MC Creative Mode: Wholesale Perpetual Motion Machine

Chapter 243 Tenderness Before Parting
After class, several girls immediately surrounded the new transfer student, Akemi Homura, and bombarded her with all sorts of questions.

"Xiaomei, which school did you go to before?"

“A church school in Tokyo.” Homura Akemi gave this answer almost subconsciously, an answer she had repeated countless times, her voice devoid of emotion.

Wow, your hair is so beautiful! What brand of shampoo do you use?

"Did you participate in any clubs before? Were they in the sports department or the literature department?"

The questions came at her like a machine gun, but Homura Akemi was distracted and barely listened.

Her thoughts were as chaotic as a ball of yarn, constantly replaying the moment before class when Kaname Madoka looked at her.

It was a gaze as gentle as water. Homura Akemi still clearly remembers that Madoka Kaname seemed to have lip-read her name softly.

So what's going on?

Why……

Why would she, who usually shyly avert her gaze when stared at by strangers, look at me like this?

Why does she use lip reading to call her own name?

Is it...

Could it be that I've fallen into a different parallel universe once again?
A world unlike any other before, with far greater differences?

A bitter feeling welled up in Homura Akemi's heart.

Long, blurred years ago, it was this girl who saved her.

In order to meet her again and to build a deeper bond with the girl who saved her, she made a wish to Kyubey that would change everything and defy the law of entropy increase.

However, the reunion brought not happiness, but deeper pain.

After becoming a magical girl, she watched helplessly as that girl and her friends walked towards death in despair. In the end, she, who should have died with them, was saved once again.

The girl begged her to save her former self.

In response to that expectation, Homura Akemi once again chose to reverse time and return to the past.

At first, she firmly believed that she had really returned to the past and tried time and time again to save Madoka Kaname.

But as time went by, and with each cycle, she discovered something amiss in a place she never expected.

Initially, when she was just an ordinary girl, she was hospitalized for a long time due to congenital heart disease, and only after the surgery did she transfer to Mitakihara Junior High School.

There, she met Madoka Kaname for the first time. When she was driven to the brink of despair by a sudden encounter with a witch, she was saved by Madoka Kaname, who was already a magical girl.

At that time, Madoka Kaname and Sayaka Miki were already experienced magical girls.

But when she first returned to the past as a magical girl and met Madoka Kaname again, the timeline was still her first day after transferring schools, and Madoka Kaname was still that experienced magical girl.

The second cycle, the third cycle, the fourth cycle...

The situation remains the same.

Until one of the loops, Homura Akemi noticed the anomaly.

In a place called Kamibama City, an inexplicable situation has arisen. An unknown magical girl communicates with them through dreams, attracting magical girls from all over to go there and triggering a series of chaotic events that leave a deep impression on them.

After that incident, Homura Akemi fell into a deep abyss of despair after discovering the magical girl in her dreams calling her to Kamihama City.

Because this has never happened in previous cycles of reincarnation.

What if the so-called "reversal of time" is not a return to the real past, but rather an entry into a parallel universe similar to the past?

Doesn't that mean that in each reincarnation, she simply leaves the corpses of every Madoka Kaname she has ever truly encountered in the old universe, and then jumps into a brand new universe to search for another Madoka Kaname?

If that's really the case, then what is the meaning of my repeated reincarnations?
Just when despair was about to engulf her, Madoka Kaname, who noticed her abnormal state, gave her strength again, allowing her to regain her spirits.

She began to realize that no matter what the truth was, whether it was a parallel universe or real time travel, she had to save that girl!

In that cycle, after the Kamihama City incident, the five magical girls from Mitakihara City returned to Mitakihara, united as one, to fight against Witch Night in order to protect the city.

But what awaited them was a new kind of despair.

The Witch's Night, which they could theoretically defeat, became stronger than ever before, and they suffered a crushing defeat.

Gradually, in countless subsequent cycles, Homura Akemi suddenly discovered that at the same point in time, at the same moment of their transfer and reunion, in other parallel universes, Madoka Kaname, who should have already made a contract with Kyubey, was just an ordinary person and never became a magical girl.

This briefly ignited a glimmer of hope in her heart.

Magical girls are almost destined for a tragic end. No matter how hard they try, they will eventually die in despair or when their magic is exhausted, their soul gems shatter, and they will become new witches.

If Madoka Kaname could have remained an ordinary person, she would have had the chance to live a peaceful life, get married, have children, and grow old, instead of struggling on the edge of life and death and ultimately becoming a witch who takes the lives of innocent people.

From then on, her sole goal in reincarnation was to prevent Madoka Kaname from becoming a magical girl.

But now... what does this change mean?
If Madoka Kaname is completely different from any of her previous lives in this cycle, in this parallel universe, does that mean that the efforts to prevent Madoka from becoming a magical girl had already failed before this cycle even began?
Has everything returned to the beginning? Or is it worse? Countless cycles of reincarnation, countless accumulations of despair, have long since made her forget too many details. She can't remember how many parallel universes, each with subtle differences, she's traversed, or how many times more powerful the Witch's Night has become since the very beginning.

But her past experiences gave her a vague understanding that perhaps these subtle changes would accumulate and, as she continued to travel, the changes might become more and more significant.

But if this change has indeed accumulated to such a massive extent, then the next one, the one after that, and even in the more distant future...

Is it possible that Madoka Kaname became a magical girl and a witch long before her next reincarnation began?

If we compare each cycle of reincarnation to saving in a game, and try to defeat a powerful boss by constantly resetting the save file, then the result is no different from getting stuck under the boss's attack with a sliver of health, which means the save file is completely ruined.

No matter how many more times it can be reincarnated, it means that this is the final, irreversible failure.

This thought made Homura Akemi's heart clench suddenly, and a wave of despair almost erupted from it.

Despite her inner tension and anxiety, Homura Akemi maintained her usual indifference on her face.

After a whole class period of random thoughts, she took a deep breath and finally spoke up to interrupt the chattering questions: "Sorry, I might be a little too nervous, I'm not feeling very comfortable."

"Can I go to the infirmary?"

The girls around immediately realized something, and their barrage of questions probably made the pretty transfer student feel a little uncomfortable.

One of the quick-thinking girls immediately said, "Ah! Then I'll take you there."

"I want to go too! I want to go too!" The others echoed.

“No need,” Homura Akemi gently shook her head, her voice calm. “I’ll just go find the health committee member.”

As soon as she finished speaking, she ignored them and walked straight to the other end of the classroom, her target being Kaname Madoka, the girl she longed for.

Her steps were steady, her face indifferent. She had been preparing countless times to approach her, to... protect her, using those words that had been repeated countless times in countless reincarnations.

However, just as she walked up to Madoka Kaname and was about to speak, she saw the girl's gentle eyes.

Kaname Madoka was looking at her tenderly, a beautiful smile curving her lips.

At that moment, Homura Akemi's heart tightened, and a long-lost sense of tension, bordering on panic, gripped her.

She opened her mouth, her voice trembling slightly, with a barely perceptible stutter: "Kaname Madoka, you...you..."

"Hmm?" Before she could finish speaking, Kaname Madoka stood up with a smile, took out her hand, and gently grasped Homura Akemi's hand, which was trembling slightly with nervousness. "I'm the health committee member, Homura-chan. I'll take you to the infirmary."

"Huh?" Homura Akemi was stunned, completely unable to react.

Her hand was enveloped in a warm, soft palm, her head was spinning, and she was pulled along in a daze, following Kaname Madoka out of the classroom.

"Huh? I... Xiaoyuan, what's going on?" Walking in the familiar corridor, everything around me was exactly the same as in my memory, but the experience I was going through was something I had never experienced before.

Homura Akemi's mind was in chaos, filled with countless questions. She opened her mouth, wanting to ask something, but a sudden surge of inexplicable fear made her swallow her words back.

She simply lowered her head, pursed her lips, and, filled with a deep sense of panic, let that hand lead her forward step by step.

The distance of just a few dozen meters felt like an eternity.

Homura Akemi felt her feet were light and airy, as if she were walking on cotton.

Before she could react, Kaname Madoka stopped at the end of an empty corridor and let go of her hand, and she bumped right into him.

But instead of bumping into Madoka Kaname's back, she was only embraced by a warm hug.

"You... a steamed bun card?" Homura Akemi was stunned again.

She tried to struggle, but found herself powerless. She instinctively reached back and hugged Madoka Kaname's back tightly. Tears welled up uncontrollably, and her lips trembled as she almost cried.

"Don't cry, don't cry..." In the quiet, deserted corridor, the pink-haired girl and the girl with long, straight black hair hugged each other tightly.

Madoka Kaname gently patted Homura Akemi's trembling back, feeling the girl in her arms shiver.

She buried her face in Homura Akemi's shoulder, her voice gentle as water: "Homura-chan, you've really worked hard."

"It must be very tiring, it must be very hard."

"Madoka...I..." Homura Akemi was speechless for a moment, a thousand words stuck in her throat, but she didn't know where to start.

She simply felt the warmth of the embrace, and the bittersweet emotions welled up within her, causing tears to stream down her face.

In this empty corridor, the lonely girl who had experienced countless reincarnations and witnessed the death of countless close friends held tightly to the one she had killed and tried to save countless times.

But this time, the girl who held those memories wept silently.

And right at the corner of the corridor, Sayaka Miki was peeking out secretly.

She initially just felt that things were a bit strange, wondering when her friend Madoka Kaname had met this unfamiliar beautiful girl, and her curiosity led her to follow her.

Sayaka stared in disbelief at the scene, completely bewildered. Just as she was hesitating whether to go up and ask, she saw Madoka Kaname raise her finger to her lips and make a "shh" gesture.

(End of this chapter)