February

In the February of my first year of high school, I was beaten up in a restroom. Six years later, I was killed in an accident. Now, fourteen years since my death, I continue to live with a new identity.

… You see, I was reborn in the past as someone else.

There is no definitive explanation. Maybe it was the countless nights I spent praying to God to let me go back in time and fix my life, or maybe it was something else. I’ll probably never know. But I did not complain or seek the truth; I saw very little point in resisting this new destiny, because I had much more than what I had in my past life.

I was no longer an only child; my parents were generous as long as I worked hard to excel in academics; I made decent friends thanks to the intuition I developed in my past life. But most importantly, I was no longer haunted by the repercussions of my past. That, to me, was the dealmaker: I had been liberated from my mistakes. Indeed, this new life was so excellent that I thought very little of my past.

… It was in the first semester of high school that I met my past self. After ending up in the same classroom as him, I was finally forced to acknowledge his existence: it was the first time in over a decade that I was reminded that I had been reborn.

The Other Me dressed unfashionably, wearing the same looking clothing every day; I followed the latest trend. The Other Me sat leaning back on his chair, his legs stretched out and his hands behind his head; I sat normally. The Other Me would show off and openly confront others to protect his insecurities, especially when he was near female students; I stayed silent.

I did not feel embarrassed in his place, because I no longer considered him and myself to be the same person. But after continuing to watch his strange behavior and knowing what would happen to him in the following February if he would not change his ways, I decided to lend a helping hand to my former shell.

To my surprise, he was quite compliant. There was some initial resistance, mixed with hostility and awkwardness, but he seemed to slowly realize that I was trying to help him, that I was not like the others who simply ignored his antics and hoped he would go away. And so, my plan to fix his life began.

According to my instructions, the Other Me tried to stay silent and avoid giving anyone any reason to mock him. He halted his confrontational behaviors, and as a pleasant surprise, he made attempts to properly get along with his peers. He was still mocked by others over the next few months, but I was certain that his efforts were showing results and that he would avoid his life defining tragedy.

But when February came, destiny remained the same. The Other Me was beaten up in the restroom while being filmed on a phone. I tried to ignore the spreading drama throughout the entire school day, but I could not. I could hear his screams through the videos that were being replayed over and over again.

I looked for him during the passing periods and during lunch, but it was after school when I managed to find him hurrying off toward his home. I managed to catch up to him; I was much more athletic than he was and I knew the exact route he would take. I grabbed him by his shoulder with a voice mixed with plea and sternness.

“You didn’t listen to my advice, and now everyone is making fun of you,” I lectured. “I told you to avoid conflict. Why didn’t you just run away? Why did you agree to fight him?! Tell me!”

And without making eye contact, he simply whispered, “Because he insulted my mother.” Then he walked away, as if assuming that I would not follow. He was right: I did not follow him.

As I watched him walk away, I remembered the truth that only he and I truly understood: the fight had been unfair from the start.

Sometime in the next few days, as our class was jogging around the gym building during P.E., I pulled aside the boy who beat up the Other Me. I called him a coward, he threw some harsh words back. And as the confrontation escalated, I threw the first punch. I didn’t care about getting in trouble, I didn’t care about winning, and I especially didn’t care about endangering my reputation: I wanted to deny the school and the world.

Unsurprisingly, I ended up falling to the floor. The boy regularly picked fights with other students. He was very comfortable with using his fists. I was not.

After the teacher came to break us apart and save me from a heavier beating, she pulled me aside and said that this incident wouldn’t be on my record. She told me she knew that I was a good kid and that this was just a lapse in my judgment after hearing what had happened to the Other Me.

That afternoon, it was the Other Me who talked to me after school and asked me why I had done what I did. I replied honestly.

“He insulted my mother, too,” I told him. Admittedly, I expected us to bond over this fact. I thought he would have a moment of catharsis and would laugh and understand that I was on his side.

Instead, he shrugged and said, “Well, don’t worry about it. They’ve already forgotten what you did.” Then he walked away like before.

As he had predicted, the rumors about me circulated for a few days after the fight had happened, then subsided altogether. The boy who had beaten me up gave me no attention, either.

Yet the Other Me’s peers continued to take him unseriously, even after his personality had completely changed, even as he continuously tried to be a better person. And in rare moments when he tried to point out that he was being treated unfairly, he was reminded of the video and was told that they would help him relieve what had happened. That was all it took to shut him up.

At the end of our first year of high school, as we sat together on a distant classroom table watching the other students chatting or scrolling through their phones, I finally told him how I felt.

“I should have done more,” I said. “I didn’t do enough. Now you’re suffering because no one stood up for you. I’m sorry.”

The Other Me met my eyes with a defeated look on his face. Then he sighed and shook his head, his gaze turned to the floor.

“... Don’t sweat it. There was no way you could have changed anything. None of this really started from high school, anyway. I was bullied every day in middle school. Even if you had done everything right this year, the results would have been the same. Everyone would still remember me as the outcast.”

I frowned. Then I remembered the years he was referring to and realized I had met him two years too late. I should have met him in middle school… I could have changed his fate if I had just met him earlier…

… But in this second life, I had forgotten all about my past self. I had chosen to forget because he was no longer a part of me; I had attended a different middle school because I didn’t feel a responsibility to protect him.

Perhaps under normal circumstances, I really would not have had a responsibility to protect him, but as I stared at the Other Me, I remembered the daily prayer I had made to God in my past life:

God, please let me go back and fix my life.

And to my horror, it slowly dawned on me that perhaps God had indeed answered my prayers and had sent me back in time to save the Other Me, the Me who had prayed for his salvation…

… And I had failed my purpose.

In the end, I was just another bystander to my suffering.