(Author: You might want to read the Prologue in the auxiliary chapter for a better understanding of the context of this story.)
Melvin woke up screaming… if his loud, muffled grunts could be called that.
His body jolted upright as if pulled from a grave, lungs dragging in air so violently his chest burned. Cold sweat soaked through his clothes, his heart hammering hard enough to make his vision pulse.
For a moment, it was difficult to tell where he was.
Stone floors? Crimson moon? A whip slick with blood? No.
Those images flashed before his eyes and shattered like glass.
Blinking his eyes, Melvin looked around and felt the world rearrange itself.
There was the cracked ceiling fan creaking overhead as if struggling to turn. Then, the familiar scent of damp cement and old electronics filled the air. A single desk rested against the wall, just adjacent to his window, cluttered with notebooks, an empty bottle of water, and—
Melvin froze on the bed he lay on, not wanting to believe his sight for a moment.
There, on the desk, was his laptop. It was neither broken nor shattered. Not even lying on the floor beside the empty container.
It was simply sitting neatly on the desk as if it were some majestic being.
His breath hitched as his brain seemed to reset, and the next thing, he reviewed himself.
He was not wearing the battle gear as supposed, but was on his normal day wear—a sleek, white polo accompanied with its matching trousers.
Then it dawned on him—he was alive.
Faced with this reality, he decided to check for body casualties as he lifted his trembling hands before his face and felt no blood. Not even a scar. That wasn't even the more shocking part…
He brought down his hands and looked them over. His fingers were slimmer, not calloused, and very innocently not touched by battle… yet.
Sixteen. He was sixteen years old again.
"No…" His voice cracked as a sharp pain stabbed into his skull. And then, memories slammed into him all at once.
He remembered the thick, crimson fluid in the sky; the resultant effects of its droplets; the hospital; and the strange girl. Everything that he was very certain had happened flashed in detail before his mind.
Melvin clutched his head, grinding his teeth as the torrent of memories settled into place with terrifying clarity.
He wasn't dreaming. It couldn't be a dream. It was more or less this kind of stuff he'd watch in some anime or fantastical movies.
Melvin believed he had regressed.
The ceiling fan continued its lazy rotation, unaware that the world was about to end again.
Slowly, Melvin turned his head toward the window. Then, swinging his legs off the bed, he stood and, with unsteady movements and knees that nearly buckled out of dread, crossed the room in three long strides and yanked the curtain aside.
Sunlight streamed through the thin curtains, revealing the clear blue sky and the familiar noise of the street. Just as it had happened in the memories that flashed in his head.
'Everything is normal.'
Just then, a sudden realization hit him, and his eyes snapped to the desk. He grabbed his phone with hands driven by panic and allowed the date and time to stare back at him.
A grim expression appeared on his face, and his grip tightened until his knuckles became visibly white.
"So it really is today."
A low laugh escaped his mouth, almost hysterical. At the same time, he ended the laughter abruptly and grimaced.
He wasn't sure why he had laughed, but considering what was bound to happen today… his actions were rather meticulous.
'Forgive me,' he mused and staggered backward until he collapsed onto the chair before the desk, his mind racing as he glared at the screen of his laptop.
Staring back at him was the not-up-to-quarter-finished code he was developing for his program. He was supposed to be working on it the night before, before his brain drained and he decided to take a rest that led to a deep sleep.
The codes were what he hoped would usher in a dimensional kind of program, which he had planned to name Time Warp.
Really, if only the three existential phenomena of nature—past, present, and future—could be warped. Perhaps…
'Well, I'm living in one of them now. My past.'
If this was regression, then the rules were clear. Melvin didn't bother continuing the codes for his program, knowing that once noon set, Awakening would begin and Spatial Tears would open across the sky.
People would change—some for the better, most for the worse, and many for the pitiful.
His jaw clenched as he gulped, remembering his experience back then. If life in the future had continued, he would have been scrambling with his twenty-one-year-old life.
However, now he had traveled back five years into the past with experience grueling into his mind; he was almost confident that things would turn out for the better, especially for him.
All he needed to do was find a way to alter the circumstances that should have followed the Awakening… perhaps staying back in his room would do the job, right?
After all, he seemed to have awakened too, but so late.
'Wait…'
At this thought, he remembered the system that had come to his rescue before his death. He remembered that he had chosen the affirmative option provided by the system.
So, why all these? Why did he regress? Was that the system's way of keeping him alive?
Plenty of questions with no clear answers.
And even if the system wanted to keep him alive by regression, those blurry last words he saw before he blacked out didn't prove that speculation.
Although blurred, he had managed to see the wordings: [Awakening Affinity...].
A smile escaped Melvin's lips at that realization, and he raised his hands, opening his palm as if he wanted to summon power. A magical power or even feel a sign of it.
But nothing happened.
Relief and fear tangled together in his chest as he put his hand back down, disappointed.
"If you came back with me…" Melvin growled, eyes darkening yet a little bit spooky, "then you are stuck with me too."
With the relief of having the system within him, Melvin believed the future was no longer fixed. He wasn't even sure if he was supposed to be more terrified of the forthcoming possibilities than the apocalypse… if there would be any.
For some reason, Melvin began to doubt that he had actually regressed. His doubts were based on the fact that if the system still lives within him now, then… he wasn't even sure what to call that phenomenon.
"Come out, system, if you are here," he called, trying to mimic the protagonists he read in novels.
Not like he expects to be one… but just, like–
Beep.
His phone screen flashed beside his laptop, and he saw it. It was exactly noon, which meant that the thick, crimson fluid should begin to surface in the sky, and the happy, busy humans would begin to morph.
With agitation, he rose from the chair and leaned towards the window, sliding the thin curtains to clarify his view.
And—
'Of course I regressed…' he thought, convincing his sanity.
The day was still normally noisy with the bustling activities still going on.
'…some things are just strangely happening. Not bad, just strange, like that—'
Knock. Knock.
Just then, a knock sounded at the door.
'Like that knock,' Melvin mused as he turned sharply on the chair towards the door, which was positioned a few meters away from his bed.
'Perhaps, a restart?'
The knock sounded for the second time, yanking him from his thoughts. Hesitantly, he rose to his feet and approached the door.