It was December 25th, Reiwa 42. Christmas Day.
In a room filled with fading light and flickering screens, surrounded by intrusive noise, floor covered in bags of garbage...
As I had been for years now, I was alone.
Even my mother no longer called me; she got married again recently, and surely her husband has better things to do with his life than get to know her gloomy daughter. I haven't been outside since that big riot in May, and here in the Electric City of Southern Sun, I don't need to pay too much attention to the outside world.
I don't have any friends, really. Or hope for the future. It goes without saying I'm a virgin, and I've never so much as kissed another girl. I have a lot of thoughts about such things, but...
as they often did this time of year, my thoughts drifted to twenty years ago.
In the year of Reiwa 22, I lost the two most important people to me...
Nikita Ivanov, my precious older brother Kolya...
and Vesta Ilustrada Imanis, my tutor, and the older sister I never had.
Vesta disappeared first. One day, she just stopped coming to school and never came back. I only saw her once after that, and she ran away rather than explain what happened. (I'm sure it can't have been anything good - the dorm she was staying in closed by next year.)
That, I might have recovered from, on its own. I still had friends at school, after all. Vesta would want me to be strong, right?
Then, I heard Kolya killed himself.
The news acted like this was some big shock, but...I knew he was being bullied. No one was willing to take responsibility. Dad even acted like he was glad he was gone.
At that point, I was filled with nothing but sadness and hatred for the world.
Despite the help of people around me, I failed my high school entrance exam. My friends of the time didn't, so I had to make entirely new ones - and never did. Things were never really the same after that...
It was pointless to wonder, but...
I couldn't help but think, 'what if I had the chance to save them'?
If I could find out what was happening to Vesta, surely, I could help her! And if there was some way I could be there for my brother, I could save him, too - or at least try! And surely, I wouldn't have to make my other friends sad, either...
...
...no, more than that.
I had a crush on Vesta, too, back then...a pretty bad one. Especially after that day she arrived with her new earrings, I couldn't help but think she was really sexy, even if I was too young to really actualize that...
And more than that! There were other girls I should've told my feelings to, or helped! And kissed, and then -
oh
oh, dear, I was thinking of girls again...
It was pointless to fantasize about things like 'confessing to my best friends', or 'kissing them', or 'inflicting my countless developed shut-in fetishes on them', or anything like that. Especially given I was twenty years older and not in middle school anymore! But I couldn't help it! I hadn't even seen the cute girls at the card game shop anymore! Just once in my life I wanted to at least kiss a girl!
What if I could do it all over, then? Like in those stories my favorite yuri author, Wind God Windam, likes to write...
Even if I couldn't save them, surely, if I at least told Vesta how I felt before I died, or I could tell Kolya how much I cared as his sister, I could go on with no regrets.
Ah...
there were a lot of sirens today, I thought, at that moment, as I dragged myself out of bed and looked through my blinds. S2PD and S3 cop cars, demonstrations in the streets, same shit really.
Even on Christmas, in the middle of summer - no matter if the decorations were still winter-themed, in a place where it never snows - it seemed the city was still pretty chaotic. All the more reason to hide, really. Some of the rumors are pretty crazy at this point (you can't really believe anything about 'latex drones' is anything but a fetish fantasy), but enough of it is true that I don't -
and then my door slammed open.
This hauntingly beautiful girl with pink hair, bronzed skin, and glowing golden eyes - LED contacts? - comes barging in, and I would probably move to hit her or something if it weren't for the fact that her very visage seemed to make even thinking about it impossible.
"...I'm terribly sorry, but this is an emergency," she said, and I was just thinking I saw someone like her on the news before she touched my cheek. My body couldn't respond, and her lips met mine -
ah, this woman was taking my first kiss!
"It's almost time. Be sure to use your magic responsibly, okay?"
She winked, and then she left me alone.
...
...I was pretty sure I was dreaming then. That was the only sensible explanation.
'Magic isn't real'. Those words were ones burned into my memory of Vesta, and Kolya said much the same. You'd need a miracle to change my life, I think, but nothing like that was so convenient, no matter if that girl was so magical as to be able to do that...
Ah...
Was that a shooting star?
There was a bright light in the sky, as I looked again through the blinds, a star descending to Earth. They say people used to make wishes on falling meteors.
If I had such a wish...
I'd want to go back. I'd want to redo my life...I'd want to protect the people most precious to me, and enjoy life with no regrets...
As that thought filled my heart, everything went white. Blinding light embraced me, and everything disappeared in a single flash.
I passed out, right then and there. Christmas came and went, with only a single kiss as my happy memory. Maybe, I can carry that with me, if this is the end of everything...
...
...
...or so I thought.
When I woke up, I wasn't in my dingy studio apartment in the Electric City.
Instead, I was on a tiny sofabed, and my alarm was going off, the clock radio Kolya got me for my birthday...
I awoke with a start, staring at it. I hadn't seen it in years! A novelty tanuki design, that he found in a market somewhere - I was gutted when I lost it in a move. A pink flip phone was next to it; I hadn't used it since middle school.
I stood up, grasping it, and walked out, seeing the same home Dad bought shortly after the divorce - a glass house in Verwest, far too large for just the two of us, with a single lonely artificial Christmas tree beside wrapped up presents and dirty dishes full of cookies and milk Dad insisted I leave out every year.
Not only that, I was absolutely tiny!
Looking at the mirror, I saw myself as I looked in middle school, rather than the gloomy woman I'd become. Short, just beginning to grow into an adult, skin so pale it almost looks unhealthy, like the white of Russian snow...even the same blue hair I had back then, which I quickly styled into the 'twin ahoge' Kolya was so fond of. There was only one explanation, right?
Opening the phone confirmed it...
I'm writing this down, so that I can remember it, and know that this was real - at least, assuming this isn't a dream I just woke up from.
My name is Valeriya Ilyinichna Ivanova. The date is December 25th, Reiwa 21 - around a week before my first year at the Verwest Adventist Academy. Somehow, I've traveled in time, or reincarnated, or something...
and finally, I have my chance to do it all over!
With the knowledge of an adult in the body of a little girl, and twenty years of hindsight to draw on, surely, I could create a life for myself I could love! 🖤
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