What Lance's grandfather asked of him was neither a promise nor even a request as Lance had thought.
No, it was a dying wish.
Lance couldn't fathom what had just happened. Tears quickly built up in his eyes and trickled down his face and onto his grandfather's body as he sat there motionless, like a deer caught in headlights.
His grandfather was the only person he had left. Knowing that he was living an okay life assured Lance to keep going himself.
But now, that feeling of well-being was gone.
Now replaced by a feeling of despair. One of fear and one of total mental distress.
This silent crying continued for several hours, causing Lance's eyes to swell up and turn red.
By the end, several pulsing blue veins were visible on them.
The sun slowly dipped below the crimson-red horizon as the shade of the night turned the earth into a pitch-black hell.
Soon afterward, a nurse entered room 156 to do her nightly check-up.
As soon as she entered the room, however, he was met with a horrible shock and jumped backward as she gasped, dropping her clipboard on the floor, causing her papers to scatter everywhere.
What she saw was like a horror scene from a movie; a young man with demonic red eyes and an emotionless expression sitting over a lifeless body on his lap.
Suddenly, a long, continuous beep sounded as the nurse's eyes quickly darted to the heart monitor.
The pattern of the line showed two abrupt jumps before completely flatlining...
Trying to react quickly, but still overwhelmed by her situation, she looked back at Lance only to notice his eyes didn't have the same glimmer as before.
No, they were much dimmer.
For Lance, hearing the heart monitor flatline wasn't at all flustering.
It wasn't because he expected this to happen, but simply because he wasn't in the right state of mind to care, or even understand.
It just felt like time had slowed down slightly. His vision became blurry, and his hearing woozy.
Before he knew it, several doctors and nurses were inside his room.
As his vision dissipated into darkness, he felt multiple jolts of electricity travel through his body as well.
In the end, it was all for naught. Finally, his vision fully gave way to the darkness, and his brain lost all consciousness...
It felt like only a blink of an eye, but somehow, Lance could think again.
As soon as he noticed this, he tried to look around, but he saw nothing.
Felt nothing.
Experienced nothing.
He was in an indescribable realm of absolute nothingness.
One couldn't even call it infinite darkness, or a void of sorts. It was simply... nothing.
However, Lance had his mind.
No, he had his soul. He could think.
'This is... the afterlife?'
He thought to himself, his state of being still worn out.
He believed in the concept of hell and heaven, but it seemed that none existed.
Lance always had his doubts about them, but now they had come true and to his dismay.
In the first split second that he realized he was in the afterlife, the hope of being reincarnated entered his thoughts.
This was because Lance had browsed and pretty much conquered the internet in terms of entertainment in his lifetime.
First, he found what he thought was the holy grail: anime.
Delving deeper into this genre, however, Lance soon found manga's and manhwa's, and eventually reached novels as well.
He had read countless amounts of them, and almost every single one seemed to have one thing in common for their main characters...
Reincarnation.
Another chance to triumph.
However, even that hint of hope left as soon as it arrived.
In fact, Lance forced such a stupid thought out of his mind.
How could he think of fantasies when he knew that in reality, none of this existed?
It angered him that his mind would even stray to such faiths.
The fact that he was dead was imminent. He had no other chances and no other feelings.
...
'What was that?'
Suddenly, Lance experienced something that wasn't in his mind.
It was... a feeling.
It felt like quick gusts of wind were flowing across his body.
'Body?'
He then suddenly felt he had a body!
Out of nowhere, the sound's of countless people, young and old, began to ring in his ears.
A fresh scent entered his nose.
He opened his eyes at last to a dazzling light!
Immediately, he discovered himself perched atop a little, car-sized white cloud.
He looked around after giving his eyes time to adjust to the light and discovered a perplexing sight that made his mouth hang wide.
Millions, no, billions, of identical white clouds surrounding him held thousands, no, millions, of individuals.
Some he could see had qualities that were close to his own, while others were utterly distinct.
having giant bodies and strange attire, blue skin, and horns on their heads.
He encountered an unending variety of people.
He could see a brilliant sun in the distance, which was actually enjoyable to gaze at.
Although he could see that it was as bright as the sun or perhaps brighter, for some reason, looking at it did not damage his eyes.
In fact, they even felt a little rejuvenated.
Two magnificent, sizable rivers, one red, and one blue, were rushing through the cosmos underneath him.
Beyond these three things, there was only an endless, brilliant space.
Brightly glowing blue and violet galaxies could be seen all around him, creating an incredibly stunning scene.
Every breath he took seemed to help his body heal, and everything he looked at gave his mind a fresh start.
A broad grin quickly appeared on his face before he could even notice.
Bewildered out of his mind at this glorious yet bizarre sight, Lance finally made a single conclusion.
"It's not over yet!"