"Hey, Sora… what would you do if you were given the chance to turn back time?"
The question came out of nowhere, tossed across the classroom like a joke to kill the boredom. My friends laughed, and I laughed too.
"Maybe I'd change how I look first?" I said without thinking, brushing it off as just another random conversation.
That was supposed to be the end of it. After all, at sixteen, who really thought about time travel? I was more focused on school, stressing about grades, and wishing summer break would hurry up already.
Time travel? That belonged in fantasy novels, not in my life. Or so I thought.
Because the next morning, everything felt… wrong.
The air was heavy with warmth, the sunlight brighter than usual, and the cicadas outside buzzed loud enough to drown out my thoughts. At first, my room looked familiar—but the longer I stared, the more it felt off. The desk wasn't where it was supposed to be, my bookshelf was smaller, and even my bed felt harder beneath me, as if it wasn't mine at all. When I glanced toward the window, I froze. The curtains were pale and patterned, not the usual blinds I'd had for years.
I reached for my phone.
[June 1, 2021.]
I froze. My breath caught in my throat. That wasn't just last year. That was five years ago.
Five years ago—when summer break had just begun. Five years ago—when I was still in elementary school, too small for my uniform, still scribbling answers in childish handwriting.
I stumbled to the mirror, and what I saw staring back at me wasn't the sixteen-year-old me who'd laughed off a dumb question in class yesterday. It was the younger me, with rounder cheeks, a shorter frame, and eyes wide with disbelief.
The world hadn't just given me back a summer. It had thrown me all the way back to the beginning.
Summer break, 2021. A time I thought I'd never see again.