The pain started in his left arm.
Andy—thirty-four years old, mid-level manager at a logistics company he never cared about, owner of a studio apartment with a mortgage that would outlive his enthusiasm for life—was sitting in his car when it hit. Bandung traffic, as always, was a special kind of hell. The digital clock on his dashboard read 18:47. Rain drummed against the windshield, blurring the streetlights of Dago into watercolor smears.
His arm went numb first. Then the pressure came, sitting on his chest like an old friend who'd overstayed their welcome. Andy had read about heart attacks. Everyone had. But reading about something and feeling it were different universes entirely.
"Oh," he said aloud. Just that. A small, stupid sound.
The last thing he saw was the red glow of brake lights stretching toward Dago Pakar, the wipers carving their futile arcs through the rain. The last thing he thought was: I never got to fix anything.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Not the flatline. Not the dramatic silence of movies. Just... beeping. Rhythmic, insistent, annoying.
Andy opened his eyes to sunlight. Harsh, unfiltered, wrong sunlight. The kind that came through cheap boarding house curtains at ten in the morning because you'd forgotten to close them properly the night before. His old room. His university room near ITB.
He sat up too fast. The room spun—faded floral wallpaper, the familiar crack in the ceiling that looked like Indonesia if you squinted. His hands flew to his chest. No pain. No pressure. Just the steady thump of a young heart.
His phone buzzed on the desk. A Nokia. An actual, physical Nokia with buttons and everything.
Andy picked it up with hands that shook. The date glowed back at him in pixelated green: 14 March 2014.
"Okay," he whispered to the empty room. "Okay, that's... that's not possible."
But it was. The smell of kopi tubruk from Ibu Sarti's kitchen downstairs. The distant sound of angkots honking their distinctive tet-tet-tet. The mountain breeze that slipped through the window—cool, familiar, nothing like Jakarta's suffocating humidity. All of it real. All of it memory made flesh.
He was twenty-two again. In Bandung. Three months before the world changed.
The panic didn't come immediately. That was the strange part. Instead, Andy felt something colder, quieter: certainty. He remembered this day. Specifically, this day.
March 14, 2014. White Day, if you cared about that kind of thing. He'd cared, once. Had saved for two weeks to buy a silver bracelet for Sarah—his fiancée-to-be, though she didn't know it yet. He'd planned to propose in December, after graduation. Had it all mapped out: the ring, the restaurant overlooking the city lights, the speech.
What he hadn't planned for was the text message.
Andy scrolled through his Nokia with practiced thumbs, muscle memory from a lifetime ago. There it was, received at 2:47 AM: "Andy, we need to talk. Can we meet at the usual cafe? 11 AM?"
Sarah. Even her punctuation was careful. He remembered how his twenty-two-year-old self had read that message—stomach dropping, mind racing through every possible sin he might have committed. The sleepless hours. The desperate rehearsing of apologies before he even knew what he'd done wrong.
He knew now, of course. Knew exactly what he'd find at that cafe on Jalan Riau. Sarah, beautiful and guilty, sitting across from a man Andy wouldn't meet for another three years. Marcus, the photographer. The "just a friend" who would become her husband, who would father her children, who would post their anniversary photos on Instagram with captions about "finding your soulmate when you least expect it."
Andy had hated Marcus for years. Had hated himself more, for not seeing it sooner, for begging Sarah to stay, for the three miserable months of "trying to work things out" that had hollowed out his confidence like rot in old wood.
But that was the old timeline. The old Andy.
He looked at his hands—smooth, uncalloused, no stress lines between the eyebrows he couldn't see but knew were there. Twenty-two. God. He had joints that didn't crack when he stood up. A metabolism that forgave seblak at 2 AM. And knowledge. Twelve years of knowledge, burning behind his eyes like a secret too dangerous to speak aloud.
The Nokia buzzed again. Sarah, probably wondering why he hadn't replied.
Andy typed one-handed, thumbs finding the T9 layout with eerie ease: "No need to meet. I know about Marcus. We're done. Please don't contact me again."
Send.
He waited for the regret. For the voice that had defined his early twenties—the one that whispered you're overreacting, you're being cruel, you're going to regret this—to rise up and choke him.
Nothing. Just quiet.
Andy stood up, walked to the window, and looked out at Bandung in 2014. The same chaos, the same potential, the same everything-waiting-to-happen that he'd lived through once and forgotten. The seblak vendor setting up his cart. The students in ITB jackets walking toward campus. The mountain framing the northern horizon, hazy and blue.
And beneath it all, ticking like a bomb he was the only one who could hear: the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
Brazil, he thought. June 12 to July 13.
He remembered the final score with perfect clarity. Germany 7, Brazil 1. The Mineirazo. The most shocking result in World Cup history, they'd called it. The game that broke a nation, made memes immortal, and turned ordinary bettors into millionaires—if they had the courage to bet on the impossible.
Andy had watched that match at a warteg in Jakarta, twelve years from now, surrounded by Germans celebrating and Brazilians in tears. He remembered thinking: If only I'd known. If only I'd put everything on Germany.
Now he did know.
But knowledge without capital was just torture. And capital—real capital—was something twenty-two-year-old Andy didn't have. His bank account held maybe two million rupiah. Enough for rent, seblak, and the occasional night out at Braga. Not enough to bet on anything. Not enough to fly to Singapore, where betting was legal and the odds would pay out in real currency.
Unless.
Andy turned from the window and looked at his keychain, lying on the desk. One key for the boarding house. One for his motorcycle.
One for the Nissan X-Trail.
His graduation gift. The T32 model, fresh from the dealership, still smelling of new leather and possibility.
It had taken years to accumulate—his father's careful savings from thirty years as a middle-level cadre at Telkom, neither high enough for luxury nor low enough for struggle. His mother's disciplined deposits from her civil servant teacher's salary, the rupiah she'd set aside every month since 1980, teaching generations of Bandung children to read while her own son learned to dream. Even his older sister Rina had contributed, sending home a portion of her first-year salary from the bank in Jakarta where she worked as a teller, insisting that adek deserved to start his career with dignity.
The odometer read 9,847 kilometers. He'd driven it to campus, to Sarah's house, to the mountains once for a photo trip. Mostly, it sat in the parking lot, too precious to risk in Bandung's chaotic traffic, too new to scratch. A symbol of his family's collective sacrifice—father's patience, mother's discipline, sister's generosity—distilled into four wheels and an engine.
Three hundred and fifty million rupiah. Maybe more, if he found the right buyer. Thirty-five thousand Singapore dollars.
Enough for a flight. Enough for a hotel. Enough to walk into a legal betting shop in Singapore and put everything on Germany to win big. On the 7-1 scoreline, if he could find someone to take that bet. On a future that was already written, already decided, already his if he had the guts to reach for it.
The thought hurt. Physically, in his chest, in a way that had nothing to do with cardiac arrest. The X-Trail represented something. His father's quiet pride, the way he'd simply handed over the keys without ceremony, saying "Biar gampang cari kerja"—so you can find work easily. His mother's careful calculation of every rupiah, the way she'd smiled when she saw him behind the wheel, the same smile she wore when her students finally understood long division. Rina's faith that her little brother would make something of himself, that her sacrifice would matter.
But his parents were alive in this timeline. His father still climbing the Telkom ladder, still coming home with his briefcase and his quiet exhaustion. His mother still teaching third graders at the SD near their modest home in Buah Batu, still grading papers at the kitchen table. Rina still in Jakarta, still believing in him.
They were healthy. Working. Wondering why their son hadn't called in three days.
He could pay them back. He would pay them back, ten times over, once the bet came through. Once he turned thirty-five thousand into three hundred thousand. Once he built the empire that thirty-four-year-old Andy had never managed, trapped in a job he hated, watching life happen to other people.
This is for them too, he told himself. This is for all of us.
He picked up his phone and dialed a number from memory—Dealer Ricky, who ran a lot on Jalan Setiabudi and specialized in "fresh graduates who bought too much car." Ricky answered on the third ring, voice thick with sleep or hangover.
"Ricky, it's Andy. The X-Trail guy, black, T32. Listen—I need to sell my car. Today."
A pause. Then Ricky's voice, sharpened by interest: "The new one? Low KM?"
"Under ten thousand. Still has that new car smell."
Ricky whistled, low and impressed. "Something wrong? You just got it, what, three months ago?"
"Nothing's wrong. I just need the money."
"How much you want?"
"Three-fifty," Andy said. "Cash. Tonight."
"Boss, that's..." Ricky hesitated. "That's almost what you paid. Depreciation alone—"
"I know what it cost. I also know you have a buyer list a mile long for low-KM SUVs. Some rich parent who wants their kid in something safe for the Cipularang trips. Three-fifty, you take five percent, I get the rest in cash. Four o'clock, your lot. Don't be late."
Silence. Andy could hear Ricky thinking, could almost see him calculating—the profit margin, the risk, the greed.
"Three-thirty," Ricky said finally. "And I need to see the service records."
"Three-forty, and I'll throw in the original floor mats still in plastic. Four o'clock, Ricky. I have a plane to catch."
He hung up before Ricky could negotiate further.
Andy sat back on the mattress and looked at his hands again. Twenty-two. He had time. He had knowledge. He had, against all logic and probability, a second chance.
The Nokia buzzed. Sarah, finally responding: "Andy what are you talking about?? Please call me this isn't funny"
He turned the phone off. Not silent—off. The screen went dark, and with it, the last connection to a future he'd already lived and didn't need to repeat.
Outside, an angkot's horn blared its distinctive tune. A vendor shouted about batagor. The mountain breeze slipped through the window, carrying the smell of rain and possibility.
Andy Wijaya—thirty-four in his mind, twenty-two in his body—opened his laptop and searched for flights to Singapore. June 10th departure. One way.
He had three months to prepare. Three months to turn one car into a fortune. Three months to bet everything on a game he already knew the score of.
And this time, he wouldn't lose.