My name is Ashley Halls and I love white women.
Ever since I was a little girl, I've developed an insatiable appetite for all things female and Caucasian.
There's something about their appearance that I just can't put my finger on—not that I've ever laid hands on another woman over the past 25 years of my time on Earth, mind you—it's the tall nose, the big, sensual crystal blue eyes, the marble skin that gleams under the morning sun. When put together, these elements would form a scene so poetic that they just make the heart beat in a slightly arrhythmic fashion from eagerness and want.
But what does the viewer desire from his object? What is this attraction that he feels? A sensation similar to the impulse to buy a dirt-cheap cheesecake on sale or the drive to pet your dog when he's nibbling on a small cookie.
Crunch-crunch.
That's the sound of me nibbling on the nose bridge of a white woman in my daydream while sitting at work.
White woman.
That's a weird way to refer to your own people. I think my skin is white enough to pass me off as Caucasian. The sun screen I used with the 50 plus plus plus SPF rating really helped with this.
My office job wasn't too bad, either. You just sit at your desk all day and pretend to be busy, refreshing whatever folder showing on the monitor and audibly clearing your throat every half an hour so that the other girls sitting nearby wouldn't think that you've gone into Samadhi while still on the clock.
My girls and I were in on this together. We were also working for a stocks company so any chances of us escaping Samsara would be close to zero.
Except for Gorou-san, the security guard. The old man just sat unmoving at the main entrance for sixteen hours straight under the sun, burned to a crisp. He might be enlightened.
Anyway... I was talking about my love for white women.
I loved them dearly.
That's why I'd come to accept the reality that I would never be ready to take another step. No matter what happened or what I did, nothing would change the fact that I would never find a woman that I could fall in love with. To put it simply, I had been born into the wrong world.
Don't get the wrong idea. I had nothing against my friends and colleagues. On the contrary, they were amazing people, and I loved them and I would never take them for granted. But they just couldn't ignite that spark in me, as if a small but indispensable part of life was missing.
To find that missing piece, I had to embrace a new life.
The only way to do that was through death.
There were many cults online that believed in the idea that you could be reborn into a world you desire if you decided to take your own life. I was skeptical when I heard about it for the first time, but I became much more convinced when I learned there were over 500 cults that believed in the same idea.
They all talked about the same thing. The life you've always dreamed of is waiting for you on the other side.
The only thing stopping you is your own fear of death.
All it takes is one step toward that speeding semi-truck on the highway, they said.
But the truck has to be big enough. Some people claimed that the chances of being transported to your dream world are directly proportional to the size of the vehicle that runs you over. I'm talking the DAF XF Super Space or the Volvo FH5 Globetrotter. If it's one of those mini trucks—like the 1991 Subaru Sambar Supercharged—then it's over. Cement mixers and fire engines are also out of the question.
After sleeping on the idea for six months, I finally gathered enough courage to test out the idea—or at least tried to. I spent my entire day off standing next to the highway, only to return home at midnight, empty-handed. I just didn't have it in me to step into traffic.
I was weak.
I was a coward, so I decided to go out the old-fashioned way.
Cancer.
As I lay on my deathbed, surrounded by the tearful faces of my loved ones, I was surprised that my heart was empty.
Look at them, bawling their eyes out like they were the ones lying in this bed. Is it really that sad? You could always pop out another one, like you did with your last three.
No, maybe it's a little too late for that. Mom was sixty five.
Oh God. Now that they were standing this close to me, I could see them—
Gross!
Apple! Think of an apple!
...
They weren't young anymore.
Pregnancy at this age could lead to a lot of complications.
The last thing you'd want is another retard in the family—a genuine, all-the-way retard, not a half-ass retard like yours truly. At least that was what my manager had told me anyway. It wouldn't even be sarcasm if I said she'd really given her all, trying to hold back on her words out of consideration for my feelings. Again, not trying to be sarcastic. It was the cleanest, nicest and most watered-down version she could have given to me at that place and time.
I wasn't very good with computers. To be fair, if you'd spent almost a decade familiarizing yourself to national and international cybersecurity standards such as ISO 27001. NIST, GB released by TC260, and industry specific regulations, including Al security frameworks, becoming highly proficient with common vulnerability exploitation (e.g., SQL injection. XSS, RCE, buffer overflow), and common testing tools such as Kali Linux and Burp Suite, only to never get the chance to actually use all this knowledge in your line of work and be frustrated by the fact that your employees, who worked in customer service just like you did, knew nothing about them, you'd get a sense of what it was like to walk in her shoe.
The only reason I was able to memorize all those terms was because she kept bringing it up at every meeting, office party, co-worker's gender reveal party, or every time she came over my house to play with my younger sister's babies (Yes. My younger sister. By some great miracle, she'd already settled down and had two kids at the age of 23. Somehow she'd managed to give birth to them both in the same year—they were not twins).
This is why you should keep a safe distance from the people you work with. Now that we were close, I didn't know whether I should love or hate my manager.
Or rather, I couldn't bring myself to hate her.
If I was going to dedicate all the hours of my remaining days to work for someone, how could I ever hate them?
It was Tuesday. She should be working right now.
I wondered if she's thinking about me.
My parents and younger sister were still bawling. The other two didn't show up.
"Kasumi..." my mother wailed and moaned. "Kasumi..."
...
My name is Ashley...
"Tell me who did it," my father said with a shaky grunt and a sob, wringing his fists. "Tell me the name of the son of a gun who did this to you! I swear to God! I'll kill him!"
Dad... I have cancer... What the hell are you talking about…?
Although it was a moving sight—and I knew I should at least show some emotion—I just couldn't feel anything.
Guess I should put on a frown or something to make things less awkward for them.
>:(
...
No... that doesn't quite fit the room.
(︶︹︺)
It was as if a portion of my brain had gone missing or someone had welded my tear ducts.
I felt, nothing.
Nothing.
Maybe it was because of the fact that there were fifteen other patients filling up the room, who were also dying in their own beds, without company. This had to be the reason. Dying was bad and all, but now there were a bunch of other people who were in similar, if not much worse shapes than I was. Somehow their presence made my impending death feel much less significant and special, as weird as it might sound. Having your family wailing and screaming over your dying body in front of a dozen other people who were also suffering in silence just didn't sit right with me. It wasn't sad. We were just being obnoxious.
"Kasumiiiiiiiiiiii..." God, now it's her turn—my sister. "Don't leave meeee. Waaaaaaaaah..."
My lips tightened as I nodded to her.
She pulled out her phone, opened a video and pressed play. The song was at full volume.
Kimi to natsu no owari shourai no yume. Oukina kibou wasurenai.
She sniffled as she looked at me with twinkles in her eyes, quietly singing the lyrics.
I rolled my eyes into my eye sockets to watch the mold on the wall behind my bed. Somehow, this was worse than death.
Turn that sh*t off...
My parents suddenly looked at the room entrance. "Oh, they're here," my mother said.
A knot of nine Buddhist monks came through the door and greeted with bows and praying hands.
They surrounded my bed, standing around me, chanting sutras in unison.
My family had gone above and beyond for my sake.
"Excuse me." The old monk in the fancier robe who was probably the group's headmaster stopped the chant momentarily. "Can you please turn down the music?"
My sister, a grown woman, let out another sniffle. "Sorry..."
After a while, the monks resumed the chanting.
I could still hear the song quietly playing behind them.
This had to be the worst possible way to die.
At least I'd had a good run. There had been ups and downs, but I'd enjoyed most of them. And despite all their faults, I still loved my parents and my sisters.
I had no regrets. Even if I would fade into nothingness, I would have no regrets. My only wish was to have a chance to fall in love with a beautiful woman, preferably a white woman, but such luxuries were not meant for me, which I was perfectly fine with.
It had been a good run.
I closed my eyes as the voices faded into distant echoes.
The calming sutras carried me into oblivion.
It's hot.
There was no wind, and it was blistering hot.
This was why I always woke up early, even on days when I didn't go to work.
Work?
I'd slept in!
I yelled and shot myself up from my bed.
Huh?
This wasn't my bed.
I was sitting on the ground, but the surface was soft and squishy, sagging and stretching below me, like I was on top of a bounce house.
My hand was holding onto something. They're like debris of shredded of coconut.
What is this, some kind of brownie?
I'd tried these before... An Australian cake, or Bulgarian, I don't remember.
Lamington?
The earth was made of sponge cake.
Pink and green hills were stretching in every direction towards the horizon, covered in desiccated coconut pieces.
No, hang on a second.
Didn't I die?
Yeaaaaaah, baby! That's what I've been waiting for, that's what it's all about, whooooooooooooooo—
I was still alive! Checkmate, atheists! Too bad my life didn't conform to your stupid worldview. You only live once, my ass. I could only imagine the dumb look on their faces now. Aaemm, aecktuellee, you need evide—shut up. Your evidence didn't mean crap around here. If only they knew how many science conferences I'd gone to in my dreams, where S***ne Ho*******er and R***r Pen**se right in the middle of the debate just pulled out their automatic rifles and sprayed bullets at the audience.
My hands pushed against the earth made of lamington cake and felt the spongy texture.
Then again, I could be dreaming right now—light at the end of the tunnel kind of thing. But if that was the case, why couldn't hear the sutras or that stupid song playing on her phone? I was clearly lucid. I knew what I was doing. At least I should be able to hear them.
Whatever.
I lay down on my stomach and dug my face into the lamington cake.
Waaaaahh...
It's so good...
I'm gonna eat my way to the core of this planet.
I wonder if I'm still in the same physical universe as the one my parents and sister were staying in. If I'm still in the same physical space but in a different location, just how far am I from home…?
My face.
Am I still in the same body?
I still have my long hair, but there's a hat over my head, which definitely isn't mine.
My height, my hands look the same.
I wasn't sure. I could be a different person.
I wonder if I'm hot.
All these sweets were making me thirsty.
And the sun.
I should get going—no, it's far into midday. The sun would dry me up and burn me to a crisp.
The earth is pretty easy to dig with my hands since it was made of cake. I made a hole large enough for me to crawl into. The hole should go down far enough to block out all sunlight and at a shallow angle so I could still get out when I needed.
Some time later, I climbed back to the surface. Things had cooled down quite a bit.
Now that the sun, which was now perched on the horizon, wasn't so blinding like a couple of hours before, it almost looked like a piece of hard candy.
The terrain was mostly flat, besides some small mountains, but there were a few directions where the surface got lower, which I'd heard might lead to civilization. I knew that once I'd picked a direction, I'd have to stick to it. Let's go with the one opposite the sun's location so I wouldn't strain my eyes from having to look at it for too long.
I knew all those hours of watching Discovery Channel on my desktop at work would pay off some day.
While you were all busy watching J-celeb and K-celeb interviews, makeup tutorials and Uniqlo latest-haul videos—useless loser content—I had to watch a man drink his own urine in the wilderness for survival.
Thanks, Guriru-san.
My legs were getting sore. I'd been walking for God knows how many hours. The sun had set long ago, allowing only the slightest amount of visibility for me to navigate.
I'm so thirsty.
My legs were about to fall off—I couldn't walk any further.
I couldn—
My knees dropped on the ground.
I couldn't go on any further.
This was it.
What was the point? Was this som—
Ah, a village!
I could see the houses, which were also made of candy.
None of the lights were on, though.
I got up and walked in the direction of the village.
At the center, there was a small house with a family sitting in front of it.
"Um, excuse me, I just came by. Do you happen to have some water?"
"Greetings!" The man said with a grin.
"It's so good to find a visitor around here," the woman nodded while two kids were sitting on the ground next to her.
Good. They spoke Japanese. How convenient.
"I'm really thirsty, can I have some water?"
"Water?" The man looked at the woman next to him—his wife, probably—"We don't have that, unfortunately."
"Huh? What do you mean? You don't have water?"
"Uhh... ehehe..." the man smiled coyly at me. "Sorry. I don't know what you're talking about. You can join us for dinner if you want."
They didn't want to share their water for some reason. Must be pretty scarce.
We sat and ate our dinner in the living room. Lamington cake. I could barely see the food because it was so dark.
After some introductions, I learned that they really were a family, and the woman and two children were his wife and kids.
The plate and the fork were also made of some kind of candy. The table was probably edible.
The husband suddenly said, "Did you come from the South? We rarely get travelers who came from the Kingdom of the Sun."
I threw the fork on my plate and dropped to my knees. "Please. Please! You have to help me, I'm so thirsty."
The mother left her seat and tried to raise me up. "No, what are you doing?" she said.
"If you don't help me, I will die!" I held onto her hands in desperation. "I don't want to die… I don't want to die…"
"We..." she said with a nervous expression. "We'd love to help you… but we don't know where we can get this 'water' you speak of."
"Don't you drink from rivers and wells?"
"Drink?" There might as well have been a question mark floating over her head.
"Eat?" I said with some uncertainty. "Do you eat from the ravines?"
"Sometimes. If that's what you want, we can take you to the Coco River in the morning."
They really had never tasted a drop of water in their lives. These "humans" had somehow evolved to adapt to the environment, living off confectionery and air alone.
Maybe I really was dreaming.
"Oh no," the father suddenly rushed to the front door to look outside. "They're here."
"Quick! Go to your room!" The wife instructed her kids to climb the stairs down the bunker and shut the lid, which was also made of candy."
"Who's here?" I asked them.
The father turned to me with his eyes opened wide. "The general."
I came out the front door to find the soldiers had completely surrounded the small village, their numbers filling up every bit of space on the ground and stretching to the horizon like an impossible ant infestation.
Did they materialize from thin air? I didn't hear a thing—not even their footsteps or the clinking of their black armors.
Very slowly, the sea of men began to split somewhere in the middle as a tall figure emerged from it, clad in full body-armor that was darker than the night.
All the other villagers and their children had run back inside their homes, hiding from behind bolted doors.
"What do you want from us?" An old man was yelling from inside his house.
The tall figure removed his helmet, revealing his stern expression. "You know why we're here," he said.
"Never!" the old man shot back. "As long as we live—we will never submit to the South!"
"As expected of you," the tall figure said calmly.
A woman's voice was coming from one of the houses, "Why are you doing this? Think of the children!"
After hearing that, the features on his face only darkened. He raised a hand which was covered in what seemed to be a metallic glove. Then a pack of men—about twelve of them—came forward holding something that resembled the cheap Monoblock plastic chairs that you often see on the streets of some South East Asian countries. One of them carried a dirty plastic table of the same white color. They sat right in front of the entrance to the biggest house of the village.
Suddenly, a woman opened the front door and dashed towards the tall figure to kneel at his feet, hanging onto the rim of his armor. "I'm begging you! Think of the children!" She was sobbing now.
The man looked up at the sky as his face only became colder. The woman thrashed and screamed as the soldiers pulled her away from him and dragged her back into her own home.
"Why do we wage wars?" the tall man said almost as if to himself. "Perhaps we do it for peace." He continued to look at the sky. "There can be no peace without war."
Another soldier was wheeling out a stereo machine and placed it beside the pack of soldiers sitting in their chairs.
"Come inside," the father whispered as he shut the door. It's too dangerous out there, he said to me.
Then, the music started playing.
I could hear distant screams of agony. Not again, one of the villagers cried.
The soldiers were singing karaoke.
Country music.
They were cackling and talking loudly, screaming their lungs out while giving toasts.
This was their version of warfare.
I asked the father, "How often do they do this to you?"
With large fingers that had calloused probably from years of toil, he wiped his eyes while turning away. Once a week, he said quietly.
The house was rumbling in sync with the drum kicks and the bassline.
Should I do it? Would it be the right thing to do?
There's a chance it might work.
As I paced to the door, the father tried to stop me. "What are you doing? It's dangerous!"
I looked at him and smiled. "You have to trust me."
Without waiting for another second I sidestepped the man and reached for the door.
Now that I was outside, the music was definitely loud.
I strode towards the tall figure while he stood and looked down at me.
With a hop I raised my hand.
Smack.
The music immediately stopped at the sound of the impact.
The tall commander looked down at me, surprised. "You—"
Smack.
My heart was pounding in my chest. I could already see it right in front of me.
The dank dungeon, the shackles, the bloody whip.
The village was dead silent.
The tall figure covered his cheek with his hand. Tears were welling up in his eyes.
No, don't say anything. Just keep glaring at him really hard.
We stared at each other for a couple of seconds, before he said in a low voice. "I'll remember you."
When he raised his hand, the soldiers began to turn around and march.
It took half an hour for the sea of men to completely vanish from sight, the tall figure being the last to leave. I tried to maintain eye contact the whole time, raising my brows and looking as mean as I could.
The villagers came out of their homes and cheered for me, hugging and rubbing the hat on top of my head against my hair.
Hero, they called me.
We had a feast that evening, eating even more lamington in total darkness.
"You saved this town," the mayor said with a shaky voice—it was so dark, I couldn't even see his face. He was probably that old man I'd heard shouting from inside one of the houses. "You are our Savior..."
"Very nice," I mumbled. "Do you happen to know where I can find some white women around here?"
"What was that?"
"Nothing." I sighed.
In the morning, the nice family couple brought me to the chocolate river, or coco river or something, as promised, which was way better than getting no water at all. Maybe I should've grown a pair and jumped in front of a speeding truck—that might have taken me to a better world.
"No, don't eat that." The wife tried to stop me from jumping into the river. "It's not cooked."
How do you even eat liquid?
They put it into a "glass" bottle—it was probably also made of candy—and later boiled it when we got back home.
The firewood used for heating was also very sweet.
It was dinner time again.
"Are there other villages nearby?" I asked them.
"We don't know," the father said. "A few hundred years ago, we separated from the South and built a settlement here."
"Where was the furthest you've ever gone from home?"
"A day's walk, perhaps. There isn't much to see out there. The world is a scary place." He turned and held his wife's hand. "To be entirely honest with you, we have all we need here."
"You two seem like you love each other."
"What?" He looked at me strangely. Way to go, Ashley.
"I mean, you seem like a really nice couple." I didn't know why I even needed to compliment them but whatever. "I wish I could find someone who'd love me as much as you love each other."
"'Love' each other? What's 'love'?" The husband asked me. So that's what it was.
"Hmmm, you've got a point," I crossed my arms and leaned against my seat. "I mean I don't even know what it is, myself. It's a type of feeling, like hatred and other emotions, but why does it feel that way? Why do certain chemicals in our brain feel differently? Why do oxytoxin and cortisol feel the way they do? Why can't love feel like hatred, or fear, or something else entirely? So you're right. I don't know why I said that. I guess what I wanted to say was you two look like you get along."
The two of them just smiled politely, not knowing what the hell I was talking a out. They were probably thinking I was having a schizophrenic episode. And here I thought we were on the same wavelengths. Maybe they just didn't have a name for it.
"All right, come on children, it is time." The mother stood up and guided her son towards a large closet.
The boy climbed inside, closed the doors and started crying.
"What is that thing?" I pointed at their closet.
"Oh? It's our crying room." The mother smiled kindly. "Don't you have one at home?"
"Why should I…?"
"To feel better, of course," she said. "Crying feels really nice. It's good for your health."
The members took turns to climb inside the closet to cry. First the two kids, then the mom; the father was the last one to go.
They probably used it because they didn't want to annoy the neighbors. Despite its size, the closet was also only large enough to fit one person so a group cry session as a family bonding activity was out of the question.
After a while, the husband came out and invited me to get inside it. The whole house reeked with tears.
"Nah, I'm good."
I forced myself to finish the food, wondering whether I'd be committing a faux pas if I didn't eat the plate as well.
The father then sat down at the dinner table before asking, "Don't you miss your home?"
I shrugged. "I mean, I don't know. I shouldn't even be alive right now, to be honest. Say, you still haven't told me your name."
He gave me that confused look again. I groaned.
What is that, he asked me.
"You know, your name. If you're going to call for someone in a crowd, you're going to need it. What do others call you?"
He shook his head and laughed. "I don't know. If anybody in town needs something from me, they just come over to our house."
It was like they were living in the stone age.
Hah—
Is that?
"Praise the Lord!" I left my seat and dashed for the front door.
It was raining.
Running outside the house, I opened my mouth wide and pulled back my head.
...
It's chocolate.
Deeply disheartened, I lay on the ground and let the rain drops fall on my tongue.
The father stood tall right above me, taking in the view.
I'm so thirsty...
"Another peaceful evening," he said with his fingers intertwined behind his back.
But that peace did not last for long.
I woke up to an earthquake. It'd made me fall down from my candy bed when I didn't notice.
The whole family had already gathered at the front door.
What time is it? It's still dark outside.
I squeezed my head through the small gap between the couple.
No, it was morning already, although I wouldn't haven gotten to that conclusion without doing a double-take.
The sky looked like a snake pit as it was filled with squirming silhouettes.
I'd never seen so many dragons in my life.
Men clad in dark armors were marching forward, engulfing the town like black waves drowning an island.
That guy wasn't kidding when he'd said he'd remember.
But I wasn't so concerned about him as I was worried about the walking mountain of a figure among the ocean of men. That skull head between its shoulders must have been as large as Kyoto. Swarms of soldiers were falling into the newly-formed canyons of its every step.
"Is this the end of the world?" The wife said quietly, almost as if to herself. Her kind eyes were laced with dejection.
All the villagers were brought out by the soldiers and made to kneel in the open with hands tied behind their backs.
The children were screaming as the soldiers separated them from their parents and lumped them all together in the corner.
The makeshift handcuffs chafed and cut into my wrist as one soldier used his boot to push me forward. I flexed my stomach to stop myself from falling over.
"She's the one, my Lord." It was a familiar voice. The tall figure in dark armor emerged from the ranks of soldiers. I assumed he was referring to the titan towering before all of us, the upper half of whose body I couldn't see anymore, no matter how far I turned my head back. The giant skeleton was about one kilometer away from us. If it took just one more step, the whole village would be devoured in a valley.
For a brief second, the whole place became quiet. The soldiers did not make a sound, not even the clattering of their armor. Even the countless vile creatures in the sky did not dare to flap their wings too loudly.
Suddenly—
The ground under my knees vanished along with the town and its occupants as I found myself hovering above a dozen layers of clouds.
Before me was a giant eye socket of a skeletal head. Due to its colossal nature and because I was so close to it, when I tried to look in any direction, I couldn't even see the other parts of the skull.
When it moved ever so slightly, hinting its lower jaw had begun to shift, the sky vibrated to the intensity of its voice.
"Vermin, I will rearrange every atom in your body. You will beg for death."
Those words sent shivers up my spine as I broke into a sweat.
An intense heat shot through my body. My skin was buzzing, almost bubbling, as if every cell was going to evaporate.
I didn't know whether it was leaning towards me or that I was being brought closer to it.
"You and the rest of this realm shall perish," the titan said. "It is time to start over."
I could hear faint screams from a distance.
It's going to destroy the entire universe?
"My Lord," I responded, making sure to yell loud enough so it could hear me. "I admit defeat. I will tell you everything!"
The narrowing of our distance suddenly ceased.
"What?" My eardrums were aching, almost stretching to the boom of its voice.
"Everything!" I shouted, my voice rapidly drying up by the syllable. "I will tell you everything I know!"
"About what?"
"The world that I came from!"
It looked at me for a few seconds, before telling me to continue, "Go on."
I fought the urge to look down, knowing that I wouldn't be able to see the rest of the skull, let alone the ground from this height.
"You see, my Lord, my name is Ashley Halls! I came from another world. The place I came from was nothing like yours. It was drab, without colors or flavors. The food we ate were bland and the rainbows had very few hues!"
"Why should that concern me?"
"It was the utter emptiness of my world that had driven me to my own death. For you see, my Lord, I had already died. It would not benefit me in anyway to lie to you. I am the living proof that there is life beyond death. But none of that is important, because I had never in my life imagined that I would be reborn into a world far greater than my own!"
The titan skeleton was quiet, as if deep in thought. The cells in my body never stopped bubbling and burning—I had to keep pushing forward.
I continued, "A world where the soil is made of sweets, a world of so much beauty! You, Mighty King, Conqueror of the World! Dare I ask, you have had it all, my Lord, have you not? Power, riches, loyal servants, even immortality. Is there anything that our Lord does not possess or any pleasures that he has not experienced?"
"Where are you going with this?"
"Please forgive my impudence, my Lord. However, I sincerely hope I have not erred in my assumptions."
After a moment, it said, "You were correct."
I sneaked a sigh. An immortal god. "It only befits the Conqueror of the World to possess all that this realm has to offer. But, alas, I truly believe that someone in a position such as yourself deserve so much more!"
"I've had enough," the titan said. "Pleasure is poison for the weak."
In that case...
"Our Lord is wise. I am in awe to be graced by your presence! However, I am here to present to our Lord the possibility of worlds beyond the notions of pleasure and pain, joy and grief, good and evil. An array of undiscovered feelings and sensations. I speak of realms with qualities that Our Lord could never experience in this one. Please forgive my bluntness, my Lord, but to withhold this possibility from You would be no different than confining a bird to its cage for all eternity. Our Lord is the ruler of all, and such treatment would not befit His image!"
I waited for a response with my eyes wide open, fighting the stinging pain from the beads of sweat that had seeped into them.
"Do you take me for a fool?" the skeleton suddenly said. "Did you think such cheap tactics would work against me?" Even if it was speaking softly, the voice was loud enough to almost tear my eardrums apart. "You're implying that I should take my own life in hopes of gaining entry to greater worlds?"
I tried to gulp back the anxiety swelling in my chest.
"Your sagacity knows no bounds, my Lord," I said, my voice slightly shaking. "Nothing escapes your perception! However, I'd like to once again remind you that I would gain nothing by engaging in trickery or falsehood. I myself am the living proof that there is more to life behind the veil of death. If such a phenomenon could happen to me, then it very well could happen to all of us. I am merely presenting such a possibility to you, my Lord, of other worlds waiting to be conquered by your hands, worlds beyond the five senses, worlds that we could never perceive or even imagine in our most vivid dreams."
The skeleton looked at me, gauging my every word.
Then I said, "An eternity spent in this world is everything a mere mortal like myself could ever dream of. However, I only want the best for our Lord!"
My body began to cool as the buzzing on my skin dissipated. After a bout of silence, the skeleton said, "Then you shall accompany me into this new world."
"My Lord, as much as I'd want to, I'm afraid that this is simply not possible, for there is a very real chance we would materialize in completely separate worlds. Also, unlike our mighty king, I am but a lowly craven who fears death more than anything else. Our Lord, on the other hand—as the conqueror of the world, nothing should shake your spirit! Not even death itself."
"But then I'll be alone."
The sudden shift in its tone made me feel bad for some reason.
The corners of my lips turned upward into a warm smile. "Even if bound in this realm, in spirits, we will always be by your side, my Lord."
My gradual descent back to the surface probably took about an hour and a half. For a third of that duration, I struggled to keep my face from grazing against the fabric on its crotch on the way down.
As I was nearing the ground, the soldiers raised their hands to support my body.
"Look after my kingdom for me," the skeleton said to someone with its head far above the clouds.
The tall man standing with the soldiers gave a low bow. "As you wish, my Lord."
"My wife," the titan said. "Whatever world she's hiding in. One day... One day..."
Then, its entire body began to fall back, like felling a cosmic tree. The titan king fell for a very long time.
The villagers cheered as the soldiers untied them. The children ran to reunite with their families. Although the army was marching back to base, some were staying behind to join the festivities, drinking beers with the villagers. Some of the dragons even joined in.
The couple I had been staying with came over to where I was lying on the lamington soil. "Hero!" the wife cried as she hugged. "You are our Savior. Thank you. Thank you!"
"So the general became King," the husband said. "We might be able to go back South again."
"Water..." It was all I could think about. "Water...Water..."
The titan was still falling. It would probably take two weeks until its head would make contact with the ground.
"Are you okay?" the wife cried. "Stay with us!"
A flock of women suddenly ran over and surrounded me. They were begging me to not leave them behind. A smile tugged at the corner of my lips. When viewed from this angle, they kinda looked Caucasian.
My dream had finally come true.
Those villagers had hidden them from me for so long.
My life is now complete.
This is it.
I have no more regrets.
Thank you...for everything...
The sound of wailing woke me up.
I was lying in the hospital bed.
Mom. Dad. My sister.
And the one sobbing the loudest.
"...Boss..."
"Kasumi!" she cried. "You're okay!"
"It's..." It's Ashley... Whatever. At least use my family name—we're not that close.
After being rejected so many times, my parents' credit card was finally getting accepted. They were going to treat my cancer, after all.
What is this, an anti-Isekai?
This is the worst day of my life.
"I'm sorry I called you a retard! I'm sorry!"
...
Maybe it's not the worst day ever.
"...It's okay."