Death....
Once a friend had asked me whether I believed in life after death.
I had answered in the negative back then.
Really foolish I was, wasn't I?
It had eventually led to me being on the receiving end of a lot of playful half-hearted critiques. "We gotta harbour hope for a better luck- I mean better life next time, dude", my friend had chided me.
Oh how simple minded he was.
Look at him now, and all my other friends.
The memories their souls had collected in this lifetime are slowly being corroded away one at a time. They soon will not recognise each other, they will forget those very same people who had accompanied them even in their death, never once leaving their side.
They call this process prepping. Erasing the memories before allowing a soul to enter the cycle of reincarnation.
A new life awaits us.
The only drawback?
We have to give up on our previous life to embrace the new one. Forget the past and embrace the future.
Thus is the eternal truth, the eternal cirque.
And my turn is coming soon. I was the one who had clung on to life for the longest time, making the reapers quite anxious if I would really make it over to the other side. They even had made peace with the fact that this particular fish would be sure to slip past their fingers.
And that was when I breathed my last.
My death wasn't something 'unordinary', just a little bit uncommon in the place I come from.
I, accompanied by my friends, met our collective end when the building we were in shook violently and collapsed as a result of being targeted by an earthquake of magnitude 8, an occurrence never before seen in the entire country.
Okay, I can feel my readers getting indignant now. How could I know the magnitude of the earthquake if I'm dead already?
Good question.
But it has a really simple answer.
The Reapers assigned to take care of us while we were in-transit through Underworld divulged this.
Said we're really lucky to have died even before comprehending what was going on. It made our deaths less gruesome.
Really chatty guys they were. Dunno why all the mangas and manhwas portray them as frightful beings.
We are currently queued up, twenty five of us in this line. We are slowly approaching an abyss, at the precipice each person would halt for half an hour, and a warm glow would waft up from below and envelope them, thereby erasing their memories.
Then they would be pulled down below.
The abyss represents life, or so the reapers said. The abyss ends in a myriad of vibrant colours, apparently representing the beauty of life – thus were we informed.
We did not react to such unimaginable information.
After all, we were already dead, and the chilly atmosphere around us kinda made us numb to all physical and emotional stimulus.
We were just glad that we were all together.
Soon my turn came. I was the last person standing, after all. The reapers eyed me with glee, once I would be gone, they would have the rest of the day off.
I let the warm glow envelope me, gently prying my memories loose. I didn't resist.
What use is it to deny the inevitable? I would end up the loser anyways. Struggling will only wound me.
Pity I had to let go of my memories. This life had treated me well, and I was a bit saddened to part with it so abruptly.
Oh well, not that it matter—
Beep. Beep.
Where was I? That damned beeping noise cut off my thought process.
Before me I saw a weird reddish screen hovering about in jerky, erratic movements, all the while screeching loudly.
Apparently some error has occurred.
Why the hell does all sorts of weird nonsense happen only with me?
Swivelling my head 135° anticlockwise, I saw two dumbfounded reapers standing behind me, their jaws hanging open in shock and disbelief. Their faces clearly portrayed that they had no fucking idea about what was going on and how to mend it.
Great, just great. Now I'm the one who has to clean up after someone else's mess.
Frustrated, I turn to the now crimson interface, demanding that it fills me in about the shit that is going on.
Surprisingly it obeys. The screen changes, and quite a few lines of text emerge.
[Error 404: Soul Incomplete]
[Mutilated Soul Shard detected. Detected that host's soul has been forcibly snapped into two before previous reincarnation cycle.]
[Failed to extract memories.]
[Searching for the remaining soul shard.]
[Search failed. Target is currently not in Underworld.]
[Searching in the mortal realm.]
[Search successful.]
[Targeted Soul Shard Found.]
[Remaining soul shard is found in a twelve year old boy.]
[Does host wish to complete his soul?]
[If yes, host will take over his counterpart's physical vessel and continue living as his counterpart.]
[If no, host would have to patiently wait for his counterpart to arrive in underworld after dying and then fuse with him to avail reincarnation.]
[Detected that host's counterpart will for another century. If host disagrees to fuse now, he would have to wait 10,000 years of Underworld time.]
[Host has half an hour to choose.]
[Fuse with counterpart: Y/N?]
======
What should our MC do, hmm?