To Escape

Akari and I hesitantly looked at each other as the bread children excitedly rushed into the house.

Seeing our nervous expressions, the woman said, “oh come on! I don’t bite! I’m just an old baker! Look.”

She then stepped aside to let us look inside her home. From where I stood, I noticed the interior very much looked like a bakery. There were a few display cases filled with inanimate bread, and the smooth wooden walls and warm lighting gave it a sort of cozy look, especially to our tired eyes that had seen nothing but darkness not too long ago.

“I understand you might feel afraid or distrustful after what happened,” the woman said as if she knew where we came from. “But you’re safe here. If you still don’t trust me we can even have the conversation out here. I just figured that you might want a cozy place to sit first to ease your nerves.”

“That… would be nice, yes,” Akari said before looking to me. “Right?”

I nodded.

The two of us made our way inside the bakery, a blast of warm air and the scent of sweet bread hitting us as we entered. The woman guided us towards a table, stopping every so often to avoid stepping on the bread children, who were playing chase as they scampered around the floor.

“I know these little children aren’t probably the greatest first thing to see after you die,” the woman said after we settled down, “but some people find them cute.”

Die? I wondered.

“They are cute!” Akari chimed in, seemingly not worried about the implications of the word.

“Why thank you young lady, I baked them all myself!” the woman said proudly. “But some people like Monsieur Charles were deathly afraid of seeing inanimate objects move when they first came here… Come to think of it, we haven’t introduced ourselves yet have we? My name is Mila Klein, but the two of you can just call me Mrs. Klein.”

“I’m Akari Takahara,” Akari said before pointing over to me, “and this is my friend Nozomi.”

“Nozomi Seisaku,” I said, before adding, “...what do you mean by ‘after we die’?”

“What do I mean? Well, this is the afterlife of course!” Mrs. Klein said. “There is no other way to get here.”

I knew it!

Akari slowly looked to me, but I didn’t look back.

“So what kind of afterlife is this place exactly?” I asked. “Is this a type of heaven? A type of hell? Is it purgatory? Is there a god here? Is—”

“Hahaha! No!” Mrs. Klein laughed. “Oh, I remember when I used to have such beliefs and worries, but that was so long ago! This isn’t heaven nor hell, this is Meraki: a simple afterlife where you are not judged for the quality of your deeds, but the quality of your human soul.”

“...What does that mean?” I asked.

“Well, as soon as you enter here, your human self is split into two parts: the first is your mind and body, and the second is your heart and soul. You retain your natural body and mind, but your heart and soul are separated and remanifest in the form of your ‘Masterpiece’... It would make a lot more sense if you knew what the word ‘meraki’ meant. Have the two of you heard of it before?”

We shook our heads.

“It means to put your heart and soul into something you create. That is how our Masterpieces are formed: by creating them with meraki. In this afterlife, your soul is only able to persist here because you’ve literally ‘placed’ it into something else back when you were alive. That ‘something else’ is what our souls remanifest as. Every person’s Masterpiece and soul is different, so every person will manifest it differently. For example, my soul manifested as these bread children, because I was both a baker in my past life and because I’ve always wanted to have children. The only thing that stays the same from when we were alive is our mind and bodies, which is the part of ‘me’ that you’re talking to right now. You also might’ve noticed it already, but having your soul be released from your body allows your corpse to regenerate back to its healthy state that you’re in right now.”

“...Um…” I started, but wasn’t sure if we should tell her the truth.

“Actually,” Akari added in, “there’s something that you should probably know… While I’m sure that what you’re saying is true, the reason why we don’t look dead is because… we’re actually not.”

Mrs. Klein paused, her expression becoming unreadable as she gazed at the two of us.

“It’s true,” Akari said, thinking that she didn’t believe her. “Neither of us are dead. Instead we…” She glanced over to me for a second before continuing. “We fell down this really deep hole, and somehow ended up here. There was this strange wind that carried us safely to the ground just before we landed, so we didn’t die from the fall either.”

“A strange wind…” Mrs. Klein murmured. “So something like that can happen…”

“Something like what?” Akari asked.

“I’ve heard of living people falling down here before, but the stories always happened in the other towns, so I just figured that it was just some dumb rumor that a dead person made up because they were bored… You’d be surprised how often that happens down here.”

“So… do you know of a way that we can get back to the living world then?” I asked.

“Yes, but I wouldn’t recommend doing so just yet,” she replied. “There’s a few things you need to know first. You know how this place is the afterlife? Well there’s a system in place that makes sure that that’s the case. We call it the ‘culling’, and it happens at the start of every month. It’s when the reapers come back from the living world to tally up the dead people, and make sure that everything is ‘orderly’. By that, I mean making sure that only dead people exist here. The reapers are also quite lazy, so instead of going through the hassle of bringing the living back up, they just kill you instead.”

Wait… but March just started yesterday, I realized.

“I’m honestly surprised that they haven’t caught you guys yet,” Mrs. Klein continued. “The hole you fell through is one of the holes that the reapers use to enter and exit the living world. They usually put it somewhere obscure like an alleyway or something so I didn’t think it was possible for the living to fall through it, but here you guys are. Since you guys didn’t see one on your way here, that means that they haven’t left yet.”

“So then how do we get out?” I asked again.

“Well first, you need to find another living person. That’s easy for you guys since you fell down together. Second, the two of you need to have created a Masterpiece before. After those two requirements are filled, all you have to do is ask a reaper to bring you back up.”

“What?!” Akari and I shouted in unison.

“Okay, I lied a little bit. That second part isn’t a requirement, but I would highly recommend you to have made a Masterpiece anyway. Like I said before, typically, the reapers just kill you off, but if there’s two people who fell down or more, they’ll be more likely to see it as a fault of not placing their entry and exit more obscurely and bring you back up for a second chance. But on the off chance that they decide to kill you anyway, you’ll just be brought back here… and I’ll be the first to tell you that when that happens, you’ll have wished to have made a Masterpiece before.”

“...And what happens if you haven’t?” I asked.

Mrs. Klein sighed. Her face, gazing blankly into the distance as if remembering something, seemed to age with each passing moment. She bit her dry lip and murmured something, the mole on her left cheek twitching silently with each inaudible gnash of her teeth. The kind baker woman from moments before seemed to have transformed into a decrepit old woman in just a few seconds.

After a while, she finally regained her composure and answered.

“I’ve seen it happen a few times before... In this village, I’m the one in charge of orienting the newcomers, so I often send the bread children out to guide all the stragglers here. Unfortunately, this also means that they bring everyone, including those who’ve never made a Masterpiece before… Remember how I said that the soul being split from the body is how our bodies are able to regenerate back to their healthy states? Well if you’ve never put your heart and soul into something else, your soul ends up being trapped inside your corpse instead of separating like normal. If this happens, the body never regenerates, and stays in the shape it died as. Because of this, you’ll be in a constant state of pain, and over time, as your body and mind eventually deteriorates, you become something I wouldn’t even consider ‘dead’... That’s the fate of those who do not create with their heart and soul. It is a fate I do not wish on either of you guys, which is why again, I’m telling you, for your sake, and the sake of the villagers and my sanity, if you are going to confront the reapers, please, please make a Masterpiece first. That way, even if they do kill you, you at least won’t have to suffer for long.”

I stared at her with hollow eyes. I had never seen someone so afraid before. It hadn’t even occurred to me that the dead could ever be afraid of anything at all. But now, I was afraid too.

A masterpiece? Not once in my life had I ever made anything remotely close to that, and at the rate I was improving, I don’t think I ever would. This was impossible. Why is the afterlife like this? Why was the afterlife based on such rules? Is this really what it comes down to? Eternal punishment for those who were born with longing but not talent? There must be a god here responsible for all this. Who else would create a place so cruel? I almost wanted to confront the reapers themselves and just demand they let me go, but that was a move too stupid even for me.

Ah… if only I could change how things worked…