Chapter Text
The ending theme song of the anime played softly in the background. The room felt like a cozy, small home theater. dim lights, and the coffee table was at just the right height for me to prop up my feet. I glanced sideways. My new friend chuckled, his body moving in a strange, jarring motion. Sometimes it looked like he was moving backward in time, like someone rolling back a VHS tape.
My new friend was more than a little weird. He looked like a shadow silhouette of a human; even in the dim light, I should have been able to make out his form, but I couldn't. I looked back at the screen as a new episode of another anime began to load. How long had it been since I had simply sat down and watched an anime with a friend?
A sharp, sudden pain made me wince. My head throbbed. He glanced at me, his oversized square glasses catching a permanent light glare that made it impossible to see through to his eyes. Without opening his mouth, he asked if I was okay. The language he used was bizarre. I couldn't actually comprehend the words, but the general sense of what they meant echoed clearly in my mind.
I nodded.
“I’m okay. What are we…”
I trailed off, glancing around. I recognized this room. I didn't recognize it because I had ever physically entered it, but because this was exactly how I had imagined a media room of my own house would look. It was my oldest dream. One I had never managed to achieve in life. And now, I never would. I looked down at my hands as sorrow constricted my throat. The sheer unreality of the situation kept panic at bay, allowing me to find my voice.
“I died, didn’t I?”
I asked my new friend. Memories were beginning to piece themselves together. I remembered meeting him somewhere, though I couldn't say where. He greeted me with a curious smile, and before long we were talking about anime, manga, and all sorts of nerdy things for what felt like an eternity. We talked about the classics, as well as the new generation of games, like Zenless Zone Zero. I had started playing that one recently. It was actually really good. Or, at least, I had been having a ton of fun with it.
My new friend stared at me for a moment, then nodded. The image on the television screen shifted.
Suddenly, I was watching a video of myself walking down the street. I had been out buying bread. My parents had asked me to grab some before dinner. In the video, I got distracted by a loaf of bread slipping out of the paper bag. A truck hit me square, dead center. My body flew through the air as my bones shattered. The truck's tires screeched as it accelerated, running over me a second time before disappearing around the corner, leaving behind nothing but the sound of burning rubber.
“Damn," I muttered, staring at the screen. "Did I owe that guy money?”
My friend shook his head. The monitor filled with static, pulsing with distorted, glitching words: Bad Luck.
I snorted bitterly. “Yeah. I always had a lot of that.”
I looked around the space again, suddenly struck by an uncanny feeling. It was like the moment in a dream where you suddenly realize you’re dreaming. Everything gained a surreal, weightless quality. A bizarre but comforting atmosphere settled over me.
“You know, I always thought death would be more like that anime, The Faraway Paladin. A graceful deity guiding souls through the galaxies, listening to their thoughts and leading them to the next great adventure. That's still one of my favorite concepts for the afterlife or reincarnation.”
My friend perked up instantly. The entire room dissolved around us. The background instantly shifted, though our furniture remained stacked in the exact same positions, now resting on what looked like invisible glass panels. All around us, vibrant galaxies, nebulae, and distant stars swirled in the deep void of space.
I laughed out loud. Seeing my reaction, my new friend practically vibrated with pure joy.
"So what now?" I asked. Despite everything, a spark of excitement stirred beneath the bittersweet melancholy in my chest. "Do I get my own isekai adventure?"
He went completely still for a second, vibrating in place, before nodding frantically. He seemed incredibly enthusiastic about the idea. I laughed again, though a little sadly. I wondered about what I was leaving behind, but the truth was, I wasn't really needed back home. My parents were doing fine on their own. They had their retirement, my sisters, and their grandchildren. I had just been... there. Existing.
Perhaps this time, in this new place, I would actually get to make a difference.
“Okay then," I said, leaning forward. "Do I get a cheat ability?”
My friend paused. He looked at the TV, then back at me. Slowly, he stretched out his arm. Which didn't look like a hand at all, but rather a shifting, shadowy tentacle. It wrapped around the TV, pulled a tabletop RPG manual from the air, grabbed a stray volume of manga from the table, and mashed them all together, compressing them into a single, tight sphere.
When he retracted his shadow, he presented his creation to me. Resting in the air was a small, erratically pulsing, octagonal crystal. It flashed with colorful static and multi-colored light every few seconds.
I raised an eyebrow. “Is it safe to touch?”
He shrugged, giving off the distinct impression that this was the very first time he had ever tried doing something like this.
Taking a deep breath, I reached out and touched the crystal.
An explosive headache burst behind my eyes. The cosmic world around me instantly dissolved into white noise as the crystal began to liquify, traveling rapidly up my arm and sinking into my skin.
Right before my vision blacked out entirely, a massive field of green CRT static appeared directly in front of my eyes. Words manifested across it, flashing in big, bold, pixelated letters:
GOOD LUCK, COMMANDER.