Chapter Text
The glare of its white beams lights up the night sky above him. The impact tossed him into the air, onto the hood of the car.
Everything happened so fast. He didn’t feel anything for a moment but a sense of flying through the air.
In that split second, his thoughts went from his broken heart to the heart shattering words written in his wife’s diary. To their wedding day-to their first date-to their first everything…then to his childhood years.
Life looked through the lenses of a microscope was fascinating. The brakes screeched, and he hit the ground hard, his head bouncing off the asphalt.
There was a shriek of brakes as cars stopped, loud horns, screams and voices filled his ears. Then there was nothing but darkness.
I’m dying, he thought.
….
Go Eun-taek woke up with a gasp. He was lying on his back on a cold floor. His mind was in a shambles. His heart burned, and his limbs ached all over. He was staring at a ceiling, not really registering what he was seeing.
The thud of his skull and body hitting the pavement and haunted screams of those around him still hung fresh in his ears.
“Go Eun-taek? Are you okay?” a familiar voice echoes in his ears. A voice he hasn’t heard in a while. He glanced around. The light was bright, and he was surrounded by kids.
“Go Eun-taek?” the voice came again, then a face hovered above him. It was his high school friend, Oh Nam-joo, “Are You okay?”
This must be heaven. He thought. How else was he seeing and hearing his friend, Oh Nam-joo. He’d lost Nam-joo four years ago in a car accident.
ironic. He thought.
But the Oh Nam-joo in front of him was younger. In his teens, he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt.
So, I must be in heaven.
“What’s wrong with him?” another familiar female voice came. Eun-taek turns and see’s Baek Ho-rang, his other friend from high school, “Should we take him to the nurses office?”
Nurse office? He thought. Why would I need to see a nurse if I’m dead. Eun-taek pushed himself up to a sitting position with Nam-joo’s help.
Gathering his surroundings, he saw kids wearing gym clothes, some playing and some sitting on the benches.
He was in his gym class.
Was this his idea of heaven? He thought. How lame. Some believe that when you die, your deepest desires manifest, and you return to your best years. At least that was what he saw in movies.
If he was to describe his high school years. It would be uneventful and gray. After graduation, he’d imagine what it would have been if he had done things differently.
Then during his last year of college, he reunited with the love of his life, Im Sol. It was fate or at least he thought it was until he came across her diary.
Then he was hit by a car and died. And now here he was.
“I can’t believe im dead,” he groans.
“What’re you talking about? Says Nam-joo, puzzled, as he stared at him with concern, “the ball really scrambled your head.”
“Ball? You mean a car,” he says.
Ho-rang scoffs, “He probably has a concussion, we should take him to the nurse’s office Eun-taek gazed at Ho-rang. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail like she always did during gym class back in high school. She too was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. A pair of glasses sat upon on nose.
Ho-rang and he went their separate ways after high school. Then a memory all sudden came flushing back.
He remembered her love confession for him on their last day of school. He had rejected her. Eun-taek rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment and redirected his gaze back to Nam-joo.
“So do you also have memories of the accident?” he asks.
Nam-joo stares at him dumbfounded, “Yeah, let’s go see the nurse,” he says holding onto Eun-taek’s arm.
“What for?” he says, confused himself. If this was heaven, shouldn’t someone be guiding him? He wonders.
***
Being in the nurse office, he felt a wave of déjà vu. The nurse found nothing wrong with him but told him to rest until the next class. No concussion. Eun-taek felt strange. Like he was in a weird time warp or something. He was hit by a car that was for sure.
But he woke up in the middle of gym class. Nam-joo told him he was hit in the face by a ball during gym class.
Eun-taek knew he was telling the truth. During his third year of high school, he was sent to the nurse office after a ball knocked him off his feet during gym class. This felt the same. Though his memories of high school were faded.
Eun-taek exhaled, getting of the bed, slightly annoyed. He searched around the rather empty office. It consisted of two beds. A small drawer. It was completely white like a hospital room. His eyes caught sight of a calendar, he felt like he was seeing things. Approaching the calendar that hung on the wall. The calendar read Monday, September 11, 2023.
“2023?” he muttered to himself. That was barely two weeks into his senior year.
Impossible. He thought. I’m not dead? He proceeded to the restroom located in the nurse's office and stood in front of the mirror.
In the mirror, a familiar face stared back at him.…round face, dark brown hair, and brown eyes with smooth, even features.
It was the teenage version of himself. His face was more than a decade younger. There was a red mark where the ball hit his forehead, just like before.
This was the same memory.
Had he traveled back to his last year of high school? Why? He pinched himself on the cheek and felt the pain.
This wasn’t a dream.
He must have somehow traveled back in time, or this was someone or something’s sick prank. Eun-taek felt a bit nauseous. He went back and sat on the bed; he was lying on before. He took a deep breath to calm himself.
Was this god’s way of giving him a second chance? It was hard to believe things he’d read about in manhwa and saw in dramas were real.
If he was correct, and he had somehow traveled back in time, he was reliving his third year of high school all over again.
He gasps in realization. No matter what the truth was. This was a chance to redo his life. To fix things.
To make Im Sol truly fall in love with him so she doesn’t regret marrying him, like she does in the future.