Endless darkness.
No matter where he looked, that was all there was, an infinite void stretching in every direction. Akira let out a tired sigh as the realization hit him.
"Great… I'm back here again."
He floated in silence for a moment before muttering, "Is this going to be a regular thing now? Because I'm already sick of it. This has to be the third time…"
But then.
"Wait… my body, I can feel it."
That's when he noticed something was different from before. Unlike previous times, when he was just a drifting consciousness, now he could actually feel his body. He looked down, and sure enough, his body was there. This wasn't like the other times.
Suddenly, stars began to light up the void, and it soon became a starry night sky. This had happened the previous times, too, but now… something was different.
"You must leave now."
Akira heard a voice. He couldn't tell if it was male or female, it was a calm but distant voice and echoing through the emptiness.
"Who are you?" Akira asked.
"You must see the end of your story," the voice replied.
Then, some of the stars began to shimmer and shift, transforming into what looked like floating screens scattered across the void. One by one, they lit up, each showing a different scene.
One screen showed a dark forest in the middle of the night, and swordsmen wielding katana hunting humans who turned into demons.
Another one showed a classroom, where a three-meter-tall yellow octopus-looking creature in teacher clothes, writing something on the board, behind him, students are firing at him with their guns, but he was dodging them at incredible speed while still writing on the board.
In the next one, a masked blond-haired elven girl, surrounded by a party of girls dressed like adventurers in those fantasy stories, slashing through monsters in a dungeon.
Another one showed a black-haired girl holding a katana, fighting against a blue-haired girl in a white military uniform, launching boulders made of ice at her.
Another one where a red-haired girl in a school uniform, holding a golden broad sword, unleashed flames while clashing with a black-haired boy with a katana.
Another one where a blonde girl in an armoured dress, wielding a sword, fighting against a smug blond-haired man who is launching swords like missiles at her through golden portals.
"Reach the end of the story in your own way."
The voice sounded again, and hundreds more screens spun past his eyes. Each showed different scenes: one where ninjas were running at high speed, one where pirates were sailing their ship, one where humans were fighting huge naked giants, one where a guy with glowing blond hair was fighting against a purple alien, and many more. At this point, Akira realized some of them were from anime he had watched before, except now, they looked real.
"See? They already noticed you."
The voice echoed again. And then.
A screen, unlike the others, appeared. It was furthest from the rest.
A place entirely swallowed in Darkness. In the very center stood a cocoon woven entirely from shadow. A narrow slit opened, and from within, a single black eye suddenly opened and looked straight at him.
Gasp.
Akira's eyes snapped open.
He blinked at the ceiling.
"This ceiling... looks familiar," he muttered dryly, as he looked around and realized he was lying the bed in his bedroom.
"Oh, you're finally awake," Yuki said as she sat by his bedside, sipping tea casually and doing something with her phone.
"Hello, Mother," Akira replied as he sat up on his bed. "How long was I out?"
"Just a day", Yuki replied.
"Oh, a day...…wait a day, oh no, I missed my daily login streak", Akira said in shock as he tried to look for his phone.
"Sigh, that's your first reaction after waking up," Yuki said with exasperation.
"Mother, you don't understand. If I log in for fifty days straight, I can get an SSR unit for free. I was already at forty days!" Akira said with urgency. "Sure, it's a trash unit, but a free unit is a free unit."
"Do you even remember that your heart was crushed and you nearly died?" Yuki asked, irritation creeping into her voice.
"Oh yeah, my heart", Akira only then remembered the fight, and how his heart got crushed, but when he looked down to check, his body didn't have any injuries, he figured someone had healed him. "I guess you guys saved me. Wait, the battle, what happened, and the girls, are they safe?"
"Now, that's a more appropriate reaction," Yuki gently placed her phone down. Her expression didn't change, but her tone shifted, "Erika's fine. As for Haruna… she is fine too, but we just had to erase her memories."
He expected that. "How much?"
"A year."
"What? We only knew her for a week!"
"Haruna is just a normal human. What she went through was traumatic, and if we erase any less, she might remember and since this was Erika-chan's first time using that magic, we had to erase more than usual to stay within the margin of error," Yuki explained casually.
"You let Erika erase her memories, mother. She was the first normal friend Erika made, that's cruel", Akira said with a pissed off expression, since the future he tried to avoid happened.
"Sigh, I know how you feel. We even tried to stop it, but Erika-chan was the one who insisted she would do it herself", Yuki explained with a heavy expression.
"Huh, what? Erika insisted, Why? That makes no sense." Akira was now more confused.