Konrad fell face-first into his bed, ears still ringing from the karaoke.
His phone dared to say it was seven-thirty.
Impossible. Did he wake up only twelve hours ago? It felt like it had been an entire week.
Rediscovering Earth in a day was way too much—especially as a student in a foreign country.
"I'm too old for this shit," he groaned, struggling to lift his face off the pillow.
"You do sound old for an eighteen-year-old," a familiar voice noted, jolting Konrad awake.
His heart was beating like crazy.
"Holy—I almost threw a fireball," he complained, his breathing uneven. "You said you're working late. Don't scare me like that, Kaede."
"Kaede?" the girl asked, raising an eyebrow.
Wait, she wasn't? But that voice—
Konrad regretted leaving the lights off.
As she stepped closer, his phone's display was the only thing lighting up her frame.
She looked like Kaede, sounded like Kaede—but had way more freckles than a few hours ago.
And to top it off, a fiery orange tangle framed her adorable face.
"Oh, right, that's what I'm calling meow-self here," she chirped, reaching for him. "It freaked out our angel friends a bit. And, well, I guess me, too. It's a huge mess right now."
She caressed his shoulder, his skin breaking into goosebumps everywhere.
Eyes wide, his heart picked up the pace again—but for a different reason now.
"Lily?!" he almost jumped into her arms, but his legs gave out.
And he even thought about her showing up before. Did that mean—
"I'm only here for a quick visit, Konny boy," she purred, kissing his forehead. "The timeline's all wonky, so I wanted to make sure you're still alive."
Timeline? His brain was too foggy for puzzles.
"The Demon Lord is here," he warned her. "And—you. Maple translated her name to Japanese, and so did the Green Mage. But they arrived a lot earlier—is that what you mean?"
"Well, that's definitely a part of it, but—" She let her voice trail off, caressing his face instead.
Konrad fiddled with his hands, unsure whether to stand up and hug her, or pulling her into his lap was the right move. Before he could either, she took a shaky step back and out of his reach.
Her expression seemed painful, if anything.
It didn't take a prodigy to read the mood.
"You're not here to take me back to Kasserlane, are you?"
"I could," Lily said, her fingers twitching. "But the temporal paradoxes finally caught up to me."
"The what?" Konrad frowned, eyebrows furrowing.
He already figured out that she was a time traveler.
In fact, she must have been all over the place, since Kaede was a mere hundred years old, and she was thousands. But where or when did she grow that old, Konrad had no idea.
And by the looks of it, Lily had none, either.
"I always thought the timeline would correct itself no matter what," she said, her voice low. "But as I was chasing Lucifer across a multitude of worlds today, I started flickering."
"Flickering? What does that even mean?"
"I guess it's no longer a secret that we first met in Kasserlane. But now that time had finally looped all the way around, I—Maple, Kaede—walk a very different path than I remembered."
She paused, and Konrad thought the phone's screen went dark for a moment.
It didn't. Lily did.
She faded into darkness for a second before returning to normal.
She meant flickering in the most literal sense.
"Yeah," she mumbled. "And if I have to guess, this one isn't the right path."
"A-are you disappearing?!" Konrad finally managed to get on his feet.
Grabbing her waist, he pulled her close.
She was warm and soft, and the most important part—she was there.
"Hard to tell," she said, her arms closing around his back, too. "Could be something unrelated, like a curse, or anything. Your guardian was all kinds of surprising these days, too."
"Lucifer?" Konrad asked, only leaning back enough to look at her face.
Lily nodded, and their eyes finally met.
"He turned on the angels, beat Meowhael in a surprise battle, and our little Gabby is in full panic mode. If I didn't chase him off, he would have teleported the Green Mage back already."
Shit.
And here he was moralising about Kaede's suggestion, thinking he was the only one who could take him back. No, the Demon Lord had his guardian's backing for some reason.
And with Lily's unexplainable state, it seemed like they were the ones stuck here instead.
"What can I do to help?" Konrad asked, determined to do something.
She shook her head, looking tired and fragile.
"I would tell you if I knew, or do it myself," she claimed. "But all I can do right now is to keep that fallen angel away from Earth. You'll have to figure out the rest with my past self."
That sounded like a tall order.
Last time he saw her, Kaede seemed rather mad at him, and for a good reason.
Saying that he wasn't sure about going back in the first place—
No, there were other issues now.
Problems, way bigger than what a simple apology could fix.
"If this—flickering," he pointed at her, right as Lily's petite frame started to fade again. "If this is a temporal anomaly, shouldn't I take you back to your original timeline? Kaede, I mean."
"Hah, good luck," she snorted, burying her face in his chest. "Kaede didn't even exist there."
"What?!"
"My memories are hazy," she said. "But the way I remember, you found me in those salt mines two weeks later than now. Named me Maple, and I carried that name for a century."
"But how did things turn out when you got here? What did we do with Maou Midori?"
He was grasping at straws, but Lily wasn't exactly helpful.
"I don't know. The first time I visited Earth was thousands of years ago. My only contact with Meow Midori was his sealing me away for you to find. None of this happened back then."
No wonder she said the timeline was all messed up.
And if she actually disappeared, it would all come crashing down.
Would her past and all her actions disappear with her?
He closed his eyes, trying to think. If he never met her and she never ruined his past life, he wouldn't have become Konrad Halstadt, either. Kasserlane would have fallen, although—
The way he saw it, Maou Midori only became a threat in this timeline.
And that was because of Lucifer.
He was the one to reincarnate Konrad, too.
The one who gave those vague instructions a few months ago that ruined Gabrielle's plans.
Without his actions, Eyna would have sacrificed herself, and Maou would have died.
That said, he was also meant to find Maple in that cave. So he had to walk down that path after all. And now the longer he thought about it, the less it made sense.
Trying to decipher all the causes and effects was giving him a headache.
"I won't let you disappear," he said before he went too deep into that rabbit hole.
He squeezed his arms, but something felt off.
When he finally opened his eyes again, he was alone in his apartment, hugging himself.