Chapter Text
Prologue
Everything was cold. There was no air. I cracked open my eyes to see the light fading around me as I drifted lower and lower into the water. Other than the gentle feeling of the water against my skin and the screaming of my lungs for air, I only felt the tug of the weighted rope wrapped around my ankle.
Somewhere in my mind, I felt regret. Regret for deciding to end it all. Regret for the things I left behind. Perhaps I could have turned things around. Perhaps I could have fixed things. But it was too late now; I had already taken the plunge - literally.
My life had been a disaster, one thing after another. The repeated divorces of my parents, the attempted suicides of my siblings, never being able to get into a good college or to be able to find a job - it all contributed to my spiraling depression. I had never really known what I wanted in life, so I had wandered aimlessly, searching for a purpose. I had tried to find love, but it never lasted longer than a week, and I had never truly felt anything for the ones I dated. Anytime that I had thought I had found my calling, my inspiration for it was gone within a month. My only happiness had been found reading books.
So what had even been the point? I had only stuck around so long because my favorite story was still going, but it finally ended a few weeks ago. It was over. The characters that I had come to feel were my only friends would no longer continue forward. How was I supposed to go on, knowing that I would never be able to know what happened next, or where the characters ended up after the book was closed? Sure, I could’ve reread what was already written, but that was like reading history books, looking over events already set in stone, knowing that things weren’t going to change.
So really, what was the point?
Gradually, I began to feel more and more like I couldn’t hold my breath, the pains in my chest proving their lack of oxygen. Just before the last of the light from the surface faded, I let out a breath and watched as the last of the air I would ever breath floated away from me in a stream of bubbles.
~ ~ ~
“Suicide, hmm?”
I heard the voice before anything else.
“I guess it’s not too uncommon in this day and age…”
I opened my eyes to find myself in a living room I had never seen before, slumped ungracefully over a cushy couch. A young-looking girl with the shape of someone you would only find in an anime was leaning over me, purple eyes gazing at me quizzically.
The girl brushed some of her silver hair out of her face before experimentally poking my slightly-pudgy belly, which had been exposed from my shirt sliding up a little. “But you’re not too different from me before I came here…”
Realizing that this had to be some kind of afterlife, I had to ask. “Are you God?” Of course, I was an atheist, but when you see someone with inhuman beauty standing over you after you know for a fact that you died, you begin to question things. “Or perhaps an angel?”
The mysterious girl just snorted and retracted her hand. “If it makes you feel better, you can call me that, sure. But I’m not.” She sauntered over to the other side of the room and plopped down in the nicest looking chair in the space, leaning forward and tenting her hands. “Have you ever heard of isekai?”
Sitting up in an attempt to get more comfortable, I nodded my head vigorously. It was one of my favorite things. Just the thought of getting to go to another world and away from my mess of a life sounded like a dream come true.
“Good, that’ll make this easier.” The silverette smiled, her teeth shining a brighter white than I’d ever seen anywhere outside of movies and toothpaste commercials. “Turns out, you’re one of the lucky few souls that is capable of traveling between worlds after death! The only catch is that you can’t return to your previous world. Oh, and while I say lucky ‘few,’ there are actually quite a few of us. It’s just that it’s a small percentage compared to the number of souls that can’t.”
“Wait, you said ‘us’... You’re one, too?” I rubbed my eyes. For some reason, I felt dead-tired. Perhaps it was because I had just died. “So this is the other world that I ended up in?”
“Yes and no. This is the inbetween space. A few isekai ‘victims’ decide to stay here, like me. They often proclaim themselves as gods and spirits and whatnot, but, make no mistake, they’re just like you and me.” I pointedly looked at self-proclaimed isekai victim’s distinctly inhuman characteristics, such as her unnaturally colored eyes and hair and her flawless alabaster skin. “Oh, I forgot to mention that we can do pretty much anything we want in this space once we figure out how! Though some people find certain things easier than others. I turned myself into an OC from a fanfiction I was writing before I died. I also made this entire house and its contents. If you were to step outside, you would see pure white void as far as the eye could see.”
I looked out the window, where the clear blue sky and a deep green, flower-covered field were clearly visible, and birdsong sounded through the glass. What? Shaking my head, I looked back at the strange girl. “So, if you could reincarnate, why did you decide to stay here?”
“Well, I can watch all the others if I stay here!” She smiled mischievously. “And before you ask, no, not in an ‘oh, I’ll help you on your journey’ type of way. I just like the stories. It’s entertaining. Not to mention the fact that I can eat as much as I want of whatever I want without gaining any weight. And all the stories that I never finished before I died? I can finish them here! I can even go beyond what the authors decided to share, seeing more of my favorite characters.”
My eyes widened. “Can I stay here, too?”
“Nope!” She shot me down gleefully. “I don’t want the neighborhood to get too crowded, you know? Now where do you want to be sent? Somewhere with others that have been isekaied, or somewhere that you’ll be the only one? Or perhaps you have a story in mind that you want to go into? Otome games are pretty popular.”
But I wasn’t listening. “But… I want to know what happened after all of my books ended… Why can’t I stay?”
At this point, the girl, who had been only mellow this whole time, seemed annoyed. “Look, I didn’t ask for this job. The only reason my home is right on an appearance point for so many people is so that I can send them on their way and prevent them from cluttering up this perfectly tranquil in between world. Now do you want to choose your world, or am I going to have to choose for you?”
“Why do you get to stay and I don’t? Just because you got here first?” I stood up, advancing toward her. “Why don’t I have a choice?”
Now the silverette was angry. She stood up, suddenly becoming taller than me and glowing slightly. “You had a choice.” She said menacingly. “But you just lost it. I’m known for being one of the less patient inhabitants of this realm for a reason. Perhaps if you had died earlier, you could have stayed, but you didn’t.” She flicked her wrist, and her smile reappeared. “Goodbye, world traveler, and good luck. You probably won’t remember any of this.”
“W-Wha-?” I started to say, but the floor dropped out from under me, and I was gone.