Reset: Class of 2016

It's 2026. It's been 7 years since I last saw her. My thumb hovered over the dial icon, my chest tightening as the call finally connected. After seven long years of hitting dead ends in old university forum archives, sending unreturned emails, and literally bribing an old department administrator just to dig up a deleted student registry, the screen finally flashed a connection. Im Da-eun’s voice came through as a jagged, defensive whisper. "Who is this? How did you get this number?"

For seven years after our 2019 college graduation party, I had scanned subway platforms and crowded Seoul streets, nursing a stubborn, foolish hope that Han Yeon-woo had simply moved away to escape the pressures of school. When she didn't show up at our meeting spot that night, I convinced myself she walked away because I wasn't enough.

"It's Kang Ji-hoo," I rasped, my throat raw as the static hummed between us. "From our freshman lectures. Da-eun, please, I just need to find Yeon-woo. She won't answer her old phone. Where is she?"

There was a sharp, violent intake of breath on the other end, followed by a suffocating silence that made the blood run cold in my veins. "Ji-hoo..." Da-eun’s voice completely broke, cracking under a heavy, sudden wave of grief. "You... you really don't know? They pulled her body out of the Han River near the Mapo Bridge. It happened seven years ago, Ji-hoo. On the exact night of the graduation party."

The words hit like physical glass, shattering the reality I had lived in for a decade. The address Da-eun gave me led to a decaying apartment complex where the narrow stairwells smelled of damp concrete and old cooking oil. Standing at the threshold of Yeon-woo’s home for the very first time in my life, my breath hitched as her mother opened the door. The woman didn't weep. She was a hollowed-out shell, staring straight past me with cloudy, lifeless eyes as she aimlessly rearranged plastic containers on a dusty kitchen table.

"Who are you?" she asked, her voice flat and completely devoid of energy.

"I'm... I was a classmate from her university," I stammered, my chest tightening. "My name is Kang Ji-hoo. I only just found out today about what happened."

At the sound of my name, the woman’s hands froze over the plastic containers. She blinked, her cloudy eyes widening slightly as she looked up at me, genuinely taken aback. "Ji-hoo? A friend? I... I didn't know Yeon-woo had any friends at school besides Da-eun. She never told me about anyone else. And a boy..." She trailed off, her voice cracking slightly as she stared at my face, as if trying to find a trace of her daughter's hidden life in my expression. "She always stayed so quiet. She would come home, lock herself in her room, and never say a single word about campus."

A raw, heavy wave of guilt washed over me, making it hard to swallow. She hadn't just kept me a secret; she had hidden her entire lonely world from her own mother, leaving this poor woman to believe Da-eun was her only connection to the outside world.

"Can I... can I look at her room?" I choked out, the air in the apartment suddenly feeling too thick to breathe.

The older woman barely nodded, her dull gaze fixed back on the table, completely detached from the world again. She left me to wander blindly into the suffocating quiet of Yeon-woo’s untouched bedroom.

The small room was a dead space trapped entirely in a 2019 time capsule. My chest tightened until it ached as I noticed a velvet-bound notebook buried deep inside an open storage crate. Pulling it open, my own name "Kang Ji-hoo" stared back at me in her delicate, neat handwriting on the very first page. Wedged deep inside the spine was a frayed blue friendship band. It was the exact one I had painstakingly picked out for her, handing out cheap plastic ones to the rest of our classmates just to disguise my attention.

Clutching the notebook, I walked back out to the kitchen, my voice trembling as I showed it to her mother. "My name is written inside this... can I please take it with me?" The older woman barely nodded, her dull gaze fixed on the table, completely detached from the world. A heavy, physical wave of agony crashed over me. She hadn't abandoned me. She had walked directly onto that bridge while I was somewhere else, leaving behind an empty promise.

The afternoon sky had bruised into a toxic purple by the time I tore out of the building. The rain hit the windshield in blinding, deafening sheets. I threw myself into the driver's seat, my knuckles locked white around the steering wheel as the engine roared. My vision dissolved into a smeared mess of red taillights and blurred street indicators. Why did I tell her to wait? Why did I? The questions clawed at my skull.

As I accelerated through the slick intersection near the riverbank, a delivery truck lost traction on the flooded asphalt, its massive metal frame veering violently across the center line. I slammed my foot onto the brake, but the car aquaplaned, spinning helplessly sideways. Through the driver's window, a pair of blinding high beams cut through the deluge, surging closer in a fraction of a second. There was a sickening, metallic crunch as the door caved inward against my ribs, followed by the explosive shatter of the windshield showering my arms in glass. A white-hot bolt of agony pierced my temple, and the world went completely black.

Drip. Drip.

The smell of burning rubber and wet asphalt vanished, replaced by the sharp, nostalgic sting of floor wax and citrus perfume. The chaotic roar of the crash died down into a low, echoing hum of generic chatter.

"Hey! Watch where you're going!"

A heavy shoulder slammed into mine, spinning me backward. My spine hit a cold, metallic surface with a loud, ringing bang. I gasped, clenching my jaw and clutching my head, fully expecting my fingers to come back wet with blood from the shattered windshield. My forehead was completely smooth. No blood. No glass. Just a faint smudge of dirt.

My vision swam in violent, disorienting circles. My lungs burned as I took in sharp, ragged breaths of clean, air-conditioned indoor air instead of suffocating rainwater. Am I dead? Is this an emergency room? I forced my eyes open, but the sterile white ceiling of a hospital was nowhere to be found. Instead, brilliant morning sunlight poured through massive, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, illuminating a crowded, bustling university lobby filled with hundreds of shouting faces. A massive crimson banner stretched across the mezzanine: WELCOME FRESHERS — CLASS OF 2016. Myeong-Seon University.

Panic gripped my throat. None of this made any sense. I looked down at my hands in utter shock. They were smaller, free of the calluses of my late-twenties. I pulled at the fabric of my sleeve, I was wearing a crisp, dark-navy University blazer. I checked my pockets frantically, pulling out an old flip-style student ID card and a crumpled ten-thousand won. My mind spun. I was just dying in a mangled car, and now I was standing inside a ten-year-old memory. Did I lose my mind? Am I in a coma?

"Ji-hoo! What are you just zoning out for? The orientation is about to start!"

I spun around, my heart hammering against my ribs in pure confusion. Standing less than an inch away was Choi Mina, her hair pulled up into the exact high ponytail she wore during our freshman year. She was smiling brightly, holding a glossy campus map, and tapping her foot impatiently. I stared at her, completely speechless, my jaw slightly slack. My mind struggled to process how my childhood best friend looked exactly like an nineteen-year-old student again, completely missing the faint wrinkles I had grown used to seeing around her eyes in 2026.

"M-Mina?" I choked out, my voice sounding weirdly higher than it usually did. "Why do you look so... small? Why am I small? Is this a joke?"

She laughed loudly, reaching up to slap my arm playfully. "Small? Are you still asleep? You're the one who stayed up until four AM playing video games on Discord! What are you talking about?"

I grabbed her by the shoulders, my grip desperate. "Mina, look at me very carefully. What year is it? Tell me the exact year. Right now."

Mina’s smile faltered, her eyebrows knitting together as she stared at me like I had completely lost my mind. She reached up and placed the back of her cold hand against my forehead. "Wow, you don't have a fever, but you've definitely lost your last remaining brain cell. It's 2016, you psycho. Did you get hit on the head by a basketball on the way in or something?"

"2016..." I muttered, dropping my hands as the silver flip-phone clicked shut in my palm.

"Yes, 2016! The year we finally start college!" She leaned her weight familiarly toward me, her elbow brushing mine as she pointed toward the crowded hallway. "Come on, if we don't get seats in the center row right now, we'll end up stuck behind the tall basketball majors and you won't be able to see the stage."

I just stood there frozen like a stone statue, entirely oblivious to the subtle, possessive warmth in her eyes, too consumed by the sheer terror of this impossible reality to see anything else.

Before I could clear the fog in my head, the heavy glass entrance doors swung open behind her.

A girl came rushing through the entrance, sprinting in absolute panic as she checked her watch for the orientation. With simple short hair framing a pale, quiet face, she was completely blind to her surroundings in her rush. Suddenly, her foot clipped the back of her own leg.

She tripped entirely over her own stride, her momentum throwing her helplessly forward. I was standing directly in her path, and before I could even blink, she crashed full-force into my chest, her weight sweeping me right off my feet.

We went down violently together. My back slammed hard against the polished tile floor with a brutal, solid thud that knocked the air completely out of my lungs, pinning me flat under the sudden impact.

For a breathless, agonizing second, everything went completely quiet. The room stopped spinning. The pain in my back dulled as I stared upward, my lungs screaming for air while she remained sprawled across my chest.

She scrambled backward in a sheer panic, dropping her hands to the floor as her face flushed a deep, mortified crimson. She tucked a stray lock of her short hair behind her ear, her shoulders shrinking inward as she looked down at me.

My mind was a chaotic mess of grief and disbelief. It was her. Han Yeon-woo. Alive. Whole. Sitting right in front of me, seven years before the tragedy on the Mapo Bridge.

Then, she reached a trembling hand toward me, her eyes wide with frantic worry.

"Are you okay... Ji-hoo?" she gasped, her voice shaking.

My heart completely stopped. The air froze inside my chest.

I stared up at her, my jaw slack, a cold sweat breaking out across my neck. We were strangers. In my original timeline, we never spoke a single word to each other on this day. We were just distant classmates who looked from afar, and she wasn't supposed to learn my name until years later.

How does she know my name?