At fifteen, Hiyori had built a fragile semblance of normalcy. Her new family provided her with stability, and she had started high school, making a small but close circle of friends. Though the scars of her past lingered, she had learned to bury them deep, focusing on the present instead of the darkness that once consumed her.
One evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in hues of orange and pink, Hiyori sat alone in the park near her home. She was sketching in a notebook, her thoughts wandering as the world around her grew quiet.
"Still writing, huh?"
The voice startled her. She looked up to see a familiar figure leaning casually against a nearby lamppost. His face hadn't changed much—calm, composed, with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"Yuto?" she whispered, her heart pounding.
"It's been a while," he said, stepping closer.
"What… what are you doing here?" she asked, her voice a mix of surprise and unease.
Yuto paused, his expression unreadable. "I promised you I'd return when the time was right, didn't I?"
They sat on a park bench, the air heavy with unspoken tension. Hiyori's hands trembled as Yuto reached into his coat and pulled out a worn, leather-bound diary.
"Do you remember this?" he asked, placing it on her lap.
Hiyori stared at it, her breath hitching. She hadn't seen that diary since the night her world fell apart—the night the police took her away from her home.
"How do you have this?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Because it's mine too," Yuto said, his tone calm but firm. He reached into his pocket and pulled out another diary, identical to the one she held. He opened it, flipping to a specific page, and handed it to her.
Hiyori's eyes scanned the entries, her heart sinking as she read the words. They were her words, the same ones she had written years ago in her moments of fear and despair. But the handwriting wasn't hers—it was his.
"What… what is this?" she stammered, her mind racing.
"This," Yuto said, "is proof that your life has been altered. And so has mine."
Hiyori stared at him, confusion and fear swirling in her chest. "What are you talking about? How is that possible?"
Yuto leaned back, his gaze distant. "I'm not just some stranger who happened to help you. I'm a time traveler. My job is to protect the timeline from alterations—ripples caused by events that shouldn't have happened. And you, Hiyori… or rather, Ansh… are at the center of one of the biggest ripples I've ever seen."
Hiyori's blood ran cold. "Ansh?" she echoed, the name foreign yet strangely familiar.
Yuto nodded. "In another timeline, you weren't Hiyori. You were Ansh—a man with a life, a family, and choices that shaped the world around you. But something happened—a catastrophic event in the past that altered the timeline. You were caught in the crossfire, your existence reshaped into this one."
Hiyori's hands tightened around the diary. "You're saying… I was someone else?"
"Yes," Yuto said simply. "And that in itself wouldn't be a problem. Time adapts. People are rewritten, their memories wiped clean. But for some reason, you retained fragments of your old life—memories that shouldn't exist in this timeline. That's where the problem lies. Those memories have the potential to disrupt the course of time."
Hiyori shook her head, disbelief flooding her. "This doesn't make sense. I've lived my whole life as Hiyori. How could I be… someone else?"
Yuto opened his own diary, pointing to an entry. "Look at this. These are my memories of you, written when I was assigned to investigate the ripple. Compare them to yours."
She flipped through her diary, her heart pounding as she saw the similarities—the same fears, the same sadness, but with subtle differences. Where her diary spoke of a girl's fear of her parents, his described a man grappling with guilt and loss.
"Your lives mirrored each other in some ways, but they diverged in key moments," Yuto explained. "That divergence is what caused the ripple."