How to Survive When Everyone Is on the Villain's Side

Check out my upcoming story, "Hagiwara Awakens Superpowers After His Sacrifice," a Hagiwara x Matsuda story. The blurb is at the very bottom.

[Story Blurb]

Kusafuka Shika was an ordinary police officer on the good side. Only after his childhood friends sacrificed themselves one after another did he discover that the world he lived in was nothing more than a manga. Then a System called the Salvation System appeared and told him that if he bound himself to it, he could reverse the flow of time. He could travel back in time and save his fallen friends.

*

After Hagiwara's sacrifice, he found himself back on his first day at the police academy. At first, he thought it was a blessing from heaven.

But gradually, he realized that there was always an extra person among them. Sometimes that person was a boy, sometimes a girl, and sometimes not even human. Sometimes they were a sixth classmate, sometimes a police academy instructor, and sometimes an assassin from an organization with a tragic past...

Without exception, all of them came with the goal of saving and winning them over. They deliberately ingratiated themselves, deliberately got close, and offered self-righteous salvation, only to leave their world even more shattered.

Standing once more at the familiar police academy, Hagiwara immediately noticed the striking figure in the crowded throng.

Hagiwara knew this time it was him.

The young man with shoulder-length hair walked over and smiled at the boy.

"What a coincidence. Are you in Onizuka's class too?"

"So am I. Want to go together?"

*

Kusafuka Shika thought going back in time would change his friends' fates. But only later did he realize that their meeting from the very beginning had been a carefully spun, ulterior-motive-driven deception by his friend.

[OOC] [Blurb archived 22.11.23]

Theme: Believe in goodness and beauty, and save the regrets that cannot be put right.