"Now that you have regained your memories, what can you say about love?" the goddess's voice resonated in the grand chamber.
Her gaze bore into me, expectant and almost challenging. I opened my mouth to speak but found that no words came out.
What could I say? Love, as a concept, had always been distant to me—vague, undefined, perhaps even irrelevant. I glanced at Satoru, standing there beside me, a mix of hope and fear in his eyes.
It was only when I looked at him that I began to understand that love wasn’t something to define in abstract terms. It was something felt, something real, and it had been with me all along.
My hesitation was palpable. “I—I don’t know,” I stammered. The goddess's piercing gaze didn’t waver, as if she was waiting for me to confront something I had been avoiding all along.
“Love... it scared me,” I finally admitted, the words slipping out almost unwillingly. “I thought if we let ourselves love each other more than just friends, I would lose him. The more you love someone, the greater the risk of losing them, right?”
I looked at Satoru again, remembering the countless moments I had pushed him away, not out of indifference, but out of fear. Fear that if I allowed myself to acknowledge the depth of what I felt, it would only hurt more when he was gone.
I continued, my voice trembling. “I was terrified of how love could bind us, make us vulnerable. I didn’t want to depend on someone like that. What if he left? What if something happened to him? What if I couldn't protect him?”
The words came in a rush, memories flooding back: all the times Satoru had been there for me, his unwavering loyalty, his silent understanding.
And yet, I had kept him at arm’s length, because I didn’t want to feel the weight of that vulnerability. I didn't want to accept that loving him meant risking everything.
Satoru’s eyes softened as I spoke. “But then,” I continued, my voice steadier now, “I realized that not loving him was even more painful. That keeping him at a distance was its own kind of loss. Love isn't just about fear or loss—it’s about trust, about sharing that vulnerability with someone and knowing they’ll carry it with you.”
I paused, the weight of my own admission settling in. "Love made me scared at first because it meant letting go of control. But now, I think love is worth the fear. It's worth everything."
I glanced back at the goddess, unsure of whether my words were enough. But for the first time, I felt certain of what love truly was.
But still, nothing made sense. Absolutely nothing. I looked around the strange chamber, the colossal gods staring down at me as if I had answers to the questions swirling in my mind.
There were lots of them actually and seem to be acting as juries.
"None of this makes sense," I muttered, my voice audibly above a whisper. Then, louder, "How did I even end up here? And how is Satoru suddenly here too? Where are we?"
I turned to face him, but Satoru looked just as lost as I felt. My memories had come flooding back, yet they brought more confusion than clarity.
Everything about the situation felt like I had stepped into some warped version of reality, a place where nothing followed the rules I had known.
The goddess, her serene face laced with a touch of exasperation, finally spoke.
"You’re here because you broke the balance of the world, Quinn." Her words were calm, yet heavy. "When you vanished from your timeline, you disturbed the fabric of reality itself. This was not a simple error or small disruption. The timepiece you found..." She paused, as though weighing her next words.
"It belonged to the god of time, who has been in a deep slumber since the great war that tore through our realm." She gave me a long, steady look as though trying to gauge whether I could grasp the gravity of what she was saying. "You, unknowingly, wielded the power of time—something no human was ever meant to possess."
I blinked, trying to wrap my head around it. "But I didn’t mean to break anything. I just wanted to..."
My voice faltered as I thought back to the moment I found the watch, that innocuous-looking piece. "I didn’t know it was so important. I just wanted to escape."
I turned to Satoru again, searching his face for answers, for something that would make this nightmare make sense. But he just stared back, helpless, as lost in the chaos as I was.
I felt the weight of their words pressing down on me, suffocating me with the knowledge that my actions had caused all of this. My chest tightened, and I realized just how small I was in the grand scheme of things.
The goddess sighed, as though explaining to a child. "After the war, we believed the human realm was stable. But then we started noticing... disturbances. Your actions, Quinn, were disrupting the god of justice’s scales. Each time you used that timepiece, you weren't just tinkering with your life’s moments—you were shifting the very foundations of existence itself." Her voice hardened slightly.
"You caused rifts in time, ones that rippled across the realms, creating confusion and chaos. At first, we thought it was an enemy trying to wage war again, someone intentionally attacking us."
My head spun as the god of justice, who had remained silent until now, finally spoke, his voice like thunder, deep and unwavering. "When we discovered it was a human behind the disruptions, we sought to understand why. That’s when Satoru came into the picture."
His gaze turned toward Satoru, making my heart skip a beat. Satoru wasn’t just here by chance. He had been caught up in all of this because of me.