There is a man living inside a residential apartment. The apartment has only 1 room connecting to a bathroom, his room is a mess; the state of the apartment looks like it's been plundered. The walls are rotting, like how he is. He has food everywhere.
How can anyone even live here? It looks like it's been erected, renovated, and adorned by rats? Clearly, no one takes care of this place. The traffic outside is clamorous as usual.
He gets up from his dirty mattress and hears a knock at the door. The knocks are loud and annoying. He knows who it is.
His grayish-blue eyes are tired and stressed. He decides not to answer because, at any rate, they'll kill him, right?
"I don't really know why they are waiting. They most likely have guns; they could probably shoot through the door," he thinks to himself and goes to the bathroom lazy dragging his feet.
He's hungry but knows he'll die before he gets something to eat. Upon sliding the door open, he looks inside his bathroom for the mirror. He looks at his face. His face is tired; his black hair is a mess; his eyes have not bags, but boxes of sleep under them. He is also wearing a wife-beater(tank top); he has a well-structured jaw at least, and is very well-built, but his body has been taken care of horribly. In the past, he wouldn't look like this.He says in an ironic, panicked kind of way infront of the mirror:
"Hey, you look starved.....hahahaha—". The door bursts open, and men in black suits come rushing through the front door of his room. They violently slide open the door.
He notices them; they are armed with weapons. He tries to mentally count them and wonders how many are here. 10, 20, 50? 78? and says, bewildered, "Why do you always wear black suits? In movies, I noticed how inefficient it is to always wear black suits. Maybe it's to hide what you're doing from people? But like, a group of guys wearing suits isn't that kinda—"
"SHUT UP, FIRE NOW! HE CANNOT ESCAPE. THE CLIENT CLASIEY RAYMA WANTED HIM DEAD IMMEDIATELY," one of the men says. Our protagonist notices the man who said it is wearing a gold badge, different from the rest, aside from being old and bald.
But before he gets a word in, the man raises his weapon. The rest cluelessly follow. "FIRE," the bald leader says. The protagonist sees the bullets, have you ever driven a truck? But very fast? You've seen flies hit the truck, there are so many of these hitting the glass of the truck; when will they stop? Now imagine those flies are bullets and there isn't a window to protect you. An army of flies, so fast is their pace they would make a jet jealous, and now thousands of them are piercing his flesh.
Hurting him from every angle of his body. He falls down in the bathroom tub, laying in blood.
He lies there covered in his own blood. He thinks to himself how much he regrets living in this horrible complex. He probably should have found a better place to rest his final moments.
He closes his eyes and lies there in a dark, cramped position in his bathtub, soaked with holes and blood. His black hair was a mess even before, but now it has no life in it. His grayish-blue eyes lie gray now.
Everything is dark. He can't hear, he can't feel, and he can't even think. All that is happening is the void. This passes for hours, perhaps days? Years? Perhaps decades? But it never stops, but he hears something—wind? What? How? How can there be wind?
When he hears the grass, wind blowing, and the sun on his body. He can't see, but he knows he's in a pasture. The very air around him smells as if there has been a huge storm and it has passed, that air of cleanliness after a rainy day. He opens his eyes; he can see now. This place is warm, nice, and cozy. The grass covers his body gently, not how normal grass does. The sun is as bright as a phone on full brightness at 2 AM, and there is barely any life aside from him on this pasture, but he does spot a tree. The tree looks, well, like how you'd expect a normal-looking tree. But it's exceptionally robust, like, I mean remarkably pristine. He looks at the tree and thinks that it's strange.
"Is someone taking care of that tree? It has no marks; it looks perfect. The tree looks like it's been taken care of by a professional gardener. THE LEAVES LOOK SO DAMN VIVIDLY GREEN; it's like the first time I've seen the colour green. The wood looks perfect too; there isn't anything, not a single scratch on it," he says, perplexed but praising the tree's appearance.
The tone of his voice is a bit deep since, well, that's how he's born; there really isn't a reason behind it. He looks at the tree and says confidently out loud,
"Yeah, I'm not touching that. Looks like I made it into heaven; no reason to touch an eccentric-looking tree like that. I'm not hungry and don't feel like I should be close to it. I think I'll be fine here."
He now has a compulsive urge to touch the tree. Not for any particular reason, he just NEEDS to touch the tree.
"...urgh," he holds in his cravings, but the more he resists, the more it increases. He tries desperately to hold his own and stay in this heaven, but it increases greatly. He runs away from the tree and holds it for as long as he can. He doesn't know why, but it reminds him of something...
His birth.
The start of his hell in "THAT DAMN PLACE," he screams out loud. The compulsions don't stop, but eventually, he does. He looks at the sky and lies down. He refuses to go near the tree, regardless of the pain he feels.
After hours, he eventually sleeps, lying down. After days of sleeping, he knows that tree is waiting for him. He refuses to open his eyes. He just doesn't want to.
He thinks to himself, "...What am I afraid of most in my life? Death? No, it is a salvation. Perhaps the thing I am most afraid of is life. Years of torture, no, perhaps I'm just a coward. Why am I so afraid to open my eyes? I should. Plus, nothing in my life was quite as bad as my childhood was. Perhaps I can live on. I should just open my eyes. What's the worst that can happen? I've already died? It's not like I can relive my torture at that 'school.' "
He takes a huge breath, opens his eyes and as he guessed, he is under the tree. He had run far away from it. Yet, he is so close. The tree covers him in a shadow. He looks at it and says sarcastically,
"Aw, what's next? You plan to reincarnate me in an isekai, or whatever?"
"Yeah, basically," a mysterious voice says.
"You know, things are really weird right now. You talk?" he replies, lying down still, looking up at the tree that covers him.
"Yes, but less on that. 1 Thanks for the compliments; yes, I can read your mind along with your search history and no, there isn't a flamethrower around. 2 You have some deep psychological wounds; I mean, it's really profound. It took forever for you to wake up because you are afraid of me, which isn't something I think I've seen in my entire existence," the tree replies.
"You plan to reincarnate me? I don't want to live again," he replies.
"I do, in fact, want you to live again. And as you probably guessed, in a fantasy world. I know what happened to you, and it's gruesome. I don't want you to have that sort of life and experience. Don't you think you could live a better life? I don't plan to give you hacks or anything. I just want you to not live with the pain of your past life," the tree replies with concern. The tree has an insanely deep voice that stretches on as far as its wisdom.
"Yes, you're right." He begins to take out his hand and realizes.
"Why should I trust you?" he replies.
The tree answers with a bit of anger, "You've been here for exactly 12 years,24 days and 2 hours. Get out. I'm nice, but you are taking too long."
"Reasonable," he says and touches the tree.