Plucking at our shirts, tugging our red shorts, we grimaced through the moist summer heat behind wooden desks. Ito-Sensei scribbled on the chalkboard. The equation of spacetime, embossed in chalk, towered over us. For weeks, I drafted solutions. I pictured the headlines reading, “The first man to travel through time, a hero—Haru!” shouted Ito-Sensei. “Could you solve this paradox?” I pushed and pushed to reveal my answer but only choked on my words. I couldn’t trust myself. Nothing but stuttered nonsense blurted out. My face grew hotter than the room. I stumbled over to the board. Lifting the chalk, my hands danced around the canvas without thought, boasting the experience of a physicist. Just as I reached to write the final line, time hung. The bell shattered the silence. I turned to hand Ito-Sensei the chalk. Her mouth was agape, and everyone stared. I jogged home without another word.
I ran through the front door, threw my bag to the floor, and lowered into my desk chair—peaceful solitude. A blank envelope lay on my desk. My hands lifted a pen and furiously jotted down the last line of my solution. The pen bumped up and down as I solved it. I stopped, flipped over the envelope, and sliced it open. A white linen sheet slipped out. “Don’t choose to share what you just solved,” it began. “I made that mistake. A man will come to your time and incinerate your town. Blood is on my hands. Change this fate.” My heart capsized. Pieces of dried skin, smoked and charred from time, were folded into the letter. At the bottom, my name and a distant year were clearly imprinted. My limbs grew numb from picturing Mama and Papa burnt alive and my life gone. I looked down at my school shorts; the red color had become the blood of my family. I couldn’t stand the sight, the thought, the vision. I threw down the letter and ran out of the house without stopping, past the rice paddies, by the old lady’s onigiri stand, and far away from that cursed letter.
My legs collapsed. I sat on the top of a hill overlooking my town, the only place I had ever known. Tear droplets dribbled down each cheek. I smudged them with my dusty hands. Children played on the dirt paths near the schools. Dogs rolled over in the mud to cool off. Women folded clothes in their backyards, singing as they worked. An ocean poured onto my white shirt that Mama pressed for me. I looked in the distance to see the house my grandparents built: bamboo walls, thatched shingle roofing, and a garden of wilting cherry blossoms. A pillar of smoke, blossoming outwards from the town’s center, consumed every building, child, animal, and family in sight. The cruel reality of the letter unfolded. I wanted time travel to explore. I never thought it would destroy. I shouldn’t have solved the equation. I have to rewrite the letter.