Rewritten Past

First off, interpersonal relationships.

Mama Yue was doing great. Apparently, she'd gotten the role dubbing Princess Mononoke in the Studio Ghibli movie. She'd also apparently secured the role of that female Triad assassin in Rush Hour 2. Between that, Power Rangers, and all the other streams of income she was generating with her investments, I didn't have to worry about her anymore.

...Well, that wasn't true. I was still keeping an eye out for any oddities in her behavior or notes about 'weird people' being around her.

Mama Yue WAS still beautiful, after all. And beautiful women in the entertainment industry always drew problems. Especially if they were single.

But for now, it seemed fine.

Mom... That was, my biological mom, Mei Li. She was doing well. Between Mama Yue, Serena, Dad, and both me and April spending time with her every day, she was completely stress-free.

According to Mama Yue, Mom was much more relaxed than when she was pregnant with me. Her pregnancy symptoms weren't as pronounced too.

That was good.

I vaguely remembered that Mom had a miscarriage once when I was smaller, so it was good that she was relaxed. It had been early on, but that memory stuck with me.

Never happened again though. But that was probably the stress...

Huh.

Actually, the timing lined up to around now...

I was definitely in first grade at the time...

The more things change, the more they stay the same I guess?

Well, in any case, things were different.

Mama Yue and Serena were both very knowledgable in pregnancies. Mama Yue because she had been cramming as much knowledge as she could about it from books, and Serena because she, uh... had to be.

But anyway.

The parents situation was pretty much resolved.

I mean, there was still Dad, but he and I had a mutual understanding. He wouldn't question me or push anything on me, and I wouldn't criticize him about his working hours.

That, paired with the fact that he probably saw a lot of himself in me these days what with how many hours I spent on training various things, mostly meant he just left me along while being all distantly proud.

Honestly, preferred it this way.

Dad got to boast about his son, I got fatherly support without fatherly intervention or expectations...

Win-win, really.

Next off...

Miss Serena... Or as she kept insisting, Serena, was doing well too. Her injuries from the incident had long healed, and she was doing really well finding purpose in her work as our (on paper) maid.

In reality, she was basically like another mom for me, or a really close aunt.

Which was odd considering she was younger than Mama Yue. If I remembered right, Serena was just 18.

And yet, out of the adult women I knew in my life, she was definitely the most motherly.

Of course, there was a reason for that, so let's not dwell too much on it...

Anyway.

Serena had taken up painting and knitting in her spare time and was now obsessed about prepping the nursery for Mom and my baby sister.

Apparently, she was living vicariously through Mom in having a baby since she didn't get the chance to celebrate properly for April.

...Not that she really COULD considering the backstory there.

But, uh...

Moving on!

April was doing well too. She'd filled out a bit these days from when I first met her. Less skin and bones and more a healthy young girl. She was also much happier.

That was obvious though. She had me.

...Still a bit iffy on that situation.

April was VERY much infatuated with me. And I was also objectively amazing.

I wasn't her ONLY friend. But I was definitely her best friend. Or as she insisted, her bestest friend.

That put me in a sticky situation though.

Mentally, I was very much an adult. Physically, I was very much not. And objectively, no one knew that I was mentally an adult.

Which led to this sticky situation of me being able to play with April like a kid as long as I turned my brain off and just took things as they were. But also definitely understanding the implications afterwards since there was absolutely NO way that April would ever be interested in anyone else at this rate.

Sheer proximity, the fact that I was very much unable to say no to anything she wanted due to everything in my past life, and the fact that she was also very adorable in general and a joy to be around meant that I was on a fast-track to the AprilxAlex ship.

It wasn't a matter of 'if' but just a matter of 'when.'

And considering that my parents, Serena, and Mama Yue were all supporting it because April was a genuinely wonderful girl and objectively good for me due to her sunny personality contrasting against my overly serious mood...

Major moral and ethical dilemma here, you see. Also very much a Morton's Fork.

I couldn't reject April. Not because of the fallout with Serena and my family, though THAT would be a disaster too. No, it was because April ALREADY had my heart.

Not this April, of course, but the April I remembered.

We were never together, and we were just good friends. But the fact that I still remembered her even after two decades since she passed in the future when everyone else had forgotten pretty much proved that point.

Alex Li just could not reject April Rose. And the older April got, the closer she looked to the April I remembered, the more dead to rights I'd be.

And I think that April could sense that in one way or another.

Kids had scary intuition, after all. And April had already intuited that I would never seriously reject her on anything. I might delay, push it off, or gently redirect her. But if she was deadset, I wouldn't deny her.

So of course she was taking full advantage of that by making me her nightly bodypillow and basically teddybear replacement.

At the same time, I couldn't just accept April's feelings right now. She was still just a child, after all, and she didn't really even understand what 'love' was. If I was careless with my words, I could very much accidentally make April develop to my personal preferences.

Or in other words, accidental grooming.

Which, again, VERY bad.

The problem was, everyone thought that I was a kid. And I couldn't just say I had regressed back to the past. Not to mention I didn't have a valid reason for ACTUALLY rejecting April too. Not when everyone saw that I genuinely cared for her.

Plus, my stupid mouth saying that 'destiny' line back then...

So...

Problem for future me!

I'd decided that I was just going to turn my brain off when I was around April and just act like a kid.

Thankfully, I had plenty of experience with compartmentalizing things, so executing that plan would be a non-issue.

And also thankfully, April was very much just a cute little girl right now who didn't really get what loving and liking someone really meant.

...That would definitely change in the next five or so years though.

...Ganbaru, future me. Ganbaru.

So for now, put a pin on that.