Published at 1st of September 2019 7:39 pm

Prologue, 1-9

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It’s been too long since we took the time

No-one’s to blame, I know time flies so quickly

But when I see you darling

It’s like we both are falling in love again It’ll be just like starting over, starting over

—(Just Like) Starting Over John Lennon

This is the story of how upon reaching my twentieth birthday, I was

sent back to the age of ten, and lived to be twenty once more.

* 1 *

The story I’m going to tell may run contrary to your expectations.

After all, you would probably believe that, if one had the opportunity to be sent back to the age of ten with their memories up to twenty, they would make good use of their knowledge and be able to change all sorts of things.

Everyone has those regrets, those thoughts of “If only I had done this instead.”

For those who wish they’d studied more, there are others who wish they’d played more.

For those who wish they’d been more honest about who they were, there are others who wish they’d listened more to others.

For those who wish they’d gotten closer to someone sooner, there are others who wish they’d never had anything to do with someone.

For those who wish they’d made more careful decisions, there are others who wish they’d taken bigger risks.

When I was a child, I once happened to talk with a vagrant under a bridge for about an hour.

He was a cheery man who laughed with his whole body. Regret was a thing that seemed unbefitting of the man, yet there was one thing he couldn’t quite get over.

“In these fifty years,” the man said, “the only mistake I’ve ever

made was being born into this world.” So even that could be a regret.

Well, anyway. What I’m trying to say here is, life comes packed with regrets. I’m sure you can empathize with that yourself.

And if you could start your life over, no doubt anyone would use their self-reflections, lessons, and memories to make for a smoother second go.

Because they’d know those regrets lie ahead of them.

But when it came to my experience, well, it was quite the opposite. Thinking on it now, I did a truly foolish thing. I really did.

* 2 *

When I realized that my life had been rewinded a decade, I had one immediate thought:

“Talk about unnecessary.”

Let’s suppose we have a guy who doesn’t have a single regret about his life.

Now the guy could be plenty happy, or else he could be a moron. He could’ve lived a life so perfect that there was nothing to reflect upon, or he could just lack the brains to reflect on anything.

Granted, I’m speaking for myself, but I was the former. I was a happy guy.

I was pretty pleased with what I was calling life. It’s the truth, I didn’t have any problems at all.

Had the best girlfriend I could ask for, great friends, a perfect family, and went to a decent university. Nothing lacking, in my mind.

I mean, I guess there was the fact I was having so much fun as to only get six hours of sleep a day, resulting in the occasional headache.

Since I knew I could always wake up to good things, I always wanted to stay up a little longer. Sleep was just missing out on life, as I saw it.

And so for me, who was pretty pleased with how his life was going, the chance to relive my life just seemed like more of a bother than anything.

A big waste, I thought - felt like it should have gone to someone a little more despairing about their life.

Suppose there’d be lots of people who wouldn’t mind living the years from ten to twenty over again.

Opportunity always seems to fall upon those who don’t seek it. God’s just a big old prankster.

Turn on the TV, and you’ll know right away from the people you see that “God doesn’t give with both hands” is one big lie.

Maybe I’m just asking for punishment here, but God doesn’t have the first notion of “equality.”

Anyway, seeing one of God’s cruel pranks with my own eyes just got me thinking about all that stuff.

Point is, I was satisfied with my first life, and I had no interest in

doing it a second time…

So I thought, hey, maybe I should just do everything the same the second time around.

That was the idea.

I guess in a way I was a bit of a prankster myself, taking God’s prank and sorta making it backfire.

Fix those mistakes and missed chances in my first life? Nah, I would have it all play out the same.

I’d set out to make the ten-year rewind meaningless.

I knew in my mind all the accidents and calamities, the crises and changes to come, but I’d keep my mouth shut.

After all, soon as I started talking about that stuff, I wouldn’t know when to stop.

Besides, there were already plenty of crazies out there claiming they’re from the future and know what’s gonna happen, so there was no way anybody’d find me any more credible.

I’d live out the rest of my life in a hospital if I went off in that direction.

Sure, I suppose choosing not to save people who could be saved wasn’t something you should rightly do.

But to be honest, there wasn’t anybody out there I cared about enough to consider sacrificing my own happiness.

Yeah, some people are willing to do that kind of self-sacrifice. But they just do it because the satisfaction they get from the act exceeds what they lose, that’s all. So no different from putting priority on your own happiness.

The important part is what brings in the most happiness for you. And for me, happiness was “nothing ever changing.”

So I’d thoroughly re-enact my first life. That’s all I sought out of the second round.

I bet upstream time-swimmers who don’t even want it are real rare. Feels like I should be congratulated.

* 3 *

My second shot at life began right at the Christmas when I was ten.

What tipped me off was the paper bag with a Super Nintendo by my bedside.

Ten-year-old me’d desperately wanted one.

“Super Nintendo.” Hearing it now, it’s a pretty damn silly name. But at the time, it was the best toy out there.

When I first saw one at a friend’s house, I was shocked, all like, “Is it right for something this fun to exist?”

I was so transfixed on the screen, I didn’t even lay a finger on the candy they brought out.

Games were pretty expensive at the time, but my birthday was December 24th, Christmas Eve.

My birthday and Christmas presents got put together, so I did get bought some fairly expensive stuff.

I emptied the paper bag onto my bed. The dull gray system itself. The red, blue, yellow, and green buttons on the controller. Man, those were the days.

Forget thinking about this swimming up the river of time stuff, I wanted to play. Old games always had a certain charm to them. They were limited to simplistic methods by limited storage, but that turned out to make the games more effective overall.

The paper bag had a game in it, too. Ah, of course. The system was worthless without one.

…But, you know, I had to laugh. Because the game in question was all about time travel, going to and fro between the past and future. To borrow a term from said game, my life had been given a New Game Plus: carrying on the memories and abilities from the previous playthrough to do it all again.

And what better description for what was happening now.

* 4 *

Now, around this point you might be begging to know. How was I suddenly sent back in time at the age of twenty? And what about time paradoxes? And all that sort of science fiction nonsense.

Well, to be honest with you, I don’t have a lick of interest in that stuff. See, you could make all these theories, but I’d have no means of proving or disproving them.

As far as logistics goes, what happened to me was, well, something that would never ever happen. It was like two plus two coming out to five. Like your ruler itself was out of whack, I guess.

One possibility was that I’d gone nuts - basically, that ten-year-old me suddenly started hallucinating he’d gotten the wisdom of his twenty-year-old counterpart, as a result of twenty-year-old me being sent back in time.

But honestly, I was very much sane. I mean, what’s the point of wondering whether you’ve gone nuts, anyway? Really crazy people never notice that they’re crazy.

The only thing that needed my attention was “what to do next,” and nothing else.

Could I live a happy life out of this situation? That was all I needed to consider.

* 5 *

I wiped the condensation off the foggy window with a pajama sleeve.

It was still dim outside, but I had an unbroken view of the snow- covered town.

From how the sky looked, it should have been rather cold, but my young body was warm. Kid’s bodies are great like that.

It was still early morning, so there wasn’t anyone outside, nor was there a sound.

All that was even moving out there was the snow, drifting down at a fixed rhythm.

It made my own breathing and the rustling of my clothes seem unusually louder.

As I rummaged through the paper bag, it woke up my little sister sleeping on the bottom bunk, and I heard her crawl out from under the down quilt.

I grabbed onto the bed frame and peered down at my seven-year- old sister.

She drowsily turned to a teddy bear beside the bed and shouted “Yaaay!” with a slight delay.

Long hair like lacquered silk, round mouth, big eyes with just a light touch of color.

Oh yeah, my sister used to look like this, I thought nostalgically. Always walking a few meters behind me, going “Big brother, big brother!”

I guess in a way, I’d say this was when she was cutest. ‘Course, she was still a great little sister ten years later, that didn’t change.

But thing is, as she grew older, she didn’t need to rely on me anymore. Good for her, but makes you wonder if your little sister can ever be too capable.

I dropped off the bed onto the carpet and sat down on my sister’s bunk.

As she sat entranced by her teddy bear, I said to her “Hey.”

“Your brother’s come back from ten years in the future.”

Still sleepy, she laughed “Welcome back!”

I kinda liked that response and said “It’s good to be back,” rustling her head.

My sister being my sister, she looked down, smiling wordlessly, and

did the same with her teddy bear.

I didn’t do this kind of thing much when I was ten, so it might’ve been new. So I wondered how I should respond.

I wanted to open my heart to someone about the brilliant plan I’d devised.

I just had an itch for somebody to hear my strange notion, my dare to re-enact my first life. And my sister seemed like a good pick for it. She was little and wouldn’t understand whatever I told her, and she’d soon forget all about it.

I said this to my sister, sitting before me with a teddy bear on her lap.

“I know the mistakes I’m going to make, and I know what it is I should really do. Tell the truth, starting right now I could be a prodigy, or get super rich. Heck, I could even be a prophet or some kinda messiah.

“…But you know, I don’t want to change a thing. It’ll be fine by me if I can just live the same life as before.”

She stared absentmindedly at me, holding her teddy bear. “I don’t get it,” she replied honestly.

“Suppose you wouldn’t,” I said.

* 6 *

This is the story of how upon reaching my twentieth birthday, I was sent back to the age of ten, and lived to be twenty once more.

* 7 *

First thing I want to get out of the way: I made no compromises in my recreation of the first time ‘round.

It was a difficult road, to be frank. Taking lessons for a ten-year-old with the intelligence of twenty and having conversations that suited a kid my age was harder than you’d imagine.

Real grueling. Felt like I was gonna go insane in a classroom one day.

Maybe this isn’t the best way to express it, but I bet that’s how it feels to be a sane guy thrown into a mental hospital.

Anyway, I was serious about everything I did, cut no corners. Everybody craves the limelight from time to time, so of course I had urges to answer questions that nobody in class knew, or object to ridiculously wrong nonsense the teacher said. I’m not gonna deny it.

All that self-control can’t be good for the body; it was pretty stressful resisting those urges.

But it wasn’t all bad, of course. There’s nothing better the world can offer than the luxury of seeing the world through a child’s eyes again.

I was still friends with the world then, you could say. The trees, the birds, the wind, they all opened for me. And that’s not half bad.

Of course I’d seen all of this before, yet it all seemed new somehow, so it was a great experience.

I wondered what exactly it was. Maybe my memories had been damaged in the trip back. Or maybe they were compressed for space into something less detailed, more abstract.

For example, let’s take this memory: “The starry sky on the day we camped at the lake during the summer when I was twelve.”

If I tried to recall that, I’d think “The stars were innumerable and pretty, and there were a number of shooting stars too.”

That’s what I’d naturally remember, but not a trace of the physical scenery came to mind.

I couldn’t remember what the lake or the campsite were named. I just remembered “lake” and “campsite.”

Even if I tried to recall deeper, sometimes I just couldn’t scrounge up any more detail.

This is how memories work to begin with, of course, but it seemed extra prevalent in my second loop of life.

So because of that, I chose to not waste any of those moving experiences.

Or maybe I should say that, with some knowledge of what was going to happen, I could be prepared, and would take the opportunity to enjoy every moment.

Maybe you could say it was like reading a book having only read the summary prior.

But with how vague my memories of the ten years ago were, I’m

sure there were things I just flat-out forgot.

Still, I planned to do what I could to recreate my first life.

Using my limited memories to shed light on the situation, I made the choices that felt most “natural.”

It wasn’t an easy thing to do, but I’d sent off all lingering doubt about using my advantages to improve my life further.

I loved everything about my first life, and I was bound to the idea of keeping it. Whatever happened, I didn’t want it to be undone.

But as they say, something as small as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can bring drastic changes.

Five years into the second round, my life began to veer off from the path of the first significantly.

* 8 *

I’m not really sure where to begin. Every little thing ended up different.

I mean it, I really couldn’t tell you. If you compared the two and asked me “Where were they different?”, I wouldn’t know how to answer.

You need to have some common points to compare and contrast. You can’t just ask someone to explain the differences between a merry-go-round and a pencil, right?

But in a word, I was ruined. Far worse off than one would ever imagine given my first life.

To give a few examples, let’s see. I was bullied by my best friend from my first life, I was severely rejected by my girlfriend from my first life, and I failed the exam for the high school I attended in my first life… and so on.

I bet you’re dying to know what change in my heart or whatever brought on such corruption. But I don’t want to talk about that, at least not right now.

Basically, I’m not the type to moan about his worries.

Anybody who enjoys hearing that stuff’s gotta be someone who love strangers’ sorrows better than three square meals, some real rubbernecking gossiper types.

And this story’s not for them. So let’s just summarize the interesting bits.

I guess I’ll put it like this. In my second go at life, a vicious cycle had created itself seemingly out of thin air.

One bit of misfortune led to another bit of misfortune, and that led to a third. As soon as there was a tiny misalignment in the cogs, all these other ones got mucked up, and those ones mucked up even more…

And in the end, the cogs had all come apart. I think that’s a good way to explain what happened.

It was a friend of mine who put it that way first, though.

I was always a guy who could “fall either way,” so to speak. I had the potential for great success, but I also had the potential for massive failure.

The more I think about it, I realize that’s hardly something exclusive to me.

* 9 *

There were a lot of causes all linked together which I could point to, but what I would call the most decisive one was how readily the girl who should have become my girlfriend rejected me.

When my confession - which I was a hundred percent sure would succeed - bombed, well, it’s not hard to imagine my dismay.

According to my memories, “that girl” always had sleepy eyes, but it only looked that way because of her long eyelashes.

When she appeared to be spacing out, the gears were in fact always turning in her head… That’s what my “future girlfriend” was like. Those memories about her were some of the most clear. Maybe memories have a hierarchy, where the highest-priority ones make the most concrete memories. Yeah, I guess that’s memory for you.

At any rate, she seemed like the kind of girl I’d fall for. I’ve never been particularly interested in a girl simply because she’s smart, but I guess I’m soft for “looks like she’s spacing out, but always has her head on straight.”

That sort of fondness for abnormality… Well, if you compare it how I choose my friends, it’s a more pure, feeling-based thing, admittedly. Not something I wanna do all the time.

I seemed to recall that in my first life, I confessed to her in spring, my third year of middle school.

And her reply was something like “Thank you, I’ve been waiting so long,” half in tears. And in the five years after that, we were more or less inseparable.

That’s how it should have gone the second time, too. Yes… It should have.

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