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The last thing Yuha remembered was tears stinging behind her eyelids as she closed her eyes and relaxed her body.

Help was not coming. They were expendable.

Next to her, her friend and mining teammate, Yasha, had been saying something and squeezing her hand. They had been trying to stay hopeful, even though they were trapped in a cut-off tunnel from which they weren't expected back from for several days. But from a certain point onward, the lack of oxygen started to cramp their bodies and lungs. It was excruciating.

The end was near.

It was a relief.

Had been a relief...

***

Yuha clambered out of bed, her eyes wild. She had been with Team 12 in the caved-in tunnel.

"Yasha?" she whispered into the quiet room.

Her face trembled as she looked around the small white bedroom she was in.

It was badly lit by a single fluorescent tube light on one wall, and furnished simply with a single bed, table, chair and a collection of stacked cardboard boxes of clothes in lieu of a wardrobe. She recognized it instantly as her old smoke-dorm room at the 27th Territory Government Academy.

Smoke-dorms were government housing buildings for scholarship students like her, called so for the smoke coming out of their windows from students cooking their own low-cost meals within their rooms. It had been her home for 12 years, as one of the few students that moved in while still a minor and stayed all the way to graduation.

But she'd graduated and moved away 3 years ago.

So why was she here?

"This isn't possible... How did I get here? How? No, when-", she cut herself off and forced herself on her feet and went to the laptop that was open on the table. Government-loaned, for the duration of her studies, of course. It lit up as soon as she touched it. The familiar rainy window lockscreen, followed by a password prompt. Her thoughts were numb as she hammered the password into the keyboard.

As soon as the desktop appeared, her eyes slid to upper right corner for the date. Her heart hammered in her chest.

"14:20... 1st September, 2030."

The day right after her graduation ceremony and the day before she left the little room she'd lived in for more than half her life.

3 years into the past... Yuha was freshly graduated and had no job, no home, no money and was 18 years old.