Un-isekai

I took a deep breath as I was transported from one darkness into another, familiar one.

“Look, I am really sorry, but I think I have learned my lesson, so please, can we finally talk like grown-ups?”, I spoke into the darkness.

My only chance to finally live my life in peace would be to convince these two that they weren’t angry on me anymore or at least that killing me off wasn’t as entertaining as they might think it was. I was drastically running out of lives, and I definitely didn’t want my next life to start inside of a volcano or something like that.

I took a short break to wait for a response. My words vanished in the depths of the darkness around me without creating any type of echo or response.

Nobody answered.

“Is anybody there?”, I carefully asked.

“Corporate rules demand a change of clerks as soon as both start to dislike the client. We will send your case to our supervisor.”, said the first voice, before there was a click like somebody hanging up on an old telephone. Then I felt that I started to move through the darkness. The movement wasn’t as quick as when they shot me into the light. At the same time, I had no orientation. It felt like I was driven on a conveyor belt into a destination unknown to me. I had definitely moved. I couldn’t tell how fast, how far or in which direction but I had definitely moved from my original spot, when I heard a voice starting to speak to me. The voice was neither male nor female. Taking into account how deep and loud the voice was, it was likely not even human. The words didn’t seem to be conveyed by the sound the voice created but more by the will to be understood by the individual speaking. The voice itself was more like a deep growling background noise over a message conveyed to my very thoughts.

“So, you are the troublemaker?”

“I-I wouldn’t necessarily think of myself as a troublemaker….”, I stuttered in response.

The experience in my head was more than irritating, like just being here was already part of a punishment.

“You are the first to manage to upset both of your clerks in about two hundred years.”

“That… wasn’t my intention. I’m sorry.”, I said bowing my head.

“Then what was your intention?”

“In total? I would say I wanted to live happily with people I deeply cared for. Doesn’t everybody want this?”

“Some crave money and power.”, replied the voice matter-of-factedly.

“Money can help in many ways but ultimately it attracts its own problems. And power also comes with problems. Having enough money to live carefree is surely nice, but in the end, what is the worth of it? It is the connections between people that make life worth living. Deep connections. No short-lived ones. A stranger in a bar might be a good listener for one night, but he won’t care about you once the alcohol is gone.”

The voice seemed to laugh for a moment, even if it was hard to tell due to my ears almost being unable to catch up on the frequencies of the sounds.

“And what did you learn about yourself?”, asked the voice, still sounding amused.

“I learned that my first life would have likely been way different. There wouldn’t have been a need for huge changes in myself. I would just have needed to act according to my wishes and not prolong every major decision or change. I would have needed to find my courage to make a move. But in the end, I led myself into misery. And it took me so many lives to finally realize what I had done wrong all the time. I didn’t cherish my life and myself enough and that is why my life turned out to be the way it did. It was all my fault, but I distracted myself by making myself think, somebody else had all the cards in his hands and was destroying my life.”

The voice laughed again. This time it was clear it was laughing.

“Good. Good. Not many people catch up on this. Usually, they stay in whichever world is chosen for them at first and then life there, acting like this their new life was so much better because of magic or other abilities they randomly gained, not seeing that their very core remained unchanged.”

I felt like I had changed quite a bit in these past lives, but then again, my wishes had stayed the same. I had learned a thing or two, had finally dared to do something to make them come true and had met new people and ideas, changing my approach towards some topics, but deep down, I was still the same person. Not that office worker who had always been unhappy with his life and every decision he had made, but basically the child that still had to face all of the decisions I had already made. I could clearly see myself in front of me. I was six, maybe seven. My life had just started. Not everything had been good, but still ok enough.

“If you had one wish, which would it be?”, asked the voice like a merchant trying to sell his goods.

“If I had one wish….”, I mumbled to myself.

One wish. There was so much I had always wanted to do, so much I had craved in my life. But in the end, there was only one way to finally achieve all of it. Only one way. Maybe I would make mistakes again, maybe I would stumble and fall, maybe I would forget what I had learned and repeat every mistake I had ever made, but it would be my own fault. And this time I would be the only person I would blame for it.

“If I had one wish, I would like to start over again. In my own world. In a life that is fully mine. Not something that starts in the middle of a monster-infested nowhere.”

There was a deep growling sound. The sound was shaking my body, and I felt it reaching even the deepest points of my mind.

“Once you are dead in one world, you can’t return to it.”, the voice said.

“I know. But you asked me for my wish. This is what I wish. I miss my old world. Where the most dangerous thing I encountered was spoiled fish. I’m not made for these types of frontier-worlds people would consider adventurous.”

The voice seemed to think for one moment. The voice seemed to come to the conclusion that I was right.

“Well,…. there is one way. But I’m using kind of a loophole there. If I do grant you your wish, then nobody will ever be allowed to know. Also, you won’t be able to return here. Meaning your next death will be your last, like it is for most people.”

“What is it? I will do what is needed!”, I shouted, gaining hope for a truly normal life.

“Your old body is dead and buried. Sending you back would cause an uproar. Didn’t go well last time….”, the voice made a short break after saying this.

“…. but there are new people born every day. I can just send you to one of them. You will start from zero. Well, not directly zero. I will leave your memories untouched. But you won’t be able to tell anybody, even if you want to.”

“I agree! Send me back!”

“So be it!”

With these words the voice shot me one last time into the shining bright light. This time all the things I carried on me fell off my body. They seemed to start growing, until they became way too huge for me and just fell off, due to the speed I was moving in. I wanted to save my notebook at least, but the strength left my whole body, which now seemed awkwardly small and thus I left everything behind to start one more time.