The walk to school had never felt like this before. Every step seemed to pulse with energy, every breath filled my lungs with possibility instead of the usual teenage dread of another day in educational purgatory. The morning air was crisp and clean, carrying the scent of cherry blossoms that would bloom in just a few weeks—a detail I'd completely missed during my original senior year, too absorbed in my own anxiety and self doubt to notice the beauty surrounding me.
But this time was different.
My school bag felt lighter despite containing the same textbooks and notebooks that had weighed me down for months. My uniform—pressed and neat thanks to Emi's perfectionist tendencies—fit better somehow, as if my body had already begun responding to the decision I'd made at breakfast. Even my reflection in shop windows showed something new, a straightness to my spine, a steadiness in my gaze that hadn't been there twenty four hours ago.
The other students streaming toward Sakura High looked exactly as I remembered them—tired, anxious, caught up in the petty dramas and social hierarchies that seemed so important at seventeen. But seeing them through the lens of ten additional years of life experience was like watching a movie I'd already seen, knowing how all the storylines would play out.
There was Tanaka from my literature class, destined to become a successful accountant but never quite shake his regret about not pursuing his dream of writing novels. Suzuki from chemistry, who would marry her high school boyfriend and spend the next decade wondering what she'd missed by settling down so young. Yamamoto, the class clown who used humor to hide his crippling insecurity and would struggle with depression throughout his twenties.
And there, sitting on the low wall outside the convenience store where she always waited for me, was Yuki.
The sight of her hit me like a physical blow, stealing my breath and making my steps falter. In my memories of that final night, she'd been broken and bloodied, her spirit crushed by violence I'd been too weak to prevent. But here, now, she was whole, beautiful....alive, her dark hair catching the morning sunlight as she sketched something in the notebook balanced on her knees.
She looked up as I approached, and her smile could have powered the entire city. "There you are! I was starting to think you'd decided to skip school and become a full time hermit." Her voice carried the same musical quality that had first attracted me to her three years ago, when we'd been paired together for a history project and I'd discovered that the quiet girl who sat by the window was actually brilliant and funny and kinder than anyone had a right to be.
"Sorry I'm late," I said, settling onto the wall beside her with a careful distance that felt natural after years of friendship but also left room for the relationship I hoped we might build. "Uncle Hiroshi and I had an important conversation this morning. About my future."
"Oh?" She closed her notebook—but not before I caught a glimpse of the drawing inside, a detailed sketch of a boxer in mid combination that captured the grace and power of the sport with startling accuracy. "What kind of future are we talking about? Please tell me you're not planning to become a professional video game tester or something equally ridiculous."
I laughed, genuinely amused by how well she knew my original personality. The Kai she remembered was exactly the type to harbor secret dreams of turning his hobbies into careers while never taking any real steps to make it happen. "Actually, I told him I want to start training seriously. Boxing, I mean. Competitive boxing."
Her pencil slipped, leaving a dark mark across her drawing. "You what? Kai, are you feeling alright? You've never shown any interest in actually fighting before. You always said you preferred to watch and analyze."
"I know how it sounds," I said, choosing my words carefully. The last thing I wanted was to worry her or make her think I was having some kind of breakdown. "But I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about what I want my life to look like. About what kind of person I want to be. And I realized that all my knowledge about boxing doesn't mean anything if I never test it, never find out if I can actually apply what I've learned."
She studied my face with the same intensity she brought to her artwork, looking for signs of whatever had prompted this sudden change. "This is really important to you, isn't it? I can see it in your eyes—there's something different about the way you're talking about it."
"It is important," I confirmed, resisting the urge to tell her exactly how important, how the decision to become strong enough to protect her had been forged in the moment of watching her suffer. "I want to be someone who can stand up for the people I care about. Someone who doesn't just watch from the sidelines when things get difficult."
"The people you care about?" There was something in her voice, a note of curiosity mixed with something warmer. "Anyone in particular you're planning to protect?"
The question hung in the air between us, loaded with possibility and the kind of delicate tension that defined the space between friendship and something more. In my original timeline, it had taken me another two years to work up the courage to tell Yuki how I felt about her. Two years of missed opportunities and careful distances, of admiring her from afar while convincing myself that someone as talented and beautiful as her could never be interested in someone as ordinary as me.
"Maybe," I said softly, meeting her gaze directly instead of looking away as the old Kai would have done. "If she'll let me."
A blush spread across her cheeks like spilled paint, and she ducked her head to hide behind the curtain of her hair. "Well," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, "I'm sure whoever she is would appreciate having someone willing to fight for her. Even if she's perfectly capable of taking care of herself."
"Especially because she's capable of taking care of herself," I replied, remembering all the times in my previous life when Yuki had shown strength and resilience that put my own cowardice to shame. "The strongest people deserve to have someone in their corner."
We sat in comfortable silence for a moment, watching the stream of students making their way toward the school gates. The morning rush was reaching its peak, and soon we'd have to join the crowd or risk being late for first period. But for now, it was enough to sit beside her in the spring sunshine and pretend that the future held nothing but possibility.
"Can I ask you something?" Yuki said eventually, her fingers absently tracing the edges of her notebook. "What changed? I mean, you've been the same thoughtful, analytical Kai for as long as I've known you. And now suddenly you're talking about competitive boxing like it's your calling in life. Did something happen?"
The question cut deeper than she could have known. How could I explain that I'd lived an entire life already, that I'd seen what happened when good people stayed passive while evil flourished around them? How could I tell her about the nightmares that weren't nightmares, the memories of a future that would never come to pass if I could help it?
"I had a dream," I said finally, settling on the closest thing to the truth I could share. "A really vivid dream about what my life might look like if I never took any risks, never pushed myself to become stronger. And I realized that I don't want to spend the next ten years wondering what might have been if I'd had the courage to try."
"What kind of dream?" she asked, genuine curiosity overriding any impulse to tease me about taking my subconscious so seriously.
"The kind where you watch everyone you care about get hurt because you weren't strong enough to protect them," I said, the words carrying more weight than I'd intended. "The kind where you realize that all your good intentions and careful planning don't mean anything if you don't have the power to back them up when it matters."
She was quiet for a long moment, processing the intensity in my voice. When she spoke again, her tone was gentle but serious. "That sounds like a terrible dream. But Kai, you know that you don't have to become a fighter to be strong, right? There are lots of ways to protect people and make a difference in the world."
"You're right," I agreed, standing up and shouldering my bag as the warning bell echoed across the school grounds. "But this is the way that feels right for me. And I think... I think it's something I need to prove to myself, even if I can't fully explain why."
She stood as well, slipping her notebook into her bag with practiced efficiency. "Well, if you're serious about this, you'll need to be careful. Boxing is dangerous, and I worry about what might happen if you get hurt."
The concern in her voice made my chest tighten with emotions I didn't know how to process. In my original timeline, by the time I'd finally worked up the courage to pursue her romantically, she'd been so used to thinking of me as a friend that it had taken months to shift our dynamic. But here, now, there was something different in the way she looked at me—as if my decision to pursue boxing had revealed some hidden aspect of my personality that intrigued her.
"I promise I'll be careful," I said, falling into step beside her as we joined the flow of students heading toward the main building. "Uncle Hiroshi knows what he's doing, and he won't let me take unnecessary risks while I'm learning."
"Good," she said firmly. "Because I happen to like you exactly the way you are, and I'd hate to see you get your brain scrambled for the sake of proving some point to yourself."
"You like me exactly the way I am?" I asked, unable to keep the smile out of my voice. In my original timeline, it had taken years before she'd admitted to having feelings for me, years of careful friendship and gradual emotional intimacy that had eventually blossomed into love.
"Don't let it go to your head," she said, but I could see her fighting back a smile of her own. "I'm just saying that if you're going to start throwing punches, you should make sure you can still hold an intelligent conversation afterward."
"I'll do my best to keep my wit intact," I promised as we reached the entrance to the building. "Though I can't make any guarantees about my looks."
"Please," she said with a laugh that made my heart skip beats, "as if anything could make you less handsome than you already are."
The words hung in the air between us as we climbed the stairs toward our respective classrooms, carrying a weight of possibility that hadn't existed in my original timeline. Everything was different now—my perspective, my goals, my understanding of what really mattered in life. But some things, like the way Yuki could make me feel like the most important person in the world with just a casual compliment, remained beautifully constant.
As I took my seat in homeroom and watched her disappear down the hallway toward her own classroom, I made another silent promise to add to the one I'd made at breakfast. I would become strong enough to protect her, skilled enough to face any threat that came for us, and wise enough to never again mistake passivity for peace.
But more than that, I would make sure she knew how much she meant to me long before it was too late to matter.
The gentle Kai who had died in that alley might be gone forever, but the love that had driven him to make his final oath remained stronger than ever.