Yesterday's Mysteries are Today's Masteries

"YABAI! YABAIIII!!!"

Within two months of graduating, I’d landed a well-paying position at a high-end business firm—buzzing with the thought of finally achieving the Japanese dream.

Within two weeks, I was spending my nights at a gyoza bar with the boss, arguing that Hiroshima could still salvage the NPB season—while quietly praying I wouldn’t get fired if I stopped feigning interest for just a second.

Within two hours of leaving the office, I was dead. Well, going to die. It was a matter of semantics when you are bleeding out as fast as I am.

Much like my life, there was little fanfare when it happened.

A modded car speeding, a distracted driver, and a passenger wrestling for control of the wheel made for a deadly combo. I wasn’t even given the dignity of causing a scene!

Well, except from the occupants of the car.

I was still conscious enough I could see their looks of horror. They looked even younger than I was. One of them was crying. A young woman. Phone in one hand, speaking deliriously to 119 on the other.

The other was trying to give me chest compressions. "IIE! Don't die on me!"

It wasn’t their fault, not really. How could they have known some idiot was walking home at the dead of night?

As I lay dying, my thoughts should have been about family. About Mum. Who was going to help her on Saturdays now?

Still, I felt selfish. I felt, in some sick way, like I deserved this breach of etiquette.

Because deep down, I knew what brought me to that cold stretch of asphalt.

What a shame that my story doesn’t even get the courtesy of being unique. Just another sad story in a country full of them.

Mum never pushed her own plan onto me. She only asked, “Are you happy?”

I lied every time.

\\

“You’re right—resistance was never in your nature.”

I screamed.

The sound bounced off nothing and everything. My body felt stretched, everywhere and nowhere at once. The space around me was infinite yet I couldn’t move an inch.

Then I saw Her.

A shape, red as blood, flickering like spilled ink in water. Her face was a perfect drama mask—white porcelain smile on one side, and anguish on the other.

Who can it be other than…

“Are you… the Devil?” I choked out.

“In a sense! I can be your greatest ally, your deepest want, your darkest nightmare. And this so-called ‘Devil’. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!” She lunged forward until she was inches from my face, her breath hot and panting like a hound. “I can be whatever you want me to be~”

I felt myself blush. 

“Ho ho ho…!” Her grin widened. “You’re fun.”

She sprang onto a conjured stool with a theatrical flourish and snapped her fingers. 

In an instant, we were in space. As in, space space. 

She was a showman.

Endless stars stretched in every direction, galaxies spiraling, the black vastness of the cosmos yawning before us. I could see everything.

Clearly, warping the laws of reality for her was just part of the act.

“What I want, what I most desire… is change. Change in any form.” Her voice sang with glee. “And you—you possess so much potential for entropy, yet produce so little. I won’t stand for that!”

“Why am I here?” I managed to gasp. The only concern I had was getting back home to mom.

Something tells me she won't give me what I want. 

“I admire your competence,” she cooed. “It so contrasts with your agreeableness. That precious talent for folding yourself smaller so everyone else feels taller. Negotiating the best deals—and always for others. A master salaryman!” She clapped. “And all to save your perfect, unwrinkled face. What a sad, tidy life you led. And so, so, so narratively RIVETING…”

A shiver clawed up my spine. She was insane!

“ME?” She teleported; one blink, and she was right in front of me! “CRAZY? Oh nononono! You of all people don’t get to say that.”

Of course she can read my thoughts.

She flicked a single finger on my nose and sent me flying. I was spinning, I was weightless, I felt I was going vomit!

“Crazy,” her voice echoed from all directions, “is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result!”

Slam!

The spinning stopped.

I barely caught my breath before the air completely and utterly changed. 

It felt cold and incredibly intimate as she walked toward me with a sway. 

And beside my ear, I heard her poisonous voice. 

“Tell me,” she whispered. “Did you ever feel like your life was on rails? Like even when you were alone… you never really had control of your actions?”

“What…?”

“Answer, and I’ll continue.”

I didn’t dare lie. Even if I tried, she’d know. She’d dig it out of me.

“…Yes,” I whispered. Every day.

Suddenly, the air cracked. My face slammed with pressure. For ten seconds, I couldn’t breathe as I felt myself hurtled at the speed of light!

The ensuing sudden stop hit me like a truck. 

The air cooled. The burning vanished.

I opened my eyes and saw…

The most beautiful place I’d ever seen.

Golden sun spilling over rolling hills of emerald…

Cottage houses with curling chimneys dotted their slopes, and duck-like creatures soared all around—above, below, through me—as if taken from my childhood sketchbook.

And in the farthest distance... wizard towers on floating isles; spire towers that pierced the clouds; waterfalls going off the edge into nothing; floating skyships!

It was…

“This,” the Devil whispered, sweeping her hand across the endless expanse, “this was what you gave up?” Her golden eyes glinted. “This is the world you were so scared to explore? All for fear what others thought of you…?” She snorted. “You utter fool.”

She didn’t understand my position. Mine was a single income household in the middle of the boonies! I had to pick the path that I did to be able to support my family! 

I had to…

I couldn’t respond. Before my eyes may as well have been straight from my best dreams.

“Tell me, Endo. Do you still want to go back?”

“What… do you mean?”

“And if you got a second chance in another life, living in this world… would you take it?”

I hesitated. There had to be a trick. And if I said yes, wouldn’t that make Mum’s sacrifices pointless?

Of course I’d go bac—

“LIARRR!!”

A typhoon of wind slammed into me, tearing my thoughts to shreds.

I doubled over, gasping. My stomach was doing flips.

I was on the back of a dragon. Falling. Freefall. Clouds tore past. Wind howled in my ears. We were barrelling straight down right toward the earth and somehow, I was still alive.

She’d teleported me again!

“YOU’RE MORE SELFISH THAN YOU’D LET YOURSELF BELIEVE!” she roared from above. Her wings kept pace effortlessly with the dragon, while I held on for dear life. “ALL THOSE DAYS OF MEANINGLESS TASKS, EMPTY TALK, SMILING POLITELY—YOU CALLED THAT A LIFE?!”

Even now, with the wind screaming and the ground rushing closer… if I admitted it, what would that say about me? About my choices?

Wouldn’t that make everything meaningless?

“YOU DENIED YOUR NATURE. AND I WON’T LET YOU ANY LONGER!”

“I…” The earth was rising too fast now, impossibly fast. My chest heaved. My knuckles went white.

“Say it,” she demanded.

My throat closed. I just… I wasn’t ready!

Tears stung my eyes. “I… want to go ba...”

“SAY IT!!”

And yet, somehow, I knew in deepest heart and soul... I couldn’t keep running.