Here’s the thing about knowing the future: it’s the ultimate cheat code, until the game glitches.
I know Bitcoin is going to hit sixty-nine grand. I know which startups will turn into tech giants and which ones will crash faster than a drunk celebrity. I even know that in fifteen years, people will be paying real money for pictures of bored apes. I died a broke, overworked middle manager at thirty-five, and I woke up back in 2008 with the mental equivalent of a sports almanac in my brain.
I should be planning my empire. I should be buying Apple stock.
Instead, I’m staring at the back of a girl’s head—a girl who is supposed to be dead—while a rotting, invisible hand claws at my ankle, trying to drag me to hell.
There’s a bright red digital timer floating above her perfect black hair.
179 Days, 23 Hours, 59 Minutes.
Forget the stock market. If I don't figure out how to exorcise the demon under my desk before the bell rings, my second life is going to be significantly shorter than my first.
The first thing I noticed wasn't the smell of sulfur or the overwhelming sense of dread. It was the chalk dust.
It hung in the air like a low-res texture pack, catching the afternoon sunlight in a way that made my eyes water. The second thing I noticed was that my back didn't hurt. For a guy whose lumbar spine usually felt like a jagged game of Tetris by 2:00 PM, the absence of pain was more shocking than the realization that I was currently drooling on a wooden desk.
"Ren? Ren!"
The voice was distant, muffled, like audio playing through cheap earbuds.
I peeled my face off the varnish. My vision swam. I looked down at my hands. No wedding ring (obviously, since I died alone), no carpal tunnel brace, and—most disturbingly—no wrinkles. My skin looked disturbingly smooth.
System reboot? I thought, blinking. Did I finally stroke out during the Q3 budget meeting? Is this the afterlife?
I looked up.
"If you are quite finished projecting your astral form to another dimension, Mr. Ren, perhaps you could join us in reality?"
The class erupted into laughter. Not the polite, corporate chuckle you give the boss when he makes a bad joke, but the raw, hyena-like cackle of thirty bored teenagers.
Standing at the chalkboard was Mr. Henderson. He looked exactly as I remembered him: a comb-over fighting a losing war against gravity, and a beige sweater vest that screamed "I gave up on my dreams in the 90s." He was tapping a piece of chalk against a trigonometry equation that looked like alien hieroglyphics.
I blinked again. The classroom was a time capsule. I saw a Nokia flip phone being stealthily passed under a desk in row three. I saw a poster for the Beijing Olympics on the back wall.
2008.
Holy crap. I had actually pulled a Groundhog Day. I was seventeen again.
A surge of adrenaline, sharper than a triple-shot espresso, spiked through my veins. This was it. The Golden Ticket. I could fix everything. I could buy Amazon. I could actually floss. I could—
I tried to stand up, ready to declare my genius to the world, or at least excuse myself to the bathroom to hyperventilate.
I couldn't move.
It wasn't paralysis. It was physical resistance. Something cold and wet was clamped around my left ankle.
I looked down.
Under the desk, hidden in the shadows where the sunlight didn't reach, was a hand. But not a human hand. It was gray, bloated, and covered in what looked like weeping sores. It trailed off into a misty, vaporous arm that seemed to originate from the floor tiles themselves.
"What the hell..." I whispered.
I kicked at it. My sneaker passed right through the flesh, but the grip tightened, sending a jolt of freezing numbness up my shin. It felt like sticking your foot into a bucket of ice water mixed with sludge.
I looked around frantically. The guy next to me—Kevin, I think? The one who used to eat glue—was frantically copying notes, completely oblivious to the spectral limb trying to give me gangrene.
Okay. Assessment time, my inner manager narrated. Scenario: I have time-traveled. Variable: I am currently being assaulted by a physiological manifestation of... something gross. Conclusion: I am hallucinating, or the stress of high school has literally come to life to drag me down.
"Mr. Ren!" Henderson barked, slamming a ruler on his podium. "Since the ceiling seems to hold the answers, perhaps you can tell me the value of X in this quadrant?"
I stared at him. Then I looked back down at the ghost hand.
It was pulsing. I could see veins of black light throbbing under its translucent skin. And it wasn't just grabbing me; it was feeding. I could feel my energy, my actual physical stamina, draining out of my leg like a battery leak.
I needed to detach this asset immediately.33Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHsebt2XeCU
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Closing Note：I’m stuck on a plot point! Help me decide the Heroine's next move on our Discord: unplot_joshua.33Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo1EZxTitMr
and then Add to home screen.