Chapter 2:
Kaikirai: My Characters H8 Me!
I fell asleep with my eyes wide open, like two cold jades, unmoving before the abyss that had grown around them.
The peace that once wrapped my body had vanished, replaced by a fleeting urgency, a mist of meaning that dissolved the moment I tried to grasp it. Everything around me was visible, yet I felt blind. I could reach anything, but nothing felt real.
I dreamed, lived, worked, died… all in a matter of seconds. And then I understood…
That feeling had always been with me, from the very first breath. The only difference was that, over time, I grew harder. The urgency, the pain, the discomfort... they never really left. They simply fell asleep with me.
I saw the world I longed for and tried to hold it in my hands, only to realize my ambition was greater than anything it could offer.
I came to understand that to desire and to suffer are almost the same thing, or at least, one inevitably leads to the other.
That’s why I started writing.
I needed to feel things that no longer belonged to me. I needed to create, destroy, and create again.
Starting over was the only thing that kept my flame alive. Day after day, I watched the worlds I wrote turn to ashes. Characters were born and died, sometimes in tragic ways, all measured by how much boredom weighed on my heart that morning, or during that writing session in the afternoon.
And even after all of that, I still had the nerve to tell myself I hated endings…
When really, results were the only thing I was ever looking for when starting something new.
I was ready.
My time had come.
I understood everything.
And finally, I could rest-
My descent into thought was broken by a male voice. It was theatrical, bitter, sarcastic, like spoiled wine.
"Bravo, bravo! What a marvelous tale... and so tragic! Oh, how I longed for this ending! I could count on my infinite fingers the endless times I imagined what flavor your conclusion might have!"
Intermittent clapping struck me with anguish, before the voice proceeded:
"The melancholic author meets a tragic fate, slain by the blade of his soulmate, whom I, of course, designed to love him! Ah, such raw cruelty, and yet, so sublime! I’m convinced. Yes, this one was the best. The best death of the day!"
"…What?" I replied instinctively, my voice tinted with disbelief, especially after realizing I could feel my throat again.
"Ah! Forgive me. You’re still in that moment, aren’t you? That’s fine. I have all the time in the afterlife."
My thoughts scattered in every direction. Suddenly, I had no idea what was happening to me.
"Moment?" Desperate for answers, I decided to engage with that voice.
"The moment when you accept that you’ve died. Did I get it wrong? No, I never do. That’s definitely it."
I froze. My face went blank. My eyes widened like open windows.
So... I really was dead.
Not only that, there’s an afterlife. I had been wrong my entire life, and-
"And gods exist, atheists were wrong! You spent your whole life believing in something that wasn’t factual, right?! Isn’t that devastating?"
The voice asked, laughing with a kind of sadistic energy that shook me.
"But were you really wrong? Now that you finally have proof, isn’t this the perfect moment to be skeptical and question my existence? I could be a creation of your mind, or an illusion of your brain in its final seconds, or maybe just a random dream? You’re sleeping! Hahaha! So many possibilities. I can’t contain myself!"
My face grew wet. Suddenly, I was crying. I didn’t even know what I was feeling, but it was intense, it was awful... and somehow, it made me smile.
"Of course," I began, my voice trembling, "If you do exist, you’re someone who would never give clear and objective answers, just like every question I’ve ever had in my life."
Completely ignoring whatever I was feeling, the voice snapped back:
"Oh, but what’s the point of giving answers, when you always build your own truths?
Your selfishness would never let you accept anything I have to say about those boring questions!"
And before I could respond (and honestly, I don’t even know why I considered it) the voice interrupted the moment I parted my lips.
"Speaking in such an impersonal way is just bad manners. This is my voice, sure, but what do your opening thoughts have in store for me?"
At the end of what felt like more of a monologue, I suddenly felt able to see. The darkness was cast away by a light so bright, it felt like staring directly into the sun. There was nothing but light around me. And as I ordered my neck to find direction, I found I could feel my limbs again.
I was present, summoned by my own desire.
The sight of my own hands startled me. They appeared right after I blinked. And amid the confusion caused by my body popping up from nowhere, I was startled again:
"Here, behind you," said the voice, which had once come from all around, and was now focused directly on my nape.
_________
A golden throne stood imposingly before me, covered by a white sheet adorned with blue stripes. On it sat a man in a laid-back posture, one hand holding a wine glass, the other resting lazily against his cheek. He looked visibly bored, yet his broad smile made me question my own judgment.
"Oh, Nico. Of all the things you could have imagined a god to be, you went with a hedonistic charlatan?"
He swirled the wine in his glass before taking a small sip.
"You really are something else."
He wore a toga covered in various ornaments I couldn’t identify, which made me doubt everything he was saying. I was certain I didn’t have the creativity to invent symbols like those, so how could I have created him from my mind, or from my so-called opening thoughts?
I spent too long analyzing his clothes, but it didn’t take a lot to notice he was a very handsome man, tall and muscular. The sadistic air in his smile painted his expression perfectly, like a tyrant I could hate without guilt.
"Hey, hey, hey, we haven’t even really started talking and you’re already annoyed? Let’s take it slow."
He held out the wine glass, without even moving his body.
"Do you like wine?"
He clearly wanted me to approach him, since he didn’t bother leaning forward at all. Only his arm moved, which made me uncomfortable and made me instinctively step back.
"You can read my mind, so you already know I don’t like wine."
I made the assumption aggressively, based on how he’d finished one of my sentences earlier, and now, somehow, guessed that I didn’t like him.
"I never did that," he replied, unfazed. "But after hearing the same stories billions of times, it’s easy to spot patterns. What, did you think you were the first man I’ve spoken to?"
"That… makes sense," I sighed, lowering my gaze to my hands. I rubbed my face, trying to chase away my disappointment. "Then what do you want with me? If I died, why am I here?"
"Normally, if someone doesn’t believe in anything after death, I just deliver them to nothingness.
Almost everything here works based on your expectations, even my appearance, and-"
I cut him off.
"Clearly, I don’t have any control over your personality."
"Oh, but where’s the fun in that? If I acted exactly how you wanted, you could have ended up dead dead, like, actually dead. Didn’t you learn anything from Neela? You know… the character that caused your unfortunate departure from earth."
His question stabbed me like a knife. Neela was Lana’s favorite character. Her obsession had killed me. I recalled everything in an instant.
But what was he trying to say with that? Was he mocking me? I was almost sure of it.
I was about to say something, but like some kind of tug-of-war of disrespect, he cut me off again just as I opened my mouth to speak.
"I don’t like anonymity in my conversations. Even if they’re brief, I’d like to introduce myself, if that’s alright."
Without waiting for my approval, his smile faded, and the wine glass in his hand levitated. Then…
He stood.
The drink vanished from existence in a puff of violet vapor.
Suddenly, he was much taller than I’d thought, and I, much smaller than my eyes had previously accepted.
I felt powerless the moment his sarcastic air gave way to an authoritarian presence. Honestly, it was intimidating.
"My name is Euphorel."
His voice echoed in all directions, his eyes turning white and glowing, becoming shining scleras.
"I am the God of Rebellion and Pleasure. I help mortals forget their despair… or I condemn them if they can’t. And I, Nico, was the one who wrote your story."
_________
I lost my breath the moment he finished introducing himself, and an overwhelming pressure crashed down on my shoulders. It felt like I was being forced to the ground, to bow or fall flat on my face, but still, I stayed on my feet.
Despite the suffocating aura surrounding Euphorel, especially after his declaration that he had created me, the first thing that came to my mind was his pathetic opening line…
I mean, if he wrote my story, why had he acted like my arrival was unexpected, like something new?
That realization shrunk his presence, and I was filled with the same rebellion he claimed to represent.
"I always thought my life was dull, but it never once crossed my mind that it had been written by a liar, or by anyone, really, and…" I started, challenging his authority, "If you already knew how it ended, why make such a show of me arriving here?"
"You misunderstood everything." He sat back down on his throne, calmly, closing his eyes as the sarcastic smile returned to his face. "I write stories and erase them from my memory, so I can watch them all the way through. That way, I always have content from the best director I know, ready for consumption."
"You mean… yourself?" I frowned and narrowed my eyes, pure disgust in my expression.
"Exactly! But now, do you still want to know why you’re here, or are you going to interrupt again to try and reassert yourself?"
"But you were the one who-" I gave up on finishing the sentence.
God, what a son of a bitch.
"That’s a yes. Anyway…! Like I was saying, almost everything here works based on your own desires. But I have a different policy when it comes to writers, and avid readers."
He threw his arms up, palms facing the sky, like he was revealing something about himself.
But I saw nothing, just a toga and an idiot.
He paused in that overly theatrical way, probably waiting for me to ask what he meant, but I held back and just let the silence stretch. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of more rhetorical play.
"…I let them choose what they want for the afterlife. After all, they spent their entire lives wishing for different fantasies, and it’s hard for me to decide on their behalf. It feels... unfair." He spoke like someone proud of himself.
Apparently, Euphorel genuinely believed in his own sense of justice, and from what I could tell, he didn’t doubt his own benevolence one bit.
"And well, if you’re here… it means you weren’t condemned, which means you overcame despair! Congratulations…! I have to admit, that one caught me off guard."
He swirled that glass of wine around, trying to mimic natural gestures, clearly to try and dwindle with my ego.
"It happened in the final seconds of your life. You were this close to falling into the eternal void! Haha!"
It sounds dramatic, but part of me believed that "nothingness" might’ve been better than spending five more minutes with this guy.
"So what ‘saved’ me?" I asked, genuinely confused. All I remembered was unbearable pain, and seeing my stomach become a pool of incomprehensible, red chaos.
"You understood what it takes to overcome despair. And let me add… it’s not too far from what I do! You and I are very alike, Nico. Practically kindred spirits!"
Not even in a thousand years.
That guy was a dick. I had nothing in common with him.
But before I could make that clear, the almost-monologue continued:
"You wrote, craving new beginnings, new things to experience… But unlike me, you never had the pleasure of truly feeling what you created as something new. And that’s what I want to fix: my… injustice."
"Injustice...?" I asked, my voice faltering into a confused murmur.
I took a moment to look around and inspect that empty world, swallowed by a light that had no end, no beginning. The light was nothing but cold. I saw the reflection of the one who sat on that throne in every direction I looked: nothingness.
At least, that’s what I thought. And it hurt to realize that maybe… we were quite similar in that way. Even so… I believed I was much more creative with my share of nothing. Maybe in a way he would never be capable of.
Let’s just say that, at that moment, all I had left was clouded judgment, the result of a rage filled with envy…
"You’re not unfair. You’re a tyrant without creativity," I said, spinning on my own axis as I raised my left arm, pointing toward the directions full of nothing. "You have the power to do everything, and the best you came up with was turning into my perception of your pathetic personality."
After a deep breath, I resumed.
"You created a world where I watched people live empty lives. So many of them worked endlessly just to end up with nothing meaningful. I was one of those people, and what you did to me wasn’t just unfair, you piece of shit! It was cruel! You have no artistic sense. And if we’re going to speak writer to writer, you SUCK!"
Euphorel stayed silent. His fists clenched the arms of the throne, and his gaze shifted toward me.
"Anything else?" he murmured.
Oh.
Suddenly, the realization hit me…
I had just insulted the critical sense of the god who created me.
I swallowed hard. There was no turning back now. If I had put one foot in the fire, maybe it was time to dive in completely.
He tilted his head in a way that felt… wrong.
My discomfort grew, and I felt… fear.
"You’ve annoyed me," he let out a deep sigh and closed his eyes, until his smile returned.
"But I wonder if what you’re saying is just empty talk. I mean, if you think I’m such a lousy writer, you’re saying you could do better, right?"
I didn’t know where he was going with this, but the feeling that I was about to fall into the most painful trap of my entire existence wrapped around my intuition like a blanket made of thorns.
"I…" I tried to form a sentence, but fear overtook me.
"If you’re that good, Nico… then I have a brand-new idea for you."
_________
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t speak. And what good would it do, anyway? He had clearly already made up his mind.
Shit. Shit. What have I done?
Did I really have to let pride take over me?
Now…
"Why don’t you go see the worlds you’ve created up close? That way, you’ll know just how much better than me you really are. Let’s measure your artistic sense against mine!"
He gestured subtly with his left hand.
"You’ve created countless universes, Nico. Many of them you never even published. What do you think happened to the people in the stories you never finished writing? How do you think they felt… when they were left behind in blank pages? What if every letter you wrote became a blade of grass, every word a smile, and every paragraph… a life? Just how devastating would it be to leave all of that without an ending?!"
His words assaulted me with a vision of myself I never wanted to face.
Yes. I had thrown away so many projects. It tore me apart inside, but I never wanted to admit the real reason why:
I was afraid of not being good enough for my readers; afraid I wouldn’t be able to compete with the other writers. Horror clung to my skin every time I felt I wouldn’t be understood by my audience…
That fear made me toss out more pages than I’d ever have the courage to admit.
"What are you going to do to me, Euphorel?" I asked, already sick with anticipation.
"Prove what you said to me. Hear it from your own characters, the very words you threw at me! Try to please them… even when their ambition is infinitely GREATER THAN YOUR OWN!"
A bolt of lightning exploded behind his throne, and a roaring whirlwind knocked me stumbling backwards.
"Take a tour through every place you deemed not good enough! Deliver this truth, raw and bare, to all of them…! And prove to me the extent of my ignorance!"
Small whirlwinds formed around Euphorel, then twisted themselves into thick, black ribbons and lashed out at me like hungry snakes, wrapping around my arms and legs.
I tried to fight back, but suddenly… my arms didn’t exist anymore. Neither did the rest of my body. I was completely swallowed by darkness.
As my vision dimmed, I could still see Euphorel, clearly furious, despite the smile on his face.
"Looks like your story hasn’t finished entertaining me yet, Nico. Let’s see what else you’ve got in store for me."
Where… was I going?
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