Chapter 2

Christian's POV

I stared at my bedroom door, my mind taking me back to a memory from long, long ago.

During the winter when I was eight, Mom walked into the living room holding a little girl's hand. She wore an oversized black coat, her hair hiding most of her face.

Mom crouched before me and said, "Chris, this is Giselle. From now on, she'll be living with us."

I ran over, grabbed Giselle's hand, and looked at her with a grin. "Nice to meet you, Giselle. My name's Christian."

Her hand stiffened in mine for a second before she quietly pulled it away.

Mom sighed and explained that Giselle's parents had passed away in a car accident. From then on, our home would be hers, too.

I remembered secretly knocking on her bedroom door then. "Giselle, I'll share half my strawberry cake with you if you promise to cheer up."

She never opened the door, but I could hear her crying underneath her blanket.

From that day on, I followed Giselle everywhere like her shadow. She ignored me at first, but eventually, she got used to having me around.

She never smiled or said anything sweet, but if a boy at school made fun of me for being short and weak, he would show up the next day with a black eye and apologize.

When I scraped my knee badly, she crouched down, carried me on her back, and walked all the way home from school.

I took a deep breath and turned the doorknob.

Giselle was leaning against the doorframe, half her face hidden in the shadows. When she heard the door open, she turned her head slightly and pulled a tiny paper star from her pocket.

Once, when we had gotten into an argument and spent three days giving each other the cold shoulder, I found a folded paper star in my desk drawer the following morning. When I unfolded it, it read, "I'm sorry."

After that, paper stars became her way of apologizing. Whenever she upset me, she would fold me one. Sometimes, it said, "I'm sorry." Sometimes, it only said, "Fine."

I kept every one of those stars in a clear glass jar on my desk, right where I could always see them.

During the second semester of our freshman year, I joked with Giselle one day. "If this jar ever fills up, that'll mean you've upset me more times than you should have. By then, I might have to distance myself from you."

She paused briefly. "Then stop getting mad at me so often."

That jar had always been almost full, but today changed things.

I reached out and took the paper star from Giselle's hand. She was rather taken aback.

Every time she had handed me one, I would deliberately keep a straight face and glare at her for a while before forgiving her. Today, I neither glared nor smiled. I simply took the star and closed the door.

Her voice was blocked from the outside. "Chris…"

I walked over to my desk and dropped the paper star into the jar. It was finally filled to the brim. I screwed the lid on tight, picked it up, and tucked it away in the deepest corner of my desk drawer.

Then I opened my diary again and pressed my pen to the page. "I came back from ten years in the future…"

...

The next morning, I knocked on Mom's bedroom door. "Mom, I'm taking the day off. I'll go with you to the doctor's for a checkup."

She was brushing her hair and looked at me in confusion. "A checkup? For what? I'm perfectly healthy."

I couldn't exactly tell her that on one random day, she would suffer a sudden heart attack. The last person she called would be Giselle, but she wouldn't make it in time. By the time I got home from school, her hand would already be cold.

Regardless, I dragged Mom to the hospital. The doctor frowned as he looked over her test results. "I recommend admitting her for a few days. We need to run a full examination."

Mom waved him off as though he were exaggerating, but I insisted she follow the doctor's instructions. I completed the paperwork myself and didn't leave until she was settled into her room.

In my previous life, on the tenth anniversary of Mom's death, Giselle and I had gone to visit her grave. Holding a bouquet of white lilies, she crouched down and said, "Mrs. Cooper, I'll take good care of Chris."

As the wind howled, footsteps broke the silence.

Despite Giselle's objection, Spencer had stubbornly followed us. He looked at me, his brows scrunched together. "There's something I've been wanting to tell you, Christian. I think I should say it in front of your mom today."

He straightened his back. "Your mom's death wasn't Giselle's fault. That day, she called Giselle, saying that she wasn't feeling well and wanted Giselle to take her to the hospital.

"But Giselle couldn't make it because… I called her. I was drunk and stranded outside. I couldn't get home, so I asked her to get me. By the time Giselle rushed home, your mom was already gone.

"It was all my fault, Christian. I caused it, not Giselle. So, stop making her carry that burden. Just because your family took her in doesn't mean she owes you for the rest of her life. It's been ten years. Please, let her go."

Those last few words became the nightmare that jolted me awake. So, all those years, I had been using gratitude as chains, keeping Giselle tied to my side.

Tears streamed down my face, soaking into my shirt. I wiped them away roughly and went back to school.

During a break, I sat at my desk working through a problem set. Spencer walked over with a test paper in his hand. "Can you explain this question to me?"

Without even looking up, I replied, "Let me finish this one first."

Out of the blue, he dropped to his knees. "Christian, I'm really sorry about yesterday. I shouldn't have made that video, let alone joked with you like that. I messed up, okay?"