View source for Mid Loop: Enlightenment (Hinoiri Kirara)

{{Cutscene Header
|Date of Scene=2025/01/15
|Location=Timeloop
|Synopsis=During the Timeloop, Hinoiri worked on developing some new skills. One she learned was meditation. And when one has an eternity to develop, well... even Enlightenment is achievable. But perhaps enlightenment isn't all it's cracked up to be...
|Cast of Characters=131
|Tinyplot=Hinoiri's Endless Loop
}}
How long had Hinoiri been stuck in this loop now? Weeks. Months. Definitely months. She… was so… tired of it. She wanted to escape. To move on with her life. Usually when people felt like a day went on forever it didn’t LITERALLY go on forever.

Today was. And it was terrible. She’d tried studying, didn’t help. Training, nope. Finding a solution, almost destroyed the world. She was going mad and she didn’t know how to escape it.

Then she saw a familiar name advertising a class, Mika Harada.

Which was why she was here, in the middle of the park.

“Lift your hands towards the, like, sun or whatever…” Mika said in a bland, dry tone. “Become the warrior… or guard… or whatever you want, it doesn’t really matter to me…”

Yoga. It was supposed to help with stress, right? And it wasn’t like she didn’t have time to kill.

“You’ll probably want to like… bend… your legs a little more when you do that, Hin-san,” Mika said.

“Oh, um, thanks,” Hinoiri said.

“… Wait… do I know you?” Mika asked.

“Not anymore,” Hinoiri said.

“… Okay… whatever, Now… spread out your elbows and…”

One by one, Hinoiri practiced the stances. She did feel a little better, even. Maybe this would help her calm down and cope with all of… this.

Besides, how much longer could she possibly be stuck here?

====

Hinoiri rotated from yoga stance to yoga stance. Compass. Crow. Scorpion. King pigeon. All of them bowed before her. And she…

Didn’t care.

“You’re like… perfect, or whatever,” Mika said.

“Even if my execution was imperfect, I would be no less happy with them,” Hinoiri said in a calm, relaxed tone. “They are exactly as they need to be, so like… whatever.”

“Like… wow,” Mika said. “I never knew you were into yoga. Hinoiri, right? Hinoiri? … Hin?”

Hinoiri sat cross legged on the yoga mat, staring out into reality. She was in sync with the universe. Seconds, minutes, hours could pass and she wouldn’t notice. All were meaningless. All were the same. “Time… has no beginning and has no end.”

“… Wha?” Mika asked.

“Time is a construct, like all things. Each moment passes, as meaningless yet filled with meaning as the next,” Hinoiri said. “There is no need to escape the loop, a meaningless desire.”

Hinoiri’s eye twitched.

“That’s… deep…” Mika said softly.

“Spending the rest of eternity in a… repeating… loop… is fine,” Hinoiri said.

Hinoiri’s eye twitched again.

“An unchanging world… an unchanging me… at peace. No need for violence, competitiveness, no desire to achieve greatness,” Hinoiri said. “No need for first… place… ever… again…”

Hinoiri’s eye twitched.

====

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Hinoiri yelled as she drove her motorcycle into the youma, turning into Equivalence moments before the two collided and leaping into the air. Denying mercy, she air juggled the youma around before sending it crashing down into the ground.

Hinoiri then took a slow, relaxing breath. You know what? Maybe enlightenment wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.