The Gateway's Garden

“Makoto Ikeda, hurry up or we’ll be late!”

“Yeah, she’s right, son! Any longer and never mind missing the boat, it’ll end up being next month by the time we reach Okinawa!”

“All right, all right!” called Makoto from the door threshold. He turned back to the old man and rubbed the back of his head nervously. “So sorry about my parents, Mr. Hanazono.”

“Oho! Never mind, Makoto! Thank you for helping me with all that garbage.” He held out an envelope. “Here’s your payment, though I suppose it’s more like your vacation money at this point!”

“Yeah!” Makoto took the envelope and with a courteous bow and hand wave he dashed from the porch and down the stone steps toward his family. “All that fuss and yet you’re still five minutes earlier than when you said you’d pick me up…”

“Oh, hush, Makoto,” grumbled his mom, “not like you had anything better to do.”

“Yeah!” his teenage younger brother Taji added, “Besides, it’s not as if us being earlier or late makes that much a difference to you. Either way, we’d catch you reading a philosophy book.”

“Hey, knock that off,” said Makoto huffily. “All I’m doing is making use of my time.”

“He’s got more philosophy and sociopolitical books on his shelves than he does friends,” said his father jokingly.

“Stop that, the both of you,” grumbled mom. “Yes, our Makoto is 20 and is late in going to university but I think he’ll make a great politician in his future.”

“He spent all that spare time doing chores around the neighborhood instead of at home,” said Taji sulkily. Makoto didn’t reply and merely chuckled uneasily before pulling a small economics book from his backpack and began to read with the aid of his phone’s flashlight while dim streetlamps flashed by. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, zoned the noise out, and then went back to his reading material.

Unknown to the family, a tire on one of the cars up ahead had snapped. Honks filled the air before metal gut wrenchingly crunched.

“Shit!” Makoto’s father yelled, and he slammed the brakes, but it was too late. Another car rear-ended them, and the Ikeda’s family car joined it crashing through the barrier and down the slope. Screams filled the car and then—

“AAAHH!” Makoto jolted up and fell to the floor with a scream, smacking his face onto a cobblestone. Then he realized that something was off – for a start, light now filled his eyes but instead of what he expected to be the cold, clinical, and sterile scent of a hospital, he was greeted by the pungent aroma of flowers, plus instead of an artificial ceiling light, it was the sun…well, sort of, something was lighting the place but he couldn’t find the source, everywhere he looked seemed bright but with no obvious source, and on that topic, he didn’t even know where he was. All around him seemed to be green and yet beyond was a shimmering white void.

“Where am I?” he wondered out loud.

“Hmph, took you long enough to wake up,” said a mysterious voice, it was deep and ominous. Makoto looked around in shock, the voice seemed to come from everywhere. “Ah well,” it went on, “out of all those peons you were the most promising of the lot, only by a mere decimal difference of course.” Makoto stared in a mix of horror and interest as a being in Shrine robs materialized in the air before him.

“W-w-who are you?”

“Tch, names do not matter to me, Makoto Ikeda.”

“Um. May I ask…what happened?”

The being didn’t answer immediately and just stared. Makoto took an uneasy second to process his surroundings. An impossible white void and a god with an uncanny kabuki mask, it definitely seemed either like a nightmare or a sign that he had passed.

“It was all so sudden,” said Makoto after a while, “just…came out of nowhere.”

“It was most gruesome,” said the god indifferently, “it was sort of amusing, actually. Created the sort of ruckus one within the vicinity couldn’t ignore. Or could…” he trailed off.

“I’m…I’m dead, aren’t I? What about the rest of my family?”

“Wouldn’t you like know?” grumbled the god sarcastically. “Frankly you were all in a sorry state. It’d be most amusing to see the reactions of the first responders to the mess you left behind, from where I was it wasn’t a clear view, but it showed signs of promise.”

“Mom, dad, Taiji…please! I’ve got to know of their fate!”

“Pfft,” mocked the god, “I don’t know, they might survive, they might not. It was rather ugly, I’d doubt their chances. I’d tell you definitively, but I have better things to do than watch the plight of a handful of beings. Even your mortal body might have the chance to live but I figured we were better off skipping those steps.”

“Wait! A-Am I still alive!?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“What? Then I shouldn’t be here at all! Put my soul back where you found me! I need to confirm that my folks—”

“YOU DARE TO QUESTION A GOD?” Makoto froze up. The air in the garden had massively shifted, despite not seeing the god’s true expression, it was clear he was enraged, the air around pulsated with an unseeable menace. The gods voice hadn’t changed but it penetrated his soul and filled him with the kind of terror one would feel if confronted by a fearsome animal. “Question me not, Ikeda,” he snarled, “consider yourself blessed to be here, in the presence of a god, surrounded by this ‘beautiful’ place. Yet you’re asking these questions? Things in my realm are not done so flippantly.”

Makoto’s earlier confidence had thoroughly melted and quivered in place. “I-I just w-want to know if my folks are a-all right…”

“Pfft!” The god pondered for a second, then he chuckled, it sounded as if he was grinning behind his mask, “Very well! Since you’re so insistent, I shall offer you… yes…30% of the current state your physical body is in right now.” With a snap of his fingers…

“Ack!” Makoto leaned forward from pain. His right sleeves melted into a disheveled form, a sharp pain came from his stomach as a pool of blood appeared along with the appearance of what seemed to be a long metal rod, branches grew from his shoulders, soon his body began to feel cold and wet, almost as though he had just been in a river…

“Stop. Stop, please!” Makoto yelled as hard as he could through what felt like pressure on his neck. With a cold chuckle, the god snapped his fingers once again and the strange phenomenon that had taken over Makoto’s body vanished into nothing. Through heavy breaths he physically felt himself over as his skin and clothes confirmed that it is now as if nothing had happened to him. “I…I see,” he whispered with a shudder, “so that’s what is happening to me right now.”

“Hmph! Good, now you are starting to understand the kind of position you’re in right now.”

“Then…if I may be so bold…” He glanced up nervously and saw the god give a slight nod of approval. “…what is this place? And why am I here?”

“The Gateway’s Garden. I have no idea why a garden, frankly I’d wreck this place and rewrite it with my own designs but alas Amaterasu insisted that the gateway be a place of beauty. I do not hold to such ideals but I’m powerless to make the changes I seek. As for ‘why’: it was as at this time on Earth that I, Sen, was ordained to make a choice, my due date to find a being, a hero, to save the planets of another universe. A system that the local lifeforms call the Carmine Galaxy.”

“A-Another world? I-I’m being sent to a-another world?”

“Yes, yes,” replied Sen nonchalantly, but before Makoto could reaction, the god literally zipped his lips. “We foresaw a situation occurring on that galaxy and my sister insisted we intervene. Said a human fitting certain requirements was the prerequisite, though finding a human of those exact parameters was a taxing affair. You just barely cleared the minimum range for potential. You’ll do regardless, however.” He paused impressively. “Right now, I have many matters that need attention. Hurry up and be on your way.” He snapped his fingers once again and before Makato faded in a dirt path and a Shrine’s gate.

Sen was perched up top, once foot on the red gate and the other dangling down. With a one finger, Sen silently pointed at the entrance. Figuring that that was an order without any room for questions, Makoto slowly walked through the gate – and kept going. The dirt soon faded to the blank whiteness of the void, and Makoto soon began to feel aware that he was losing consciousness. Then…darkness engulfed him.

***

Makoto screamed with pain as he felt bolts of lightning coursing all around him, zapping yellow before his eyes. The very air of that supernatural garden was all but gone, replaced by something musty. His feet soon touched what seemed to be cobblestones – he’d been lowered to the ground – and as he struggled to remain upright, the cracking feeling and noise of the electricity slowly faded away.

“Ugh,” he moaned. His eyes took a moment to adjust; he looked up and saw that in front of him stood a nun in blue robes on her knees.

“Oh!” she squeaked and swiftly bowed, head fully to the ornate rug underneath her. “Greetings, Milord,” she began. “Welcome to the Valbridge Church. I am Melanie, now your humble servant, Lord.”

“Huh…?” Makoto held his head and looked at his new surroundings. An altar room, behind him a shrine and some sort of ceremonial table, and in front with pews – which he knew of from his family vacations abroad to Europe and the United States of America – on either side of her, a bowing, blonde nun referring to him as her Lord.

Right, said Makoto’s inner voice, a new world, I Ching, Darwinism… I have to adapt, and fast…