Transition and Restart

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Christina left the barbecue behind her. She needed some time on her own and climbed up the small hill she had visited earlier that evening.

The sun was finally setting. 'Half past ten already? Yukio will go bonkers.' For some reason that thought was hilarious and she laughed into the summer evening.

With the sun setting temperature dropped rapidly. It wasn't like Japan where summer nights were warm, even though you couldn't trust June at all. A lot like April in Sweden with the weather gods playing the lottery most every day.

A clean slab of weather-beaten stone made do as a bench, and she stared across the sea. Seeing everyone back together like this brought a lot of memories to her. Some good and some not so good.

Right now she mulled over some of the latter. What she had done, and how those deeds eventually found her here a quarter of a century later, because there was a connection between what she had done as a teenager and where she ended up as an adult.

Christina pulled her shawl tighter around her. A lingering wind brought salt and sea to her nose, but she couldn't feel as childishly nostalgic as she had done earlier. Because of what had happened back then.

Some had been accidents, but some had been poor and selfish choices from her part, and those haunted her still. She had paid for them in full, but redemption was still an open question.

Did she want them undone? Yes, but she had already been given a second chance at life, so she had no right to complain.

Still, what if?@@