyes, and felt the bubble of her mind expand. To her surprise, she felt pushback against it immediately. It was subtle, so small that Sakura may not have noticed it if..if…

No time to think about that. She pushed back against the other illusion, and immediately it broke. Sakura gasped and fell to her knees, suddenly aware that she was covered in cuts along her arms, neck, and face. Tiny slashes that came in twos, bleeding slightly all over her body, the droplets all coming together to drip from her fingertips.

That's where the dripping noise was coming from.

"Ah!"

With the illusion broken, the fog in her mind had lifted, giving back her clarity of thought. Unfortunately, it also stopped blocking out the pain. A tiny cut wasn't much, but a thousand of them felt like her entire body was aching with pain, constantly throbbing as she bled.

No. She had a job to do. Focus!

Sakura looked up, only to find that she was in complete darkness. She fumbled a little with her phone, but managed to turn on the flashlight. She needed to get up. She needed to get going.

As she slowly stood up, ignoring the pain from the numerous cuts that seemed to be on her legs too, another slow, dull pain began to throb in her head. Sakura knew that this pain had something to do with the illusion she just broke, and so she braced herself for it.

But it didn't come all at once. It came slowly as she walked in the darkness.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Sakura could hear her own breath as she walked deeper into the darkness. There was nothing down here, nothing but concrete. Her only source of light was the flashlight on her phone, and it only lit up a few meters in front of her. She desperately wished that she had a better source of light, and cursed Jason for setting this up.

Because all of this was definitely his fault. No matter what he said to defend himself.

Sakura would never forgive him.

"So, you've come to face me once more?" said a soft, hissing voice.

A voice that sounded incredibly familiar.

Sakura forced a smile.

"Once more?" she said, confused. "What do you mean, once more?"

The voice hissed and laughed.

"Right, of course," the voice chuckled. "You've broken the physical illusion, but you still have no idea about the mental illusion."

"Mental illusion?" Sakura asked.

As she did, she quickly looked around. The voice seemed to be coming from everywhere all at once. It was impossible to know where the voice was coming from, not in this darkness.

But Sakura knew what she had to do.

"Typical human," the voice hissed. "You master a few small tricks and think yourselves the supreme lord of an entire art."

"And you're not human?" Sakura shot back, closing her eyes. She blocked out the pain and focused on her mental bubble.

The voice hissed in displeasure.

"How dare you pull me down to the level of a mere human!" It spat. "I am nothing like you greedy, selfish beings!"

As the voice spat its vitriol, Sakura expanded her mind bubble as far as it would go, as fast as she could. Immediately, it exploded in size, finding the illusion hiding in the darkness. She could feel it, standing just a few meters behind her.

But if she could feel the monster, the monster could feel her.

Sakura immediately ducked as the monster leaped towards her. She scrambled to her feet as the monster flew over her, flaring its wings to stop itself from overshooting.

But it was too late. Sakura had the jump on the monster.

The monster hissed, it's tail end watching Sakura run away.

"Coward!" it hissed, turning around and getting ready to pounce. No matter how large a head start the human had, there was no way it could outrun its lion body.

Suddenly, something grabbed the snake tail. Hard.

"Looks like my tricks worked this time," said Sakura, holding tight onto the snake tail. She knew that the tail was the main head from all their interactions.

The monster's body went very still. It started to s.h.i.+ver, the eyes of the snake darting around, looking for any kind of escape.

"H-how...?" it gasped.

Sakura grinned, allowing herself a moment of satisfaction.

The trick had been planted the first time Sakura had been trapped. During her first loop, after she discovered the monster, she had realized something was wrong. When it was revealed to her the first time that she was trapped in an illusion world, Sakura realized that she needed to find a way to determine what was real and what wasn't.

So she tried to use her illusion powers to give herself some sort of trigger. A little signal to herself to tell her when she was in an illusion and when she wasn't.

She had failed to do that in time.

But that was okay. Because the monster liked to play with its food.

Every time Sakura reached the same end, she came to the same conclusion. Even if she didn't remember the other loops, she did remember everything just before the loops.

The deal with Jason for more information, how she had used it to track down the monster, and how she had found to "wounded" monster.

But that wasn't important. What was important was that every time Sakura remembered, she got a little better at using her illusions. She also noticed that every time she remembered, she had a lot of scratches on her body.

From that, she deduced that being scratched or bitten had something to do with her memory loss.

Fine. If she was getting her memories erased through a bite, why not make that the trigger to get her memories back?

It took a while (not that Sakura realized), but with each loop, Sakura's powers got stronger, allowing her to protect a small part of her mind from the monster's illusions with her mind bubble, using the noise of blood dripping from her countless wounds to finally break through the illusion and memory loss.

Which lead to now, with Sakura's memories completely returned, and her illusion powers stronger than they had ever been.

"How, you ask?" said Sakura, squeezing the tail a little tighter. "How about I show you?"

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, the monster suddenly keeled over, unconscious.

Sakura let out a sigh, her body aching. It was all she could do to keep herself upright; all her cuts were bleeding. It wasn't a lot from each cut, but she had them all over her arms, legs, and face.

She needed to get to a hospital. Quick.

She checked her phone for what felt like the first time in days. She did a double take when she saw the date.

May 10th?

She'd been here for over two days??

Quickly she checked her messages. Sure enough, there were a bunch of them. A lot of them were voice messages, but there were a few texts too. She scrolled through them, and stopped dead at the last one.

It was sent by Michi, yesterday.

"They have Bunta."

Please go to to read the latest chapters for free