The moment my fingers touched the cold water, I felt a shiver. Looking down, I saw my scared reflection. I had never learned to swim back in the mountains, where all the rivers were shallow as well as in monastery I hadn't got my chance. And before I knew that swimming skills might have been of vital importance now, I was sinking. Fully drowned, I thought I'd hit the bottom, but instead, everything went dark.
Was that what usually should be happening when you faced death?
Then a realization hit me—if I was thinking, I might still be alive. And if alive, so for how long I might still stay alive? This thought seemed an endless torture I couldn't escape, until I finally tried to open my eyes. But I couldn't. I felt nothing and I had no control over any face muscle, as if I had no eyes at all. Moreover, I couldn't feel my entire body too, even a part. What a death game it was?!
"You're doing it wrong," a voice echoed around me. It sounded annoyed. "Stop thinking and open your mind!"
"Open my mind?" I was confused.
The voice sighed, "I wish you were a mortal and already dead instead of being trapped with you here! What a turture!"
"Trapped with me?" I asked again, still not getting it.
"Yes, me, just me here," the voice said, sounding an even more irritated. "No ideas where we are? Open your mind and see for yourself! Come on, don't be a dump! Or you'll stay trapped in here forever!"
So, I really died?
Did I just die falling into a pond? A pond that was always knee-deep, just for lilies and that fat fish almost every monk fed?
The shock of it all turned into a kind of panic.
"Calm down!" that same voice snapped.
"No way you are saying this?! You mean… Calm down after I just realized that I'm dead? Is it a joke?" I argued back.
"Celestial Stars! Your Stupidity is the yin to wisdom's yang. Keeps the balance, you know."
Not like I wished to be lectured at this very moment.
"If you don't calm down now, you'll actually die! Don't be that stubborn ox that pulls the cart of destiny!" the voice warned.
Wait, what? I was already dead, and now I could die again? Could a new dying get even worse? Was there another way to die? For real?
*Thx for reading.