Where Do We Go After Death?
It's a question even science fails to answer.
"Heaven," my grandmother once said with quiet certainty.
"We return to dust," a drunk man muttered, lying on the cold concrete, a bottle clutched in his hand. His breath thick with liquor and regret.
But let me tell you where I went after death.
At a young age, my younger sister and I lost, our parents to a car accident. Which left us in the care of our grandmother, a frail woman surviving on a government pension that barely covered rent, let alone food or school fees.
She worked whatever cleaning jobs she could find, scrubbing floors in offices, washing laundry for the most fortunate, her thin hands cracked from detergent and cold water.
Every morning she would force her frail body to go to work, and before that she would press a few coins into my palm.
"For food," she'd say.
It was never enough for a proper meal, just a boiled egg and a dry slice of bread from the school tuck shop. We'd wash it down with tap water and pretend we weren't still hungry.
Our school uniforms grew thinner each year, using a needle and thread, she patched over and over the new holes with her aging hands. The shoes we wore were too small, then too large, as we inherited them from neighbors who had outgrown them.
At school I never fit in, while the other kids debated the latest TV shows and soccer matches, I had nothing to contribute. We had an old CRT television at home, but it barely picked up free-to-air channels. While they played, had fun with friends or scrolled through their smartphones, I never had that luxury, I spent my evenings helping my sister with homework, if I wasn't studying or listening to my grandmother hum old songs as she sewed, the candlelight flickering in our tiny one room home.
I never told grandma, how hard it was, she had enough burdens already.
Still I did have a friend, Natalie, she was a piece of my past, from a time when life had been kinder. Before we moved in with Grandma, she had been my childhood friend, the one constant in my life. She still visited sometimes, checking in on me and my sister, slipping us snacks she had smuggled from home.
I remember the way she smiled, the way she once said, "One day, we'll get married."
But I had no time for such a thing, love doesn't fill empty stomachs and I was old enough to know that love wasn't enough to change our circumstances.
To change our circumstances, I had to study, I had to fight my way out, to build a future where my grandmother and sister would never have to struggle again.
Luck was on my side, after all it was my name, I had one thing on my side, an eidetic memory, everything I read, I remembered. It was this gift that earned me a scholarship to one of the most prestigious schools in the country.
Thanks to that grandma had one less mouth to feed, after all the school covered tuition, books, and meals, but grandmother still insisted on pressing a few coins into my hand every morning. "For emergencies," she said. I tried to refuse, but she wouldn't hear of it.
People in our neighborhood started to get closer to us, I kept to myself but I knew how the world worked, people only stick around when they think you're useful.
Then, one morning, our teacher announced, "We have a new student joining us today."
I looked up and there she was, Natalie. Her gaze found mine in an instant. And then her smile.
Natalie came from a world I could never belong to. Her parents were well off, her future already secured. The students at our school were the children of politicians, CEOs, and celebrities, people who had never known hunger, who had never felt the weight of coins in their palm and had to choose between food or transport.
And yet, she sought me out.
As we grew closer, something dangerous bloomed between us. The same love, I had wanted nothing to do with, cupid had shot it's arrow through my heart. I had fallen for Natalie and learnt that people do strange things, when inlove. That same night, I started writing.
It was a fantasy story, a web novel about a commoner girl chosen by the heavens to fight against the forces of darkness. She battled injustice in a world ruled by nobles, just as I wished I could fight against the unfairness of reality. The heroine was inspired by Natalie, the commoner? That was me.
I told no one about the webnovel, not even her. At first, no one cared seemed to care about the webnovel, maybe it was because my writing was average at best. But then one comment appeared beneath a chapter, "Keep going. I want the heroine to kick the demon lord's behind!"
Just one comment. One reader, but it was enough. Every night, I wrote, so the reader could return and he/she did, leaving comments now and then. For the first time in my life, I felt seen.
One afternoon in class, Natalie and I stumbled upon a scene that made my blood run cold, a group of our classmates had cornered a boy, their laughter sharp as knives, they shoved him, spat words at him that stripped him of his dignity.
I could have walked away, I should have walked away but instead, I stepped forward.
"Leave him alone."
The bullies turned to me, eyes gleaming, not with anger, but something worse than even greed.
I reached into my pocket and handed them the coins my grandmother had given me that morning. A pathetic offering, barely enough to buy a loaf of bread. Forgetting who these kids were, they laughed and then, they took it.
What they wanted wasn't money but control, at first, it seemed like nothing had changed.
I took me time to realize that I had made a mistake.
I had crossed a line I could never uncross, I had just sold my own life to save his, I should have looked the other way, I should have done what everyone else did, I should have minded my own business, but I didn't and that was the beginning of the end.