The turn of the doorknob was an act of blind faith. The oak door opened without a single creak, revealing not a room, nor a landscape, but an explosion of white light and a sensory assault that shattered the silence of the void.
I was thrown from nothingness into totality. The first impact was the sound: the deafening roar of metal against metal, the sharp screech of brakes, the cacophony of a hundred overlapping conversations, the music from cheap headphones playing so loud I could make out the lyrics, the murmur of a street vendor shouting "gum, lollipops, chips!"
The second was the movement. A violent sway that made me stumble and fall against something warm and solid that turned out to be the shoulder of a man in an office shirt. "Watch it, dude," he muttered, pushing me away without looking. Instinctively, my hand gripped a cold, vertical metal pole to keep from falling.
The third was the smell. Sweat, cheap perfume, the aroma of street food filtering from outside, the scent of ozone and compressed humanity. My mind, accustomed for an eternity to blood, dust, fire, and nothingness, was overwhelmed.
I was in a subway car. A crowded, noisy, dirty, and vibrant Mexico City subway car, bustling with chaotic, mundane life.
My first thought, born of trauma, was: It's another level.
My eyes scanned the car, looking for the signs. The muted colors. The oppressive atmosphere. The empty, silent occupants. But I found none of that. The colors were garish and real: the bright orange of the seats, the faded blue of a detergent advertisement, the yellow blouse of a woman in front of me. The atmosphere wasn't oppressive; it was simply uncomfortable, the normal discomfort of being pressed against strangers at rush hour. And the people... they were alive. They looked at their phones, talked to each other, listened to music, dozed off from tiredness. They were real.
I looked at my hands, which still clung to the pole. They were my hands, but they looked younger. The scars from the forest of wounds had vanished. The skin on my right knuckles wasn't broken or bruised from hitting the mirror. They were unharmed.
With growing dread, I pushed my way to the car door and looked at my reflection in the dark glass, superimposed over the flickering lights of the tunnel.
The face that stared back at me was mine, yet not mine. It was my face from years ago. I must have been in my twenties. Thinner, with slightly longer hair, with that expression of studied boredom I used to mistake for profundity. It was the face of a boy who hadn't yet known hell. But my eyes... in the reflection, my eyes were those of now. They were old, burdened with the weight of ghosts and the knowledge of purgatories. They were the eyes of a man who had died over and over again.
Panic seized me. I reached into my jeans pocket and pulled out my phone. It wasn't my current phone. It was an old model, one I'd had four or five years ago, with a familiar crack in the corner of the screen. I turned it on with trembling fingers. The lock screen lit up.
The date was June 12, 2021.
The air left my lungs. I leaned against the door, my knees weak. It wasn't another level. I hadn't escaped to my present. I had been returned. I had been returned in time.
The enormity of that revelation was a universe in itself. It was a gift so immense, a mercy so unexpected, that it felt like a form of cruelty. What was I supposed to do with this? With all the knowledge, all the pain, all the guilt, trapped back in the body of the ignorant young man who had caused all that damage?
I unlocked the phone. My fingers moved purely from memory, opening the messaging app. And there they were. Conversations from a past life. I saw my mother's name, my sister's, my college friends'. And I saw hers.
Valeria.
I opened our chat. The messages were recent, from that very afternoon. They were casual, full of inside jokes and emojis. They were the messages of a couple still in love, not yet eroded by my neglect. The fight in the school office with my parents had not yet reached its peak. The breakup had not yet happened. The visit to the clinic, the secret that had shattered my soul, had not yet taken place. I was before. I was before.
A wave of hope so violent and pure washed over me that I had to close my eyes. It was a pain different from all others, the pain of impossible joy. A second chance. Not just a second chance at life, but a second chance in this life.
My phone vibrated in my hand, shaking me from my stupor. A new message had arrived. It was from her.
Valeria: Don't be late! I made katsudon :)
The word "katsudon" hit me with the force of a physical object. The memory of the feast of mirrors, of the taste of exhaustion and sadness, of the dozens of her smiling, vacant faces, came back to me with brutal clarity.
And then, I remembered. I remembered this day.
This exact day. I had received a bad grade on a midterm. A grade I deserved, but which in my arrogance, I felt was a personal affront. I spent the entire afternoon in a foul mood, feeling like a victim of the system, the professor, the world. And I carried that foul mood with me to the subway, and then to her apartment.
I remember the night perfectly. She greeted me with a smile, excited to have prepared my favorite dish. And I barely looked at her. I sat on her sofa and complained for an hour. I rebuffed her attempts to cheer me up. I interpreted her optimism as a lack of understanding of my "profound" grief. And when she, finally tired of my self-pitying monologue, gently suggested that perhaps I was overreacting, I exploded.
I told her she didn't understand anything. That her life was simple and easy, while mine was a constant struggle. I made her feel stupid for trying to help. It was our first real fight. Not the worst, but the first serious crack in the foundation. The first time I used my manufactured unhappiness as a weapon against her.
I was on the subway, at this very moment, on my way to her apartment to hurt her.
The universe, or the entity that ruled my hell, had not returned me to just any day. It had returned me to the beginning of one of my greatest transgressions. It had placed me at the scene of the crime, minutes before it was committed.
The train began to decelerate. The pre-recorded voice announced the next station. My station. Valeria's station.
The bell rang, a sharp, clear echo. The doors hissed open. People began to exit and enter.
The original Kenji, the ghost whose body I now inhabited, got off the train without thinking, wrapped in his own small storm of injustice. He walked towards Valeria's apartment to sour her gift of love with his poison.
I remained still, anchored to the metal pole. I looked at the open doors, the people moving on the platform. It was a portal. A choice. I could follow the script. I could get off the train and repeat the story, perhaps trying to change the dialogue, but following the same path.
Or I could change the fundamental action.
I thought of Koro, fading into nothingness, his last act of faith in me. I thought of the flame that had been born in the void, the oath I had made to myself. No more laziness. No more self-pity. No more taking the easy way out.
The easy way was to get off the train and make the night revolve around me, whether with anger or an exaggerated apology.
But the right way... the way of a man who had truly learned something... was different.
With a deep breath, the first truly free breath I had taken in an eternity, I pulled out my phone. I ignored the platform, the open doors, the script of the past.
My fingers, the fingers of a twenty-year-old, moved across the screen, but guided by the will of an old, scarred soul.
I wrote a reply to Valeria.
Kenji: Heading over. Had a bit of a rough day, but I'm dying to see you and hear all about yours. And thanks for the katsudon. You're the best.
I sent the message.
The subway doors closed. The train began to move again, leaving me inside, carrying me past my stop, past the past.
I wasn't going to her place that night. Not with my foul mood, not with my poison. I wasn't going to give her a slightly improved version of the same toxic evening. I was going to give her something I had never given her before: space. Space not to have to take care of me.
Later, when my own stupid internal storm had calmed, I would call her. And for the first time, the conversation wouldn't start with me. It would start with her.
The journey through hell was over. But the real work, the arduous, terrifying, and hopeful work of living an amended life, had just begun. And it had begun with a choice. With a text message. With the decision not to get off at the same old stop.