Beginning to the End

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Everything is quiet, well not really. I could hear some city hustle bustle combined with the cooking noises.

I expected to wake up in some hospital, perhaps still lying on the road bleeding profusely, feeling immense pain.

That was not the case. I was in my room lying on my bed. There was no pain of any sort.

Is that just a dream?

It was a really realistic dream if so. I could still remember the texture of the shopping bag that I was holding, the hazy city lights, and the coldness of the night. I recall standing by the crossing, waiting for the pedestrian walk light to turn green despite the empty road.

Suddenly, a car came swerving from nowhere. It was so fast that if it had been real life, I would probably be horribly injured.

Taking a step back from my thoughts, I reached for my phone with closed eyes and....it's nowhere to be found. Which should have been impossible since I have a habit of putting it under my pillow. I searched around the bed and I still couldn't find anything.

I begin to realize the other oddities of this situation. The bed covers were not how I remembered it to be. There are a stack of books on the table. The walls are in a slightly differeny color. A flip phone next to the books.

A flip phone?

I headed to the table to check that phone out. It was my old phone from a long time ago. There were also schoolbooks and a calendar next to it. A calendar for year 200X.

I gasped and took a step back.

Isn't it the year 201X?

I checked the date in my phone and it showed the same date.

5th September 200X.

Is this another dream? A dream in a dream?

I gave myself a pinch, it hurts. I slapped my face hard. It really hurts. I observed my phone and it really seemed to be my old phone. It has all my songs that I remember being obsessed with.

What is this ridiculous situation? I traveled back in time like those fantasy dramas?

I opened the window of my room, and I saw a scenery that was so familiar yet different from the year 201X.

It isn't that different, after all it's just a difference of 10 years, but it feels uncanny. Familiar but uncanny, like something I would see in a dream.

I watched skies that proceeds to darken while my brain got consumed by multitudes of thoughts.

I had gone back in time to when I was 15 years old. Back to when I am still very much active as an actress. A child actress to be exact. At this time, I received a lot of offers to appear briefly in dramas as the younger version of particularly crucial characters, even a few female leads.

The offers gradually began to reduce as I grew up. I was no longer a child, but my image was that of a child actress, which was clearly a mismatch.

Trying to find roles with an agency is hard, and finding one without an agency is even harder. At some point, I got let go by my agency, Agency N, that I had been with since my debut.

In the end, I just have to settle with extras and minor roles to continue acting.

Despite everything that happened, I always loved acting. It always felt like something that I should do, and I wanted to keep pursuing acting, but it's difficult.

I went from audition to audition, but the roles that I received could be counted by one hand. That was still not counting the ones that I got cut out from, or the projects probably won't be aired.

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"Hana!! Go down and eat your dinner!!."

A loud voice interrupted my musings. That's my mom. She has always told me to chase my dreams, to do what I want. As I pursued acting with not much success, I wondered if she ever thought me as a failure.

She always told me to do everything I wanted to, but what is the good of that? I did everything I wanted to, but it lead me nowhere.

I gave my forehead a light smack, trying to stop the thoughts from spiraling. Think about something else, like...I don't know this whole situation with the time travel?

The idea that I managed to somehow time travel is still weighing on my brain. I can't think of a reason why it happened to me. I got into a car crash but I did nothing to warrant time travel. I was just doing what I usually do, there was nothing out of the ordinary that day.

"Hana!!!! Dinner!!!!"

I wanted to do some research on this strange phenomenon, but my mom has always had a thing about eating dinner in time. I'll have to think about it later.

"Yeah!!! I'm going downstairs!!".