Saciel's morning had already been a disaster before the truck got involved.
He'd overslept. Missed breakfast. Spilled coffee on his only clean shirt, decided the stain wasn't that bad, then decided it was definitely that bad but wore it anyway because he was already late. His bus had pulled away exactly as he rounded the corner, which he chose to interpret as a personal attack. The convenience store was out of the onigiri he liked. It was raining.
By the time Saciel was crossing the intersection at Nishida Street, he had compiled a thorough mental list of everything wrong with his life and was in the process of deciding it wasn't actually that bad. He was almost done convincing himself when the truck found him.
He didn't see it. That part was important to him, later. He wasn't being dramatic or poetic or staring into the sky thinking about his regrets. He was mid thought about whether he'd left his stove on. The last thing he processed before everything went white was that he was almost certain he had.
He probably had.
The waiting room didn't look like anything in particular.
That was the most honest way to describe it. It wasn't clouds or marble or warm golden light. It was just a room that seemed to have the vague suggestion of walls and a ceiling without being especially committed to either. There was a chair. Saciel was sitting in it. There was another chair across from him, and in that chair sat something that looked roughly like a person, if a person had forgotten a few of the details.
The being opened its mouth.
"I'm sorry," it said.
Saciel stared at it.
"That's… look, I know that's not… I'm just going to come out and say it, that truck was not supposed to hit you. That was not scheduled. We have a whole schedule and you were not on it and I am… I want you to know I'm very sorry about that."
Saciel said nothing.
"The driver… well, it's complicated. The soul routing got a bit… anyway. The point is. I'm sorry."
"Okay," Saciel said.
"Okay," the being echoed, visibly relieved, then immediately added: "I'm still very sorry."
"You mentioned."
"Right." It clasped its hands together. "So. The thing is. You're dead."
"I gathered."
"And normally… normally… a soul in your situation would be processed and sent back through the cycle in the standard way, but because the incident was our fault, there's a… there's a compensation policy. You can be reincarnated. New world, fresh start, the whole arrangement." It paused. "You'd get a System."
"What's a System," Saciel said, though he had the creeping sense he already understood the shape of this conversation.
The being brightened, or did something that functioned like brightening. "It's an interface. A kind of framework that quantifies your growth. Skills, levels, stats. It supports your development as you move through the world." A pause. "The world has magic. And an academy. You'd start there."
Saciel considered this for a moment.
"And if I say no?"
The being looked genuinely distressed. "I'd… we'd have to process you normally. Which is… I mean you'd just…" It made a vague cycling gesture with one hand. "Back in. Standard rebirth. No memory, no System."
"So this is the better option."
"It really is," the being said, and it sounded so genuinely apologetic about having to say so that Saciel almost felt bad for it.
Almost.
"Fine," Saciel said. "Sure."
The being looked so relieved that Saciel felt vaguely insulted. He hadn't been difficult. He hadn't even raised his voice. He had simply sat there while a cosmic entity apologized at him repeatedly and then agreed to its compensation package like a reasonable adult. He wasn't sure what kind of reaction it had been expecting.
"Wonderful. That's wonderful. Okay." The being stood, or shifted upward in a way that approximated standing. "There are a few things I should tell you before you go."
"Sure."
"You'll retain your memories. Your personality. Your name if you'd like it, though names work a little differently over there." It paused. "The academy will assign you housing. You'll receive your System upon arrival, which is standard. Everyone gets one at enrollment."
"So I'm not special."
"Well." The being shifted. "Everyone's System is unique to them. Yours will be calibrated to your soul's… particular qualities."
Saciel had the distinct impression it had almost said something else.
"That's vague," he said.
"It is," the being agreed, without elaborating. "Anyway. You'll be fine. Probably." Another pause. "I'm sorry again. About the truck. And the stove. You did leave it on, by the way."
Saciel stared at it.
"I thought you should know," it said, and then everything went white again.
The first thing Saciel registered in his new life was a ceiling. Stone, vaulted, lit by something warm and flickering. He was lying on a narrow bed in a room that smelled like wood polish and dust.
The second thing he registered was a faint shimmer at the edge of his vision, something hovering there, present in a way that was difficult to describe, like a word on the tip of his tongue made visible.
He looked at it.
It looked back.
Then, in a voice that seemed to originate somewhere slightly behind his own thoughts, crisp and deeply unimpressed:
"Hey dumbass, look here, not there, up here, idiot."
Saciel looked up.
There was nothing on the ceiling.
"Not the ceiling. Here. The interface. The glowing thing you were just looking at before you decided the ceiling was more interesting."
He looked back at the shimmer.
"There you go. Incredible. Really. The bar clears itself."
The shimmer resolved into something more structured as he focused on it, like adjusting to a new pair of glasses. It was a panel of some kind, translucent, floating at a comfortable reading distance. His name was at the top. Below it were rows of text he couldn't fully parse yet, numbers and categories and a progress bar sitting at zero.
At the bottom of the panel, in slightly different text than the rest, were the words: SYSTEM ACTIVE. AWAITING USER INPUT.
"Are you the System," Saciel said.
"No I'm the window curtains. Yes I'm the System. What else would I be."
"I don't know," Saciel said. "A headache."
A pause. Then:
"That was almost funny. Don't get used to it."
Saciel sat up slowly, taking stock. He was in a small stone room with one window, one door and one desk. His body felt different in a way he couldn't immediately articulate, lighter maybe, or just unfamiliar, the way a new pair of shoes felt before they stopped feeling like shoes and started just feeling like feet. He looked at his hands. They were his hands. Roughly. Similar proportions.
"What are my stats," he said.
"You sure you want to know?"
"Yes."
"Okay but I'm just flagging that you might not."
"Just tell me."
The panel shifted and a new screen replaced the previous one. Saciel read it. He read it again. Then he looked away from it and stared at the wall for a moment.
"Those are bad numbers," he said.
"Yeah."
"Those are really bad numbers."
"I did try to warn you."
"You said 'you might not want to know,' that's barely a warning."
"I said it twice."
Saciel looked back at the panel. The numbers had not improved in the time he'd spent not looking at them. He hadn't expected them to. He just felt like they warranted a second look, the kind of second look you gave a bill you'd already added up correctly the first time, hoping somehow the math had changed.
It hadn't.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay?"
"Okay." He swung his legs off the bed. His feet hit the stone floor. It was cold. "So I start from the bottom."
The System was quiet for a moment, which was somehow more unsettling than when it was talking.
"You're taking this well."
"I got hit by a truck this morning," Saciel said. "Bad numbers feel pretty manageable by comparison."
Another pause.
"…Fair enough."
Outside the window, Saciel could see the edge of a courtyard, stone paths and tall arched buildings and students moving between them in uniforms he didn't own yet. Druiami Academy. He didn't know what it looked like yet from the inside, what ranked first or who mattered or where exactly the bottom was and how long it would take to climb out of it.
He'd figure it out.
Probably.