Chapter 1

In my hazy consciousness, all I could sense was noisy chatter around me. There were voices buzzing everywhere.

Someone nudged me with their elbow and said, "Channing. Hey, Channing. We're voting. You're the only one left."

I blinked blankly and looked around. The faces before me were both familiar and strange at the same time. Yet, every single one of them looked young.

The seven of us had once been the best of friends in high school. But an accident during our graduation trip changed everything. My best friend, Lionel Tawney, died. I, on the other hand, was left disabled.

The pain from it all was too great. No one dared to bring it up. In the end, we all gradually drifted apart.

"So, what do you think about going to Windmare Cave for our high school graduation trip? Say something already."

Upon seeing that I still hadn't snapped out of it even after a long time, Lionel, who was sitting on my left, gave my head a heavy smack.

When I saw my old friend before me again, so animated and full of life, I was both shocked and overjoyed.

I had somehow gone back to the time before the graduation trip. This was the very beginning of the tragedy that was about to unfold.

"What's wrong with Channing? Did he lose his mind after hearing that Britney Lambert, the campus belle, is coming with us? What a loser!"

The moment I heard that name, I felt my blood run cold.

In my previous life, Britney had suddenly said she and a few of her female friends wanted to join us for the trip. But in the end, all of her friends couldn't join us because of some other things that came up on their end. She was the only one who came.

On the first night, a tour group thronged the hotel and took the room we had reserved. We boys originally planned to spend the night at a cheap, dingy motel. But since there was a woman with us, we checked into a small hotel instead.

Unexpectedly, an earthquake struck that night. The building was decrepit and ended up collapsing.

When I saw that Britney was about to be hit by a falling stone, I pushed her away. When I turned back, a light fixture smashed into me. By the time I was rescued, my left leg had already gone necrotic and had to be amputated.

Lionel, who had tried to save the other people in the hotel, left us forever.

After that, Britney and I went to the same college. While we were studying there, she took care of me the entire time. At our graduation ceremony, she suddenly proposed to me.

And I said yes.

After we got married, we had less of the passionate sweetness between young couples and more of the everyday warmth of supporting each other through ordinary daily life.

Still, I tried to add a bit of romance to our lives by writing one love letter after another to Britney. Before I died, however, I discovered that all 199 love letters I had written were tossed in the trash.

Meanwhile, the love letter written by another man was locked away in a safe.

As I lay dying in my hospital bed, I heard the last thing Britney said to me.

"Next time, don't save me."

I had thought that years of being together had brought us to where we were. Only at the very end of my life did I realize that I had been fooling myself.

It turned out that Britney had only been repaying me for saving her life. That debt had bound her to me for so many years, and she didn't want it anymore.

Now that I had been given a shot at another life, I would never get involved with her again.

But that accident would end up hurting too many people. So, this time, I was going to change everyone's fate.