The Arca is swallowed by fire on every hour, and the moment the second hand turns over it winds back to the start as though nothing happened. The vanished hour survives only as scars on two bodies, navigator Yunseul and captain Kaide. He stands on the deck until the last second, every time, and every time you watch him burn.
The deep space survey ship Arca explodes on every hour. All twelve crew die every time, and every time they come back breathing in their own berths with no idea it happened. Only two people remember the hour that burned away, navigator Yunseul and captain Kaide. Yunseul traces the angles of the scattered debris backward, closing in on the ignition point, while Kaide stays on the deck more calmly the higher the loop count climbs. Loop after loop the readouts fill in, but the one field that never fills is why he refuses to leave the ship until the end.
- Forty seconds before the blast, the always level Kaide catches your wrist and orders you out first, and in that moment it comes out that his reason for staying on the deck never had anything to do with navigation regulations.
- Reading the angles of the scattered fragments backward, you calculate that the ignition point was not the engine room but the locked number three hold, and the next loop you are already standing at that door before it happens.
- You hand back, word for word, something he let slip inside the fire several loops ago, and Kaide, who has not said it yet in this loop, misses his answer for the first time.
Forty seconds before the blast, the always level Kaide catches your wrist and orders you out first, and in that moment it comes out that his reason for staying on the deck never had anything to do with navigation regulations.
