--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I woke up to the pale morning light spilling through the blinds, that soft silver-blue that always made my room feel like it belonged to a different time. For a moment, I didn't move. I just lay there, listening to the quiet. The air was still, almost too still, and the distant ticking of the wall clock was the only thing convincing me this wasn't a dream.
My name is Bhavishya. I'm quiet a hardworking man. I work... or rather, worked... in a place no one has ever heard of. A secret company. No name. No building. No trace. The kind of organization you couldn't find even if you knew where to look. I had been part of it since I was fifteen. I didn't apply for the job; I was chosen. Don't ask me how or why—because, truth is, I never asked. Some doors, once opened, change you so completely that you forget you ever had the choice to walk away.
My work wasn't like any job you'd read about in newspapers or see in movies. It was harder. Dirtier. It was... quiet. The kind of quiet that keeps you awake at night. My assignment was always the same: travel back in time and prevent certain people from being born. People who would grow up to be politicians who bled countries dry, mafia bosses who left trails of bodies, or worse—those whose names never made it to history books but whose shadows stained entire generations.
The method was simple but precise: find the moment their parents met, and make sure it never happened.
And for twenty years, I did exactly that.
I ruined first dates, staged accidents, even arranged coincidences so cruel they would seem like divine warnings. The irony was, I never knew my targets' names. The documents only described them in fragments: birthplaces, mannerisms, physical traits, key moments in their lives. But never a name. It was as if the company didn't want me to feel like I was erasing people—just... possibilities.
Last week, I handed in my resignation letter. The work was too heavy now. I'd spent half my life running through other people's pasts, fixing futures that weren't mine to fix. All I wanted was a quiet life—somewhere nobody knew me, where I could sleep without waking to the sound of my own heartbeat pounding from the things I'd done.
But first, there was one last job.
And that's why I woke up in my room this morning with a different kind of heaviness. Today I wasn't just waking up to the day—I was waking up inside my own story.
The jump took me thirty-six years back. The air was warmer, the colors sharper, like the world had been freshly painted. The streets felt unfamiliar even though I knew exactly where I was.
I spotted him almost immediately—my target. The man described in my final set of documents. Tall. Slightly hunched shoulders. Hair too long for the fashion of the time. He stood across the park, his back to me, hands stuffed in his pockets as though hiding from the world. I didn't need to see his face to know it was him. The small limp in his left leg, the faint tug of the coat sleeve... it all matched.
And then I saw her.
She was sitting on a park bench, head bent forward, trying to fix a broken shoe sole with delicate fingers that kept slipping against the leather. The light caught her hair, deep and dark, and it fell in gentle waves that half-hid her face. Even from here, I could see how her presence pulled at the space around her, as though the air itself was softer near her.
My breath slowed. I knew what was about to happen. He would see her, walk over, help her, and that single act of kindness would be the thread that tied their futures together. Within a year, they'd be married. A year later... the child they'd have would become someone whose existence my company deemed dangerous enough to erase.
I'd done this dozens of times before.
But this time... something felt different.
The man shifted. His head turned slightly toward her. His foot stepped forward.
I moved.
Not thinking, just moving.
I rushed toward the woman before he could reach her. My plan was to intercept—step into that space between them, stop the meeting before it could start. Maybe pretend I knew her, maybe offer help so he'd walk away.
He paused mid-step, eyes flicking toward me. There was no suspicion in his gaze, just mild curiosity, maybe even relief that someone else was helping.
I knelt beside her, forcing my voice into something calm.
"Looks like you could use a hand," I said.
She lifted her head.
And the world stopped.
My mouth went dry. My heartbeat thudded so hard I could feel it in my throat.
"Mom??"
The word fell out before I could catch it.
Her eyes widened slightly, not with recognition—how could she recognize me??—but with the confusion of a stranger suddenly addressing her with something so personal.
I turned, suddenly desperate to see him again. My future father. But the space where he'd been was empty. He was gone. Slipped away in the few seconds I'd been frozen.
I spun back toward her, mind racing. The reality of it clawed at me: if she never met him today, she would never marry him. She would never have me.
A strange pressure filled the air, like the weight before a storm. My skin prickled, the edges of my vision dimming.
I had been on countless missions, pulling apart other people's timelines with surgical precision. But never once had I thought what it might feel like to cut my own.
Her face blurred. My voice didn't work anymore. My hands didn't feel like mine.
And then—
I was gone.
Not in the way the jump usually feels, where the world folds inward and spits me back into the present. This was different. It was like the story had simply... decided I didn't belong in it anymore.
No goodbyes. No pain. No light. Just absence.
Somewhere, the ticking of a wall clock faded into nothing.
Somewhere, my room never existed.
Somewhere, Bhavishya never woke up to tell you this story.
Bhavishya had erased himself from Bhavishya (Future).
