April 5, 2008.
Saturday.
Sunhaven First High School, senior year, Class Four.
Evan Hart had spent the last half hour confirming one important fact.
He was not dreaming.
And this was not some elaborate prank, either. A TV crew could fake a lot of things, but not de-age an entire classroom and convince everyone to stay in character.
Once he accepted that he had somehow come back in time, the panic lasted maybe ten seconds.
After that, he was weirdly fine.
He had grown up online. People his age had spent years reading stories about screwups getting a do-over. The rules were simple enough: if life had slapped you around the first time, a second run was how nobodies stole themselves a future.
And honestly?
He had not exactly been crushing life the first time around.
No money. No girlfriend. No glittering future waiting just out of reach. If he did nothing at all, he still got extra years out of the deal. That alone made this a net profit.
By the time the bell rang, Evan was already halfway through drafting a new life plan in his head.
The teacher, familiar and strangely younger, dragged class a few extra minutes before finally letting them go.
At the door, she tossed out one last reminder.
"Warrior-track registration opens next week. If you're thinking about it, start preparing now."
Evan barely processed it.
In the post-class shuffle, he mentally filed it under ordinary exam admin. In his head, it had come through as the usual academic-stream paperwork, not anything worth paying attention to. Their school usually handled college entrance exam registration automatically anyway. Why would anybody bother announcing it?
Also, this was a science class.
What did academic-stream paperwork have to do with them?
More importantly, he had much bigger things to think about.
This was 2008. A little late to be born early and buy everything in sight, sure, but not too late. A real reborn protagonist did not come back just to coast. He ought to be plotting how to bury future tech tycoons, front-run the market, and maybe, if business felt crowded, step into politics instead.
He was so busy stacking bricks for the empire in his imagination that he barely noticed anyone else.
These kids, he thought, had no idea what kind of glorious future was taking shape in his head.
Starting today, they weren't living in the same world anymore.
"Evan. Caleb. You guys signing up or not?"
The voice came from the desk ahead of him.
Evan looked up and saw Derek Boone turning around in his seat.
Derek was built like a second-string linebacker and, for reasons Evan remembered with painful clarity, completely unforgettable. Years later, at a class reunion right after college, Derek had shown up with such a thick beard that Evan had spent a full minute wondering why somebody's father had wandered into the restaurant.
That beard alone had burned the guy's face into his memory forever.
Evan was still busy thinking, so he did not answer.
Caleb Vann, his desk mate and one half of what the class jokingly called the Forgettable Duo, shook his head first.
"I'm out," Caleb said. "It's a waste of money."
He adjusted his glasses and added, "Ten grand just to register. I won't pass anyway. For that kind of money, I could cover a year's tuition and living expenses at a normal university."
Derek let out a long breath. "Yeah, but if I don't at least try, I'll regret it for the rest of my life."
The guy beside Derek, another classmate Evan only remembered in the vaguest possible way, twisted around to join in.
"It's our only real shot to move up," he said, his expression dimming. "Too bad it was never meant for people like us."
The three of them sank into that particular brand of seventeen-year-old tragedy: half resentment, half longing, all fatalism.
Evan, meanwhile, was completely lost.
Sign up?
For what?
The thing the teacher had mentioned?
That registration cost ten thousand?
This was 2008. Real money. The kind of money families argued over for months. The kind of money that made you think about housing prices, not school paperwork.
Was there some scam going around?
Or had he missed something obvious?
He was just about to ask when Caleb pushed his glasses up again and said, with the solemn determination of a kid trying to convince himself as much as anyone else:
"Even if I can't get into the warrior track, that doesn't mean my life's over. I can still take the academic route. There are private combat academies out there. Once we graduate and start making money, we can train later."
He swallowed.
"We won't be as good as the warrior-track students, but it'll still be a chance."
That earned an immediate nod from Derek's deskmate.
"Exactly. Get into a good academic university, land a decent job, build from there. It's not like regular people can't make something of themselves."
"I still want to try," Derek said.
He sounded uncertain, but only because the price hurt. His family had more money than most, and he looked built for the attempt. Letting the chance go without testing himself clearly bothered him.
Neither of the other two tried very hard to talk him out of it.
They were young, not stupid. If Derek gave up because of them and spent the rest of his life wondering what might have happened, that would be the kind of grudge people carried into middle age.
The conversation rolled on.
Evan sat there staring at them.
What the hell was going on?
He wet his lips and watched their faces carefully.
Nobody was laughing.
Nobody was setting up a punch line.
That was when the first real crack opened under his feet.
Something was off.
He opened his mouth to ask, but somebody else cut in first.
At the desk beside them, two boys had been whispering to each other for a while. Apparently deciding the audience was finally large enough, the buzz-cut one leaned over with undisguised excitement.
"Derek, Caleb, did you guys see the news online last night?"
Derek and Caleb both shook their heads.
Final exam season was close enough that most parents were locking their kids' schedules down tight. Getting online after school was a luxury, not a given.
Seeing their blank looks, the buzz-cut boy grinned wider.
"You missed it? Seriously? It was huge."
He lowered his voice for dramatic effect and failed completely because he was too thrilled to stay quiet.
"Grandmaster Mason broke into Tier Eight."
The desk cluster exploded.
"What?"
"No way!"
"Tier Eight? Wasn't he Tier Seven just a few years ago?"
"You're kidding."
"Zack, come on, say it properly. Public challenge or private?"
"A Tier Eight match..." someone murmured. "I'd kill to see that. Not that they'd ever let people like us in."
Now Evan had a new problem.
He understood every word.
Individually, they all made sense.
Put together, they sounded like complete nonsense.
The buzz-cut boy, Zack Holt, was visibly enjoying himself now that half the room had started listening.
"It's real," he said. "Completely real. Grandmaster Mason really broke through. Not just that, Blackwing Group formally issued a challenge yesterday to Tim Vale, Atlas Search's Asia-Pacific president. Tim Vale. A veteran Tier Eight monster."
The room got louder.
A lot louder.
Most seniors weren't browsing the internet every night this close to the exams, so although the story had already blown up outside school, plenty of people in the class were hearing it for the first time.
That made Zack the undisputed center of the room for a solid minute.
He loved every second of it.
"Do you get how insane this is?" he went on. "Mason isn't even forty yet. He's already the strongest martial artist of his generation. If he beats Tim Vale, Blackwing can push into markets all across Asia and become one of the top groups on the continent."
He slapped his desk for emphasis.
"And if he reaches Tier Nine in a few years? Then Blackwing becomes one of the world's true giants."
"That's too fast..."
"Did the Grandmaster rankings update yet?"
"Top thirty for sure."
"Top twenty, maybe."
"No way. Not this fast. Unless he wins the match."
"Still, Tier Eight..."
The whole class had joined in by then.
Boys. Girls. Everyone.
Every face around him carried some version of the same expression: excitement, awe, hunger, worship.
Not one of them looked confused.
Not one of them acted like this was a joke.
Evan was the only exception in the room.
He sat frozen at his desk, his thoughts reduced to static.
What?
No, seriously.
What?
He knew what Blackwing Group was supposed to be in his old memories, or close enough. He knew Atlas Search too. Tech companies. Corporate competition. Market share. Advertising. Software. Search engines.
That part he understood.
But what had Zack just said?
That a corporation had challenged another corporation's regional president through a martial duel?
That one man's breakthrough could redraw the business map of an entire continent?
That an entire classroom of ordinary high school seniors considered this perfectly normal?
Evan swallowed again. His mouth had gone dry without him noticing.
The words around him were familiar.
The world they belonged to was not.
And for the first time since waking up in 2008, a cold, unmistakable thought settled into place:
He had not come back to the past.
He had landed in the wrong version of it.