In a hesitant step out of the doorway, I arrive in a location that quickly daggers my heart. Slapping me with waves of nostalgia is the room from my childhood on earth. The walls, the anterior designs on the floor were fix up to the point it didn't look like the most recent one I live in, but the room only my eight-year-old self was able to experience.
The moment I take a full step forward inside my past bedroom, the door God conjured vanish and out came the white bird I knew too well, flapping their wings from underneath the bed.
Holding a picture in its mouth when resting on top of the short dresser, the bird tilts their head at me, scooting up on the ledge, glaring at me with those red bead eyes of theirs. My guide, it wants me to take the photo from their mouth.
"How odd..." The words I subconsciously thought of flew from my mouth without a second passing, taking the photo from the bird's beak, only to drop it on the ground once I laid eyes on what was on that photo.
My hand cup over my mouth, strongly disgusted by who was in the picture itself, bringing back flashes of things I wish to forget. I start to ask myself how and where the little white bird got the photo.
I shoot glances at the white bird, who gaze at me unknowing. The same creature that guided me now mock me. And losing to the bubbling rage in me, I shout at the bird, "What the hell is this?! Who the hell do you think you are?!"
That same bird kept the look; Confused, blind to their acts, tilting its head to the right this time. Of course, the bird didn't speak back or tried to offer a hand to my suffering.
-I jot my eyes to the photo on the floor, then the bird again. - The length I would go in order to deny what happen that day. I'm shouting at a goddam bird...
Picking up the photo from off the ground, I wipe the tears that almost form from the crust of my eyes, brushing out a calm breath of air. I let go of the photo significant, crushing the thick paper in my hand. During the moment of caving in, I walk over to the freshly fix bed in front of me, falling flat into the bed, spooking the bird, who now flutters away. Then, stretching my school clothing, I twist and turn the balled-up photo far off near the bed's back frame.
I began to lose all hope, no longer wanting to continue on, just like I did back on old earth, spiraling into a darker and darker mind set. Would it be wrong to go right back to that mindset, staying here for the rest of my life...
- The white bird pulling the balled-up paper from my fingers, dropping it on carpet, pulls me out of such a dooming thought. It made me realize the cycle I repeated, rising up from my comfort and touching the crumple photo with the shoes I put on this morning. it takes me an entire minute to stop ignoring the dagger over my head and pick back up the photo to unfold.
I lay back down in the bed, this time turning over to my side with the photo in my hand, cradling the picture between my fingers. I stare endlessly at the photo, looking back on how much I loved the family that took me in, and most importantly, her. The days before the incident that ended her life...
When I was adopted by her family, I met that girl. Someone who treated me not as her little brother, but a younger friend. She shared her heart and dreams to me, held my hand when I was frightened and gifted me happiness to her very last breath...
Akki... That girl died because of me... Her death... Is my fault. -
As I mustered to hold back the stings directed at my heart, the white bird lands near the photo, chirping up to my fingers, devouring all with their eyes. - It yanks the photo from my hold in quick succession. -
"Wai-!" I bounce up from depression, swaying my hand towards the bird who flies further up, slamming my hand on the pillow during the fit. I stop chasing the bird, feeling my hand press on something underneath the pillow.
Scooting up on my knees, I remove the pillow from off the bed, revealing a strange object...
"Is this a mask?" I eye the item, speaking aloof, tracing my finger along the two finely carved holes that is side by side, going to an odd flower of some kind paint hot pink on the left side. Forgot to mention that the mask is plain white.
Flipping the mask over, my finger taps a thin sheet of paper tape on the inside of the mask. It looks like a note, so I tore the paper off of it, unfolding it, reading the text outload to myself.
"To you the Unchosen." It read with nothing more to deepen the meaning.
It felt like an empty gift, something God themself must have gift me. And to call me the unchosen... I wonder if they treat all their other "Children" with such regards.
I fade the thoughts of being another number in this game, flipping the note from front to back before bringing the mask up to my face, seduce by my own curiosity. Weirdly, I also felt drawn to do so, covering my face perfectly as if the mask was shape having my use in mind.
-The moment I place on the silk white mask, my breath turns to clouds of cold air, fingers frost bitten, and chills taking over the room's atmosphere. Ice ate the hairs on my arms, and what I thought was fire burning my lungs was its shards.
A ball of ice suddenly forms in a large size, clear as glass. What brought me more shock was a hand smacking the inside of the frosted egg, then another, putting cracks in the ball of ice, shattering, bursting into foam of clouds.
Amid those fading clouds, a pink hair girl plumets to the carpet flooring, two horns curve back on the front of her forehead. The girl has a tail that sways like a dangle string in midair, staring blankly into my eyes with her blood green ones. She also wears a pink sleeveless hoodie, and is covered in bandages from chest to toes, having a mask over her mouth that look to be part of her face, in bind with her flesh.
The first thought that came to mind at the sight of her was the thought of her being a demon. The two pink horns, the imp like tail. She screams demon from the very first sight of them. Nothing you expect in a game to become God...
The girl continues to gaze at me in silence, blankly. - I find myself looking at her in the same manner, jolting my eyes back to the photo that now lays crumple under my hand somehow. This demon has many similarities to Akki... Wearing different clothing, but strikingly the same body type as hers from the day she died. As if... As if she stood right back from the grave.
"Ak..ki?" I let her name slip from my lips, jumping off the side of the bed, dropping the photo to the floor, palm stretch out to her, grabbing for the girl who struggle to pull herself off the carpet. "Is that... Really you Akki?" Tears floods my face, desperate for her response, stepping closer and closer to her.
The way I approach her causes the girl that looks like Akki to sprout up from her position, cowering back like a wild defenseless animal.
Hand falling back to my pocket, gripping at my wrist in mere disgust of my overly attach behavior towards her, I went back quiet, seeing the fear in her eyes.
"I... - " About time I try to muster the courage to apologies to the girl, she vanishes from my line of sight, replace by a door.
My heart immediately drops, seeing all that happen as a mere delusion, made up to cope with seeing the picture of her again.
In the place where that demon that look like Akki vanish, the door in front of me, the little white bird reappears, sitting on the knob of the door. It calls me to follow it once again, despite what I just been through.
I eye the mask that was gifted to me, checking my still frost-bitten fingers. "Is this... Is this some sort of trick?"
A pucker of laughter comes out of me, though I manage to keep my mind straight, slouching over the bed, re-grabbing the mask off the floor. I crumple back up the photo of Akki that rest underneath my hand, which I can only assume at this time was the little white birds doing, stuffing the picture down into my pocket. I then eye the door...
I want to refuse the birds demands; However, this creature, being my only guide in this new world, I have no choice but to continue following it into hell, blindly...
When I take a full step out the door it disappears like the entrance into there. I am now sure that everything that happened so far was God's doing. Even erasing Akki from my sight. It kind of felt incurring that she might be safe.
Eyeing the room, I enter; my eyes lit up, dilating to the bright chandlers that hung above my head. Infront of me, surrounding my left and my right were a large number of others like myself, standing, drinking wine out of glass and chattering to another, as if this was some sort of banquette. A few wear masks and a suite. -
In fact, when I look around then at myself, everyone is dressed in affluent type clothing, dazzled in richness. Clothing that you would only wear at a wedding or high-class events.
This place... It has to be the Eternal Ballroom; The one God spoke so proudly of. When did God switch out my clothes though? -
In the middle of my thoughts, the little white bird that I follow to this place, flew high up to one of those chandlers, causing me to watch it while walking, bumping shoulders with a guy in a two buttoned, baby blue, dress suite.
That very same man eyes me in a district way, glass dropping from his hand onto the floor.
Facing him and the sound of glass shattering, the bright red stain from the wine spill gaze at me. A dreadful cloud hovers over my shoulder as well. Other's look back gossiping, and the gasping didn't help settle the anxiety I gain from the mistake I made.
The shallow looking guy, pitch black fitted hair and dead coal eyes, approach me in a slow-paced manner, cracking no certain expression, just a plain daze glare. "That drink... It lasted for eight years; it was truly divine..." He mutters that strange comment under his breath before locking eyes on me. "You must be the last arrival. It's a shame we had to meet like this."
The young man voice remains emotionless, but a hint of anger was detected in how he words it. He then bent to slide his finger onto the ground with the crowd still eyeing us, scraping up the left-over wine on the ground. He then flings it at me, hitting the wine on the suite that I wore, forming a dark shade of red on the white suite that I'm wearing. "There, now we are even."
I understood that this was the calmest way for him to approach the situation, but I couldn't help but feel disrespected. What I did was an accident. - I grab the guy's shoulder, not letting him walk away without me giving him a word. -
"...." - His stone-cold glance towards me fades every idea of retaliating against him, taking my hand off of the guy's shoulder, once gaining this aching feeling in my throat.
I'm not sure, but he gave out the impression of someone who would slaughter me om spot, if I decided to mention anything hostile.
"Didn't I say we were even?' He asks, continuing to side eye me, the crowd spacing out, anticipating a brawl.
Nothing to say to the young man came to mind. The only thing I could do was not speak in this situation. If I speak up, it's possible I could die. - No, I would die. This guy, he had to be one of the chosen God mention or someone more menacing. -
"Third," A man much older than then the emotionless one, having a short orange fuzz beard and mustache that connects, giving off a silver fox vibe, walk pass me with a mask in hand. He raises the mask up high in the air at the shallow eyed guy, who he calls Third. "Come on, Let the kid off. He obviously just arrived here." The man spoke to him in a friendly tone, resting his arm on Third's shoulder. -
Taking the attention away from the uproar, a glass clinging far out in the crowd, caught me and everyone else by ear. There, stood a decayed human version of some random person, its giant black horns swirling out the left side. I could only assume that the figure is God.
With all eyes on them, God let out in anticipating pace, "The Eternal Ballroom, has reach its end."