Be Kind, and Rewind

This all has to be a dream, right?

It had to be. He was just in his apartment complex, after all.

Yet, the room he woke up in was drastically different. Everything had a familiar glow to it, as if he had been in this room before, yet he couldn’t quite explain when or how. The main thing that was on his mind was the bed, or rather its size, appearing drastically bigger than him.

Being the movie buff he was, he knew that just staying idle in an unfamiliar area risked yielding unsavory results, so he lifted himself off the bed.

Huh, that’s odd…

Feeling his feet hit the ground, an air of curiosity took hold of him. As he looked around the cabin, the memories began to flow back to him.

“Wait… Am I back at Camp Gehenna?! How is that even possible?!”

Running over to the mirror placed in front of the wardrobe, the boy breathed deeply.

He looked exactly as he remembered he did ten years prior. That same snot nosed brat with shaggy blonde hair that he refused to brush, was looking right back at him. Though his skin was constantly ravished by the harsh summer heat, he wore that same green cargo jacket and red newsboy cap even in his sleep.

The only thing about his appearance that particularly stood out were his eyes. At some point during his childhood, they shifted to a vibrant violet hue. Such a condition was so rare in the medical field that they didn’t quite know how to define it.

Such a feature was one that he would ultimately deem to be a curse, due to how people would always flock to give him praise, or question how exactly said condition came to be. No matter where he went, he felt the intense eyes of strangers burning into him.

As such, the boy's personality would deteriorate with time, becoming more of a shut in, hesitant to let people into his circle due to fearing that they would just idolize him based off of his appearance.

Everything about this environment felt real to him, but Hiro was still convinced that this must be a dream. He had experienced lucid dreams in the past, after all. There was only one foolproof method to determine whether or not this current reality was fact or fiction. Having reeled his arm back as far as it could possibly go, Hiro smacked himself in the face with enough force to leave a stinging red mark across his cheek.

“Holy shit, this is real! And god damn it, that hurts!”

The same hand that he used to smack himself was now gently caressing his throbbing cheek as he carefully inspected his visage. Where he should have felt fear, the crescendoed pounding of his heart stemmed from excitement.

“Does this mean what I think it does...?”

Snapping his fingers, a wide grin stretched across his face as he pointed at his reflection.

“The tape must have brought me back somehow!”

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Jun Hiroshi was never the kind of person to give up easily.

In all of his twenty-three years of life, he had pushed himself through even the toughest of situations, determined to make a better future for himself.

So having been suddenly brought back to his past felt akin to that of a second chance.

Rather, it was a chance to, “Pull himself out of the ten-year-old depressive slump he found himself locked in due to his childhood friend, and crush Fushō Suzume’s disappearance, and untimely death.”

An event that he had wished constantly to happen upon learning the news about her remains being found at the camp.

The way that he spent his days afterward were reminiscent of a spirit going through the same autonomous motions they did when they were alive. Working at a VHS store, he would spend his days watching films such as slasher movies and detective dramas, thinking, “If I ever get into one of these situations, I’ll be more than prepared!”, despite most villains in such films posing a supernatural threat.

With his desire to learn more quickly becoming an obsession, he failed to realize that the few remaining people in his circle of friends had all silently shut him out.

Aside from Kazutora, and Kentaro of course. After not speaking to him for a month since Suzume’s funeral, they only reached out to him while on police duty, to deliver Suzume’s last known recording of the summer camp. Kazutora had stated, “She would have wanted you to hold onto this more than anyone.”

“Never would I have ever expected to actually be sent back here… I don’t quite understand how this all happened, but I can’t waste the opportunity.”

He had left the cabin, and was scouring through a wooded area, attempting to retrace his memory of the camp’s layout.

No matter how far he walked, though, it felt as though the onslaught of green was never-ending.

“If I really did somehow travel back in time, I figure that whatever I do should be done from the shadows. Wouldn’t want to go around pulling a back to the future in the timeline.”

He thought to himself about the possibilities, more specifically, how things could go wrong. In all of the sci-fi movies that he had indulged himself in, there were always repercussions for changing things in the past.

This all had to do with simple chaos theory. Moreso, a certain concept that he had learned about from the film of the same name: the butterfly effect.
If one were to travel back in time, something as simple as squashing a bug can result in vastly different changes to the timeline.

“If I just stick to this path until tonight and stay out of everyone else’s line of sight, I should be fine. If I remember correctly, everybody should be in the cafeteria right now anyways, so I shouldn’t worry about somebody seeing me.”

For the first time since he appeared in the tape, Hiro was calm, and took a moment to lean against one of the many oak trees, hoping to relax under its shade until nightfall. He knew that due to local legends, no one dared to venture this far out into the camp’s wilderness, so he closed his eyes with the belief that he could rest there without attracting the attention of his peers. The moment of reprieve that he got from this, proved to be short-lived however.

“Hiro?” A familiar female voice called out to him, jolting him out of hypnagogic state.

Even though ten years have passed since they had last spoken with one another, Hiro recognized the voice instantly. It was the same voice that plagued his dreams, reassuring him that its disappearance wasn’t his fault. A warm stinging sensation rippled throughout his body, and water welled in his eyes, leaving Hiro debating with himself whether or not he wanted to open them and confirm that this is reality.

“Today’s the 28th of August. I was absolutely positive that she’d be in the cafeteria right now. If I remember correctly, she was assigned the duty of making sure that the younger campers ate their meals. There’s absolutely no way that she’d be out here in this part of the camp. Unless…”

It felt as if the world came to a standstill when he opened his eyes. Hiro froze, trying to make sense of the person standing before him. He desperately attempted to speak, to break the silence between them, but no words escaped his trembling lips. The only thing to come out of him that was close to a response, were the tears that came down like a waterfall down his face.

“What are you doing here, Hiro?”

Suzume spoke curiously, as she knelt to lend him a hand.

Even for somebody in their early teenage years, Suzume was abnormally short for her age, clocking in at a surprising four feet and eight inches. It was no wonder that she was nicknamed “The Sparrow” by her peers. She wore her auburn orange hair in a half bun, with the bangs neatly brushed to the side. One thing that she had in common with Hiro was her inability to follow a simple dress code. Sticking out of her oversized light-blue sweatshirt was the teal uniform shirt assigned to all of the campers. Something that she only got away with due to being the spitting image of what Camp Gehenna represented.

She looked at Hiro with that same dopey smile she had offered him since the day they met. For as long as he had known her, she always radiated with nothing but positive energies. Even in the darkest times, she always tried to be the light in other people’s lives, believing that “If I can make the world a better place for others, it shouldn’t matter” when it came to her own.

For once, that same expression was replicated on Hiro’s mug. Having finally gotten a chance to see her again, Hiro wiped the tears from his face, and took hold of her hand, and used it to slowly lift himself from the ground.

“Oh, nothing really. Just decided to take in the scenery. We leave tomorrow morning, after all, so I figured I’d spend my final day here exploring the camp.”

Hiro was always a terrible liar. For the most part, he was an honest person, just telling white lies here and there, knowing fully well that no one would take such statements seriously. Suzume was the exception, however. No matter what he told her, her child-like behavior would always compel her to believe in him.

“You know, you’re a bad liar, Hiro.”

Following this revelation, there was a brief pause between the two. Suzume’s smile faded, and she tilted her head in confusion.

“Wait, what do you mean by that?” Hiro asked, puzzled by her sudden accusation.

“Nothing really. I know you usually skip dinner, it’s just that you had planned to help out in the cafeteria today.”

“Shit, she’s right.” Out of all the things that he could have forgotten about this day, Hiro neglected the fact that he had even made that promise to Suzume. Which is only fair in hindsight, someone can only remember so much when affected by the kind of stress he experienced. It was all coming back to him though, during that final week of camp, they rarely had any time to really hang out with each other, so they had made plans to do so while she was on cafeteria duty.

The sweat glands on the palms of his hands had begun to perspire, and his face blushed a bright red, and like a piston, he arched his upper torso down, with hopes that she would forgive him for such a mistake.

“Heh,” he laughed awkwardly, attempting to lighten the mood. “I had completely forgotten about that, Suzu, I hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

Without hesitation, Suzume raised her hand to the sky. Upon getting a glance, Hiro winced, closing his eyes, he believed, “I never thought I’d see the day that I’d see the sparrows deadly move firsthand! I’m done for!” But her open palm gently caressing the top of his hat made him open his eyes.

Suzume’s smile had returned. The combined feeling that he received from seeing her expression, and from the head pats, eased his mind.

“Don’t worry about it, Hiro, there is nothing that you could ever do that I wouldn’t forgive. Besides, if I spent all this time grilling you, we’d be late to our last bonfire!”

That’s right. Every year we had one last bonfire, where the camp counselors try to scare the shit out of everyone by telling ghost stories. I was never really afraid of these, but I’d always play along, happy to see the other’s reactions.

These stray thoughts once again sent an eerie chill creeping down his spine. It wasn’t the thought of the stories that spooked Hiro, but it was the memory of the last time they all sat around for a bonfire. Remembering how it was the last time he saw Fushō Suzume alive.

The moment that one of the older camp counselors began to tell his version of a certain camp urban legend, he remembered how Suzume excused herself, letting everyone know that she was “simply going back to the cabin to get some rest” as she was feeling unwell. No one put much thought into these claims until the following day when nobody could find her. While the higher ups assumed that her parents must have come for her early, the campers gossiped amongst each other, believing that Suzume must have been Kurosawa’s latest victim. Something that wouldn’t be confirmed until the Hyogo prefectural police department re-opened the investigation ten years later.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit too scary for you, Suzume?” Hiro taunted, expecting her to acquiesce.

To his surprise, she answered in the form of shooting him a menacing grin, before she pulled him further down the trail by the sleeve of his coat.

“Leave it to Suzume to be full of surprises. She may present herself as the poster child of innocence, but she has an almost sinister side to her. She lives for adventure and hardly ever listens to reason. In a way, she’s who I always dreamt of being.”

The prideful nature of her stride, the way she hummed a familiar tune to fill the silence as they continued their walk, mesmerized Hiro. Something deep within him kept shouting for him to make things right this time, once again lighting the fire in his eyes.

Hiro had long forgotten his old world. To him, none of that mattered. How could it? All that was important to him was making sure that she survived in this reality.

“Since I remember a bit of what’s going to happen tonight, I think it’s best that I make a game plan to ensure that she survives the night.”

He shuddered at the thought. Hiro pictured himself following behind her and the two of them encountering the legendary Kurosawa. Worrying that with his current stature, he would get cut down with ease, and only buy her enough time to make it a few feet away before she was dispatched of as well.

“There’s no way in hell I’d stand a chance against that guy! I’d probably go down quicker than the guy that tried to fight the hockey mask wearing freak!”

The only fighting experience that Hiro had came from watching aged action flicks starring stars that hadn’t been relevant since the 80’s, and from playing video games. And he had the gut feeling that he wouldn’t be able to just simply throw a projectile at a slasher villain.

The soft popping sound of fiery wisps and the laughter of children signaled to Hiro that they had finally arrived at the bonfire. Suzume’s grasp slipped through Hiro’s fingers, and she ran closer to the group. There, sitting on their own respective logs around the campfire were the other members of their friend group. With a wave, the two young men who grew to become detectives in his previous timeline signaled for him to come join them.