"So who is this Lady Rhea, anyway?", I asked the girl sitting in front of me.
Celest, the soul scouter, has led me to a meeting room, and made me wait there with her.
She stared at me, clearly tired and a bit annoyed, but finally answered, "...this is going to be a bit hard to understand, but I'll try to explain as best as I can."
"Being taken to a 5-star hotel afterlife, and then taken to meet with a psychiatrist despite of being quite sane is already hard to understand so no problem."
"... that's true.", she laughed and began to explain.
Every world has a 'god' as their representative. This 'god' has a main role to watch over their designated world and keep their world going as peacefully as they can manage. These 'gods' are called the world administrators or in short, the admins.
The important person that I'm about to meet is also one of those admins. Her name is Lady Rhea, or Goddess Rhea from the novel world 'While Wearing This Mask of Rivalry'.
"And what about that code you said before? The MW something?", I asked.
"MW-6-376616. It's the code name for that world you're going to transmigrate to. The 'MW' stands for 'Middle World', the '6' indicates the world's grade. But those aren't important, the only thing that you need to know is that the world's admin, Lady Rhea, is the Goddess of that world, so you need to at least give her a good first impression."
She lazily took out some of the leaves that stuck on her messy coat, and gestured to the mirror in the corner of the room.
"Groom yourself a bit, your hair's a mess." She said while slumping comfortably on her chair.
Said the one person in this room covered in soot and leaves, I thought, a bit annoyed.
But remembering that I'm going to meet a literal Goddess, I decided to groom myself like she said.
After combing my brown hair a bit, I asked her, "What about you Ms. Celest? Aren't you going to use the mirror too?"
Hearing my question, she scoffed and spat, "No thanks. Even if I'm fully groomed, that jerk- I mean, Goddess and I will never get along. In fact, I'm going to annoy her with my dirty attire on purpose.", she playfully spun around, and gave me a smile so sweet, I felt a menacing chill behind my neck.
"But you, on the other hand...", she continued, "You need to be as respectful as possible. You're going to be her belooooved chosen in your next life after all."
She rubbed a stain on her coat, intentionally making the stain even bigger, and said, "I've seen your file, you know. A kind person with a good view towards life. A capable and competent person, and is also ambitious when the situation calls for it."
She turned her chair around and looked me in the eye.
"In short, a good upstanding person."
Hearing her praise me so earnestly, I scratched my head, flustered.
"I know that you're going to forget everything that happened here in this office but..."
She stopped for a bit and continued again,
"Please promise me that you won't just discard the past memories of whomever body you're going to inhibit."
"I.. alright.", I answered.
There's no way anybody can deny a request that earnest. But this request made me wonder, just what kind of past did this girl experience? Or is this a professional request as a soul scouter? Her job is afterall, taking dead souls like me to the afterlife, so she's practically a grim reaper. She must have viewed life differently than us, normal humans.
I hesitated a bit, and finally asked, "Hey... this is going to be an impolite question but, are you actually the grim-"
SHALALALALALALALALA~
A majestic choir sounded from her big brown bag.
Clearly annoyed, she cursed while taking out a blinking ringlike object that looks like an angel's halo. She grabbed it with both of her hands and glared furiously at it for a while.
She turned her head towards the door and said to me,"She's here, get ready."
Nervously looking at the door, I straightened up my posture a little.
After standing still nervously for a while, the door finally opened,
and an incredibly gorgeous woman, clad in a traditional greek styled dress, walked into the room, followed by a few attendants walking behind her.
The Goddess Rhea has finally arrived.