"What would you say gives a life meaning, gives one value?"
The paper-like steel shuddered overhead, frailly protecting the dim, dusty warehouse underneath from the beating rain. The type of run-down warehouse you'd expect to remain soulless. The only residents, piles of abandoned junk, and other irredeemable objects.
"Wealth?"
"Fame?"
"Power?"
"Your loved ones and the ones that love you?"
"Dreams?"
"Faith?"
"Or even just happiness?"
His fingers curled tightly around the knotted ring as if he were not holding a tangle of hardened sand painting his fingers and palm in cold blisters. He gripped it, in negligence, raising it above his head; any hint of hesitation far dissipated before this moment.
"Well, what if a life is utterly void of a single one of these things? Everything and anything that you could say gives a life meaning, a life value."
"Can you dub such an existence valuable?"
The warehouse remained in an eerie silence. However, the rain, the painful creaking of the worn wooden chair he stood upon, and his lonely thoughts all bellowed simultaneously.
"Things null of any sort of value are often discarded and forgotten within the next moment like the piece of trash once holding your chocolate bar, or your old torn clothes once delivering you confidence and warmth, or games you had grown bored of once delivering bountiful entertainment."
"The world unanimously agrees such things deserve to be disposed of."
"Now, what stale argument will you give to deny that such a life shouldn't just be discarded like everything else considered in the world?"
After one bountiful leap, his neck drug back, leaving his lifeless body gently swinging back and forth. His neck limper than a broken plastic doll's.
Within that instant, Hikashi Gozard's life flickered out.
"Even the world won't show you it's pity."
Hikashi drifted in pitch-black comfort. He couldn't even see his own hands, though he didn't intend to look. His body remained stagnant for a few more seconds; Hikashi really couldn't understand the concept of time in this state. "I could've sworn your life is meant to flash before your eyes before you die- ha, what life?" A smirk emerges across his face for the first time in a while, from what he could remember of his life.
A spark of light suddenly beams before him; causing Hikashi to finally move to shield his eyes from the blinding array slowly consuming him till he clenches his eyelids shut. And within the space of a blink, his eyes flutter open to a completly antonymous setting to his previous.
The scenery around him far exceeded the brightness of whatever gate he had just passed through; although nothing resembling a sun sat in the sky, the earth had passed away along with himself. Whatever land he stood upon remained suspended in the air, the only thing carrying it, the golden clouds gently hugging each other in a puffy embrace.
There was no more sea, no sorrow, no pain, the path paved with gold, leading to a gate decorated with an array of precious stones reaching so high into the clouds he could not see its peak. So far wide, he could only see one side; it was impossible to experience it in its entire glory from where he sat, a rainbow of flowers and bushes - "Hey, are you Hikashi?"
Still absorbing the scenery, Hikashi is suddenly stricken by a sharp query; his soul nearly leapt out of whatever he had now, but it certainly was not a physical body, no matter how it seemed like it. He wore a long, pure white garment grazing his ankles, similar to what you'd expect patients to wear at a hospital, although it had a touch of gracefulness you couldn't explain, paired with just as white sandals at his feet, although one now flung away alongside his immersion.
Hikashi sat up again, gently rubbing the back of his head to soothe the injury, until he realised he had merely been brushing his dark brown hair with his fingers as the bristles. There was no pain to soothe in the first place.
"Ahhh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to startle you, ohhhh, it's my first day on the job, oh my lord, you just died. You are definitely in so much shock like I was; what am I thinking!"
Hikashi glances up, a heavenly distressed angel dressed in stainless thick layered golden armour, wielding a spear seemingly formed solely of light itself, capped with a golden helmet, wings gracefully flowing from her back. "Please forgive-"
"It's fine, really, don't worry," Hikashi utters, raising his body to its feet and delivering a reassuring smile, near instantaneously cleansing the girl of all distress.
"Phew, thank god I got a nice person," she exhales; followed by her genuine warm "Thank you."
Hikashi's smile doesn't falter; "it's fine, don't sweat it."
Her initial persona vanishes, now more of a lecturer, but this didnt disturb Hikashi. "Okay, well, let's run this from the top. Hikashi Gozard, you are dead; welcome to the afterlife. Based on how much value you acquired during your lifetime, you'll decide the type of eternity you'll exist within." Her words hang in the air, heavy with the weight of their implications.
Hikashi's head slants momentarily. "I'll decide?"
"Yes, you see, the value of your life is measured in a currency, soulis." She draws her hand forward, and a sheet of paper similar to that of a pound note forms in the centre of her palm. "These are used to purchase the type of eternity you desire; once you die, the value of your soul cannot be increased."
"I see."
"But you seem like a wonderful human being, I'm sure you gained tons of Soulis." The angel proceeds to pull out a scroll, her eyes gradually scanning the information. Her entire body freezes, and her jaw is suspended in time for a moment, followed by pure silence.
Swiftly returning the scroll to her armour pocket, she stands her spear upright just as awkwardly. "Okay, let's go to the purgatory auditorium where you'll decide your eternity." Without giving a moment for response, the angel taps her spear on the ground.
They are soon encased in a small golden circle, with a biblical cross in the middle; within the next instant, it envelopes them in a light. When he had reopened his eyes, he was now in a gigantic room filled with lines upon lines of people, a sequence reaching so far he wasnt aware if there was an end to them. The room's atmosphere was far dimmer than the last area, starkly contrasting the brightness of the previous scene. Some people sat with a river of dismay leaking from their faces, while others cheered and beamed with glee.
The ground was dull white and similar to that of a waiting room; rows of leather chairs collected around the area. Certainly out of place, what seemed like slot machines dotted around the region, with an 𝓢 logo on either side, identical to the note the angel had shown him earlier.
The angel beckoned him with a paper booklet, still refusing to utter a word. Flipping through the pages, different eternities flooded the page, many requiring tremendous amounts of Soulis up to the tens of thousands. Yet despite taking up entire pages of their own, reincarnation costing 500,000, and revival, 1,000,000, neither of them was given much more than a glance.
"Your Soulis card should appear inside your pocket; go check your worth on one of the machines." The angel mutters blanker than a sheet of white paper.
Deciding to mirror the energy, Hikashi approaches a machine. Inserting his card into a slot identical in shape, he waits, the rectangular screen rolling through a rapid sequence of numbers, finally landing on a single digit.
Hikashi's eyes widen. "I got one single Soulis?!"
He gripped both sides of the machine, clenching his teeth in disbelief; it began to jitter. His teeth clenched shut. "What the hell is this-" Within an instant, a gush of blood shoots before Hikahi's eyes, its source still unknown.
Curving his eyes over his shoulder, he realised his feet were far from the ground, and the same spear of light the angel held was pierced far through his chest.
The attacker raises their head, finally revealing their identity. The same exact woman who had welcomed him into the afterlife had just taken his life for a second time without any additon of reason. Needing to question why, Hikashi's mouth opens, yet only releasing an inaudible gurgle, thick red blood simultaneously spewing from his mouth and chest like a faucet.
And within that instant.
Hikashi Gozard's life flickers out.