* 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. 

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

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. 

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.

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. 

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

But when it came to my experience, well, it was quite the opposite. 

“Talk about unnecessary.” 

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

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. 

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. 

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

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. 

Point is, I was satisfied with my first life, and I had no interest in doing it a second time… 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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

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. 

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. 

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. 

Forget thinking about this swimming up the river of time stuff, I wanted to play. Old games always had a certain charm to them. 

…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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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!” 

My sister being my sister, she looked down, smiling wordlessly, and did the same with her teddy bear. 

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. 

“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. 

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

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. 

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. 

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

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. 

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. 

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.” 

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. 

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. 

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

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… 

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. 

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. 

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.” 

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. 

We were implicitly allowed to stay at school until 9 PM that night, so everyone finished up early so we could have a blast. 

It might have been a little after 6 PM. As I took in the breeze on the veranda outside, I watched my classmates making props and rehearsing a play in the classroom. 

As I searched my mind for the cause, I realized it was that girl who would soon become irreplaceable. 

Just past nine, when I couldn’t bear to wait any longer, a classmate spoke up. 

I intuitively accepted on the spot, and received a number of props. Among them was a red Santa hat. 

I would’ve been willing to just take it by myself, but then from the corner of the room came a voice: “Wait, I’ll help you!” 

Sleepy eyes, long eyelashes, always thinking. As I said, I’d been searching for a girl with those characteristics, and found a few, but Tsugumi matched them most closely. 

She smiled at the corner of her mouth, took some reindeer antlers from among the props we were carrying, and put them on me. 

The lights were already off in the gym, so it was pitch black. After we put down the props behind the stage, Tsugumi looked at me and grinned mischievously. 

I agreed, of course. 

We ended up going home together that night. We both seemed sad to leave each other, so we talked for about an hour more on a park bench. 

Except, well… what happened in cherry blossom season, in my third year of middle school. 

As in my first life, after school, when we were the only two in the classroom, I confessed to Tsugumi. 

But she just looked worried and said “Umm…”, faintly trying to smile. 

Perhaps my desperation managed to move her, and turned a confession that ordinarily would not have won her over into one that did. 

Having lost my “goddess of happiness” for my second life, I was as powerless as a vinyl bag in a storm. 

For the first month or so, I wanted to believe it was some kind of mistake. Thought Tsugumi must’ve had some reason to lie to me. 

But fifty days passed since my confession, and even I couldn’t believe that anymore. It was too late for her to take it back. 

It seemed no matter how hard I tried, faithfully recreating the past was impossible from the start. 

But it was too late now. Five years had passed since I swam upstream, and my mental and physical ages had mostly realigned. 

On a related topic, a life without Tsugumi was so hard to bear that I stopped really trying to listen to lectures after that, putting me down a few notches in academics.

But hey, you try emptying your head and being stuck back in elementary school for a few years. I think you’ll get what I mean then. 

I never asked for a lot. If you ask me, I was pretty humble. I thought my attitude was commendable. 

Well, maybe I’m just borrowing the word “God” to refer to the justice of the world and all that. I suppose that’s it. 

* 13 * 

So with all that going on, by the time high school came around, I was a very gloomy individual. 

Well, I went to a way worse high school than the one I’d gotten into before. And thanks to all the people without a shred of intelligence there, my budding misanthropy bloomed. 

So I kept putting more distance around me. As a result, I was the epitome of a loner. 

I might say my time at school was reduced to nothing but suffering. 

I thought that with time, things would get better. But the only thing time does is bring things to their end. 

As such, I barely even remember my second-time high school years. I even tossed out the yearbook with hardly a glance inside. 

It was a painful time. Even class trips, which should have been great fun, were just agonizing. 

But those are feelings anybody can have. It’s basically just self-discrepancy. 

But then again, I felt like I’d already confirmed that the world didn’t have any sense of fairness. The world I lived in didn’t seem equal enough for that to be true. 

But see, he’s placing third when he’s trying his best to place first. If he were only aiming for third to begin with, he’d probably end up seventh or ninth. 

I was shivering and waiting for the bus that went to the train station. 

My melton coat was completely white with snow, and my face and ears were painfully frozen. 

There was a warm light coming from a residence near the terminal. 

I found it far more beautiful than all those light decorations which clumsily aimed for beauty. 

The bus finally arrived, though it should’ve been there thirty minutes ago. 

I was sure I’d catch a cold in this weather, but I didn’t really care so much. I’d have a valid excuse to take school off, right? 

“Why?”, I thought first of all. The high schools we went to should’ve been miles apart. 

At the time, I still had sort of a half-resentment for Tsugumi. She hadn’t accepted my good will, so now I wasn’t going to give it to her. 

I gave Tsugumi a rude glance, but she didn’t seem to notice it. Maybe I was so insignificant to her that she’d long forgotten about me. 

Shivering in the cold, she seemed so lonely. 

But I told myself that was what she was thinking. A happy misinterpretation. 

After all, people can use misunderstandings as food to keep living. 

First on the agenda was studying like mad to get into the same university as Tsugumi. 

“Concentration by elimination,” maybe? Has a nice ring to it. I did away with all choices that weren’t studying. 

It’s a dangerous method to be sure. If you mess it up, it’s an easy way to make yourself otherwise-talentless with nothing to live for. But I guess I hung on by playing music as I studied. 

Strangely, Lennon-related memories stood out a little bit more than others. Well, I suppose his music survives the ages, so maybe it’s not that odd. 

I read in a magazine once that a good song, even if it doesn’t suit your mood at all at first, grows on you as you listen to it again and again. 

Since then, I would always play Lennon while I studied. 

Finally having a clear goal in mind, I got more serious with high school. 

But the moment lectures became something that mattered to me, it started passing in the blink of an eye. 

I’d practice rote memorization even on the bus and the train, and after I got in the habit of spending a fixed amount of time at my desk at night, I stopped having sleepless nights worrying about nonsense. 

By cramming an extraordinary amount of info into my head in such a short time, old memories got pushed aside, diminished in importance. 

My final year of high school was actually a rather peaceful one. The part I remember most was the finale, the exam cramming in early winter. Memories of being cooped up in my room studying. 

Behind and to the right of my chair was a heater, angled just right so it wasn’t blowing hot air directly at me. 

Once every two or three hours, I’d get my coat on, go outside, and take in the wintery air. 

It wasn’t so bad, actually. Maybe there was even a soothing, self-satisfying quality to it. 

In the end, I stretched my academic skills as far as they could go. 

It was a wonderful feeling. I had finally gotten my confidence back. I felt like I could do anything then. 

So that was good. Things were going good so far. 

When the college entrance ceremony was over, I looked around for my former girlfriend… for Tsugumi. 

If nothing was necessarily going to be the same, perhaps even because of the fact that Tsugumi and I didn’t get together, it was a clear possibility that she went to a different one. 

Plus, I had honed my sensor for distinguishing between Tsugumi and other people. I’m not even kidding. If you’ve ever had an intense love for someone when you’re young, you’ll know what I mean. 

The new students, of which I was one, would see people they knew and cry exaggerated shrieks of joy at recognizing each other. 

I was envious, to be honest. Unfortunately, there was no one I knew, and if there were I don’t think I’d want to talk to a single one. So I didn’t get to do any of that. 

By this time, I had become pretty economical. Since my life was lacking in joy, whenever I came upon the slightest happiness, I ruminated on it and got all I could out of it, like licking every bit of an ice cream cone. 

I had my hair neatly cut, wore a necktie, and loosened my face muscles for my reunion with Tsugumi. 

I wasn’t sure what to say to her, so I started by walking over. 

But no voice came out of my open mouth. 

I felt my temperature plummet. 

* 18 * 

My former girlfriend was walking, arms linked, with a man I didn’t know. 

I didn’t really want to think about that reality, but I thought I was prepared for it. 

As I’ve said before, my memories of my first life weren’t concrete, but he perfectly matched characteristics like “friendly smile” and “melodic voice.” 

“Doppelganger” came to mind. 

But there were some problems in considering the man to be my doppelganger. That is to say, my first and second selves had become quite distinct in every sense. 

If there was a doppelganger here, it felt more reasonable to assume it was me, not him. 

I knew then that I had failed. Had been I able to exactly recreate my first life, I would have surely become the man before my eyes. 

It was now no wonder why I hadn’t been able to date Tsugumi. 

Until then, I couldn’t really muster the energy to loathe anyone. Because to consider someone a villain, you need to see yourself on the side of justice, right? 

I couldn’t do that. I knew better than anyone that on the second loop, I was a worthless human being. 

I could only stand there dumbfounded, shouting in my head “Hey, that’s not right! That’s MY role!” 

What can I say? If Tsugumi had merely gotten a boyfriend, I could live with that. Heck, I might even think “I’ll take her back,” tell myself “I’m way better than him!” 

Basically, someone who assumed the position I had in my first life, and grew up to be exactly like I had then, appeared to be Tsugumi’s boyfriend. 

“Can I beat myself?” 

Had I been competing with a different type of man, I could have found my own virtues to emphasize. 

But competing with a man who was the exact same as me? I didn’t know how I could win then. 

The months to follow were full of surprises. Since my other self was perfectly recreating my college experience, one event after another. 

Oh, as an observer, I couldn’t help but remark just how happy I had been in my first life. Again. And yet he wasn’t disagreeable, he was kind to everyone. 

I hate to admit it, but him and Tsugumi walking together sure made a good picture. They were a walking fairy tale, you might say. 

But that wasn’t what I wanted. 

Yet it felt strange to think that even this seemingly perfect person could end up like me with the slightest misstep. 

When you look at it that way, maybe there aren’t so much good and bad people as there are good and bad environments which people grow up in. 

I rarely went to school, didn’t have a part-time job or anything, didn’t meet with anyone, didn’t eat well, drank all day, and slept the rest of the time. 

Other than going to the convenience store to buy beer, cigarettes, and junk food, I hardly went out there. 

I became very self-conscious about how much better he’d do every little thing. 

Thanks to this, even things that were perfectly ordinary before become all of a sudden unbearable. 

Since then, every day I came and went to school alone, I was overcome with emptiness thinking how Tsugumi wasn’t there next to me. 

And this gradually started to happen every waking moment. 

I was aware of Tsugumi not being there all the time, and I was stricken with a sense of loss. 

When I walked through town and saw couples in high school and whatnot, I was wordless. 

On days they stayed late for clubs they’d bike home together, on rainy days they’re share an umbrella, on snowy days they’d hold hands through their pockets. 

I knew how happy Tsugumi would be able to make me, and I probably knew how happy I would be able to make her. 

It just further reminded me that I didn’t have anyone to share those wondrous things with. 

I’d given up. There was really nothing I could do. I was only a step away from going mad. 

Of course, though, I was made miserable that day even despite my decision not to go. 

Because unfortunately, I remembered what this day had been like in my first life. 

Well, suppose I shouldn’t have expected any less, as it was an important one. 

First-life me and Tsugumi were rarely ever apart after fifteen, and would hug and kiss all the time, even when people’s eyes were on us. 

So we held out as best we could. We managed to put our anticipation aside… for a while. 

But the action I actually chose to do was the polar opposite. And why I did it, I don’t know myself. 

I hid underneath the table. Yeah, like a fire drill. And I started sobbing. For hours and hours, like a kid. 

But once you despair, it’s all over. Because that’s at least half-accepting that it’s all worthless. 

* 23 * 

My room had gotten awfully dim. I heard the chirping of crickets outside the window. 

I consented to the fact that I wasn’t the right man for Tsugumi, and that I could never beat Tokiwa. 

So then what am I to do?, I asked myself. That’s easy, I replied. 

Wouldn’t say I was at my most sane, no. 

Then, of course, Tsugumi would be lonely again and move toward me, the next best thing. 

No matter how you looked at it, it wasn’t rational, and even if I succeeded in murdering Tokiwa, it was difficult to say it would fundamentally solve everything. 

Those driven into a corner really don’t tend to have good thoughts. Their outlook is too narrow. 

But as far as I could tell, it seemed like my mind hadn’t matured any further than twenty. 

Tell the truth, what mattered most in my journey back to twenty were those last few months.