Chereads / Claire-voyant / Chapter 2 - Luck

Chapter 2 - Luck

Claire Seneth was a true believer of luck. After all, that's what her whole life revolved around. Every time a person around her had a meeting with luck, Claire would have to relive the different outcomes of it.

The first instance of this that she remembered was when she was five. She had finished her milk and was happily playing with her toys. She didn't know when she switched back, which is something she still has trouble with today, but she was switched back to a time before she had finished the drink. Oblivious to that, Claire kept on playing, until of course, her mother saw the still full glass and scolded her.

"But I finished it!", Claire protested, but to no avail. Of course her mother wouldn't believe her. She'd thought that Claire was just being a child. Claire didn't talk to her mother for the rest of that day.

As she grew older, similar things started to happen. Missing homework, incomplete chores, repeating television programs and what not. One time she even almost went to school thinking she had changed into her uniform, when really she was still in her regular clothes. She got scolded multiple times. She got called lazy. No one would believe that she actually did finish everything, but that all of her work just got undone!

So, she developed a habit of double checking and triple checking everything. Did she eat breakfast? Was her room clean? Was her homework in order? She thought that's what everyone did, and so she should too.

It actually took her a surprisingly long amount of time to figure out that her situation was not normal. Other people did in fact NOT go an hour back in time randomly throughout their days. Other people did not have to do everything multiple times a day. This was just her.

The realization made her lock herself into her room for a week. It took a lot of persuasion by her parents to drag her out.

It was her 7th birthday when she figured out that every time she went back in time, something in the world changed. Just a day before that, her neighbors had bought a new puppy. They had named him Borris. She liked to call him her flufferino. She had spent an hour just playing with him back then, and would definitely have spent more time with it, were it not for her parents.

In any case, while she was enjoying her birthday party, a car screeched to a halt outside. It was loud enough that all of the occupants of her house ran out to see what had happened. When Claire herself reached the front yard, her mother had promptly covered her eyes. Claire was glad that she did, for the chatter around her had let her know that the Borris had been hit by a car. Just a single minute of carelessness and an open gate, and her new friend had lost its life.

She cried her lungs out for the next hour or so. Her father held her tight during all of it. But then all of a sudden, she no longer had anyone hugging her. She opened her eyes to find the all that attendees were looking at her - after all the birthday girl had suddenly started crying out of nowhere for no discernible reason. She figured she had switched again, back to before the car crash. She ran out the moment she deciphered that. Maybe she could still save the puppy.

The screeching sound came right as she reached her front door. She thought she'd been too late, but she rushed out anyway. Turned out, she didn't need to save Borris. The driver noticed the dog earlier this time and was able to stop his car just in time. The puppy was just fine!

After that, she'd start paying attention whenever she went back in time again. Something always changed. It might have been something as simple as a person getting pricked by a rose thorn, to something as big as the news changing, but something always changed.

Another year, and she'd attributed these changes to a word: "Luck."

More often than not, when she'd go back in time, she'd hear that someone got lucky, or that luck wasn't on someone's side. It wasn't always a change to something good that happened either, after all bad luck was also a part of luck.

And she'd live through these, year after year. Day after day. It only got more frequent as she aged.

Hours of rewriting homework. Hours spent in classes she'd already attended before. Hours doing chores again and again and again.

"Hey, wake up.", a soft voice echoed in her ear, followed by a shake. "Teacher's here!"

Claire was taken out of her dream, and thrust back into reality. She was in school. Class was in session. And she had dozed off, again. After all, the switch back in time did not reset her mental fatigue. She looked up to the face of the girl that had woken her up. Narrow, wide eared, brown haired. Her antics weren't the only reason her best friend was nicknamed Jerry. Claire grinned at her, before said grin was suppressed by a yawn.

Jerry rolled her eyes and sneaked her a pack of gum under the desk. Claire's grin resumed as she grabbed one and hid it in her pocket.

"Thanks!"

But also hours spent reliving the best times with her friends. Hours helping them through things that only she knew would have happened. Hours seeing people 'get lucky' when she had seen the alternatives. Helping people out before they even knew they needed help. Being kind. Yes, hours of kindness, hours of happiness.

Maybe someone else in her shoes would think this was a terrible thing, but to Claire, this was life and she wouldn't have it any other way.