Chapter Text
Umi’s eyes shot open suddenly. She was seated… somewhere. A strong sense of disorientation made her head spin. A splitting migraine forced her eyes shut. This wasn’t her home, this wasn’t her dojo, this wasn’t any building she’d ever set foot into.
Last she remembered…
She tried recalling…
She had been…
Bedridden, was a word that jumped to mind. Not in the comfort of her own home however…
In the hospital? Looking up at the ceiling. The sterile, white ceiling, fluorescent lights uncaringly illuminating her surroundings. And when she tired of the monotonous view, she turned on her side and saw an equally unpleasant sight in a mirror: an old woman, her long marine blue hair having turned an aged grey, liver spots blotting her creased skin, tubes of varying sizes jammed up her nose, down her throat, into her arms.
Had she… died? Was she in the afterlife? That… couldn’t be right.
Not in her wildest imaginings of the afterlife had Umi imagined it to take a form like this. She dared look at the dull grey wall that sprung behind her, reaching infinitely far in length and height. A bright fog began consuming the structure as it stretched farther and farther away. The white, tiled floor disappeared in a similar fashion, leaving the red velvet stool as Umi’s only anchor point-
“Next”, called a voice seemingly out of nowhere-
Not nowhere! A mahogany desk had materialized itself to Umi’s right. Seated at it, tapping away at a computer’s keyboard, was a pale girl with bubblegum pink hair, most of it draping down the side of her face in well-defined tresses, though one such tress defied gravity and curved upward, reminiscent of an antenna.
“Next”, the girl called out again, her bright yellow eyes locking gazes with Umi’s amber ones.
Sensing she was keeping the… clerk waiting, Umi quickly rose from her seat and took place at the opposite side of the desk.
The girl remained quiet for a while, her eyes glued to the computer screen, while the keyboard clacked and the mouse wheel spun. Umi wanted to ask why she was here, whether she was in some kind of dream, whether she could wake up and go back to…
Go back to…
“Thirty-three.”
“E-excuse me?” Umi queried.
“Thirty-three points. The lowest score I have ever seen.” The clarification offered little more clarity.
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.” Umi shot the girl an unconvincing smile. “I don’t think I’m supposed to be here.”
“You’re Sonoda Umi, right?” Umi nodded silently in the face of the girl’s thousand-yard stare.
“But what do these points mean?” Umi tried reasoning instead.
The girl faced her computer again, as if the answer could be read there, but she was clearly preoccupied with different things. “The score determines where you’re sent in the afterlife.”
A pit formed in Umi’s stomach. Her eyes widened and her breath hitched. The afterlife… That meant this wasn’t a dream. And if she was at the whims of this clerk and her… score, the lowest she’d ever seen, then…
“Th-there must have been a mistake! I’ve lived a virtuous life, I can’t have such a low score.”
“We don’t make mistakes”, the clerk replied calmly.
Umi rose from her seat now, slamming her hands on the desk. “Then what does this score mean?! What should I have done instead?!”
Umi’s questions were responded to with nothing but a silent stare.
Heaving a shaky breath, Umi tried calming down again, but fear had made home in her heart. “What will happen to me now then…?”
“I don’t know”, was all she got for a reply.
Umi slid back in her chair, defeated.
“But I want to know”, she continued.
Umi looked up again. The expression of the girl had not changed a bit since first she saw her, but even so a tinge of regret was palpable, or something to that effect at least.
The girl began operating the computer again, but her actions felt more deliberate this time, less rooted in routine, as if she was doing something she hadn’t done before.
The words that followed shook Umi to her core: “I will give you a second chance, but only on one condition.”