Watching the anime from Madoka Magica and writing the rules

"Yes, she is still in school, Mr. Edogawa. Sayaka didn't come to school today. Do you know why?"

"Didn't the other one tell you? Wasn't he there?"

Zhixing frowned as he perfunctorily addressed Kamijou.

There were only a few days left, so Zhixing didn't want to care about the disappearance of Asami and Sayaka. Unlike Asami's previous disappearance, which took a long time and might attract the attention of the police, there was no need to care about the school now.

If it was just an ordinary person's call, Zhixing would have replied that he was dead and hung up the phone.

But the other Kamijou was also there, which made Zhixing a little curious, so he stalled for time while thinking about how to respond.

"Kamijo, who was at the scene, didn't fully understand the situation. He only knew that Sayaka was in a serious condition. However, he couldn't get an answer after asking the captain, so he came to the school after school to check on the situation."

"Me too. I didn't see Sayaka come to school this morning. I asked Saotome-sensei, but she didn't receive Sayaka's request for leave, and I can't contact you either. I'm...I'm very worried about Sayaka. Please tell me about Sayaka's current situation, Mr. Edogawa, please!"

"Please~"

Zhixing listened to the duet coming from the phone and swallowed back the words about the expiration of life that he was about to say. He glanced at the notebook and documents beside him and replied immediately:

"Although you are related to Sayaka, you are not participants in this world after all. I won't tell you the details. Anyway, you won't be able to see Sayaka at school this week."

"This week? In other words..."

"Well, you see the other one is still alive and kicking, right? If you have so much free time, why don't you give your own hand a handicap?"

"Hmm~" (sound of pain)

"Ha! I see. Thank you, Mr. Edogawa!"

"Your side"

"Beep, beep, beep."

Hearing the call being hung up, Zhixing shook his head helplessly, checked the suicide prevention hotline on his phone, and gave up the idea of ​​finding out more about the situation.

It is absolutely impossible to ask the paper company to call again.

It would be fine if it was just business communication like takeout, but once it gets away from the real business, the paper shop itself doesn't know what inappropriate words it will say.

"Kamijo could have called me by now, so Homura should be back soon. Now there are only two of us left, and I guess Kyoko won't want to reunite."

My dream was interrupted and I have no desire to sleep, but now I am not in the mood to watch anime.

Zhixing's eyes involuntarily stopped on the information beside him.

"We can't make decisions easily. Let's wait until 4:30 pm. If anything happens, let Xiaoyan call. If there are no unexpected situations, then I will take a look first! Maybe it will take some time to think before despairing. The time is about the same, so we can have dinner outside."

Zhi Xing tore off a piece of paper from the notebook and wrote down the time when he was going to look at the information, to ensure that the information was synchronized with his past self.

Then, watching the time tick by, I opened the reader on my phone and translated the paper document on my desk, the *-marked part of the "Summary of Past Experiences":

"For details, you need to apply to Homura separately!"

"For details, you need to apply to Homura separately!"

"For details, you need to apply to Homura separately!"

"what?"

Zhi Xing shifted his gaze from the wall to the documents.

Only then did I realize that although each character is different, the distance between the characters is almost the same.

"I was wondering why there were only four pages of past experiences. Turns out they were waiting for me."

Zhixing patted his head, speechless about his past self who actually had the mind to play a trick on others.

After scolding himself and reminding himself to modify the information later, Zhi Xing turned his attention to the * part of "Conclusion of the Investigation on the Characteristics of Familiars" which was not an option.

"Since there's really nothing else to investigate, I pondered and came up with the idea of ​​investigating familiars."

"The Whole Process of Breeding a Familiar"

"What I learned from Xingzi was just a rough outline of the process. As someone who has worked in the industry, I'm well aware that a rough outline and actual operations are two different things."

"Compared to other magical girls who have to face new familiars and witches one after another, being able to experience the same time over and over again makes it easier to control variables and understand the abnormal development of familiars and witches before."

"Because my ability cannot affect familiars, the familiar's barrier is also inaccessible to me. Therefore, after obtaining Xiaoyan's consent, the staff member who does not want to reveal his name and can influence the familiar will take my place in a chosen familiar barrier, alone, to witness the entire process of the familiar's growth."

"I'm very grateful to this anonymous, grumpy old man. Although he kept mumbling, he didn't do his job half-heartedly. He carefully recorded the changes until his ability could no longer affect the other party. This record has been compared with many times, so even though it wasn't written by me and Homura, it can still be trusted."

"After the familiar ate the first person..."

Chapter 106 Self-doubt

Zhixing pressed the pause button, looked at the information in confusion, and complained:

"This isn't right. I'm clearly questioning the past chapters because of this week's developments, and yet you, the last person to read, immediately patch it up for me? Is this a real-time update or a calculated comment? You didn't actually spend a month studying psychology and thoroughly researching your ideas just to compile the material, did you?"

"It's the * part, as expected. I felt a bit hopeless the moment I heard it."

Zhixing stood up, stretched his body, and tried to ease his anxiety.

Zhixing has a clear self-image: I'm a bit of a hothead, lazy, overly curious, and obsessive. I'm not good at memorizing, and I tend to skip questions. My thinking is different from normal thinking, which can even lead to my thinking being counterproductive. This obsession leads me to research esoteric aspects of games, or to watch anime and think about the settings, so I'm constantly self-reflecting.

However, the paper industry has a shortcoming, which is that it knows its mistakes but does not correct them, so it can help us recognize some of our own shortcomings.

Because you know you are wrong but don't correct it, you think it doesn't matter if you make a mistake, so you don't review the questions or check your answers. As a result, you will spend a lot of time and energy on the wrong path.

Similarly, because I know I’m wrong, I’m only half enthusiastic about my efforts. As a result, I don’t really remember them, and finally I become too lazy to do them and just do whatever I want.

Therefore, Zhixing knew very well that the so-called information was not created to fight against Witch Night from the very beginning, and it was not even meant to be used in life after defeating Witch Night.

It is simply because of the study of the worldview of this world that the reader himself feels despair. This unexpected gain allows the information to be preserved, and this kind of thing cannot be known in advance.

So, how could Zhixing predict his own actions from the data? Even now, he couldn't know what thoughts he would have in the future. Even if an idea just came to him, he would have to reread it and think about it again before he could recall it.

There are only two possible outcomes: the future person, Homura, directly provides the answer, and then makes his own impressions and modifies it accordingly.

And another

"Really? You're so cruel to yourself."

Once the paper industry realized this possibility, the truth of the matter no longer mattered.

Because this is a question that cannot be falsified.

[Is Conan, who was unable to give his past memories to Jixing, really Jixing himself? ]

[Or, is it that the current me is just Conan, and the original me was the Megumi himself? ]

Zhixing was thinking about Kamijou, who was like a twin with whom he had just finished talking, and the only two things that could distinguish them.

"So that's why you want to collude with it?"

"Well, after all, his memory only goes back to when you asked the teacher to find us.")

"I never thought that one day I would actually have to think about the problem of clones and originals. Memory loss and inability to synchronize is one of the ways of death that even demi-humans can't solve."

In "Ajin", in order to bring a sense of crisis to the immortal protagonist, the villain revealed a piece of biological knowledge.

After the head leaves the body, consciousness will still exist for a certain period of time, and the person can see things, blink, etc.

And if your body has recovered and awakened within this time, then you who are watching this scene on the other side, are you really not dead?

"Hoo~breath~"

Zhixing was clearly trying to divert attention by exercising, something he had never dared to do in public before.

But my mind is like a hole that I have dug myself and cannot be plugged.

"Don't be nervous, I have proof. My translation skills are my proof. From the very beginning... I... from the very beginning of this week..."

Zhixing thought of another fact: Kamijou would likely recover, so he ignored that thought and thought instead:

"The rules of wishing should be named so that they can be standardized. However, in the second round, I can't communicate with myself, so it's impossible to locate myself."

"Well, the causal effect of a wish can transcend parallel universes. This is true for Homura, and it's true for me too. Well, that's it, let's leave it at that."

Zhixing started jogging in the room, trying to confuse himself with the glasses by changing the scene, thus interrupting his thinking.

However, ever since Zhi Xing entered this world, whenever he fell into desperate thoughts, he could not help but recall the words he had only heard once, which naturally emerged in his mind.

It was as if... as if the familiar that could replay "Madoka Magica" in his mind from the beginning had always been in his body.

"My translation ability will be overwritten by my new wish, so as long as I still want to communicate, I won't be able to make other wishes."

"Due to the language barrier, I managed to communicate with the help of an online translator, but I couldn't grasp the details clearly. I only knew that Conan was also from the future."

"No, I'm probably being overly concerned again. How could I have such a big doubt right at the beginning? It must be because I encountered a lot of things this week. If I hadn't seen it so late, I wouldn't have reacted so strongly to this statement, which, although it didn't come from me or Homura, is still believable. Well, the real despair should be in the future, after all, there is still a lot of space left."

Zhi Xing tapped his forehead, hoping to convince his argumentative self and return everything to normal. Then, under Xiao Yan's care, he could relax and read the rest of the article, feeling at ease in despair.

"What was I thinking at first? Did I get the premise wrong again? Um... Yeah, I didn't think I'd be able to discipline myself enough to study psychology, so coincidentally, when I didn't trust Homura's information, I specifically emphasized that Homura's information was trustworthy."

"Yes, that's right. I can't be that self-disciplined. Even if I really am a clone made of wishes, this shouldn't happen. After all, my thinking habits and memories are just replicas of me."

"So my memories are consistent, my personality is consistent, so my actions should be consistent, and there won't be any...variations...?"

Zhi Xing's pace unconsciously relaxed, and the smile on his face that he had forced to get rid of his thoughts also faded.

"Nothing, I'm just suddenly curious. You didn't touch me much this time, so why did something unexpected happen?"

"That's not right. The reason why Homura can't memorize the game like Undertale is not only because she can't save resurrection points, but more importantly, she travels through different parallel universes, not real time. So as a parallel universe, every action begins to have variables. It is based on this setting that the fan fiction such as the Gaiden Maki and the even more outrageous Mitakihara Kindergarten are extended."

"Because they are all parallel universes, even if they look the same, they are actually somewhat different. That's why we can't take out all the witches before Asami does. That's why we can't backboard. We need more adaptability."

"It's like a game that's constantly being patched. You can't follow a single guide to get everything done like you can in a single-player game."

"That's what they call a variable, right? My situation...my situation can't be...it can't be a paper bank from a parallel universe, right?"

Zhi Xing thought about it, thinking about the situation that he didn't understand clearly, where he traveled through time with Xiao Yan and it seemed like it could only be done by making a wish.

He also thought of his translation ability which was not affected and could not be covered, and that he could let Madoka make a wish to cover his translation ability for the sake of experiment, and then have Madoka restore it in the next round.

Thinking about the fact that although she had never seen it with her own eyes, she had heard from the reliable information of Homura that there was a real girl in the Nikukai sect who was resurrected by making a wish, and she was able to make a wish to become a magical girl again and again.

And more importantly, long before entering the world of Madoka Magica, I had speculated about a theory out of curiosity.

The Birth of the Flame Witch

"So, the possibility that I'm just the product of a wish is even worse than... I'm the real Paperwalk, but not the one who fulfilled my wish. Instead, I'm a stepping stone to hope from another parallel universe, having traveled here without any adventure or support from the system?"

"In other words, the real Paper Spirit with the system, in the TV plot or the Warcraft plot, used someone's wish to participate in Homura's reincarnation. Because of insufficient cause and effect, not only can the final result not be changed, but the life of the Paper Spirit in the parallel universe must be sacrificed, thus maintaining the fulfillment of the wish for hundreds of reincarnations?"

"As for the paper line that allowed the girl to make a wish, it's possible that they didn't participate in the reincarnation at all. They might even have only thought of it as a wish, implanting false memories in Homura for just a few seconds."

"For the past month, I've been living in despair over the powerlessness of living in a witch-like environment. In the end, it was nothing more than a fleeting worry before my wish came true."

Zhi Xing had stopped running at some point and stood in front of the desk. He picked up the mirror that was originally facing downwards on the desk, looked at his reflection in the mirror, and said:

"She gave up on Sayaka, gave up on Asami, and even gave up on Madoka. Now Homura will leave too. Kyoko will try to squeeze out every last bit of value she has without any information."

"If you can't retain your memories and follow Homura to the next round, will you also have the same thoughts as I do now?"

Zhixing looked at the witch's kiss gradually emerging from the neck in the reflection of the mirror, smiled, then turned his gaze to the room across the wall where Mami's body was.

In a military base near the coastline, Homura was looking at the time on her phone. In order to save her magic power, she was circumventing the patrols of soldiers and the surrounding cameras on time.

Finally, he stopped near the gate that was completely locked by surveillance, activated the time stop, rushed to the gate, pressed the password, and with the touch of his other hand, restored the normal function of the door and opened a small section of the armory door.

Then he rushed in quickly, replaced a batch of weapons that would not be used according to his planned position, and then left quickly, closed the door, and hid back in his original position, releasing the time stop as if nothing had happened.

"Very good, it's consistent with the previous patrol routes. In this way, we should be able to return to the remaining six locations shortly after dinner."

"There's no need to reunite now, and Witch Night is about to arrive. Any traces left behind will be covered up by the damage caused by Witch Night. I feel a little sorry for Shinichi, but I don't have time to remind you to finish your dinner now. Just wait for me to return hungry."

Homura took her cell phone, which she had modified overnight to block all kinds of signals after Sayaka and Asami's accident in order to prevent leaving any clues during the stealth operation the next day, and calculated the time to leave and travel, waiting for the interval of the next wave of patrols.

"Well, well, come back once you're satisfied."

You hung up the phone and breathed a sigh of relief.

"That kid would come back on his own initiative after running away?"

"Well, it seems he asked Edogawa about it, and Edogawa lied to him, so Kamijou is relieved now."

"Isn't it because Edogawa doesn't know much about magical girls, so he provided false information?"

Yuu glanced at the grumpy man and said helplessly:

"When Sayaka Miki turned into a witch, weren't you the one who stayed at the scene to investigate the witch's information? Wasn't it you who reported the witch's transformation to the other party, which they probably already knew about?"

The grumpy man raised his finger and shook it.

"That's hard to say. After all, if he really knew, he wouldn't have spared Kyousuke's life. After all, he wasn't a real person, just an apostle."

"If it weren't for Kamijou Kyousuke's presence, judging by the seeds of sorrow still lingering at the scene, it would probably have returned to its original state."