Here is **Chapter 9** of the light novel *Peace Was Never Mine*\*.
Ren has been honored, vindicated, and mourned — and yet here he is again, alive. Again. The loop is no longer just
April 2.
Again.
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Ren didn't scream when he woke up.
He didn't cry, or gasp, or curse the ceiling. Not this time.
He just sat up slowly, as if his body already knew the routine, and let the silence of morning sink in.
The birds were chirping.
The wind moved the curtains.
The same warmth.
The same shadows.
He was **alive**.
And **alone** in the knowledge of it.
---
He walked through the early morning plains.
His shoes pressed into the dew-covered grass like it was all new.
But it wasn't.
It hadn't been new for a long time.
---
The field looked peaceful. Too peaceful.
The kind of peace that only comes from a story frozen in time — before the twist, before the tragedy.
He bent down near the old tree at the edge of the field.
No shoes. No flowers. No scar on the bark.
No trace he'd ever died here.
He touched the dirt with his fingertips.
> "So even that got erased…"
---
By the time he reached the school gate, the first students were just arriving.
Yuu waved at him, bag slung over his shoulder, still a little sleepy.
> "You good, man?"
The same line. Same rhythm.
It hit harder this time.
Ren nodded. "Yeah. Just… forgot something."
Yuu raised an eyebrow. "What?"
Ren didn't answer.
He just looked past him, toward the windows on the third floor — where **Serika** would be watching soon.
He could feel it.
Not because she was early.
Not because she was suspicious.
Because the loop **wanted her there**.
---
In class, Ren didn't open his books.
He just watched.
Every blink, every cough, every shuffled paper — he counted them all.
The pattern was **perfect**.
Too perfect.
---
That afternoon, he skipped the rest of his classes and walked through the halls alone.
His footsteps echoed.
Everything was where it always was: the dusty corner of the library no one cleaned, the crack on the third stair of the west staircase, the art club flyer that always hung half-torn on the corkboard.
He was inside a **machine**.
---
"Why are you doing this?" he asked the air.
His voice didn't echo.
No one answered.
He tried again. Louder.
> "I saved him. I died. That should've been the end!"
Still silence.
Then—
**Whisper.**
> "You weren't meant to save him."
Ren turned.
Nothing.
Just grass outside.
---
Back home, he pulled out a notebook and began to write.
Not just notes — not scars or warnings.
He wrote *everything*.
Dates. Faces. Deaths. The exact sound of the wind on the day Yuu was pushed near the fence. The way Serika held her pencil between her fingers on loops where she planned murder.
He filled twenty pages.
Then more.
Until his hand cramped.
Until he felt sick from memory.
---
That night, before sleep could take him, he whispered:
> "If you're real, if you're watching—why me?"
> "What do you want?"
---
A pause.
Longer this time.
Then:
> "We want the story to end the right way."
---
**April 2.**
Again.
---