The letter arrived on a Tuesday.
That annoyed me immediately.
If my future self had discovered time travel, the least she could have done was make
it happen on a more dramatic day.
The envelope said:
FROM: ME
YEAR: 2051
Inside was one sentence.
Do not enter the competition tomorrow.
I read it seven times.
Tomorrow was the national design challenge.
I had spent six months preparing.
If our team qualified, we would travel to Delhi for the final round.
I checked the letter again.
No explanation.
Typical future me.
I decided it was fake.
Then I noticed the corner of the page.
There was a tiny coffee stain shaped like India.
I had made exactly the same stain on my history notebook that morning.
Nobody had seen it.
The letter was real.
That created a problem.
Maybe entering the competition caused something terrible.
An accident?
A ruined friendship?
Public humiliation?
I barely slept.
The next morning, my teammate Sana called.
“You’re coming, right?”
I looked at the letter.
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
I almost told her everything.
Instead I asked, “If I dropped out now, what would you do?”
There was silence.
“Probably panic,” she said. “Then do it without you.”
That hurt more than expected.
Our project was not mine.
It was ours.
At school, I stood outside the competition hall.
In my pocket, the future's warning felt impossibly heavy.
Then I noticed something written faintly on the back.
I had missed it.
You ignored this warning the first time too.
I froze.
Underneath:
I’m glad you did.
I stared at the words.
Another sentence slowly appeared.
I needed to know whether we became brave because the future told us what to
do or because we chose for ourselves.
The ink began fading.
Before it disappeared completely, I turned the paper over and wrote:
Dear Future Me,
Stop interfering.
For a moment nothing happened.
Then three new words appeared.
Fair enough. Sorry.
I laughed.
Sana opened the hall door.
“Are you coming?”
I folded the letter.
“Yes.”
“Sure?”
This time I did not need the future.
“Absolutely.”
