The noise of the dining hall was a relentless wave, with voices from every class and grade merging into a single roar. The air hung thick with the scent of fried chicken and warm rice. My back was to the open expanse, but my eyes still felt a phantom pull toward a distant table. Today, the distance between us wasn't a choice; it was simply the reality of finding an empty space in the crush of students.
I settled into a chair with June and two boys from our orientation group. I hadn't spoken much with them then, so their presence felt familiar but not close. June turned to me, a friendly grin on his face. "Hey," he said, already preparing to scoop a mouthful of food. "I invited them. They're in our class, 10-B. Pretty cool, huh?"
I offered a small nod in their direction, a quiet gesture of acceptance that my old body would have made. "Yeah, that's cool," I replied, my voice calm and even. I offered no more, not needing to as I continued my meal. This was the boy they would know.
June, with his usual speed, had already finished his meal while I was only halfway through mine. He sat back in his chair, now a force of conversation, filling the silence with a story from junior high as he talked to the two boys he had invited. Later, after quietly finishing my own lunch, I took out a small book from my pocket. It was a flimsy shield, but a necessary one, as I dove into the battle happening in my mind.
The puzzle room replayed in a layered film, a reel of memories both old and new. I focused on a fleeting moment just before we left. We stood there, the completed puzzle a testament to our unspoken connection, and in that sliver of time, I saw it. The subtle gesture. Her hand had extended, just a fraction, the invitation to hold it as clear as day. And then, as quick as it came, the offer was gone. Her hand returned to her side before mine could even twitch in response. I had pretended not to notice. I had let the moment pass, a ghost of a mistake from a life I was so desperate to change.
Then came the walk. Twice. My mind, with clinical precision, counted the instances of a soft contact that should have meant nothing but felt like a universe. Each time, she had quickly, almost violently, maintained her distance, as if the touch was a mistake, an intrusion. The man I had become screamed at me to be cautious. She wants distance. She is not comfortable.
But the heart of the boy still living inside me ached with the profound familiarity of her touch. It remembered her hand in mine, the way she would lean her head on my shoulder, the quiet music of her laughter that once felt like home. My past was a specter, its voice a hollow ache, screaming at me to reach for her, to close the distance. But the rational, broken mind knew the cost of that comfort. It knew that chasing that feeling had led me to lose her before.
My plan, my singular obsession since waking up in this body, was to be a different person. This was the long game, a strategy more complicated than any chess match. My decision to choose the chess club over the literature club was no accident. It was the first move in a carefully constructed plan to create a new narrative. To be the boy who wasn't there in her memories.
The flashback to our past was the most painful part of my strategy. In my past life, I had made a singular, fatal mistake: I joined the literature club. It was through that club that I discovered her secret, that she wrote poetry not for anyone to read, but for herself. It was there we became so close—so close that she would lean into my embrace without a thought.
But that closeness was a curse. We became inseparable best friends. She had confessed to me once, with a vulnerability that had pierced my heart, that she could never be with me romantically. The friendship was too important. She was terrified of losing me, of tainting our sacred bond. And in her fear, I lost her completely. I watched her live out a beautiful future that belonged to someone else.
My decision to join the chess club wasn't about the game itself. It's about recognizing the pattern and then deliberately breaking it. I had to become the kind of person who played the long game, who didn't rush in. I had to become someone who wasn't so readily available, so easily placed in the role of "best friend." I needed to be an enigma, a puzzle she couldn't solve.
A surge of cold dread spread on my body as I recalled our conversation after the game of "Two Truths and a Lie." She had seen right through my clumsy attempts to be a different person. "You are not a person who hates homework," she had said, "you are a person who always thinks about the future." Her words were not a baseless accusation, but a terrifyingly accurate assessment. She saw the man, not the boy. She saw the ghost of my past, even though my actions were meant to erase it.
This was the core of my new problem. My meticulously crafted chess-board, the pieces I thought I controlled, was already in disarray. She was moving pieces I hadn't even known existed, a player I hadn't prepared for. My memories, my broken map, had become a liability. She was responding to a past I was trying to forget, but a future she seemed to sense.
I closed the book, my fingers tracing the worn cover. My past self had poured over books like this, a desperate student trying to find answers that weren't there. I had come back to save myself from a chance that I had ruined, but what if she never gave me that chance in this life-time? What if I was the ghost in her story, and she was the one with the real map? The thought was a jarring, terrifying gambit on a chessboard I no longer knew how to play.
And so I would wait. I would watch her, a silent guardian from the far side of time, and play the long game. Because in this second life, I wasn't just trying to win; I was fighting on a map that I feared was being drawn by two hands, and my own was no longer the only one in control.