Saki nervously followed Alice up the front walkway, taking in the building in front of her. It was a large, old house with a distinguished air—not flashy, but definitely expensive. A nameplate reading “Laufer” was mounted by the door.
“Isn’t your name Alice Hayakawa?” Saki asked, then immediately began worrying whether it was rude of her to pry.
“This is my grandfather’s house,” Alice replied. “Well, legally, I’m a Laufer too, but I prefer my mom’s name.”
“Oh.” Saki tried to come up with something more to say, but she was still having trouble keeping up with everything that was happening. The prettiest girl in her class had singled her out on their first day of high school, asked to be friends, and invited her over for tea? Why?
“Don’t worry,” Alice said, filling in the silence as she unlocked the door. “My grandfather’s nice enough. I get along fine with him. My dad and I haven’t been on speaking terms for a long time, though.”
“Oh…” Saki said again, feeling like a broken record.
“I’m home,” Alice called out into the front hall.
“Welcome home!” a voice called back. As Saki followed Alice inside, a jovial old man with a bushy beard stepped out of a side room to greet them. He wore a paint-stained button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and his eyes were the same sparkling blue as Alice’s. “Oh! Is this your friend, Alice?”
He spoke Japanese with barely any accent, but Saki sensed something slightly odd in the tone of his voice.
“She is. This is Saki Tokiwa. Saki, this is my grandfather, Daniel Laufer.”
“N-nice to meet you,” Saki said.
“Lovely to meet you too, young lady. I’d offer to shake hands, but, well…” He held up a hand flecked with paint. “Anyway, make yourself at home!”
“We’ll be upstairs in my room,” Alice said.
“Of course, of course. I’m almost to a good stopping point for today—I can bring you up some tea and snacks after I’ve washed off.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Alice nodded to him, then walked off to the stairs, beckoning Saki to follow. Saki gave him a quick little bow before hurrying after her.
“Is he a painter?” Saki asked.
“Yeah—a pretty successful one too. He’s got an exhibition next month, if you’d like to go together.”
“O-oh! That’s really nice of you! I’d love to! I, uh… Are you sure you want me tagging along, though?”
“I am—as long as you want to tag along with me.” Alice took a seat on a cushion by a little table, inviting Saki to sit across from her.
Saki sat down, her thoughts a jumble as she stared across the table at Alice. “Um… Sorry, this is probably a rude thing to ask, but… Why are you being so friendly to me?”
Alice looked back at her, calmly meeting her gaze. “I’ll explain. But first, let me tell you a story about my family.
“In the early 14th century, a struggling merchant named Gottfried Laufer heard a tale from a drunkard in a tavern about a strange chest that someone had paid him to bury deep underground. Gottfried tracked it down and dug it up, assuming it was some sort of treasure. The chest was covered in chains and locks and strange symbols carved into the wood, and painted on the lid in large red letters was a command that it never be opened. So, of course, he opened it. Blood-red mist came pouring out, and from the mist emerged a demon. It thanked Gottfried for freeing it, and offered to grant him a wish as a token of its gratitude. Gottfried wished for long life, prosperity, and wisdom, for himself and his descendants. The demon said it would be so, and disappeared in a plume of smoke.
“Once the smoke cleared, Gottfried looked around and took stock of himself, and found that nothing at all had happened. Nothing changed for Gottfried or his family. He cursed the demon for lying to him, and himself for going to so much trouble to dig up a chest that had gained him nothing at all, but he moved on to other unwise ventures until he died of appendicitis in his fifties. His children lived out ordinary lives as well, and so did their children, and so, eventually, did I.
“And then…it was 1329 again, and Gottfried found himself standing in a cloud of clearing smoke in front of an empty chest by a hole that he had spent hours digging, with his memories of everything that had happened from that moment until his death. His daughter Elisabeth was born a year later, and once she began to speak, they found that she remembered all of the life she’d lived as well. Her younger brothers didn’t remember a thing, though—it only passes to the firstborn. He realized that this was how the demon had chosen to grant his wish, and he and his descendants used our knowledge of the future to our advantage as we lived our lives.
“And then it happened again. And again. And again. We explored more possibilities for ourselves, we gained wealth and power, we did great things, but the loop never stopped. No matter what any of us do, it just keeps on repeating.”
Alice paused, probably prompted by whatever look of total incredulity was plastered across Saki’s face as she searched for a polite way to say You know we’re not in middle school anymore, right?
“You… You’re making that up, aren’t you?” she finally managed. “There’s no way that’s really true…”
Alice’s eyes were completely serious as they gazed back into Saki’s. “I’m not, and it is. If you need proof, then…” She went silent for a second, putting a finger to her chin in thought, then leaned across the table to whisper into Saki’s ear.
Saki’s eyes widened and her face went pale. “How… No… How do you know that?”
Alice withdrew to her side of the table. “You told me yourself, one night when we were both drunk. I’ll get to that, don’t worry.”
“Wait, so you— How many times have you—”
“I’ve lived hundreds of lives, so many I’ve lost count. The older generations have had even more—there’ve been plenty of loops where one or another of them died without ever having children. When that happens, the loop just starts over, and the rest of us down the line sort of sit that one out, I guess. I’ve heard there were a few dozen loops in a row where Gottfried just killed himself over and over, by every method he could come up with, hoping he could get it to finally stop. He was tired, desperate. Almost all of us are. We’ve been through this too many times.
“The loop only spans 28 generations at the most, though. It starts with Gottfried and ends with me. My firstborn doesn’t get any memories of lives they’ve had before. Not that it really matters—I’ve never wanted kids anyway.”
“Then how do you know it doesn’t keep going?”
Alice was still looking straight at Saki, but suddenly it seemed like she was seeing something else entirely. She was silent for far too long as Saki slowly realized how bad of a question she’d just asked.
“When I was born, this time around,” Alice finally said, “my mom says my dad just looked at me in her arms and apologized to me. Wouldn’t hold me, wouldn’t lay a finger on me. He’s been like that every time lately. It took him dozens of loops to start genuinely regretting it, stop saying we needed to know. That’s the real reason I want to find a way to escape the loop—if I go through this a few hundred more times, I might actually start to forgive him.”
Saki could feel her heart quietly breaking as she looked at the hollow little smile on the face of the girl sitting across from her. “I… I’m sorry,” she said softly, and laid her hands on the table, gently offering.
Alice’s eyes widened a little, and she slowly placed her hands in Saki’s. Saki gave them a squeeze, and a small tear rolled down Alice’s cheek.
“Thank you,” Alice said. “I— God, I missed you even more than I realized.”
“How did you know me before?”
“I met you the time I killed my dad and went on the run,” Alice said. “I’ve been born in a lot of different times and places—28 generations leaves a lot of wiggle room. We were in Paris that time, a bit over a decade later than now. I just needed to get as far away as I could, and I decided to give Japan a try. I couldn’t manage to find my feet, though, and eventually the cash I’d stolen ran out. I was an 18-year-old French girl overstaying her visa and sleeping on the streets, and you were a 27-year-old businesswoman. You found me and took me in, and I ended up staying with you for a long, long while.” She smiled again, this time with real warmth in it, looking back on happier memories.
“In the end, we had a big fight and split up,” she continued ruefully. “It was when I decided to finally come clean about, well, all this. We’d known each other ten years, we’d been girlfriends for nine of them—I should’ve told you sooner, but I was scared to. Putting it off definitely didn’t help, though. At first, you thought I was delusional—fair enough. Then, after I demonstrated by predicting a few world news items, you were furious. I got mad at you for being mad at me, and things spiraled from there, but in hindsight, I understand why you were upset. You’d been hurt before; you hated feeling lied to. You started wondering whether I’d already met you dozens of times, tried out options like a dating sim to figure out the right things to say to win you over.”
Alice took a breath, squeezed Saki’s hands back, and looked her square in the eye.
“I promise I didn’t. This, right now, is our second time meeting. And if you want me to leave you alone, then I will—there won’t be a third. I just wanted to try again, to be completely honest with you from day one this time. I never really got over you, and when I found out my grandfather had decided to live in Yokohama this loop, I felt like this could be my chance.”
Saki’s face had turned beet red at some point, and she was having trouble even processing what Alice was saying, let alone formulating a response.
“D-does your grandfather go a lot of places?” she finally asked, going for the least loaded of the many questions jostling in her mind.
“Yeah. He’s maybe the only one of us who’s still enjoying the whole thing. He’s trying to go to every city in the world—not just visit, but spend a lifetime in each one, put down roots, really connect with the place and the people. He’s good at making friends, and he’s always excited to meet new ones.”
As Alice spoke, there was a soft knock at the door, and she got up to open it. Her grandfather stepped in with a tray holding a teapot, two cups, and a plate of cookies, and set it down on the table.
“Thanks,” Alice said. “We were just talking about you. I’m still amazed you haven’t gotten tired of exploring by now.”
“Why on earth would I?” he replied cheerily. “The world is such a big place—so much bigger than we could hope to know even in a thousand lifetimes. My mother says the people all blur together for her now, but for me, all the little differences become sharper and clearer. Every new person I speak to just makes me appreciate more how unique each one of us is.”
“Do you not want the loop to stop, then?” Saki asked.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. If it were only me, I’d happily keep on going until I’d met every person and walked every inch of this Earth, but I wouldn’t want to force the others to stick around just for my sake. I’ve lived a full life—hundreds of them, now. When they do find a way to stop it, I’ll pass on with no regrets and look forward to discovering whatever comes after.” He rolled his shoulders. “Anyway, I should get started on dinner. Would you like to join us, Saki?”
“I— Oh! That’s really nice of you, but I don’t think I can tonight… I let my mom know I was hanging out with a friend, so I can stay a little while longer, but she’ll want me home for dinner so she can hear how my first day of school went.”
“Ah, of course. Another time, perhaps. Sorry to intrude. I’ll let you two get back to talking.” He stepped out of the room and shut the door behind him.
Alice’s gaze lingered on the closed door. “That’s how my grandfather is. He could just leave my dad and me out of this, but my great grandmother’s having a rough time of it all, and if there’s a way to stop it for good, he wants us to find it for her sake. Her and everyone else before her—even old Gottfried. They’ve exchanged letters a few times; he’ll give a message to his great grandfather to give to his great grandmother next loop, and once it reaches Gottfried, he’ll write a reply in his journals. It’s easy for me to say the man was an idiot and should’ve known better, but he still doesn’t deserve this. And now that we know I’m the last, we’re all pretty sure that however we break the loop, I’ll be involved somehow. So my grandfather keeps fathering my dad so my dad can father me.” Alice sighed. “He was furious with my dad when he finally found out, but they made up eventually. He doesn’t like to stay angry at people. Easier for him to let bygones be bygones, I guess. He never pushes me to get over it, at least, and he’ll always give me a place to stay.”
She ran a hand over her face and slowly turned back to look at Saki.
“So, that’s my story. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I wasn’t expecting to find you this early, but when I saw you stand up during introductions, I just had to go for it. I couldn’t sit in class together with this hanging over us. Honesty from day one—that’s what I promised myself.” Her gaze lowered to her hands resting on the table. “I… I know this must be weird, and uncomfortable, and a lot to take in. Like I said, if you want me to leave you alone, just say so, and I will. But thanks for sitting and hearing me out. I…” Her breath hitched, ever so slightly. “Whatever you decide, I’m glad I could talk to you again.”
Saki stared across the table at Alice—her downcast face, the tense set of her shoulders. Wordlessly, she made her way around the table and wrapped Alice in a hug.
“It is a lot,” she said after a moment. “I… I’m not really sure what to do with it all. I might need a little time to think it through. But I don’t want you to leave. And I want to be friends, at least. I want to talk more with you. Is that an okay answer for now?”
Alice slowly lifted her arms to hug Saki back. She nodded her head up and down, pressed against Saki’s collarbone. “Yeah. Of course. Take all the time you need.” Her hands clutched at the fabric of Saki’s blazer. “Thank you, Saki. I… I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Alice.”
Saki made her way downstairs and found the kitchen after a bit of searching, aided by the tasty smell of stew wafting down the hall. Alice’s grandfather looked up from the pot on the stovetop as Saki poked her head in.
“Alice is resting upstairs. She said to tell you she needs a little while to herself, but she’ll be down for dinner soon.”
“All right. Thanks for letting me know. Are you heading home, then?”
“Yeah, I should get going now. It was nice meeting you, though.”
“You as well. Alice hasn’t told me all that much about you; it’s lovely to finally get to meet you.” He stirred the pot with a contemplative air. “When she brought you home today, she looked the most alive I’ve seen her in a long while. She’d hate to hear me say it, but she really does take after her father in some ways. Once they set their minds on something, they focus in so much they lose sight of the things that matter most. I can’t even remember how long it’s been since she actually went to school—she’s spent loop after loop just researching and investigating, searching for a way to break the cycle. But this time, when she found out where and when we were, she decided she wanted to live an actual life here. She wanted to grow up in this city—to have a normal childhood, or as close as our family can manage. She wanted to be a part of this place, not just a stranger passing through.”
“Oh…”
“That girl could use someone to help her remember to stop and breathe—to remind her there’s more to the world than just trying to find a way out of it.” He smiled warmly at Saki. “Anyway, I shouldn’t keep you. I hope I can see you around more, though.”
“Y-yeah… I hope so too.”
He nodded and returned his attention to the pot, and Saki turned toward the front door.
“Long life, prosperity, and wisdom,” she heard him mutter as she stepped away. “We’ve lived long, we’ve been prosperous, but for all we’ve learned, I’m not sure what it’ll take for us to truly grow wise…”
Saki slipped her shoes on, walked out of the house, and pulled out her phone to text her mom that she’d be home soon.