Navigating the crowded hallways of Northwood High felt like stepping into a hyper-realistic dream. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting a sterile glow on faded posters and scuffed linoleum floors. The scent of stale cafeteria fries mingled with the sharp tang of teenage sweat and cheap perfume. Lockers slammed shut like gunshots. Laughter echoed from corners. The bell shrieked with mechanical indifference.
Shadow moved through it all with a subtle stiffness, like someone wearing a skin slightly too tight. His eyes darted across familiar walls and faces—different, yet unchanged. The same linoleum. The same chipped lockers. The same old drama bubbling under the surface. It was a hauntingly vivid déjà vu, and every detail jolted loose another memory.
He had been here before. Not just in space, but in time.
2010.
Every face he passed stirred echoes. A teacher yelling at a slouching boy to tuck in his shirt. A girl whispering into her phone behind a locker door. A group of jocks tossing a football in the quad.
But none of it mattered. Because above all the noise, above all the fragments of memory, one name thundered louder than the rest.
Sarah.
Her name hit him like a tremor in the chest. And with it came a cascade of images—her laugh, light and melodic, chasing away his darkest thoughts. The way her eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled for real. The freckle just below her left ear. The way she'd doodle tiny suns in the margins of her notebooks.
And the way she'd walked out of his life. Or maybe the way he'd let her go.
Shadow swallowed hard as he turned the corner into the cafeteria. The chaos was familiar—students shouting over one another, trays clattering, the vending machine groaning as it spat out a bottle of soda.
And then he saw her.
At the far end of the room, seated at a table surrounded by friends, laughing.
His breath hitched.
She looked exactly as she had in 2010. Chestnut waves spilling over her shoulders, eyes lit up with that spark of mischief. Her head was tilted back mid-laugh, radiant and untouchable.
The sound didn't quite reach him, but he could imagine it. That laugh. That beautiful, unmistakable laugh. The one that used to be his favorite sound in the world.
Time slowed. His heart, that inconvenient organ, betrayed him with a sharp pang of longing and regret.
He remembered everything.
The late-night calls. The fights over things that didn't matter. The way his pride had refused to bend, even when she had waited for him to speak—to apologize. How she'd walked away, and how he'd let her, thinking he was doing the right thing.
Stupid.
He found himself watching her throughout the day—always from a distance, always silently. In Chemistry, where she sat two rows ahead of him, tapping her pencil rhythmically against the desk. In History, where she doodled suns and moons in her notebook again. During lunch, when her laughter made his chest ache.
He wanted to reach out. To walk up and say something—anything. But what exactly?
"Hey, I'm your future ex-boyfriend. I time-traveled from 2025, and now I have a website in my head that's going to change the world. Also, sorry I ghosted you twelve years from now."
Yeah. That'd go over well.
His fingers twitched at the thought. So much knowledge. So much experience. In 2025, he had negotiated billion-dollar deals, outsmarted rivals, built an empire from code and caffeine.
And now he was sixteen again. Watching the girl he once loved from across a lunch table, paralyzed.
Not by fear.
By the weight of everything left unsaid.
He could rewrite it all now. Not just the code that would shape the world. But the fragile, broken script of their story.
He wouldn't make the same mistakes. Wouldn't let silence rot what should have been healed. Wouldn't let pride smother something real and bright.
As the final bell rang and students poured out into the golden warmth of the afternoon, Shadow stood at the edge of the quad. Sarah was there, her hair catching the sunlight as she waved goodbye to a friend.
He didn't approach her.
Not yet.
But as she disappeared down the sidewalk, he made himself a silent vow.
This time, things would be different.
He wouldn't just win her back.
He would deserve her.