Chapter 1 - Twenty-Three Again
I died on a Wednesday.
Which was inconvenient.
I had a meeting on Thursday.
Three, actually.
One with finance.
One with operations.
And one with a company I was considering acquiring because apparently owning several businesses had not cured me of wanting another one.
There were also twenty-three unread emails.
Seven messages from my executive assistant.
A pending contract.
Two factories having completely unrelated problems at the exact same time.
And a supplier who had somehow decided that changing a material specification without telling us was an acceptable business practice.
It wasn't.
I had opinions.
Many opinions.
Unfortunately, I died before I could send them.
There wasn't anything dramatic about it.
No car accident.
No gunshot.
No cinematic final speech.
No beautiful realization while staring at a sunset.
I was sitting behind my desk.
Laptop open.
Phone beside me.
Coffee that had gone cold hours ago.
It was past midnight.
Again.
My chest started hurting.
Not sharply.
Just enough that I noticed.
I remember leaning back.
Thinking—
That's new.
Then thinking I should probably call someone.
Then thinking I'd finish the email first.
Which, in hindsight, was a very stupid final decision.
I didn't finish the email.
When I opened my eyes again, the first thing I saw was a ceiling I hadn't seen in more than twenty years.
I stared.
White.
Slight discoloration near one corner.
One tiny crack I knew very well.
The electric fan turned slowly above me.
Left.
Right.
Left.
Right.
I didn't move.
Maybe this was memory.
Maybe death came with reruns.
Maybe the brain, in its final moments, decided to show you the least impressive room you'd ever owned.
Then I heard it.
Beep.
I closed my eyes.
No.
Beep.
Absolutely not.
A familiar mechanical whir came from somewhere near the wall.
Then—
krrrk.
Paper.
Being pulled badly.
I sat up.
Fast.
Too fast.
The room moved with me.
Old desk.
Old shelves.
Boxes.
Stacks of paper.
Cutting mat.
Ruler.
Packaging supplies.
The printer.
That fucking printer.
I stared at it.
It stared back in the way only a machine that had personally ruined several years of your life could.
"No."
My voice sounded wrong.
Younger.
I touched my throat.
Then my face.
Smooth.
Too smooth.
My hands—
I looked at my hands.
No age spots.
No small scar near my thumb from an office renovation disaster.
No ring.
Not that I'd ever married.
Just—
younger.
I stumbled out of bed.
Nearly tripped over a box.
"Fuck."
The box had my old shop supplies inside.
Not replicas.
Not similar.
Mine.
From—
No.
I grabbed my phone.
Old model.
Old case.
Battery at thirty-seven percent because apparently even supernatural events could not improve my charging habits.
I unlocked it.
The date appeared.
I stared at it.
Then stared harder.
Twenty-three.
I was twenty-three.
Not twenty-four.
Not thirty.
Not some random convenient point in my life.
Twenty-three.
A year after graduating.
Right around the period when my tiny printing and customization business was still mostly operating out of my room.
I sat down slowly.
"No."
Checked the year again.
Same.
Opened my banking app.
The balance loaded.
I stared.
Then whispered—
"Oh, fuck you."
My money was gone.
Not stolen.
Gone.
Because it had never existed yet.
No holding company.
No investments.
No properties.
No factories.
No acquisitions.
No executive team.
No offices.
No warehouses.
No ridiculous accounts I had spent decades building.
Just the amount twenty-three-year-old Lia had.
Which was—
not nothing.
But after dying wealthy enough that people had started calling me things like industry leader and self-made businesswoman—
this balance felt deeply disrespectful.
I opened another app.
Nothing.
Another.
Nothing.
No mistake.
No hidden account.
No cosmic compensation package.
I looked around the room.
"Where's the manual?"
Silence.
"Hello?"
Nothing.
"No instructions?"
The printer beeped.
I pointed at it.
"Not you."
No glowing screen appeared.
No floating text.
No mysterious voice saying:
WELCOME, LIA ALESSANDRA RAMOS. YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN A SECOND CHANCE.
Nothing.
Apparently I had died, travelled twenty-two years backward, and customer service was closed.
Amazing.
I stood.
Then saw it.
Framed on the wall.
My diploma.
Bachelor of Secondary Education, Major in Science.
I stared.
For a very long time.
Then—
"You've got to be fucking kidding me."
All that time travel.
All that impossible cosmic bullshit.
And I still had the same degree.
Four years.
Science Education.
Still mine.
Still completed.
Still completely unrelated to the business empire I had eventually built.
Of course.
Of fucking course.
Reset the money.
Reset the businesses.
Reset the properties.
Reset the entire economy around me.
But God forbid I get an MBA.
"No."
I walked closer.
Read it again as if the words might rearrange themselves out of pity.
They did not.
"Science Education."
Still there.
I laughed.
It came out halfway between amused and hysterical.
"Fantastic."
No manual.
No powers.
No startup capital.
No special degree.
Just twenty-two years of memories and a teaching diploma.
Beautiful.
Then the laughter stopped.
Because twenty-two years of memories meant—
people.
I grabbed my phone again.
My assistant.
I searched her name.
Found her.
Young.
Way too young.
Living an entirely different life.
Not my assistant.
Not yet.
Maybe never.
I stared at her profile picture.
My chest hurt in a way that had nothing to do with dying.
She had been with me for years.
She knew how I took my coffee.
She knew which meetings I hated.
She knew which people were allowed to interrupt me.
She had once forced me to go home after finding me asleep in my office.
She had organized birthdays I barely remembered attending.
She had become—
family-adjacent.
And now, to her, I was nobody.
I searched another employee.
Different life.
Another.
Nothing.
A manager who hadn't met me yet.
An executive who was still in school.
A friend who had moved abroad years later but was currently still home.
People I had known.
Loved.
Fought with.
Trusted.
Lost.
All reset.
I looked at the contacts on my phone.
Small.
Old.
Familiar.
Mama.
Ate Bianca.
Kuya Nathan.
Sofia.
Jane.
Chloe.
Old classmates.
College contacts.
Customers.
Suppliers.
A tiny life.
My life.
But not the one I'd just left.
My thumb paused over Jane's name.
For one second.
Then I locked the phone.
Not now.
Jane had existed in my first life long before any company did.
Grade Seven.
High school.
College chats.
Rare meetups.
Pink cake when we were twenty-two.
Years of liking her.
Years of knowing exactly what she could give me.
Friendship.
Nothing more.
And that had been okay.
Painful sometimes.
But okay.
Then work had swallowed me again.
A few chats.
No meetings.
One year disappearing into business like I always did.
Jane would still be Jane.
Twenty-three-year-old Jane.
She didn't need forty-five-year-old Lia dropping into her life carrying two extra decades she couldn't possibly understand.
Not today.
I put the phone down.
"Lia!"
Mama.
I froze.
Her voice came from downstairs.
Young.
Not young-young.
But younger than the last time I'd heard it.
Much younger.
"Lia! Kain na!"
My throat tightened.
For a second, I couldn't move.
Then—
"Coming!"
Silence.
Then Mama shouted back—
"Ano?"
Of course.
English.
I laughed through something dangerously close to tears.
"BABABA NA!"
"Ayan!"
I stood there.
Hands shaking.
Mama was alive.
Not memory-alive.
Not photograph-alive.
Not some voicemail I had kept longer than necessary.
Alive.
Downstairs.
Probably annoyed because I wasn't eating.
I walked out of the room.
Slowly.
The house hit me harder than the bedroom.
Everything was younger.
Paint.
Furniture.
Appliances.
The little things that had disappeared one by one over the years.
Then I saw Mama.
Standing near the table.
Holding a serving spoon.
Alive.
I stopped.
She looked at me.
"O, bakit?"
I couldn't answer immediately.
Her face changed.
"Anong nangyari?"
"Nothing."
"Ba't ka nakatingin?"
"Wala."
"May sakit ka?"
"No."
She touched my forehead.
Automatic.
My eyes burned.
"Wala ka namang lagnat."
"I'm okay."
"Edi kumain ka."
And just like that, she turned back toward the food.
No cosmic significance.
No reunion soundtrack.
Just—
kain.
I almost laughed.
I sat.
Sofia was there.
Twenty-one.
Still taking BSBA.
Hair tied up.
Phone beside her plate.
Alive.
Young.
Annoyingly normal.
She looked at me.
"Ate, bakit?"
"What?"
"Parang iiyak ka."
"I am not."
She narrowed her eyes.
Sofia had always been too observant.
Even at twenty-one.
"Sure?"
"Yes."
She stared for another second.
Then shrugged.
"Okay."
Smart girl.
No interrogation.
I loved her.
I looked away before I actually cried.
Ate Bianca was thirty-six.
Already doing online jewelry.
Not huge.
Not yet.
But running.
Learning as she went.
Seminars.
Trial and error.
Supplier mistakes.
Packaging experiments.
The Ramos family business school:
It sold.
Okay.
Sell more.
Kuya Nathan was thirty-four.
His food business with his wife was going too.
Same basic philosophy.
Make something.
People buy it.
Great.
Do it again.
Nobody had formal business training.
Except Sofia, technically.
Good for her.
The rest of us?
Vibes.
Experience.
Seminars.
Occasional panic.
And somehow, eventually, actual companies.
I remembered helping all of them later.
Systems.
Pricing.
Packaging.
Supplier decisions.
Operations.
Scaling.
Things I had learned painfully.
Things I could now see earlier.
Too early.
I looked around the table.
This was dangerous.
I knew too much.
Not everything.
But enough to make myself unbearable.
I could warn Ate Bianca about mistakes she hadn't made.
Tell Kuya Nathan which products would work.
Tell Sofia exactly which direction her future beauty business would eventually take.
Tell Mama things that hadn't happened.
Tell everyone where they would succeed.
Where they would fail.
Who they would become.
No.
Absolutely not.
I had been alive for five minutes and already wanted to interfere with everyone.
Terrible.
I needed rules.
Immediately.
Mama placed food on my plate.
"Kain."
"Thanks, Ma."
She looked at me again.
"Sigurado ka okay ka?"
"Yes."
"Napuyat ka na naman?"
I stopped.
Ah.
There she was.
Twenty-three-year-old Lia.
Already doing it.
Working too late.
Skipping meals.
Living inside her room.
Apparently dying at forty-five had not started at forty-four.
It started here.
Tiny habits.
Normal habits.
Habits everyone around me already noticed.
Mama shook her head.
"Wag puro trabaho."
My chest tightened.
I looked down.
"Yeah."
"Ano?"
"Opo."
She laughed.
"English nang English."
Sofia looked at me.
"You're weird today."
"Thank you."
"Welcome."
I ate.
Actually ate.
At the table.
With them.
And for the first time since waking up—
I let myself feel it.
I was twenty-three.
Mama was alive.
My siblings were young.
The businesses hadn't become what I remembered.
Jane and Chloe were out there somewhere living their own twenty-three-year-old lives.
The people I lost weren't necessarily lost.
But they weren't mine to recreate either.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
I had no idea why I was here.
No idea what happened after I died.
No idea whether this would happen again.
No idea whether I could change anything permanently.
No cosmic customer service.
No FAQ.
No terms and conditions.
Just—
another life.
Apparently.
After eating, I went back upstairs.
The printer was waiting.
Menacingly.
I ignored it.
Opened an old notebook.
Blank page.
I wrote at the top:
Then stopped.
Very mature.
Fine.
I started writing.
1. Cash flow matters more than looking successful.
2. Hire earlier.
3. Fire faster when necessary.
4. Build systems before scaling.
5. Do not personally approve every stupid thing.
6. Never depend on one supplier.
7. Never depend on one platform.
8. Emergency fund.
9. Separate personal and business money properly.
10. ACCOUNTING. REAL ACCOUNTING. NOT VIBES.
I underlined that one.
Twice.
The Ramos family spirit could only take us so far.
I continued.
11. Document processes.
12. Train people properly.
13. Back up files.
14. Contracts.
15. READ contracts.
16. Stop giving discounts because I feel bad.
17. Stop accepting impossible deadlines because customers say please.
18. Eat.
I stared.
Then wrote:
19. Sleep.
Another pause.
20. Exercise. Medical checkups. Don't be stupid.
I stared at the list.
Twenty rules.
Mostly business.
Even after literally dying from work.
"Typical."
I turned to another page.
Wrote:
Then, underneath:
WORK LESS.
GET A LIFE.
I paused.
Added:
SEE FRIENDS.
That one hurt more than expected.
I kept going.
SPEND TIME WITH FAMILY.
TRAVEL FOR FUN SOMETIMES.
HAVE HOBBIES THAT DO NOT BECOME BUSINESSES.
I stared.
That sounded difficult.
Then—
MAYBE DATE SOMEONE.
I laughed.
"Ambitious."
I considered crossing it out.
Didn't.
Then the important one:
DO NOT LET BUSINESS EAT ENTIRE LIFE.
And finally—
DO NOT DIE AT 45.
I sat back.
There.
Excellent.
Second-life strategy.
Twenty-nine minutes after waking up from death.
Surely nothing could go wrong.
The printer beeped.
I looked over.
"No."
It beeped again.
"Don't."
Whir.
Click.
Then—
krrrrrrrk.
I stood slowly.
Paper was stuck halfway through.
Crooked.
Crumpled.
Exactly like I remembered.
Twenty-two years.
Multiple companies.
Millions in equipment.
Factories.
Warehouses.
Executives.
Acquisitions.
I had forgotten this little bastard.
I walked over.
Opened the tray.
Pulled gently.
The paper tore.
Half remained inside.
I stared.
The printer stayed silent.
Mocking me.
I closed my eyes.
Maybe there really was a god.
And maybe he had a sense of humor.
I looked at the machine.
"You have got to be fucking kidding me."