White void

I woke up sometime after in a very bright room. My head was throbbing with pain, but a second later, it stopped. It took some time for my eyes to adjust, and as soon as they did, I tried to remember what had happened. We were standing in the middle of the road, there was a truck speeding toward us, and... my eyes widened in terror.

"Misaki!"

I shot up to a sitting position, searching the room for... there she was. I rushed over on my hands and knees, then turned her body over to see if she was all right. Her eyes were closed, but from the steady rise and fall of her chest, I could tell she was just unconscious. I let out a worried breath I didn’t know I had been holding, then took a moment to collect my thoughts.

We were dead. This much was obvious. The bright room, the truck. It was all familiar. Not in the sense that I had personally experienced reincarnation before, but from the countless light novels and anime I consumed on a daily basis, it was clear something similar was happening to the both of us. I just couldn’t believe it was all real.

"Daichi."

An almost quiet voice called out my name, and I refocused my attention on the girl still lying down in front of me. Her eyes slowly fluttered open, and for a heartbeat, she resembled the woman I fell in love with once upon a long time ago. Her nerdy glasses, her raven-colored hair, and her soft, pudgy cheeks. She was staring up at me innocently, a look I remembered from all the tender moments we'd shared. But I already knew the truth. She was far from innocent.

I awkwardly let go of her hand, and it dropped to the floor beside her. I put a little distance between us. Her face morphed into that of sadness, then disappointment, then she slowly sat up from the ground.

"What happened?" she asked, adjusting her glasses and looking around to take in her surroundings. "Where are we?"

The entire place was a white void, nothing more, nothing less. We were the only two people in the room, with no one else in sight.

"We died," I told my ex-wife directly, without sugarcoating it. "And if you want to get into the specifics, well, it's all your fault."

She immediately spun her head around and shot me a glare, eyebrows furrowed in annoyance.

"What are you even talking about? And my fault? Really? Even though we only just met, something is already my fault?"

"Actually, yeah." I was trying to control myself and be the more mature one in the situation, but how could I? The sound of her voice, the sight of her face. It all triggered memories to come flooding in, memories from recent months I tried so hard to keep buried.

"I lost a tournament earlier tonight because of you," I said, sitting on the floor beside her and trying my best to stay calm. "I desperately needed the money for something important, and now I cannot even go back and try again because, oh, and please let this sink in properly, we're dead, princess. Caput. Six feet under. Pushing daisies. Do you understand? We just got isekai’d, and in the most generic way possible."

I got up to my feet before I continued speaking.

"And again, it’s all because of you. Because you suddenly decided to show up out of the blue. Why did you even come back anyway?"

At the end of my mini rant, my darling ex-wife scoffed, crossed her arms, then looked away from me.

"I don’t even know why I did that, to be honest," she said, causing me to freeze up for a moment. "You haven’t changed," she continued. "You are still the same old Daichi. Childish, egocentric, immature. I made a mistake coming back. I made a mistake thinking I could change things."

If we were still in the past, all of her words would have easily pissed me off into further argument. And even right then, I was still very much pissed off. But when you are exposed to something over and over again, you eventually develop some level of resistance. So instead of engaging with her further, I turned around, gave up on the conversation, and simply walked to a corner of the room.

We were silent after that. I didn’t say anything, neither did she. She was still seated on the floor with her arms wrapped around her knees. I briefly wondered if she had fully come to terms with the fact we were no longer alive. I still didn’t understand her reason for returning. But I wasn’t all that interested in finding out.

"Damn, talk about unresolved baggage, am I right?"

We both heard the voice and turned around simultaneously.

"Who’s the hobo?"

The person, or rather the entity my ex-wife had just called a hobo, looked like the classic god character you’d see in most manga and anime. Long white beard, white robes, and an aura of divinity surrounding him. If only she had bothered to engage with any of my hobbies when we were together, read any of the dozens of web novels or watched any of the hundreds of shows I recommended to her almost every week, she would have known all of this without needing to ask such an obvious question. But in the spirit of being polite, I decided to help her out with an answer.

"He is a god, and his job is usually to give souls like us an option to be reincarnated or transported to another world, often with long-running quests attached," I said dismissively to Misaki, who was dusting the back of her skirt as she got to her feet. I didn’t even know why she was doing that. It wasn’t like the floor was dirty or anything.

"So, what now?" she whispered as she turned to face me, crossing her arms. "If things are as you say, and we are really dead, do we, you know, get to go..." She made a finger motion pointing up, then a finger motion pointing down.

But instead of answering, I turned to face the god. He was busy stroking his beard, gazing at us with such intensity, almost as if he were inspecting us.

"Hmmm," he said, still seriously stroking his beard. He was like this for almost a full minute, not really doing anything else. Misaki shot me a look, and I responded with a shrug. I didn’t know what was happening either. Bro seemed to really be enjoying tugging on his face bush.

But then he spoke up.

"I’m going to let you both choose whatever you want to be, and possess whatever unique skills and abilities you can imagine, then send you to a world different from the one you just came from. Now how does that sound?" the god said as he went back to stroking his chin hair.

"Whoa," I simply replied.

"Wait, what?" Misaki asked.

"Don’t worry too much about it," the god said. "I will be sending the both of you to a fantasy, video game-like world, so as long as you know your way around a basic MMORPG, you should be all right."

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. I got a second chance at life in an entirely new fantasy world, and I got to choose whoever or whatever I wanted to be.

Misaki was busy bombarding the god with questions and complaints as she stood beside me, but I couldn’t be bothered to pay attention. Something about not being a gamer, something about only having a medical degree. But again, I wasn’t really listening.

I was rather focused on coming up with a perfect identity for this new world, and when I finally thought of something, I lifted my hand and announced that I was ready. Misaki quickly turned and shot me a look with fire in her eyes. However, I remained smiling.

"Daichi, come on, you know this stuff better than I do," my darling ex-wife said as she came a little closer to grab my hands. "Isn’t there another way we can go back home, huh?"

I shook my head.

"It doesn’t work that way," I told her.

Just then, two platforms slowly rose up from the ground like mini podiums, carrying on top of them a pen and a notepad each.

"Alright," the god began. "Please proceed to take the pen and notepad in front of you, then write down the details of the characters you would want to embody when you get transported to the new world. Write as much as you want, let your imagination run wild."

I began approaching the podium in front of me, but Misaki quickly reached out and grabbed my forearm. I glanced back, and from the pleading look in her eyes, her concerned expression, I was once again presented with the image of the girl I was once married to. She was worried for my safety, and I could see it was genuine. But where was that face six months ago when she did what she did? It was too late for that now.

I shrugged her off, then proceeded to the podium and began filling in the details in my notepad. From the corner of my eye, I saw her slumped over in resignation and slowly approaching her notepad to do the same thing. I was suddenly aware how all of this might be too much for her, and how she might be processing it all in real time. For someone who just died one moment and met a god the next, a god who had decided to send her to a fantasy video game world instead of back to the one she knew, she was probably struggling to keep herself together.

I sighed.

"Can I help her?"

I lifted my pen as I asked the god. I was nearly done with my character profile anyway. The description was there, the type of clothes, the powers. The least I could do now was go help my ex-wife pick something that wouldn’t get her instantly killed on arrival to this new world. Just because I didn’t like her didn’t mean I wanted to see her get hurt. Also, knowing her, she would have written down something close to her profession. And for powers, maybe something that had to do with pharmaceuticals. Whatever she selected would have left her completely defenseless in this new world, and...

Holy crap, I was right.

Standing in front of her podium and staring down at her notepad, I couldn’t believe my eyes. For character type, Misaki had simply written down nurse. For character class, she had written N/A — I already graduated. And for powers and abilities, she simply wrote healing and strong powers, so I can protect those around me and myself.

I tore my attention away from the paper to look at her in astonishment. She shrugged and flashed me a nervous smile. I focused on her notepad again, and since there was just the single character sheet and no way to erase what she had already written, I just added in a few new details around it. Now her class was nurse archpriest, since healing was a direct function of her job in her previous life as medical personnel. And after adding a few more details, mainly to charisma, dexterity, and the ability to understand any and all languages, I set the pen back on the podium and announced I was done.

The platforms instantly disappeared, carrying with them descriptions of our new identities that would be assigned to us in the new world. Crap. I forgot to fill in details about the type of clothes Misaki would be starting with. Hopefully she didn’t end up appearing butt naked.

"Umm..."

I wanted to say something to the god about that, but I was suddenly cut off from speaking by Misaki herself.

"Thank you," she said, meeting my eyes with a soft gaze. She was still as pretty as the day we first met, and I wasn’t about to hide that fact.

"You're welcome," I replied, my eyes still focused on hers.

Our gazes must have lingered a little longer than usual, for the first time in several months. But before it could get the opportunity to verge into uncomfortable territory, the god spoke up.

"All right, time to get going."

We quickly looked away from each other, just as the ground beneath us began to glow a light blue.

"Daichi? What's happening?" Misaki asked, starting to freak out.

"It's okay," I replied. "Just, take my hand." I extended my left arm toward her, and she grabbed hold a second later.

"But wait," I said to the god. "What about our quest? You know, our long-running mission."

The strange blue light was starting to intensify, traveling up our legs and enveloping the rest of our bodies. Despite holding on to me, Misaki was hurriedly breathing in and out, trying to calm herself down.

"Ah, your quest. Almost forgot about that. Go defeat the demon prince or villainous or whoever is trying to take over this world," he said, making a shooing motion with his hand.

"You mean demon king," I corrected, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, him," the god replied. "Go stop him. Oh, and make sure you do it together. As a team."

I turned to Misaki, who was still freaking out and breathing heavily, the light now almost covering her face. She probably thought she was going to suffocate, a particular habit of hers resulting from the trauma of when she almost drowned as a kid. It was the whole reason we never went near any hot springs during our honeymoon, or rented any apartments with bathtubs. Large bodies of water always triggered her anxieties, and I’m guessing that now included glowing blue lights.

I don’t know what came over me in that very moment. Despite everything that had happened between us, despite everything she had done to me to bring so much pain and bitterness, seeing her suffering was something I could never allow myself to witness.

Not ever.

I instinctively pulled her toward my chest, then wrapped her in a comforting hug. I closed my eyes, braced myself for what was about to happen, and, a moment later, the both of us vanished into nothingness.