A new twist on an old classic

I was wearing my favorite hat on the day my brother was supposed to die. It’s a light blue snapback with a grinning great white right above the brim. It’s a hat for the Sharks, a local collegiate baseball team that I play for, but I got the hat long before I got on the team or even got into that university. And if had known I would lose it, I wouldn’t have worn the damn thing. As the saying goes, you can’t take it with you.

But I wore it to class that day, because I always did. One of my favorite parts of being a college student was the lax dress code. Goodbye stuffy uniforms, hello personal freedom. Once the bell rang, everyone groaned in relief, professor included, and shambled through the door. It was a Friday; everyone had some place better to be. 

For me, that was my younger brother Chouji’s high school. 

My Friday last class ends before Chouji gets out, and with enough time for me to catch a train and walk to his school. Pretty lucky. I leaned against the pillar by the entrance gate. A few other college students who also had younger siblings joined me there. They chatted amongst themselves while I kept to my phone, watching a baseball broadcast. 

It was two NPB teams, both vying for their spot in the finals. The scores neck and neck, I watched the pitcher hurl the ball at the mound. The batter reeled his arms back like a scorpion’s stinger and slashed into the throw with a lightning crack. The ball arced through the air, nearly clearing the stadium height, but as it fell to the ground, an outfielder dashed towards it. In a desperate bargain, the outfielder leaped with his glove outstretched. The ball fell closer and closer and closer and—

Play Quest of Heroes, the newest game storming the nation!

I let out a frustrated groan, putting a pause to nearby conversations. These ads for annoying mobile games have been popping up everywhere. Does anyone actually play them? I certainly haven’t seen it happen.

Unlock your true potential as a Sorcerer! These hot elves need all the help they can get!

And why am I getting these fantasy game ads anyway? That’s my brother’s thing. Chouji has been in love with magic and fantasy and role-playing and all that jazz since he was in elementary school.

I glanced up to the college students who were eyeing me.

“Sorry,” I said. I gestured to my phone. “Ad break.”

“You don’t have a premium subscription?” one of them asked.

“Come on, my WcDonalds manager isn’t paying me that much.” We chuckled and spent the next few minutes talking about how part-time jobs suck. 

The high school’s dismissal bell put an end to our small talk. As more and more kids began to pour out, I scanned the crowd for my brother’s brown mop of hair and thick glasses. He didn’t do the best job of maintaining it, so it kind of looked like half a coconut. When I spotted him, I waved my hand back and forth as usual. He saw my Sharks baseball hat and walked towards me. We greeted each other in the classic Mizuhara fashion: fist-bumping. Then off to the local convenience store we went.

We spent a few minutes walking in silence. It was only when we began walking uphill that I tried some small talk.

“Classes been treating you alright?” I asked. 

Chouji shrugged.

“Yeah. Nothing new.”

A few beats passed.

“So uh,” I said. “That Questing Heroes game.”

“Quest of Heroes.”

“Yeah, that one. Have you… have you been playing it?”

He shrugged. “It seemed exactly the same as the other trope-y fantasy games they’re putting out. Not really breaking new material. You’ve seen one, you’ve seen it all.”

And the silence returned. 

He kicked at stray pebbles with head bent down and hands in his pockets as we continued downhill to Lowson. This is a tradition we started when I was in high school that has somehow lasted this long despite our schedules. On the weekends he’s doing extracurriculars and I’m busy doing all my schoolwork or playing on the Sharks. We don’t spend all that much time together at home, so this is as much brotherly bonding we get during the week.

I was pondering on that as we stood just outside the Lowson, munching on our newly acquired snacks, when I nudged Chouji. 

“Hey. Is that Fukako?”

He turned his head and turned red on cue. There was the girl that he crushed on for half his life. She had waist-length, raven-colored hair and a no-nonsense air about her. She was nice, but not the most situationally aware. Poor Chouji had been trying to get her attention since forever.

She was coming our way, head craned down to look at her phone. Whatever she was doing was consuming all of her attention. Chouji straightened up and cleared his throat. I silently chuckled, watching him ready up to make a move. But before she made it to the Lowson, she turned and took the nearby crosswalk. Chouji dropped his form with a sigh, partly from disappointment and partly from relief. I was about to reach over and give him a reassuring pat on the back when I noticed the truck. 

I heard it before I saw it. It was hard not to, considering the driver was laying down on his horn with all his might. The white delivery truck soared over the top of the hill. It crashed down with a weighty thud and continued barreling down the road. 

Did this guy lose control of the it? He must have. Maybe something’s wrong with the brakes, because he’s barreling towards…

Barreling towards…

It happened too quickly for me to think. By the time I registered the danger, Chouji had already sprinted over and pushed Fukako out of the way. 

I could only watch in horror as the truck zeroed in on my brother. It was like slow motion. Have you heard of how people, right before death, see their life flash before their eyes? For me it was the reverse. Seeing my brother about to die made his life flash before my eyes. I remembered ignoring him as he tried to explain his fantasy games to me. I remember cheering him on at his sports festival, despite him being awful at it. I remember the first time we went together to this Lowson. And he had saved her. He sacrificed his life, all of that, to save somebody. All I could do was freeze up.

What kind of older brother was I? The grief and mental anguish, those thoughts… they would haunt me for the rest of my life.

I didn’t know it yet, but the rest of my life was half a second.

Just as the truck was about to collide with Chouji’s body in midair, everything paused. Just briefly. I’m not exactly sure how to describe it. But it felt like time was taking a break and reality wasn’t putting its back into it. There was a brief sense of detachment, of letting go of something I didn’t realize I was holding onto. But that moment was fleeting. It’s a bit funny. Just before blacking out, I could have sworn I heard a high-pitched voice saying, “Uh oh!”

~⚔~

When I woke up, I was standing in line. But I’m not sure if “woke up” is the right word for it. I don’t remember waking up. I don’t even remember how I got there. It was as if I had always existed in there. And despite being in line, there was no sense of urgency or time being wasted. I just stood there. Stood there in line inside of a long, blank hallway, like in an office building. Curiosity got the better of me and I poked my head out the side. 

The line stretched forward farther than I could see. Some people in line were short, some tall. Some were men, some women, some I couldn’t tell. I even saw someone in front of my missing an arm. We all stood there docile, waiting for something. The line slid forward molasses slow, but I didn’t care much. It took a while before I realized that I couldn’t hear my breathing, or the breathing of anyone else around me. I couldn’t even hear the sound of our feet hitting the tile floor. It was pure, peaceful silence until I heard chatter in front of me.

I poked my head out again. We were nearing the end of the hallway. And at the end of hallway was a woman sitting behind a wooden desk. Her hair was in a tight, blonde bun and her lips were wine red, fixed into a rehearsed smile. She was addressing the person at the front of the line, her eyes a bit too blue and a bit too wide. I was too far away to make out what she was saying, but even from that distance I could tell her voice was clear and strong, like a practiced swing of the bat. After she dismissed them with a polite nod, the person shuffled off and the next person stepped forward. 

The next person stepped forward and the next person and the next person. Her words became clearer but were just as indiscernible as they were from way in the back.

Contract… expired… termination… processing…

My dazed mind was spinning, trying to parse it all, when I took my last step forward and was finally greeted by this woman, face to face. 

“Hello,” she said. “Welcome to Hell. How may I assist you?”