---
Done Again — Revival from Ruin.
A ticking time bomb, awakened when the Arrow pierced Nanami Kira in his darkest hour of despair.
Set the bomb. Set the timer. When the countdown reaches zero, it detonates — and erases that entire timeline.
But fate cannot be changed.
The dead can never be brought back.
Anyone who died in the previous timeline will die again in the new one, at the same moment, in the same way.
[Note: This rule is identical to Bites the Dust in the original work.]
This is the folding of timelines.
But what if the cause of death was a multitude of small wounds, death by exsanguination?
Then those same wounds would appear on the victim's body. The blood would drain. And they would die.
And the key, the crucial thing, was those wounds themselves.
Those wounds.
Nanami Kira smiled, his mood buoyant, as he gazed at the dense web of scars layered across the skin. Line after line, interlocking, connected.
Sorako had not disappointed him after all. He himself had risked his life to come to this warehouse.
All to witness her death.
In this world, the person who understood you best was always yourself. Nanami Kira trusted no one, because anyone could change. He despised all change. And so the only person he trusted was himself.
Sorako's death was not important. What mattered was the manner in which death had presented itself, what mattered were the wounds that had killed her.
No. Not wounds.
Words.
Row after row of tiny characters, carved into her back. The blood had long since dried.
Dense upon dense upon dense. Covering every inch.
The strokes were calm, steady, utterly unperturbed.
One could imagine the scene: in the dim, grotesque halls of the mansion, an expressionless man holding a small knife, methodically carving into the back of a beautiful young woman. Blood flowing, flowing, pooling. Her complexion growing paler and paler, until at last she stopped breathing.
"I've also left behind coded messages. These past few days, I've been leaving them with the utmost care."
These were words once recorded in his "diary."
[See Volume 3, Chapter 5: Autumn Mansion]
In the previous timeline, Nanami Kira had kept a "diary." He wrote in it every day. And every day, someone died.
Every day, someone died.
So the question was: what exactly had he been writing on?
What had he been writing on?
In this timeline, he had once said this to Sorako:
The last noble who fancied himself so very highborn — I've already written him into my diary.
And the Nanami Kira of the previous timeline had thought exactly the same thing.
He had written every last self-proclaimed noble into his "diary."
Nanami Kira was the greatest monster in all of Amber Mansion.
He was the deepest darkness, the most profound evil lurking within this grotesque Western-style estate.
It was easy to imagine: the Nanami Kira of the previous timeline had already known that his memories could be stolen at any moment, that his life and death were governed by Amber Mansion's rules.
And every guest around him was a competitor. An enemy.
So he had begun hunting.
He disguised himself as weaker than anyone. More ordinary than anyone. More unremarkable than anyone. And one by one, he killed the guests.
Under Amber Mansion's rules, killing another person directly required paying a cost.
But Nanami Kira had found a loophole.
A life for a life.
He forced others to kill. Forced pairs of people to carve words into each other's bodies.
Then both parties would die. Or he used subterfuge.
And he pinned every death on Amber Mansion, continuing to play the part of the utterly ordinary, meek and mild-mannered office worker, Gojo, Grade 3 Jujutsu Sorcerer. Acting more normal than anyone, more righteous than anyone, redirecting suspicion, feeding everyone's fear of the mansion itself.
But the truth was that because of the invitations, Amber Mansion's will could not act against any guest directly. And because of the invitation's protection, all of Nanami Kira's actions were classified as legitimate "campaigning tactics" within the succession contest.
---
Day One. September 26th. Overcast.
He killed the maid.
When the guests awoke, they found her collapsed in a pool of blood, her chest pierced clean through.
She lay beside the fireplace.
At the time, he did not yet know the rules. He had done it with his own hands.
The cost: one secret from his heart. Amber Mansion's will learned the function of Done Again.
But in exchange, Nanami Kira understood the rules of the game before anyone else.
Before the maid had fully expired, he carved a "diary" entry near her heart. This wound became Jasmine-san's cause of death.
When the next timeline arrived, those wounds would manifest on her body.
Once this was done, once Jasmine-san was truly dead, nothing more than a corpse, any further wounds inflicted would no longer map onto the next timeline.
So he used Killer Queen to pierce through her chest, creating the penetration wound mentioned in the "diary," and utterly destroying the evidence.
At that time, his fingernails measured 1.5 centimeters.
---
September 27th. Searching for nodes.
His irritation grew worse.
Fingernail length: 1.6 centimeters. They had grown.
Because he had not killed anyone that day.
Nanami Kira trimmed his nails.
---
Killing always brought Nanami Kira a sense of calm. And from that point on, his fingernail length held steady at 1.5 centimeters.
It never changed again. The reason was simple.
---
September 28th. Rain.
On this day, he killed three people.
Sorako-san in her ladylike dress. Sayahi. And Tuxedo Man.
Because he had not killed anyone the day before, the previous day's "diary" was inscribed on Tuxedo Man and Sayahi.
But regrettably, due to the butterfly effect, Tuxedo Man, Jasmine-san, and Sayahi had all died before their scheduled deaths from the previous timeline could arrive. Their wounds could never surface, and Nanami Kira could never read those "diaries."
Today's entry, however, was inscribed on Sorako-san. This was the one now displayed before Nanami Kira's eyes.
It recorded everything that had happened today. It also addressed key events from the preceding days.
Within it lay the previous-timeline Nanami Kira's accumulated deductions and strategies for breaking free of Amber Mansion.
Etched in wounds. Written between deaths.
Carved there was the truth.
The path behind was crystal clear. The road ahead lay in plain sight. And the present was held firmly in his hands.
The scars formed writing. They read:
"Three people died. One of them was the woman in the ladylike dress."
"Got dragged into a tedious game."
"Last night..."
"I've drawn close to the truth. This so-called Amber Mansion is the equilibrium point between Present and Past. Everything within Amber Mansion has a corresponding counterpart. So what, then, is Amber Mansion's own counterpart?"
"..."
"Now that's a fascinating thought. I have a feeling this will be the key to my escape..."
"Something's coming... What is that?"
(It is recommended to read this chapter alongside Chapter 5.)