The television was on but he wasn't watching it.
His apartment was small and the walls were thin enough to hear neighbors arguing two units down, while the screen flickered with some reality show he didn't care about. He sat on a couch that sagged in the middle from years of use.
Fifty years old and this was what remained—four hundred square feet of rented space and a life that had stopped mattering three decades ago.
The beer bottle sat on the coffee table half-empty while condensation had formed a ring on the cheap wood, so his eyes tracked nothing in particular because focusing required energy he'd stopped having around year seven of his sentence.
The show cut to commercial while bright colors flashed across the screen, then the program interrupted.
"BREAKING NEWS" appeared in red letters across the bottom of the screen while the anchor's face replaced the commercial, so her expression carried gravity and excitement that news people used when they had a story that would drive ratings.
"We're interrupting our scheduled programming for breaking news out of Lyon," she said, while behind her a courthouse appeared with people gathered on the steps. "A sexual assault conviction from 2026 has been officially overturned after new evidence emerged proving the accused was innocent. The victim, now thirty-three years old, has admitted in a sworn deposition that she fabricated the entire incident."
His breathing stopped while his chest tightened, so his hand gripped the beer bottle hard enough that his knuckles went white.
The screen showed a woman standing at a podium while reading from a prepared statement, so cameras flashed. He recognized her face immediately because that face had destroyed everything he'd ever wanted.
"I lied," she said, while her voice was steady rather than emotional. "I was nineteen and stupid and scared of what people would think of me after that party, and instead of accepting responsibility for my own choices I blamed him. I fabricated injuries. I convinced my friends to lie. I destroyed an innocent man's life because I was a coward."
The anchor continued speaking while images appeared on screen—his own mugshot from 2026 when he was nineteen and still looked like someone with a future, then courtroom sketches from the trial.
"The breakthrough came after the defendant's legal team—which has been working on this case for over two decades—finally recovered security footage from a neighboring building that had been scheduled for demolition," the anchor explained. "The footage clearly shows the accuser entering a bathroom alone after the defendant left the party, and forensic analysis of the timeline proves her injuries were self-inflicted minutes after their encounter ended."
His phone buzzed on the table while the screen lit up with his lawyer's name, so he stared at it without moving because answering meant acknowledging and acknowledging meant feeling.
The news continued while his lawyer's call went to voicemail.
"The French Ministry of Justice has issued a formal apology and announced a compensation package, though legal experts say no amount of money can return the thirty years this man lost. He served ten years in prison and spent the following twenty years unable to find employment or rebuild his life due to his registry status."
Thirty years.
He'd been nineteen when she accused him at that party—young and stupid and convinced that truth mattered—so he was fifty now and the math was simple even if the reality wasn't.
The party had been loud while his football career had been everything back then.
Pau FC's academy had him on trial while the youth coach had said he showed promise despite his 53 overall rating, so if he kept working hard he might earn a contract by the end of the season. Those words had meant possibility because nineteen-year-olds lived on possibility.
A girl approached him near the drinks table while asking if he wanted to go somewhere quieter to talk, so he'd said sure because he was young enough to think that mattered.
They went upstairs to an empty room while she sat on the bed and touched his leg, so when he moved her hand away gently and said he had a girlfriend her expression went cold in a way he didn't recognize as dangerous until it was too late.
He left the room while going back downstairs, then twenty minutes later she was crying and pointing at him while everyone stared.
What he didn't know until years later was what happened in those twenty minutes.
She'd gone to the bathroom while scratching her own neck until marks appeared, then tore her shirt deliberately and bit her own lip hard enough to draw blood. She'd texted three friends with a story about him forcing himself on her before emerging from the bathroom looking exactly like someone who'd been assaulted.
She went to the hospital that same night while getting a rape kit done, so his DNA was there because they'd been in that room together. The injuries were real because she'd created them herself while her friends backed up her story because she'd convinced them it was true.
The trial came three months later while his public defender was overworked and kept pushing him to take a plea deal, yet he refused because he was innocent.
His parents sat behind him in the courtroom while believing him through the first week, but when her friends testified and the medical evidence was presented, doubt crept into their faces in ways they tried to hide.
The verdict came back guilty while his mother cried and his father's hand rested on her shoulder, so they visited him in prison regularly for the first three years before the visits became monthly and then yearly and then stopped entirely except for awkward phone calls on his birthday.
They didn't disown him completely, yet they slowly stopped knowing what to say to a son who'd been convicted of something they wanted to believe he didn't do but couldn't be completely sure about anymore.
When he was released after ten years the world had moved on without him while no employer would hire someone on the registry, so he spent the next twenty years in that apartment watching football because learning tactics and memorizing player stats meant he could forget he existed for ninety minutes at a time.
He hired cheap lawyers with money he saved from odd jobs that paid under the table, so they filed appeals that went nowhere until finally someone found footage that had been sitting in a storage unit scheduled for demolition.
The television was still playing while the news anchor had moved on to other stories.
He stood up slowly while his knees protested, then walked to the small kitchen and opened the refrigerator before pulling out another beer.
They were calling it a miscarriage of justice on every channel while his phone kept buzzing with messages from people who'd ignored him for decades, so he felt absolutely nothing because vindication three decades too late wasn't vindication.
He needed air.
The apartment felt smaller than usual, so he grabbed his jacket and walked out the door before going down three flights of stairs that smelled like mildew.
The street was quiet while the streetlights flickered overhead, so he walked without destination. The beer bottle hung from his hand in a paper bag that was already damp from condensation.
Six blocks of cracked pavement passed beneath his feet while his mind stayed carefully blank because thinking meant remembering.
The crosswalk light was red when he reached the intersection.
He stopped at the curb and cars passed in front of him with headlights that cut across his face, and his other hand stayed shoved in his jacket pocket while his mind drifted to places it shouldn't go—to thoughts about what his life could have been if he'd just stayed home that night instead of going to that party.
The light turned green and the signal chirped.
He stepped off the curb without checking right and headlights flooded his vision from the side, and sound hit next—engine roaring, tires screeching, rubber burning against asphalt.
His body froze and his legs wouldn't move and two tons of metal slammed into him at forty kilometers per hour.
The world spun and he hit the ground hard and something in his chest snapped with a sound like dry wood breaking, and pain exploded through every nerve while blood spread beneath him in a warm pool that soaked through his clothes.
The pavement was cold against his cheek and his vision blurred at the edges while sound became distant and muffled.
Through the haze he saw the truck driver stumble out with a phone pressed to his ear and pedestrians gathered with their phones out recording because that's what people did—they filmed instead of helping.
His lips moved and words came out as barely a whisper. "I wish... I could go back..."
Text appeared in his peripheral vision—crisp white letters against the dying world.
|WISH ACKNOWLEDGED|
He almost laughed and the sound came out as a wet cough that sent blood sliding from his mouth.
More text appeared with a loading bar beneath it.
|WISH GRANTED. INITIATING REGRESSION PROCESS|
|LOADING: 1%|
The percentage climbed while his consciousness slipped away and the sounds of the street disappeared entirely, and his vision narrowed to just the glowing text against absolute darkness.
|32%|
|68%|
|100%|
|REGRESSION COMPLETE|