"Elijah!" Alyssa yelled and ran towards him. She kneeled and inspected him.
What made the collision fatal was the spinal cord that was snapped.
The brain stem lost connection to the rest of the body, and so no nerve impulses were sent to the heart or lungs. Elijah couldn't breathe and his heart couldn't beat.
There was no pain. He couldn't feel anything. His vision got blurry, but it wasn't because he was dying. No.
Alyssa's tears were falling onto him.
However, he was happy because she was safe. It felt like he had done his purpose.
"Elijah! Can you hear me? The ambulance is coming soon. You need to stay awake. Don't. Fall. Asleep. Okay?"
Alyssa saw that Elijah's eyes were struggling to stay open. She cupped his cheeks with her hands.
"Stay with me. Elijah!" She cried.
His eyes snapped open for a second before losing focus again.
Alyssa bit her lips and grimaced. She closed her eyes to hold the tears back, but they fell in defiance.
'Alyssa… I'm trying… but I'm so tired. Dammit, why won't my body listen to me…'
Alyssa opened her eyes and gently smiled at him.
"I hope you can hear me, Elijah." She said stroking his cheek. Her voice was fading away.
Elijah saw her mouth the words "I love you."
'Huh? Say that again?'
His eyes got heavier each second. They finally weighed a tonne. When his eyes closed, it felt like he was thrown into the dark.
'You said that it was too early to say it…' Elijah remembered Alyssa didn't want to say those three words too early.
"But you said it, anyway. Hehehe… Now I can die happy…"
***
…
..
.
'Huh? I can still think?'
Elijah tried looking around but it was completely black. He couldn't feel his own body, so he wasn't sure if he was seeing black, or it is just black because it's the concept of nothingness.
However, how in the world was he still conscious and thinking? Is this just how it is in the afterlife? It's just black?
The thought of "living" in eternal darkness saddened him and scared him.
'Well…'
He stayed quietly in the eternal darkness to settle in and try to vibe with it.
…
…..
...….
......
"THIS SUCKS! HUH?" He had said that when the world had suddenly turned white.
He looked at his hands.
He could SEE his hands.
He first patted his legs before going further up on other parts of his body and then felt his face. Not only that, but he pinched himself.
However, he had pinched himself in dreams before, and they still hurt, fooling him into thinking it was actual life inside a dream.
He slapped himself but perhaps coming out of death was a numbing feeling. He needed greater stimulus.
He knocked himself right in the jaw and fell off the wooden chair that he was sitting on.
"Owwww! That hurt!"
He had cut the inside of his cheek with his teeth when he punched himself earlier. The familiar taste of blood greeted his tongue.
Rather than have a gloomy look on his face as one should after punching themself, he was rather excited that he was alive.
His red teeth showed when he grinned.
"Woot! I'm alive! Yeahhhhh!"
"Huh?" He then noticed that there was something else in his peripheral vision. The whole place was an endless color of white. There seemed to be no end.
It was actually a cuboid space within the System's dimension but since there wasn't even a shadow, one couldn't see the corners and edges.
Elijah saw a beautiful girl with white wings.
"An angel…"
Nia, who watched the whole thing had an incredulous look on her face.
She thought that this was the second strangest encounter she had with a reincarnator in the few hundred years she's worked here.
'And he came right after him too!'
She was referring to the WW1 boy she had met just a minute before.
'Are all of them going to be like that?'
It worried her that this was going to be a nasty streak.
Seeing that the angel had a concerned look on her face, he blushed because he realized how stupid he must have looked.
"Ahem. Welcome to the afterlife."
Elijah lowered his head and clenched his fists when he remembered he was dead.
"Unfortunately, you lived a brief life, but do not despair-"
"Umm- excuse me but is she okay?"
"Huh?" Nia was surprised.
She wasn't normally interrupted because most people would be in a state of shock and couldn't even process what she was saying. He was asking a question not about himself but about the person — the world he left behind.
She could see that he was genuinely worried about her.
"You're referring to Alyssa? I can't see what happens after your death but from what I saw she's a sturdy girl."
'That's right…'
He knew that if he was in her place, he would be more distraught than her.
Elijah remembered the last smile of her he saw.
"I love you."
The memory of her mouthing those words repeated in his mind.
"Can I ask you a question?"
"Yes, you may."
"How do I get back to her?"
After doing this job for so many years, Nia had either a warm and professional expression on her face or an ice-cold angelic persona depending on her mood and the recipient's attitude.
She had never broken out of character so many times in one sitting. She was at a loss for words.
"I'm afraid you won't be able to see her since you'll be reincarnated into another world."
"I see…" Elijah said looking gloomy.
'He's really a good boy.' Nia thought.
Suddenly, Elijah's face brightened up from an idea.
"Then how can you travel from one world to another? I assume there's magic in other worlds?"
"… Magic exists but the world you're going to is magicless, similar to your world."
Elijah was depressed again, but he didn't despair.
"Sorry… uhh what's your name?"
"!"
Although there were people who have asked for her name before, it was unusual that the boy in front of her had done so many peculiar things in one sitting.
Hundreds of years of experience were all compounded in a couple of minutes.
"My name's Nia."
"Nia… That's a nice name."
"Thank you." Nia smiled. It was a genuine one.
"Sorry for interrupting you before. Can you continue what you were saying?"
"That's fine~"
Nia had put a finger to her lip when she was thinking of what to say. She decided to go out of the script.
"You like to play games right?"