[You have been slain]
Ku Lo, in a fit of rage, slammed a fist against his cheap computer desk. Its plastic legs wobbled from the force, causing a bottle of an off-brand Mountain Dew to spill its nectar and a bowl of chips to fall on the floor.
"That fight is way too hard!" Ku Lo shouted. "But I need to clear it to reach rank one!" He was at the end of his rope after dying to the same freaking boss for the umpteenth time.
Soon the 'You have been slain' notification faded off the screen, and to replace it appeared [Respawn].
"Respawn! Respawn! Respawn!" Ku Lo's index finger spammed right click on his mouse.
[Respawning in]
[15]
[14]
"And why is the respawn timer so goddamn long? I might as well look out the window and see a shooting star with these times!" As Ku Lo said so, he indeed peered out from an opening in his porch window's curtains.
"Huh." Ku Lo frowned, beads forming on his forehead. "What the hell is that?"
Flying in the air was a wooden river barge with small, fluttering red sails. Of course, how it looked was out-shadowed by it coming straight at him!
[1]
The 'nose' of said nautical-vessel-turned-aerial dived into his apartment, crashing through the window and the wall.
It knocked him off the chair and dragged him across the room for a second before everything went black.
[Respawning]
…
Meanwhile, in a run-down shack in a very different place, a girl lied on a bed, coughing, spasming, and crying herself awake as a woman tended to her with what little she had.
Ku Xie, amidst the mind-crushing pain, noticed she was still alive, and so opened her white eyes.
First, she noticed her mother. With her remaining strength, she went straight for the point. "any news-" Cough. "older brother?" Ku Xie asked her mother with a fleeting voice.
Lin didn't stop changing the washcloth on Ku Xie's forehead. "Last thing heard was how he passed the Yin and Yang Sect entrance trials yesterday. Don't worry, he'll help you," she said with a warm smile on her face. "Ku Lo will save you."
"mmm," Ku Xie hummed. She didn't have the strength to speak more. 'big brother…' The pain building in her lower abdomen was too much for her frail, young body to endure.
She would fall unconscious again soon. Already, her eyelids were beginning to hide her white irises separated from her sclera by a thin, black line.
…
Ku Lo blinked.
Curled his fingers a few times.
Took a deep breath.
'Heaven?' The word came into mind from the wondrous garden around him. From the perfect white-marble tiles under him to the clear cut hedges, all indicated this notion to be true. As the biggest affirmation still remained, the fact that the flying river barge had, most likely, ended his life.
'Well, at least I made it here.' He shrugged.
With that out of the way, his mind focussed on other important matters.
'So the 'right' heaven was the one where girls are bountiful and hot?' Being a red-blooded man, he couldn't help his wandering light-blue eyes. The women around him started from a low 8 and only rose in grade. Buxom blondes, redheads with piercings, and skinny ones with long, raven hair. Plus, they came in every skin colour.
'Wait… The population of earth is 50.2% males and 49.8% females, so heaven can't be this skewed…' Remembering some random statistic he had seen in an OTube video made the scene more confusing.
"Hey~"
"Hmm?" Ku Lo spun his head towards the voice.
When turned, he needed to blink again, for the girl caused a skip in his heartbeat. 'She's like Qiyana from that game. The same white hair, tanned skin, out of the world proportions,' he thought, ogling at her.
"Ugh…"
However, due to him somewhat dropping his spaghetti and meatballs there, the woman who had approached him left with disdain printed all over her face.
'T-that was to be expected,' Ku Lo sighed, not taking this to heart since he must have appeared awful. The opportunity was lost, and so he focussed on the future without worrying about what he couldn't undo. 'But what was her intention?'
To find understanding, Ku Lo studied his surroundings, though this time focussing on the interactions of the people.
"Maybe we could take this to my place?" Some guy was trying to pull away a beauty. "Hey, would you like to share a drink? We could talk about—whatever you would like." A thin man approached a giant of a man who had a cocktail glass in his black hand. "Sister, what do you think? Who's the most handsome guy here?" Two sisters were whispering next to Ku Lo.
'This seems more like a high-class mixer than a lobby to heaven,' Ku Lo considered after a minute. 'Everyone here is young, certainly not older than 20. They're all here with a certain openness in their actions and clothing.''
"Someone seems lost in thought," another person approached Ku Lo who had withdrawn himself from the centre of this supposed party, near one of the hedges.
"No, no. Just a headache," Ku Lo answered before focussing on the person.
It was the right call, or he might have lost again. 'Kasumi?' Although never big into fighting games, he knew the big names from... other sources. 'No, not exactly, but there are similarities.'
"Were you injured during the trials?" the girl, with orange hair tied in a ponytail, asked while appearing considerate by coming closer to have a look at his head, even tip-toeing to see.
Ku Lo almost lost control of himself right there again, but kept it together. "Hurt? By those trials?" He shook his head and laughed. "Did you have a different track or something? What obstacles did you face?" With his question, he wanted to hear hints about this place he had arrived in.
"Aren't you going to ask for my name?"
Ku Lo chuckled. "How inconsiderate of me," he acknowledged his mistake. "Who is the person I, Ku Lo, have the chance to entertain?"
'In dating sims, you have much more time to think about your choices,' Ku Lo murmured to himself. He was no ladies' man, and it was showing in how the woman, whose name he was hoping to hear, acted. 'I'm losing points here!'
"Rin Tin Tin." Saying so, she performed a slight curtsey for Ku Lo.
Who used the opportunity the curtsey presented to have a peek at her cleavage that came even more showy from this angle. 'Okay, this might be hell, but fuck it. I'll do anything to get it on with her,' Ku Lo decided. His conviction meant he put all other things to the backside, for now, and focussed on buttering up Rin Tin Tin.
"Really? My great-grandmother was also named Rin Tin Tin," he lied. "Excellent name, so elegant and so noble." Ku Lo made a strong nod, arms crossed.
"Your great-grandmother had the same name? I knew the stars were right!" Rin Tin Tin raised her voice a level or two too high. "The stars don't lie. How could they? You must be the one I'm looking for." Her amber eyes blazed with excitement as she explained.
However, her overt, open enthusiasm for astrology made Ku Lo shudder. 'To stick or not to stick dick in crazy?'
"Rin Tin Tin, do you practice astrology, too?" For the current Ku Lo, the answer wasn't hard. "Shame, I didn't finish my rituals today, so I don't know what today will bring me…"
Rin Tin Tin, hearing his reply, became even more pumped up. "Ah!" She glanced around with her cute amber eyes. "That can be fixed in a minute. Follow me."
Ku Lo wasn't left with much of an option as she grabbed his hand with hers, pulling him towards what to him seemed a random path out of the garden.
Dragged like this left him a lot to think. This was a good thing since arranging his emotions was much harder than he thought it would be. Should he be excited? suspicious? offended?
He had gone with the flow of everyone searching for a partner of some sort, and it was not like he was in any way dissatisfied by this beauty being interested in him, but things were happening too fast for him to make sense of them.
…
"You didn't answer my question from earlier." As Rin Tin Tin led Ku Lo through gardens and corridors, he questioned her again. "About the trials."
Rin Tin Tin with excitement in her steps and tone answered, "Of course, the trials were sorted by gender," she said as if they wrote those words into a bible. "But if you are so interested, I'll tell you."
"Us girls needed to pass a stealth test and be able to score well on a written test." Her tone changed to somewhat of a loathing one. "While you boys needed to hit a training dummy hard and show good mental fortitude."
"Life's not fair, but what can you do…" she complained.
'Interesting,' Ku Lo noted her every word. 'After those words, this place doesn't seem to be heaven.'
Of course, this didn't change his plan.
'I should tease her. Take command.' In search of such an opportunity, his light-blue eyes went over her and found her hand. 'Someone's a bit too uneasy.' In the heat of things, he hadn't noticed before, but now he saw her hand and how much it was sweating and how hard it was gripping his.
"Well, it seems that the girls didn't have a mental fortitude test."
Rin Tin Tin didn't answer, though she changed the hand dragging him to the one not sweating so profusely. Also, there was a slight blush on her face, one which even Ku Lo could notice from behind.
'I'll take that as a success.'
"We're here." While Ku Lo had his own thought, Rin Tin Tin paused to open a door into a modest, yet two-story house with a balcony overcrowded with plants.
"Nice place." Ku Lo entered behind her. "I like the candles."
"Thanks." Rin Tin Tin said as she rushed upstairs. "Wait there for a second, I'll get my stuff."
Ku Lo didn't respond.
Anyway, he had become fixated on the matter of there being nothing electrical in this room, no light bulbs or wires, not even a socket. 'Where am I?' He began inspecting the room while listening to rustling from the second floor. 'This house has a strong medieval feel to it.'
'A spear?' The first item attaining his interest was a spear placed on a weapons rack. 'Why would an astrologist collect spears?'
He continued his tour of the room.
'Scrolls?' There was a wall shelf with two scrolls on it.
Ku Lo took one of them and opened it. 'The Floating Leaf?' The scroll contained lengthy instructions and few sketches of a person twisting and directing her hands. 'Is this supposed to be fantasy merchandise?' He set the scroll back in its place.
'Herbs?' The next thing was a garden bed next to a window. 'Weird.' His hand touched one of the herbs. 'There's something off with these flowers.' He couldn't put his mind around them; however, these were not your typical house plants.
Ku Lo scratched the nape of his neck through his medium-length, coal-black hair. 'Reincarnated in Another World?' He remembered a popular tag for novels. 'It sure would explain a lot.'