Chapter Text
“Could you do it, everyone? Could you entrust your life and future to someone like Siffrin right now?”
…The silence that rings through the clocktower speaks volumes. You don’t need a single one of them to say it. Really, it’s impressive how obvious it is. The answer is ‘no’, stupid~! You messed everything up, and they don’t want anything to do with you anymore! You figure you’d better loop back, since you can’t go through the House without them. It’d be faster to use your dagger, but you don’t want to do this another single blinding time. You CAN’T, but you can’t do anything else this loop, since you need them with you-
You
You DON’T need them. How strong have you been getting, all this time? You’re defeating every sadness in only one hit. You could do it on your own, but you’ve only got one orb on hand. Every party member carries one. Well, they’re right in there, so you could…
You could…..
You decide to-
“Of course I can trust Siffrin.”
What.
“Mirabelle???” Isa’s voice calls out, appalled. “Like… I get it, I care about Sif too, but are you sure? What about-”
“About what he said today? About how he’s been acting? I agree, I can’t trust that person. But I can trust Siffrin. All the time we’ve spent together on this journey, every memory you have of them… do any of you think that was some kind of lie, or a trick, or something?”
Odile sighs, silent for a moment. “...I do feel like their actions were genuine, but logically I don’t think so, considering how he changed so suddenly like this.”
“I still don’t believe he’s just… completely different. He’s still the same Siffrin, somehow. Like, when I yelled at him for being… well, he seemed so shocked. I’ve been thinking about it, and I really don’t think he meant it like that.”
“He was still super mean though!!!! He didn’t mean it but then he should’ve said it better!!!” Bonnie pipes up, voice still wavering.
Mirabelle responds apprehensively. “...He is different, somehow. I just… I’d rather figure out why. Listen, something must have happened for him to change so suddenly like this, and it must’ve been something bad. And instead of trying to help him, we’re discussing leaving him behind. I’m not going to do that to Siffrin, and that’s final. U-um, at least, for me.”
“...You’re right, Mira.” Isabeau concludes. “They haven’t exactly been working against us, so we can probably count on them to stick with us for tomorrow. We just…” He sighs. “We need to find out what’s wrong.”
“I doubt he’d tell us.” Odile speaks.
“No, I’m certain he won’t.” Mira acknowledges. “But we have to try figuring it out on our own. Siffrin’s our friend, and we need to help them in any way we can.”
Bonnie grumbles. “Frin’s a crab though.”
Isa chuckles softly. “Well, they weren’t before, right? It’s like… something is making him act like this. Something’s wrong, and they don’t want to tell us what it is.”
“Oh… OH, like how people get really mean when they’re hungry???”
“Exactly! It’s, um. Probably bigger than being hungry, though.”
“So… the plan is just to figure out what’s wrong tomorrow? While we’re in the House?” Odile questions, incredulously.
“Well… do you have a better idea?” Mira rebutes.
“...No, I agree. We can trust Siffrin to lead us tomorrow, but we need to keep an eye out. Second priority is to find out what’s wrong with him.”
“...what’s first???”
“How about to kill the King???”
“Ohhh that makes sense!!! Sorry!!”
They chuckle a little, and keep talking. They… they’re going to find out. You can’t let them, you can’t let them find out it’d be easy to just loop back but you CAN’T. You want to avoid looping by any means necessary. Who cares if they’re trying to figure it out? They can’t!!!! You keep it too well hidden!! You had to go out of your way to drop as many hints as possible for Odile to figure it out, you can just do the opposite! You can just- you just have to go through, and beat the King on your own, and make sure they don’t find out. You can do this. You can do this. You take a deep breathe in, and out. You can do this.
You figure you’d best go downstairs and make it sound like you just entered the clocktower, so they don’t suspect you eavesdropping, but then you notice how quiet the room is. Do they know you’re there??? There’s no way, you’ve been quiet, you just… did a breathing exercise right outside of the door. Are those loud?? Is breathing loud????
“U-um, Siffrin?”
. . .
Okay, breathing is loud, noted. This is fine. They don’t know how much you heard. You walk in, smile painted on the mask you call your face. Bonnie moves to hide behind Odile, peeking out with worried eyes. Mirabelle and Isabeau are sharing similar looks of pity.
“How’s everyone doing~?” You say, convincingly. They look at you like you told a joke at a funeral. It’s probably accurate in some way.
Mira’s the first to speak. “...How much did you hear?” Stars, I wonder~!
“Whaaaaat? I didn’t hear anything, silly~! Just about how you’re pretending you don’t want to leave me behind~!” That was. Maybe a bit too obvious.
“Okay, one, that’s definitely not how that conversation went down.” Isa remarks, smiling. Pretending he tolerates you. “And two, we only considered it for half a second thanks to Odile who brought it up in the first place-”
“ISABEAU.” Odile glares at him for putting the blame on her.
“SORRY M’DAME!!” He apologizes, smiling weakly. “But u-um, anyway, we’re not leaving you behind because we’d rather just help you with whatever you’re dealing with. Speaking of which, is there anything you want to tell us?”
“Nope~!” You know they won’t believe it. You just need to stall. You just need to get them to drop it.
“...Well, so much for honesty. But we’re going to figure it out eventually. M’dame Odile especially, out of all of us.” You chuckle a little. She already did.
“What are you laughing at, Siffrin?” Odile watches you intently, right on cue. Blind her and her stupid blinding observation- attentive- WHATEVER. They’re still not going to figure it out. Hey, if you play it well enough, it might line up with a normal loop in some places! Haha! You don’t want that at all~! You don’t want to see the same BLINDING lines again! At least things are different now, but you can’t have them finding out, you can’t have them hating you, so, so… so you need to toe the line. You need to be careful. You can do this. Just one more loop.
“We just want to help you, Siffrin, but that means we need to know what’s wrong. And we’re going to figure it out.”
. . .
“Do your worst.”