Chapter 1
The world is defined by milliseconds.
Muu is crying, but that's not unusual. She's always crying. She wields those tears like a weapon. Her sobs are desperate, hands shaking where she clutches her arm. Rei feels—a bit disgusted. Even now, she's pity-seeking. Muu was the villain here; not Rei. And yet, she cried, great, heaving sobs, as if she was the victim .
As if it wasn't so clearly Rei.
Rei wrenched her arm free. This girl—she'll never change, will she? She'll always, always play the part. Trying to seek it from her audience, induce sympathy. This girl—disgusting, vapid girl, with nothing to her but ego. She will always pretend to be that victim.
The world is defined by milliseconds.
“You're killing me,” Muu tells her. Rei doesn't believe her.
Her voice is wavering with a grief, with a hysteria, but Rei pays it no mind. Everything that's happening to her, she deserves. It was her own doing that brought about her downfall. Let them eat cake, let them eat cake, and yet she protests this beheading. She's pathetic, isn't she? An empty life too sad to properly mourn. And she's crying, she's reaching into her pocket, she is finished with reaching out.
But Muu Kusunoki doesn't trip. Milliseconds. She doesn't trip, and the world shifts.
“You're killing me,” Muu tells her. Rei didn't believe her—
The box cutter gleams between them. Held up to her throat. “You're killing me, Rei-chan,” Muu sobs, repeating, hitching, hiccuping sobs, “But at least it's you.”
Milliseconds. Milliseconds. Rei can't even fathom what's happening, it goes by so quickly.The box cutter plunges—
No one was supposed to die.
(The hourglass shatters.)