Chapter 1:

I Didn't Even Get To Buy The Game

Total Death Repeatability

You ever have one of those days where everything feels… narratively significant?

Yeah. That was me this morning.

A single beam of sunlight hit my front door as I opened it—like a spotlight.

All that just to venture out to buy the latest War of Fate game.

I'm Takumi, by the way. Takumi Sato. 17 years old. Average grades. Average face. Peak invisible-to-girls status.

If I was in a pay to win game, the player controlling me must be flat broke.

I'm the kind of guy you see in the background of a—

Ok I'll stop.

Today's meant to be great anyways. No more sulking.

I can feel it.

Until I made it three blocks from my house.

Three.

I was humming the War of Fate opening theme like a loser and fantasizing about pulling a five-star demon girl with abs when I heard it—a high-pitched buzz, getting louder, closer.

Bzzzzzzzzzz—

I turned my head just in time for a wasp to fly right into my eye and sting the hell out of said aforementioned eye a billion times.

What an opportune time to find out that I'm terribly, deathly allergic to wasps too.

And I—being the dumbass that I am—froze.

Then the collapse, then the sputters of what was a pathetic last breath.

Next thing I know?

Black.

Not a white void. Not angels. Just the brief, humiliating realization that I died because some of some dumb wasp with a bad temper and zero sense of spatial awareness.

I didn’t even get to buy the game.

I looked up to see this shimmering blue text mocking me in a very godawful serif font.

✦ You Have Died. ✦

> Slain By: Wasp

Age: 17

Status: Flatlined

Great.

Didn't even get to die a hero, just a dolt who got his life sucked away by a stupid wasp.

So this is the afterlife, huh?

So now what?

Am I meant to just wander around in the dark aimlessly?

I already kinda did that for years when I was alive.