Martin sat under the same tree that had led to his demise a little while ago. It was almost sunset (6:50 PM, to be exact), and Martin was bored.

He had sat under this tree for the past ten hours, and he had run out of entertaining things a while ago. He wasn’t even able to sleep because he wanted to record the exact time the ghosts appeared-

Martin instantly went on high alert as the lead ghost appeared, followed by the other ones. The leader put a finger to his lips as he mouthed that word and vanished. The others did the same.

Martin braced himself. He turned around and saw the ghost standing there, about to stab him.

He blocked the knife with his hand and got a deep gash for it. The ghost struck again, to no avail, as Martin shouted, “Astrogarth!”. Glowing white chains flew out of his hands and pinned the ghost to the tree, the same as before. The ghost’s eyes went wide as he struggled, attempting to break free of the chains. Martin backed away slowly. The ghost sighed.

“Telest.”

Martin spun around as the ghost reappeared behind him, already stabbing outwards. He once again braced himself as the dagger went into his heart.

“Please, cough, please wait,” he choked out as his hand covered his heart.

The ghost raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not sparing your life, if that’s what you were going to ask.”

“No … I just … How did you do that? You struck me, a practitioner of the binding arts (lie). I am a pupil cough of the greatest binding mage (lie) and he taught me all his secrets (lie) but I’ve never seen anything like that (true).”

The ghost smirked.

“Well, since you’re down there, sputtering on the ground, I’ll tell you.”

‘Yes!’, Martin thought to himself. ‘I was right! He’s the arrogant type!’

“For your guiding mentality, just picture yourself accelerating at high speeds towards your target. I can’t believe no other path has managed to replicate this skill yet. You guys must really suck at anything outside of reading those dusty books in your crumbling towers.”

The ghost laughed as Martin’s vision went dark once more.

When Martin woke up in his room the next morning, he spent a couple of minutes laughing at how easy that was. Then again, he probably didn’t expect Martin to revive.

‘Ah, well. We should probably test what he told us,’ Ration said.

Martin closed his eyes and turned one palm in front of him. He thought of a spot near the wall, imagined himself accelerating at high speeds towards it, and spoke.

“Telest.”

He instantly reopened his eyes to burning pain. His hand was buried three inches deep in the wall. He screamed and yanked it out, but that just made the hand throb even worse. He could hear his mother running up the stairs to investigate, but he could not care less. He cradled his hand and was huddling on the floor when his mother burst in, screaming, “Martin, what the- ARE YOU OKAY?”

“NO!”

His mother grabbed his left hand and forcefully pried it open, making him yell even harder. A couple of three inch shards as well as some smaller bits were poking out of both ends of his hand, stopping the bleeding to an extent but making it extraordinarily hard to open or close his fingers.

“Martin, what were you doing?! Slapping the wall?!”

“OWowowwwoowww…”

His father burst in as well, only half dressed.

“Martin, what- ARE YOU OKAY?!”

“NO!”

“I’ll call the hospital! Just don’t move your hand- HONEY, STOP FLEXING HIS HAND! YOU’LL MAKE THE CUT WORSE!”

Martin’s mother jerked her hand back, causing Martin’s hand to fall to the floor, stimulating his pain nerves even more.

“Martin! Er…”

Martin looked up and recoiled in shock. On his mother’s face was a plethora of emotions he had never seen before – indecision, worry, and panic. In his eyes, his mother was always the calm one- someone who made decisions with maximum efficiency in mind. Nothing would stop her carefully thought out plans. But now, she just looked … more … human. Martin had seen a grand total of four emotions on his mother’s face: anger, coldness, warmth (for the first four years of his life), and disappointment. Now three more were added.

‘Huh,’ Martin thought. ‘Does everyone have emotions like this? Behind their exterior, doesn’t everyone feel joy? Don’t they feel sad, or disappointed? I … can’t define them by what I see, because they are so much more than that. I … what about the kids I ignore in class? The teachers? My mom? Don’t they have feelings too? I never tried to know them- no, I tried to know them, but then I gave up. Because of one little incident six years ago. I missed out on … so many things. I …’

Unbeknownst to Martin, he had started crying halfway through his thoughts, which made his mother panic even further. He barely even noticed when the paramedics arrived to take him away, and fell asleep soon after.

Martin woke up to pure pain, and through sheer instinct, smashed the snooze bar on the alarm clock next to his bed. Even more pain followed, and when he looked to the side, he realized he swatted an LED monitor with his very bandaged hand. The nurse looked over at him, from where she had been writing on a clipboard.

“Ah, Martin. You’re awake.”

“Er… yeah. Um, what time is it?”

‘Huh? I didn’t stutter that much.’

“It’s … 11:14 PM. It’s Wednesday, by the way.”

“Oh. Um, what happened?”

The nurse laughed. “That’s what I’d like to ask you! We were very surprised when you were wheeled in with pieces of plaster embedded in your palm.”

Martin fell silent.

‘Well, it’s not like I can tell her I magically teleported into the wall…’

The nurse opened her mouth to speak, but then everything stopped.

She got up and backpedaled out of the room. Martin confusedly attempted to ask why, but he found that he couldn’t speak. His eyes forcefully shut themselves. He could feel things buzzing in the room. Suddenly, he felt the bandages on his hands were being unwrapped fast. Shards of plastic re-embedded themselves into his palm. Martin tried to scream once more, but found he couldn’t. He was lifted out of his bed by extremely large hands. He was quickly put into a stretcher and wheeled backwards out the door. He was pushed into a van. Less than two seconds later, he was taken out of the van and wheeled back into his room, where his eyes re-opened to find his mother cradling him for less than a second, and then exiting the room faster than she had any right to go. He saw himself jump up and shove his hand back into the plaster, where the shards in his hand stayed as he pulled his hand out, completely healed. He got into his bed, and his eyes were forcefully closed again.

Martin woke up to the incessant buzzing of his alarm, one that was stopped by a smash of the snooze bar.

‘Well,’ Ration meekly said. ‘I believe we now know how this time loop works.’