A second chance

And there I was, engulfed in complete darkness. Haru was nowhere to be seen and the alley that was around us had vanished completely. Everything around me was black, to the horizon and beyond. The absence of any light was not scary at all, I felt reassured that there was no danger for me there. The silence added up to the atmosphere. I didn’t want to try to talk just because I could have ruined that mystic place.

It felt cold, almost freezing, but my skin didn't seem to care as I wasn't even moved by that sensation. 

It was peaceful and strangely beautiful.

How did I get there? I felt like I was supposed to know that but, trying to think about it, nothing came to mind. Was I dead? Was I even alive before that? What was life anyways...

It’s too tiring to think, let’s go back to wandering in this dark sea.

The face of a girl appeared in my head. Her smile heated the space around me, I could still feel her hair brushing through my hands. 

“Haru” my words broke the silence and echoed through the infinity of that place.

I was dead, that stupid smooth-brain Momo had stabbed me in an alley just moments before. Trying to remember what happened felt hard and the memories were slowly fading away. The days before that were already lost, destroyed buy that place. I could not remember anymore how I met Haru or what led us to that cafè together during Valentine's. 

What is a cafè? What's Valentine?

Other memories were gone. Only her face remained printed inside my eyes, her voice inside my ears. She was the only thing I was trying to not let go in the darkness.

“I have to get out of here” I couldn’t be stuck there forever could I?

“It’s getting kinda boring in here”

I tried to move, nothing responded to my command. I couldn’t feel any part of my body. That was probably the reason I hadn't responded to the cold beforehand. My body wasn't there anymore, just like my memories. I was only a formless consciousness floating in pure nothing, waiting to cease existing. I couldn’t breathe, my heart wasn’t beating, but apparently, that wasn’t a problem. I didn’t need that in this place.

My thought cast away. I was fading alongside anything I had ever experienced. 

An echo came from the distance. I couldn’t understand what it said but it gave me the impression of trying to reach me. Another sound, a female voice. For a second my consciousness rebelled herself against its destruction.

“Rei”

Just as I heard those words I began to feel my body again. My heart started racing again. Every muscle was burning, my lungs begged again for air but my throat was blocked by an invisible force. My body was pressed under what seemed like water, I could feel the tips of my finger brushing against something and getting wet. My chest was in pain from the lack of oxygen and the immense pressure. 

Suddenly a light appeared in the darkness. It was so shiny I had to cover my eyes. I caught a glimpse of someone with their hands towards me before I moved. My body was being pushed behind my back at a terrific speed heading upwards, the only exit from that cursed immensity of nothing awaited me. The water slashed my body as I was moving, my skin was getting cut deeper and deeper as I ascended.

My screams were canceled by a gooey substance in my mouth. Black bubbles came out every time I tried to express my pain.

I finally managed to emerge and coughed all the water in my lungs at my side. A black puddle stained the pale floor beside me. I didn't have time to understand what was going on since I could not yet breathe properly. After another couple of coughs, my lungs were free once more. I place a hand on my chest, it was naked and I could feel my heart beneath it. It was pumping, the pressure of the blood throbbed in my head. I used my arm to dry the water over my eyes and adjusted to the new environment.

I found myself inside a white room, this time I could see walls enclosing it and just that gave me a feeling of protection I never felt before. I was sitting in a rectangular pool with just enough water to completely submerge when lying down. I was cold. The black water was freezing my legs and my hips. A ghost pain made me check my side, only to find out that the red stain was gone, not cuts could be seen as if nothing had happened.

What had happened? I do not remember.

“Haru, where’s Haru?” I began searching around me. 

Was that word important? It seemed to carry some value but my mind was empty.

A sudden pain pierced my brain like a blade.

“Where am I?”

“It’s a bit hard to explain, but don’t fret, we will get there soon” a voice I heard before spoke to me.

"I know this voice...you were talking to me in the darkness. And...also...before that?"

Just at that moment, I noticed that a girl was squatting right in front of me. Her blue eyes were shining on her face, pink hair so long that it reached the ground and laid behind her on the floor. If she were to stand up they would probably be reaching her knees. Her hairstyle was rather unique, two strands of hair separated from the rest of the pink mass creating upside-down arches around her shoulders. Curly hair caressed her cheeks reaching her collarbones. She was wearing a white robe that looked more like a fancy swimsuit, for the amount of skin it was showing. Her ample chest was held still by two white cloth straps. Gold bracelets on her arms and legs and a blue gem attached to a ring that held the upper piece of her clothing together. Bracers of the same material hung around her wrists, and shiny golden heels covered her feet. 

Another thing caught my eye, a golden pointed circle was floating behind her head. Three spikes on the circumference popped out, two on the side and one over her head.

The white color of the room accentuated her attractive figure, her skin gave the impression to break at the touch. I found myself speechless in front of such beauty.

“Aw, you’re so sweet!”

“What?” she spoke to me even though I had been silent all this time.

“You said I was beautiful, it’s the first time in centuries that someone compliments me”

“You read my mind?” did she also say ‘centuries’?

“Yes I can, I am a Goddess after all”

“A Goddess…” was this some kind of joke?

I looked around myself again to search for other people who could tell me what she was trying to do. We were alone in the white room. A Goddess she said, one of those all-knowing, omnipotent beings that people worship.

“Exactly” she read my mind again.

“Can you please stop doing that? It’s freaking me out” she gently smiled while nodding at my request.

“Let’s get you out of there so we can have a proper talk, shall we?” then offered her hand to help me get out of the pool.

Grabbing her hand, I felt it was warm and my body immediately stopped shaking. Everything about her made me calm. It probably was one of the powers of being a deity. I felt at home even though I didn't really know what home felt like.

Finally out of the water I looked back into the black pool just to see my reflection. 

When was the last time I saw myself? 

Watching my double in the water was new. For a second I didn’t know who that person was, my memories were so blank that I had almost forgotten about myself too. To check if it was really me in there, I placed my hand on my chin. I was still wet but the me in the water was definitely real, the reflection mimicked my movements perfectly. While I glanced at my body like it was the first time I found out that I was completely naked. I tried to cover myself in embarrassment.

The Goddess noticed and snapped her finger. Simple shirts and a tank top immediately hid my skin.

“How did you...nevermind” I had so many questions yet the courage to ask them remained in the darkness below the water.

The Goddess snapped once again her fingers and two white chairs appeared beside a small round table. The girl, by her looks I guessed she could have been around her 20s, took a seat and with a gesture invited me to join her. The chair was the softest thing I ever sat on, also because I couldn't remember anything other than that.

“Would you like some tea?” the Goddess asked

“S-sure” a pot and two teapots appeared on the table. They were filled with a dark liquid. I tried sipping some of it. It was bitter, I was almost sure that it wasn’t my first time drinking something like this. 

I enjoyed that moment more than I could think of. Trying anything again fro the first time was a truly delightful experience.

“So...Rei” the girl took a sip from her cup “No, the protocol said to start with introductions” a book popped in her hands and she quickly flipped through the pages looking for something. The title was written in characters I couldn’t read.

I guess my name is Rei.

“Ah, here it is” her index pointed something, she closed her book which then vanished into thin air “I am Aurora, one of the minor deities of this dimension’s Pantheon”

I was already lost. At least now I knew how to refer to her.

"Aurora...right?"

"Yes, that is me"

"Why am I here?" one of the many questions managed to slip out of my mouth "Where is here?"

"This is just a sub-space I created to welcome you" She noticed my troubled expression and kept on talking.

“Let me try to explain the rest first” a whiteboard and a black marker materialized in the room. Aurora took the marker and began drawing something on the white surface. Once done, she proudly showed me her work. I could see a bunch of poorly drawn circles with many stickmen inside them.

“There are tons of different dimensions in existence. Most of them have no intelligent species and exist just for scenery purposes, others, on the other hand, are inhabited by intelligent species such as yourself and live in their free will. Since this amount of freedom can sometimes be dangerous a Pantheon is established in each dimension with Gods that watch over the living”

I could more or less understand what she was saying. I too was supposedly living in one of these dimensions which were controlled by their own Pantheon.

“So you’re part of this Pantheon?”

“Yes, although I am one of the youngest” while talking she erased her drawings to make others

“One of the youngest?” did this mean that Gods were born at some point? “For how long have you been a Goddess?”

“Mh...A little over a thousand years if I remember correctly”

“Aren’t you one of the youngest?” a thousand years was a lot of time, at least that was what I thought.

“I am, the oldest Gods can have even more than fifty thousand years, other close to a couple of millions but The Original is by far the oldest and no one really knows exactly how old he is”

“The Original?” my head was full of new terms I knew nothing about, if my brain were to explode sometime soon I wouldn’t be so surprised about it.

“We call the one who created everything The Original” a big stickman on the board was followed by many others “He was the one who made and still makes every dimension. He’s not very creative since he uses the same assets in almost every dimension.” Aurora seemed distressed by her own words.

So there was a bigger figure even among Gods.

“What do you mean by ‘assets’?” I strangely had fewer questions than I imagined. That completely new situation left me strangely calm and almost scared me.

“Your kind could be considered one of them” I could feel Aurora was trying to make everything easier for me “The so-called ‘Humans’ are one of the many ‘assets’ He uses. Then there’s ‘Angels’, ‘Demons’, ‘Elfs’, ‘Dwarves’ and the list goes on. You could say that most of the dimensions are just different versions of the same concept”

This ‘Original’ had to be bored, with the power to create anything He still uses the same things everywhere. If I were in His shoes I’d get depressed instantly. Yet the infinity of possibilities was something that could have interested me as well. How many combinations were possible using the same 'assets'? The thought made me reconsider this Original.

“Anyways” Aurora caught my attention again “Gods are not part of The Original’s assets since we are born from the inhabitants of each dimension. Anything that is a by-product of assets is unique to each dimension. Societies, Wars, Discoveries...”

“What?”

"The by-products of assets..."

"Sorry, I meant the thing before that"

“Oh" Aurora laughed "The power of a mind that has a conscience has infinite possibilities. If a lot of intelligent creatures start thinking that something exists, they have, to some extent, the power to create it from nothing”

“So you’re saying that the Gods who watch over the dimensions are born from that same place?”

“You catch on pretty quickly!” she then gave me a thumbs up “I made the right choice"

What is she talking about?

"There are two ways to become a Deity: the first is the common way” I could now see a flash of lightning being drawn on the board “Say a Human sees for the first time something he can’t explain, this thunderbolt for example" A tiny man next to the bolt had his stick arms up in the air "The creature's conscience is made to force him to think and give an explanation to everything he experiences. Not knowing the cause of the phenomena, he puts his mind at ease by blaming an entity that could eventually replicate that phenomenon at his will. Every other intelligent being will eventually do the same in the long run and a big mass of the same thoughts creates a figure that resolves the problem”

“And with that, a Deity is born” I could start to stick pieces together. I still had my doubts but what Aurora said made sense.

“Bingo! Now, since The Original uses the same assets, the same phenomena might occur and we get to have different variations of the same Deity in various dimensions”

"So different thunderbolt Deities in every dimension"

"Exactly" 

“And the second method?”

“The process is the same but it’s related to someone that actually lived in the dimension. For example, someone that changes drastically the reality, or a figure that brings together many living creatures with its way of thinking. An Idol in short”

“Then where were you born from?” I managed to catch Aurora off guard with that question. Her chest bounced following her surprise.

“Every woman has her secrets” she placed her right index on her lips and winked at me.

Aurora sat down in her chair again leaving her drawings on the board. She materialized a ream of paper and began searching. Once found what she was looking for, she handed me a white sheet with scribbles and an image on it. My face was printed on the top left in what seemed to be a filled-out form. Everything had been erased with a thick black line leaving only two legible details.

[Name: Rei ⬛⬛⬛⬛] [Age: 18]

How was I able to read them if even those characters didn't bring up anything in my mind?

“Why is everything else blacked out?” Aurora could have told me these things even without handing me the paper.

“Co-Confidential” the ream and the paper I had in my hands vanished again. I had the feeling that she was keeping something secret from me.

“Ok, now comes the important part” Aurora let out a deep breath “You actually died...in your dimension”

“That is the only thing I am sure of”

“When people die, their soul is left behind and it can be transported into another dimension with similarities to give them a second chance at life” this is the typical isekai get-up I used to read in my novels at home.

Another sharp headache. 

What is an isekai? Why am I so obsessed with these ‘novels’ if I don't even know what they are?

Aurora noticed me in pain.

“Is something wrong?” she asked

“I just used words that I don’t know…” the headache stopped "I don't remember anything that happened to me before I found myself in that black water, but I still feel like I'm missing something. I do know these words but at the same time I don't...It's frustrating"

“Oh no” Aurora was panicked.

“Oh no?”

“It seems that your soul got corrupted during the transfer and you may have lost your previous memories” she began biting her lip “I knew there was a risk but is till did it, stupid me”

“Wait, wait, wait. Corrupted? Isn't that a bad thing? Care to explain?”

“Ehm...how do I put this...Y-you shouldn’t be here at this moment. There, I finally said it"

Her relieved expression made me even more uncertain about my purpose there.

"Then why am I here?"

" It's the higher-ups that decide who is worthy to be transferred and they rejected you, but your story was so...so sad that I transferred you anyways without permission" she bit her lip "That may be why this is happening to you”

“Why did you do this then?” I had lost all my memories because of a selfish Goddess, didn’t she think about me at all?

“Well sorry if I didn’t want to let you die!” Aurora suddenly got angry and stood up from her chair. Her hand was up in the air ready to slap my face. I could see tears forming in her eyes. 

Was my past really worthy of all this trouble?

“I’m sorry. I am grateful to still be alive, I guess memories might come back as time passes” I was feeling guilty and horrible. It was the first time seeing her but I still couldn’t believe how familiar this relationship felt.

"They might"

Aurora pouted and sat down again. She gulped her tea in a second and made everything on the table disappear.

I wasn't done with my cup...

“The rules of the Pantheon state that in every dimension there can be only one reincarnation from each other dimension at a time. Unfortunately here there’s already one. Reincarnations here are often referred to as Heroes”

“Am I going back then?”

“Not at all, you just have to avoid getting suspicious, that’s all" she made it sound easy "Normally the Gods give the reincarnation some sort of power to help them adapt to the new reality but as things stand I can’t give you anything. If the other Gods find out, they’ll send your soul back to the eternal darkness and strip me of my title…”

Aurora went through all this hellhole just to give me a second chance. I couldn’t be ungrateful for her gift. Even if my memories were gone, my life was still there, my heart was still beating. I had to embrace this opportunity and think about enjoying my new gifted life. My past could have waited for when my memories eventually returned. If they returned

“The only thing I can give you is the ability to understand the language, it’s not much but it’s still better than nothing”

Her arms reached me and the Goddess rested her forehead on mine. A comfortable warmth radiated from her. My mind stung a little. A soft fragrance of cherry brought an image of another girl into my head.

“How is it?” she asked

“Nothing changed”

“Good, you just understood what I said and responded in another language. It seems like you absorbed it pretty well” she clapped.

I was talking to her the same way I did before, had something really changed?

“I have one last thing to tell you before sending you off” she added while leaning back on her chair “The dimension you will be living in, has adapted to the use of mana through magic. Mana is the energy that lives in everything, it originated when The Original made His first creation and it flows in every existence. In some dimensions, just like your previous one, people cannot manipulate mana or they forgot how to do it”

“I feel like I know what magic is...but I’m not so sure about it” minuscule fragments of my past came to my mind when hearing that word. Did it involve...spells? Was that how they were called? I shouldn’t dwell on it too much.

“Can I use magic?” I asked “Or is this another of those ‘confidential’ things you can’t tell me”

Aurora shrugged while smirking. “Well, they say that the best way to learn something is to try it first hand!”

Her hand drew a circle around my feet and a white light appeared around my ankles. Many small circles and different shapes formed an intricate figure. Unknown symbols, like the ones on the book, decorated the circumference of the bigger circle.

“What’s this?” I asked pointing at the floor.

“It’s a magic circle for a teleportation spell to send you in your new dimension. You should land safely...probably”

“PROBABLY?” I was already afraid of the chance of me dying again right at the start “Hold on a second! I still have a lot of questions to a…”

Aurora and the white room weren’t in front of my eyes anymore. A gentle breeze blew through my hair, the temperature was warm enough for the time to be around the beginning of summer. Assuming that place fell under the same rules as my previous dimension. Rules I wasn't even sure about.

I could feel a soft grass cushion under my bare feet. All around me enormous trees blocked the sun with their branches letting only small rays of dim light in. I could hear insects, I guessed, stridulating in the leaves.

“Where the hell am I?”

[Aurora, White room]

Rei vanished from my sight as I cast the teleportation spell. It was an easy task to pull off for a Goddess like me but it still felt extremely difficult.

 Everything went smoothly, at least for the most part. With a snap of fingers, all the furniture in the room disappeared leaving the scene just for a big couch to pop out in the middle of my room. It was almost 800 years that I lived there, alienated from the rest of the Pantheon.

“Being a Goddess sure comes in handy” I said at nobody while jumping on the couch. I grabbed one of the pillows and held it close to my face as I let out a big sigh "This loneliness will drive me insane in another thousand years"

“I never thought it would be so painful to see him again...I held out pretty well no?” nobody responded.

My heart never stopped racing since he left the pool. The black water was still and almost looked like a clear piece of marble. You could have used it as a mirror if you wanted to.

“He even had the guts to get angry at me! How ridiculous...even after I saved him from death” I threw the pillow at one of the walls of the room.

I was almost crying. 

I told Rei everything I could but I still think I could have told some more...No...I did the right thing. Letting him know too much was just a risk I didn't want to encounter. At least now he could live out of danger.

"I hope he can adapt to this new reality"

It was boring in there. Even creating anything my mind could think of didn't help.

“Always making me worry...I will have to have him take responsibility if I ever see him again” with determination in my heart I stood up and began thinking of ways to make Rei regret ever disrespecting me. I materialized a piece of paper and a pencil and began writing everything I could think of

“Ah...I forgot to tell him which direction to take once I teleported him. Whatever, he’s mature enough to figure it out for himself eventually” 

I also had forgotten to mention an important detail but I could blame him for making me lose my train of thought.

“Please don’t put yourself in danger again, Rei” I said to myself as I dozed off on the couch.

Hey! Ecspo here. Hope you liked this chapter!

Since this is my first serious work and also my first work in English I would very much appreciate any tips, critiques, comments of any kind. Tell me if the chapters are too long, short, or whatever, it would mean a lot to me.