Chapter 92 - Twenty-Three, Again
I woke up twenty-three.
Again.
For several seconds, I didn't understand what I was looking at.
Old ceiling.
Old paint.
Old room.
The small crack near the corner I had forgotten existed.
Morning light coming through curtains I hadn't owned in eleven years.
My body was wrong.
Too light.
Too young.
Too familiar.
Then memory arrived.
Concrete.
A shout.
Metal.
Impact.
Someone kneeling beside me.
My phone several feet away with a cracked screen.
Thirty-four.
Dead.
I sat up too fast.
"No."
My hands were shaking.
I looked at them.
Twenty-three-year-old hands.
No tiny scar near my thumb from opening a stubborn equipment crate at twenty-eight.
No faint mark on my wrist from a production-floor accident that had needed three stitches and earned me an entire month of lectures from Mama.
Gone.
Everything gone.
Again.
"Fuck."
My voice sounded younger.
I hated that too.
I grabbed my phone.
Old phone.
Old date.
Same beginning.
Reset 4.
Life 5.
Whatever.
Numbers had stopped making this less absurd.
I opened my contacts.
Family first.
Mama.
Papa.
Ate Bianca.
Kuya Nathan.
Ate Vivian.
Sofia.
Alive.
Young again.
Good.
Always good.
Still painful.
Then I opened my messages.
Business.
Tiny.
Orders.
Customers.
No management team.
No facility.
No second company.
No procurement reports.
No payroll that required an actual finance structure.
No staff group chat with too many unread messages because somebody had brought food and somehow thirty people needed to discuss it.
I searched names anyway.
Anna.
There were several Annas.
None mine.
Mae.
Too many.
Jenny.
Carla.
Grace.
Joy.
Trish.
People existed.
Of course they existed.
Just not—
mine.
Not my Anna who had gone from early production hire to actual leadership.
Not Mae who could detect emotional damage through an office door but knew when not to ask.
Not Jenny, who had become so competent at procurement that I sometimes disagreed with her just to confirm she could defend the numbers.
Not Carla.
Not Grace.
Not Joy.
Not any of them as I knew them.
They were somewhere.
Maybe.
Living entirely different lives.
Perhaps they would never work for me.
Perhaps some of them would.
I didn't know.
And that had to be allowed.
I dropped the phone on the bed.
That lesson hurt more when employees were involved.
I could rebuild processes.
I could rebuild capacity.
I could buy printers again.
Apparently I had extensive experience buying printers while emotionally compromised.
But I could not rebuild people.
I could not go looking for Anna and say—
You become excellent at production leadership in eight years.
I could not find Mae and hand her a job because another version of her had earned my trust.
Memory wasn't introduction.
That applied here too.
Fuck.
Then the companies.
That grief was quieter.
Strange.
I had built them.
Expanded them.
Moved three times.
Then four.
Then facilities.
Printers.
Laser machines.
Tarp.
DTF.
UV.
Corporate contracts.
Two companies.
Systems.
Managers.
Awards I pretended to hate and secretly kept.
Gone.
All of it.
But unlike Aria—
those I could rebuild.
Not exactly.
But something.
That difference mattered.
Companies were systems.
People were not.
Still, I sat there mourning a production floor.
Ridiculous.
I remembered standing behind glass watching machines run while everybody worked without waiting for me.
I remembered the first day I realized the company could function while I was gone.
I remembered the pink stapler.
I laughed once.
Then immediately started crying.
Of all things.
The fucking stapler.
Mama knocked.
"Lia?"
I wiped my face badly.
"Yeah?"
"Gising ka na?"
"Yes."
The door opened slightly.
Mama looked in.
Young.
Younger.
Alive.
Not aged by eleven years.
I stared.
Her expression changed.
"Okay ka lang?"
No.
Yes.
Both.
"Bad dream."
She came inside.
Sat on the edge of my bed.
"What happened?"
Died.
Again.
Lost eleven years.
Again.
Lost people who had no idea I had ever known them.
Again.
Instead—
"I don't really remember."
Lie.
Mama touched my hair.
"Stress?"
"Maybe."
She studied me.
I let her.
Then leaned against her shoulder.
That surprised both of us.
Mama didn't say anything.
Just stayed.
Good.
I had learned that too.
Go home.
Sometimes literally.
Breakfast hurt.
Papa alive.
Sofia younger.
Ate Bianca messages in the family chat.
Kuya Nathan complaining about something.
Ate Vivian replying.
Normal.
Not the versions from age thirty-four.
Earlier.
Different.
Same people.
Current information.
I watched Papa drink coffee and remembered his older face at family dinners.
Gone.
Not gone.
Not yet.
Time was rude.
I ate anyway.
The printer jammed before noon.
Of course.
I stood in front of it.
Old enemy.
Same machine.
Probably.
Unless the universe had manufactured another identical asshole.
I opened the tray.
Paper jam.
I stared.
"You survived too."
The printer said nothing.
No remorse.
I removed the paper.
Closed the tray.
It made a noise I immediately hated.
Excellent.
Reset officially confirmed.
For the first few days, I didn't rebuild.
Not really.
I answered existing orders.
Finished what needed finishing.
Checked supplies.
Looked at the old pricing.
Winced.
Looked at the margins.
Winced harder.
Then closed everything.
I already knew where this could go.
That was the dangerous part.
I could accelerate.
Hard.
I had eleven years of recent operational knowledge on top of everything before that.
I knew what equipment eventually justified itself.
What services scaled.
What client types were worth chasing.
Where staffing became necessary.
How easily a founder could become the bottleneck.
How to build production.
How to separate B2B.
How to price.
How to refuse bad volume.
I could probably reach thirty-four-year-old scale far faster this time.
That didn't mean I should recreate the exact path.
I wrote that down.
DO NOT RECREATE PEOPLE.
Then beneath it—
DO NOT RECREATE THE COMPANY EXACTLY JUST BECAUSE IT WORKED ONCE.
Then—
CURRENT DEMAND. CURRENT PEOPLE. CURRENT INFORMATION.
I looked at the page.
Very mature.
Then added—
OLD PRINTER STILL A BITCH.
Balance.
Chloe messaged on Day Four.
Not because she knew anything.
Obviously.
Just normal Chloe.
Chloe: alive?
I stared at the screen.
Fuck.
Different context.
Same question.
In the last life she had sent that after Jane.
After Audrey.
After emotional disasters.
Now she was just asking because I had apparently taken too long to reply to something.
I opened the previous messages.
Nothing dramatic.
Normal friendship.
Current Chloe.
I typed—
Lia: Unfortunately.
Her reply came fast.
Chloe: there she is
My throat tightened.
She didn't know how many times she had said versions of that.
Would never know.
Maybe should never know.
I smiled anyway.
Chloe: food this week?
I considered.
Then—
Lia: Yes.
Not because I needed to recreate anything.
Because current Chloe was my friend too.
That part already existed.
Shared history.
Real.
No reset needed.
We met two days later.
Cheap food.
Same Chloe.
Not same exactly.
That distinction kept catching me.
She had the same laugh.
Same habit of stealing food after ordering her own.
Same ability to inspect my face and immediately ask—
"What happened?"
I stared.
"What?"
"You look weird."
"I always look like this."
"No."
There it was.
Faces.
Again.
Apparently eternal.
"Bad week."
"Business?"
"Life."
She nodded.
Didn't push immediately.
Then stole a fry.
Current Chloe.
Old friend.
No history of Jane's seven dates.
No Audrey breakup.
No checking whether I ate after two heartbreaks.
No knowledge of twenty-something employees.
No memory of joking about heartbreak printers.
Still Chloe.
I found that comforting.
And painful.
She talked about people from school.
Work.
Mutual friends.
Then—
"Jane messaged me."
My hand stopped.
Tiny.
Chloe noticed nothing.
"What about?"
"She's around this weekend. We might meet."
Jane.
Of course.
Current Jane.
Twenty-three.
No dates.
No Miguel.
No wedding.
No good makeup breakup.
No loan.
No bride.
My brain immediately produced the last image I had of her in the previous life.
Wedding dress.
Good makeup.
Happy.
Looking at Miguel.
Then laughing because Chloe and Celeste had apparently told her about my wow eyes.
I looked down at my food.
Fuck.
"Want to come?" Chloe asked.
I should have said no.
I had every justification.
Grief.
Confusion.
Current information.
Maybe too soon.
Instead—
"Sure."
Chloe smiled.
"Good."
I hated how much that one word hurt.
Saturday arrived.
I nearly canceled twice.
Didn't.
Not because fate demanded I see Jane.
Not because I needed to know whether Miguel existed.
Not because I had unfinished romance.
There was no romance here yet.
Only history.
Real history up to twenty-three.
Everything after—
mine alone.
I arrived late enough that Chloe was already there.
Jane too.
I saw her from across the café.
And stopped.
Same face.
Younger than the bride.
No wedding dress.
No ring.
No Miguel beside her.
Just Jane.
Twenty-three.
Hair different from the end of the last life.
Clothes different.
Laughing at something Chloe said.
Alive.
Unmarried.
Unaware she had once dated me seven times.
Unaware she had once broken my heart.
Unaware she had once married a man named Miguel.