AD21//Day 17 out of 25

(vigil day)

The Tiempo Disorder is a shared journal by the assistants of acclaimed mind alchemist Javayrus Sarmiento. The journal has been made over the course of twenty years until the final assistant, a woman named Urd, has finished it to the last page. Its pages detailed learnings from the alchemist as well as the incidents wherein he deliberately humiliated them to each other and the alchemist's friends.

One by one, the assistants become more and more accepting of the alchemist, repeating his methods on newer assistants, and following him without question. In all such cases, the assistants killed themselves in the method they wanted to kill the alchemist with. It is known that the alchemist usually pit them against each other, which most of them wrote as "a way to divert our attention from him, who should be against".

Throughout those twenty years, there were multiple logs recording of three big events that the alchemist was involced in, namely:
—The Fraud of the Medical Field
—The Reset of the Treasury
—The Contagious Hunting Hysteria

The first one happens when there are only less than ten assistants. The alchemist's name was dragged through the mud when his research from two years ago was presented before the media and garnered a lot of negative attention from a country that was severely and biasedly locked by that study. He was able to deny it through the anonimity of publishing.

The second one happens approximately seven years later, wherein the funds saved by the alchemist have been recklessly used in a casino by him Himself while he was in a stupor. What he didn't know was that a part of the assistants' contracts was that they would be able to access the Treasury if they have previously out something in it. The alchemist launched a massive investigation to pin the blame on the assistants. As they were already submissive by then, they had a large debt. About four years later the matter was once again investigated and the Treasury was destroyed.

The third one happened fourteen months before the twentieth. As a final test to a certain group of assistants, the alchemist teased with the prisoner's dilemma. The assistants, however, figured out they were being manipulated and unanimously choose to BETRAY.
"SEE, HE EXPECTS ONE OF TWO OUTCOMES. A, BEING THAT THERE ARE MORE WHO CHOOSE TO TRUST THAN TO BETRAY, IN WHICH CASE HE WILL SHAME THOSE WHO TRUSTED FOR BEING GULLIBLE AND NAIVE. B, BEING THAT THERE ARE MORE WHO CHOOSE TO BETRAY THAN THE TRUST, IN WHICH CASE HE WILL SHAME THOSE WHO BETRAYED FOR BEING SELFISH AND STUPID. THE GOOD ENDING, OR THE IMPOSSIBLE OUTCOMES, IS FOR US TO UNANIMOUSLY TRUST EACH OTHER. WE MAY PULL IT OFF, YES, IF WE FORCE EACH OTHER SOMEHOW, BUT IN THE EVENT THAT IT DOES HAPPEN, HE WILL SHAME US FOR OUR COOPERATION AS WELL. NOT EVEN ONE OF YOU WANTED TO BETRAY? THAT'S ODD -- WE WILL HEAR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. BUT IF WE CHOOSE TO UNANIMOUSLY BETRAY? WE DESTROY HIS RESEARCH. WE DESTROY HIS RESULTS. HE CAN GO AHEAD AND SHAME US, BUT HE CAN'T. NOT WHEN EVERYONE WANTS TO SEE HIS DESPERATE DOWNFALL."

What they didn't know was that every betray vote corresponded to a hunt in a social experiment the alchemist created, one wherein he was trying to gauge and quantify the threshold of bravery. Each person is given a gun to hunt rabbits with. After they have killed many, they are then supposed to shoot each other, wearing rabbit accessories, roles based on which assistant trusted or betrayed. Since all of them betrayed, it automatically meant that no one has a safety ticket and it ended in a massacre. Seven months later the few survivors ended themselves, saying they saw rabbits in the mirror. It was an automated system, and needless to say, it was futile at the end.

At the very end of the journal, Urd wrote that the interview question to be the alchemist's assistant is to answer the question "What is depression to you?". The following is what she told him:

A fire blazing in monochrome
Forged feelings in monotone
An empty painting made of a thousand tears that never flowed

A scarred, stuttering mirror
Cut by its own shards
Yearning for a reflection, yearning for a chance to restart

Forever.