Love Bullet - Vol. 3 Ch. 15 - Loop 0

[UdenEmpati]

Cupid hypnosis, that's what.

asking myself once again if people are actually reading the stories these days.

 

[Rafalga]

So irredeemably evil cupids do exist.

 

[K1ing]

asking myself once again if people are actually reading the stories these days.

This is mangadex. People legit just skim stories trying to get to the part where the girls kiss.

 

[hikiller]

I KNOW IT FROM THE BEGINING THAT SAE WAS A CUPID BECAUSE OF THE SHAPED HEART EARINGS SHE HAD!!!!!!!!

 

[thirty7timeslucky]

inee better be cooking

 

[syncswim]

I get the impression Sae has been a rogue cupid for a while. She's not interested in doing the matchmaking and is instead using the disguise and mind control powers to live it up and mess with people out of boredom.

 

[himejoshiwarrior]

sae is so hot 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

 

[ragecndybars]

i am. SO EXCITED for evil cupids. when Kanna warned Koharu that other cupids might fight her way back when, I was like, "That might just be foreshadowing Chiyo, or some other future low-stakes cupid-offs, but it would be so hype if there were some actual ANTAGONISTS who are also cupids soon" and LO AND BEHOLD....

I have so many theories about Sae and her motivations here but all of them have a glaring hole somewhere or other lmao, mostly wrt the fact that Chiyo knows Ena, and also doesn't seem surprised by the whole time loop situation..? We'll have to see when we get back to present-time, but I remember when reading the last chapter thinking that Chiyo along with Ena also didn't have much of a reaction to the time loop... time looping. But that would mean a lot of my theories about Sae/Ena's situation wouldn't make much sense lmao...

I'm gonna share anyway though bc I wanna yap lmao

My first thought upon seeing the panel of Sae digging Ena out (and the "Foooound yooooou") was that she was actually pissed off that Ena had died, but hiding it by acting smug. No real evidence for this lmao. it was just my initial guess. but the longer I thought about it, the more it kind of synchronized with one of my other immediate theories -- that the "curse"/time loop might be caused by the fact that Sae killed a human, whether intentionally or not, and, as other ppl in this chat have theorized, that perhaps caused some sort of divine punishment.

So -- theory number one, mostly based off vibes: Sae bullies Ena to make her get lost so that she can get her OTP together (as others here have theorized as well), then slips away from the group but forgets to make them "forget" her by dropping the human disguise. This gets Ena killed -- not on purpose, to her credit, for what it's worth lmao -- and now suddenly Sae is trapped in a time loop and furious about it. So she tries to go dig up Ena and ends up finding her as a cupid. (the reason I thought this was bc I thought it was strange for Ena to reincarnate so much quicker than Koharu did -- BUT then again, there's no time loop involved with Koharu, so, whatever the official explanation ends up being for the time loop could also serve as an explanation for that)

That would raise the question of where Sae is NOW, of course, to which I would answer -- that's why Ena is so ridiculously protective of the class, to the point of breaking Chiyo's bones without hesitation: she's been spending all her many time loops trying to protect them from Sae. Whether that's because she simply refuses to let Sae meddle anymore after her own bullying and death, or because Sae actually had malicious intent towards any of them, I feel like it wouldn't matter either way -- even if Sae was like "I'm going to end this time loop by getting my OTP together, normal style this time without the crazy bullying", if I were Ena, I would tell her to eff ALL the way off lmao. So Ena and Sae have been fighting for who knows how many loops before Ena eventually managed to drive her off, and now she's potentially keeping her distance, letting Ena try to handle the timeloop sitch?

So that's my theory for A) why time loop, B) why insta-Ena instead of several years wait, C) why no Sae currently, D) why Ena's intense hostility towards Chiyo before she realizes Koharu is a bby cupid and chills out, E) why Ena so stronk (many timeloops of cupid death battle), and potentially F) why Chiyo seems somewhat aware of all this as well - because perhaps she showed up and has been looped before. It seems kind of like her to withhold that info from Kanna and Koharu, especially if she's not aware of the full seriousness of the situation -- like, maybe she stumbled upon Ena a couple loops ago, kept getting reset back a couple days, so after getting looped again, she goes to get Kanna and Koharu and drags them along to try to help Ena (like she insisted she was doing)

Many things about my theory don't really add up lmao and I'm aware of it, plus the timeloop mechanics are as of yet unknown, but I think this is my fav theory so far. (Honestly... mostly because Sae would be a little less interesting to me as a character if she's just like, literally pure evil? it's more interesting to me to see an antagonist who can screw up, rather than "oh yes my plan to (checks notes) cause months of bullying in order to (checks notes again) cause a .... landslide? and then make myself a missing person to murder someone?" if that ends up being the canon explanation, I'll accept it -- I love Inee as a writer so far so I'm willing to suspend my disbelief -- but i'd be like. oh come on. that doesn't even make sense as a murder plan. bullying then landslide?? even if you can't hurt humans directly (which may be the case for cupids, we dunno yet but it would be plausible to me) the bullying -> pizza -> landslide gambit is just. a little silly imo

 

[lightokamii]

WE ARE SO BACK!!!

 

[Suciiptoo]

I keep revising where I stand on Sae & Ena's relationship each time I read back through - because another potential angle is that

Sae has been a cupid for longer than we can suspect--and she didn't know Ena when they were both humans, but came upon her when only Sae was a cupid.
cupids can't fall in love--but they can feel the desire for it, and the jealousy of being incapable of obtaining it (like when they get shot by cupid guns, and Koharu having to process the grief of "missing her chance" with Aki before dying).
So--Sae sees Human Ena, and "falls" for her for some reason. But she can't love properly, and it gets distorted into something like possessiveness. And she hatches the scheme of "oh, make Ena a cupid, and she'll have to spend forever with me".

But what if Ena falls in love? Can't have that, she won't become a cupid. So what does Sae do? She 'goes human', and proceeds to isolate Ena via Charm'ing the whole class and bullying her, so that she'll remain alone and beaten down and very unlikely to find love through all the abuse.

Then it's a matter of finding a way to get her killed. Probably can't just murder her--I need to carefully reread to see if it's stated, but maybe cupids can't directly harm humans like that. So the landslide is used. Then it's a matter of finding Ena and digging her up, and presto--she's stuck with Sae, who can "mentor" her like Kanna did Koharu, and keep Ena around her in that way.



From there - the question becomes: does Sae's transgression here (I'm assuming it breaks a ton of rules for cupids, assuming any form of beaurocracy) enact the curse, or does something down the line do it, wherein Ena and Sae get into a fight that goes far beyond what Chiyo keeps doing with Kanna & Koharu?
There's also the fact that enough time has to have passed that Chiyo and Ena meet and know one another. Possibly once this loop is already in place, or before it happens. But if it was before, then how long before, and even if it was after the loop, Chiyo would have not been around Ena for very long--and the impression they've left on one another and their interactions during that fight when Ena snapped Chiyo's arm tell me they've got more than a brief meeting between them.

So I think that it wasn't Sae's act of killing Ena that started this curse, at least with those additional bits of context and info. The timeline for everything is unknowable at present, because we don't know how this loop operates--are these all the actual classmates from Ena's time? If this is an isolated loop affecting this specific area, what are their parents doing with them missing for however long? Are they just "gone" from the larger timeline and reality, stuck here while the curse persists and everyone's forgotten about them? Or is this some kind of dream-state, where they're all memories of Ena's, playing out until she resolves the problem?

We need more before anything can be said on that front. But the curse is definitely tied to Ena and Sae in some way. Ena also seems surprised that Koharu changed Touma's feelings toward Ito--that feels significant, because it means the scenario can apparently shift away from what Ena is expecting. So the four of them will be needed to resolve it, but whether it's actually revolving around Ito & Touma and Ena, or if it's cupid-centric, or something else, can't be acertained at this time.

I have some theories myself but im not typing allat so im just gonna lowkirkgenuenly connect both of our theory.

I think the loop happened because Sae forcefully wakes Ena

Theres actually more but i forgot

 

[mikuuP]

Dying and still not being free of your bully is some next level messed up.


I find it so funny how sensei started this series with a fun oneshot to lure people in and then just did pure depression ever since.

Madoka Magica but instead of mahou shoujo its angels

 

[mikuuP]

ENA STRANGLE THAT BITCH RIGHT NOW

 

[what.]

Ena died for a cupid

 

[TanyaTheEvil]

That ending really got me and how everyone treated her was really sad. Looking forward to the next chapter. Thanks for the chapter and translation

 

[mylovenovels]

sae is so hot 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

Oh I saw your TikTok video I’m frying

 

[arcosapphire]

I feel like this story absolutely cannot pick a lane. We're 15 chapters in and there are like 6 ongoing plots with different protagonists. And now there's time travel too?

 

[tohka_la]

istg if sae have some stupid rich kid backstory i am dropping this shit :/

 

[mikuuP]

there was a Q&A with the author where she states that all humans have black hair, and that the usual "dyed hair" you see in manga wouldn't apply to this series--and that along with the overall darker tones was her way of differentiating humans from cupids.
So Sae, even seen in this flashback, not having black hair like everyone else, tells me she's a standout of particular significance. She also is clearly leading the bullying against Hasumi, and everyone else simply follows along.

Plus, we see her with those "Charm Eyes", reflected in the sensei's when talking about the pizza party thing. The rest of the class also praises Sae for being so successful in convincing the teachers to go along with whatever she suggests.
That's pretty indicative of that Charm effect, as well - and as you said (since I just read through everything today), in previous chapters, the "student Hasumi ran after" wasn't named. So Sae's been forgotten.
The only weird thing that I don't know can be squared yet, is that she appears in that photograph with everyone else. Would her "disguise" be preserved even after the fact? Would she be recognized by her classmates as "Sae-chan" even if she otherwise no longer exists for them? I think we'd need one of them to look at the photo and pick her out to be certain, and that hasn't come up yet.

But I'm pretty confident that yes, Sae has been a disguised cupid. She also was the one who suggested the pizza party early, which prompted the ahead-of-schedule hike up the mountain.
What if she also was responsible for the earthquake, and the resulting landslide? Peeling off from the group, so that she'd be "missing" when it happened, knowing that Hasumi is responsible and dogged enough to look after even her bully in an emergency? This whole thing could have been Sae working to get Hasumi killed.
She knew where to find her post-cupidization, after all.

To what end....I think there are a couple routes.

• Your guess is a reasonable one; plenty of people IRL believe in "OTP" type love stories, and someone sufficiently obsessive about it could turn to violence against would-be "transgressors". Though Sae going all the way to seemingly killing Hasumi, and tormenting her so much in life. That feels incredibly personal, so simply warning off Hasumi from interfeing would have taken a lot less. (the whole "hatred isn't the opposite of love, but its twisted equal" type thing - the amount of bullying Hasumi suffered at Sae's hands is far too intimate, in my mind, to be a mere erasure of a love rival for someone else.)
  
  
• I could see it being that Sae herself has feelings for Hasumi, but something got twisted, and it shows up in this perverse manner. Perhaps Sae herself has something going on mentally, that has skewed her way of dealing with people? She herself is a cupid, meaning she met the same conditions as the others, in death.
  
  
• The most off-the-wall, would be that Sae is someone from Hasumi's past even further back - someone older than Hasumi (since cupids don't age after death, apparently), who died and blames her death on Hasumi for whatever reason. And now she's come back to bully and torment Hasumi, trapping her in death as a cupid to "punish" her.
  I actually kinda like this one, or at least some iteration thereof--after all, Sae's the same "age group" as Hasumi at the other classmates, but if there's a "cooldown" between death and cupid-birth like with Koharu, then Sae had to have died some time ago. Though then again--Ena herself seems to be caught in some kind of "loop" with her own death and aftermath; so there might be bigger things at play that we don't have context or mechanic-knowledge for.
  edit--another idea: Sae had feelings for a younger Hasumi, died, and is now trying to trap Ena with her as cupids. Sure, they can't feel love--but she can now have Ena all to herself in the afterlife, and show her "extreme attention", even if it's not a positive loving kind.

It's compelling, though. I know I saw that it appears that the author has planned this whole story out--and that Ena's own arc will take multiple volumes (started in vol.2, but could go as far as vol.4, perhaps). So we'll be here for quite awhile it would seem, and that's leaving aside Koharu's own character narrative, much less Kannas or Chiyo's (who are probably going to be just as complex, I figure).
For an introductory work, this is very ambitious on her part, and I'm excited to see where this goes.

TOXIC SADISTIC YURI? HELL YEAH
Since we know Cupids can’t fall in love, I do wonder if it’s possible for them to carry over their feelings after death…? Like, the rule is “don’t fall in love”, not “don’t be in love”. If Sae had an interest in Hasumi before she died, and only realized it was love afterwards… that could be a way to both circumvent the rule as well as ensure Sae could monopolize Ena for herself. It’s a well known romance trope(at least in toxic yuri)- get the girl you’re interested in bullied so that she can only ever rely on you.