Giselle looked down for a moment to consider everything before asking again.

Her voice, still firm, but somehow set full with incredulity.

"So you're saying. We are reliving the same day?"

Karina nodded gravely, and Winter added that "That's how we knew Ningning would be near the abandoned building by the side of the garden."

Giselle took a sharp breath in before asking, "So what do we do now? Is there anything I can do to help?"

Giselle nodded, seeming a little serious.

"Mai's my best friend," she said.

"I must help her. She is an orphan. She stays with her grandmother who takes a great deal of pride in her. Best student and swimmer I have ever known."

Her voice grew angry as she recalled.

"When I heard Mai was replaced, I was furious. That's why Sei Eo was mocking me before you both showed up at lunch."

She paused for a few seconds.

"And yesterday... well, the summer festival day. Mai didn't talk much. She was quiet and didn't show up later that night. I thought she'd already gone home."

Karina's face turned tighter with concern. "Did Mai tell you if she was going somewhere?"

Winter explains about how Karina met Mai in the corridor, and added.

"I saw her from the classroom window heading towards the garden."

Suddenly, a lightbulb seemed to go off in Karina's head. She turned quickly to Giselle.

"Can you get the CCTV footage from the festival?"

Giselle nodded resolutely. "I'll try. But it's already close to sundown, and we have only up till 8 pm before the reset will hit, and we'd forget everything," she said.

Standing up right away, she went outside to make the most of what little time they had left.

When Giselle walked down the hallway, Ningning looked worriedly at Karina.

"You know," she grumbled, "you haven't eaten anything."

Karina's eyes went askew with betrayal, but she continued to say incredulously, "What?!"

That flipped her onto herself over Winter, who was only flashing a good glare.

"I didn't eat because Winter did not too!" Karina tried to plea herself.

Ningning smirked and joined into the conversation, "Winter was unconscious. She couldn't just take in anything!"

She high-fives Winter who lights up with a soft chuckle.

Karina let out a theatric sigh and folded her arms over her chest.

"That's not fair! You guys are doing this to me."

In the midst of all the sobriety, laughter broke out from the rest of the group. For one brief second only, it saved the moment from being all serious.

Ningning got up and left Karina and Winter alone.

Winter's mischievous glare softened when Ningning stepped out turning serious.

"Karina, you really need to eat."

Karina puckered and blinked her innocent eyes, trying to soften Winter's mood.

"But I'm fine. Really."

Winter rolled her eyes, still glaring but hardly able to conceal the softening in her demeanor.

"That's not going to work this time," she huffed, though her resolve was already softening.

Karina leaned in closer, her voice soft and teasing. "Really?

Winter's breath caught in her throat as Karina hovered over hers. Her cheeks colored with a burning red blush; her heart thumped violently in her chest. She turned her gaze away from Karina's as she tried to calm herself down.

"Y-yes," Winter stammered, though her voice faltered.

Karina grinned mischievously at Winter's reaction. She crept closer and closer still until Winter, completely flustered, leaned all the way back into the bed to calm down her racing heart.

Before she knew it, Karina sat on top of her, straddling her waist. Karina's hands pressed Winter's wrists gently down onto the bed, pinning her there. Winter's heart sped up even more; her mind became cloudy because of the shift in atmosphere.

Karina let her eyes drift down to Winter's mouth, breathing heavy, with tension so thick and palatable between them.

Winter's were dancing back and forth from Karina's dark intense stare to the lips that welcomed her.

She gulped hard, her body vulnerable, electric at closeness.

Then, without warning, Karina bent forward and took Winter's soft, pink lips in a kiss and bit it, making Winter groan softly.

Her eyes closed, and their lips moved in unison-slow and gentle at first, then more passionately. She released Winter's hands as she wrapped her arms around Winter's neck to pull her closer to hers.

Winter hunched forward instinctively, yanking Karina onto her lap without ever breaking the kiss. Her hands roamed up and down Karina's back, the fingers plunging into silk-smooth hair as she deepened the kiss.

Finally, they broke apart, their breath ragged, their bodies trembling slightly from the intensity of the moment.

Karina's lips opened just a fraction, and she looked into Winter's eyes, still drawing deep. She shot out, grabbing the collar of Winter's uniform, pulling her in to kiss again-only this time, much hotter than that last kiss. Both girls lost themselves in the moment, pounding hearts beating against the other's chests, forgetting all else in the world.

-

Turning around, Giselle heart thudded in her chest as she clutched the USB containing CCTV footages. Some tense give-and-take with the security had gotten her that; using her surname helped grease the wheels a little. But time was flying through their fingers-they had just two hours left before the loop reset. It was already 6 p.m.

All of them huddled around a small laptop projecting video footage of the heist as Winter received treatment in the room, one who had a sense of urgency almost silent over all of them.

"There!" Karina pointed to the screen, on which Mai's face appeared and spoke briefly to her.

Then Karina was gone as Mai stepped out of the classroom building slowly, step by deliberate step, as if she really had a place to get to. The next forty minutes were torture as they scrolled through the footage, searching for any glimpse of her.

But as Winter had told them, Mai walked out of frame, out of the camera's view. Much later in the footage, she appeared again sitting in the garden, lit solely by shadows while the festival went on over on the other side.

They watched as Mai sat there for two hours straight, never so much as shifting, then stood up and walked out of frame and did not reappear in the footage.

Winter's breath caught as the clock on the footage rolled over to 8 pm.

"That's it," she whispered, her voice trembling.

"That's when she disappeared." And she and Karina could feel a shiver run down their spines too.

Karina clutched Winter's hand tighter, her chest dipping all the way down.

"This... This is worse than we thought," she muttered, her voice barely above a whisper.

Winter nodded, her fingers curled over the other hand very tightly with Karina.

"There's something more going on here... Something... Sinister."

The room sat there in stunned silence for a moment, the weight of the situation settling down upon them. Time was running out. The clock was ticking and they had only a little more than one hours before the loop reset, repurposing their memories once again.

Karina looked at the others. She's beating with tension.

"We cannot wait anymore. But how do we stop it? How do we trace her in time?"

They look at each other, uncertainty mingling with an urgent feeling written across their faces.

Whatever had happened to Mai was far worse than what they thought - suspected - and now they're running out of time.