The Underworld
I'd died without ever managing to lose my virginity. Whatever that shape in the fog turned out to be — a woman or not — I wasn't about to regret walking toward it.
"Even if this road leads straight to hell, I'm not going out like this. It's too damn unfair."
Half a joke and half not, I quickened my steps. An eerie chill crawled over the fogbound plain, though not a breath of wind stirred, and still I didn't stop. I walked on, stubborn and straight, and little by little the fog began to lift.
What I had taken for a woman's figure was, in fact, a statue carved from stone — and not even a woman. It was a dolphin, head cocked at an angle, frozen in the instant of spraying water.
Maybe it was the ambition of the hope I'd hauled all this way. Even once I knew, I couldn't make my feet stop.
At last I came close enough to lay a hand on the enormous statue. I glanced back at the fog, now visibly torn apart, and ran my palm along the dolphin's tail.
"Ah, screw it."
I put my back to the stone and sank down onto the dirt. Why a statue stood in a place like this, I had no idea — and what did it matter. I shifted my gaze out toward the source of the light. What had been no brighter than a laser pointer was, before I knew it, blazing like a searchlight.
So this was what an empty mind felt like. Any other time, light growing brighter for no reason would have set me on edge, but just then I couldn't muster a single feeling.
Hey. God. You listening? When I get reincarnated, at least let me be born a handsome man.
I closed my eyes and let out a long breath. Sleep was creeping in. I let the strength drain out of my body and leaned back against the statue, easy as anything.
That was when a frivolous, thin voice drifted in from somewhere.
"Oho...!"
From the left side of the dolphin statue, an old man poked his head out and looked my way. He was naked, with nothing but a scrap of rag where his underwear ought to have been.
What? What the hell?
I shot to my feet. Instinct set every alarm ringing.
"Ooooh...!"
The old man closed the distance in a single burst and shot out an arm, grabbing for my shoulder.
"Crazy bastard!"
I staggered back and ran, dead certain that if he got his hands on me I was well and truly fucked. I hadn't managed five steps before something seized me by the back and I went down hard.
"Aaaagh!"
I thrashed up off the ground and dropped into a boxing stance, facing him. The old man quietly opened both hands and showed me his palms. A thread of cold sweat slid down my forehead.
"That's enough. Calm yourself."
"Do I look like I'm about to calm down? State your business, you son of a bitch. You scared the absolute shit out of me."
"Now, now... easy. It's been so long since I saw a person, that's all. I got a little excited. Just hear me out for a moment. It will not be a proposal that does you harm."
A proposal?
Maybe it really was the crisis of a lifetime, because for the first time in my life my thoughts were racing exactly the way I needed them to. The old man's speed was beyond anything human. This man — no, this thing that barely seemed human — could pin me whenever he pleased, if he felt like it. And yet, so far, he hadn't actually done me any real harm. Even the fall, if I thought about it, was just me going down on my own after he caught my back.
I looked him straight in the eyes. Shabby as his appearance was, a faint light moved in his pupils. I unclenched my fists.
"Fine. Explain what's going on... and make it quick, if you can."
"Ahem. Good. Since you've put it that way, I'll cut straight to the point."
He cleared his throat, then poured the words out like gunfire.
"You won't believe me, but I am a god. I came here to offer you a contract. I will grant you my power. In exchange, once you die, your life becomes mine. What do you say?"
I let out a short sigh and dropped back onto the ground.
"You really are out of your mind..."
"I can hear every word of that..."
Still, it was something of a relief. This didn't seem to be a request of that variety.
The old man looked quietly down at me where I sat, then gave a small nod.
"Yes... I see you can feel my presence now."
What the hell is he talking about?
I was too dumbfounded to answer, and the old man smiled with a benevolent air.
"I understand completely. You've met a god out of nowhere; of course it doesn't feel real. But there is no time, so forgive me for not giving you a moment to collect yourself."
He folded his arms.
"Humans relieve their lust through sex, or through masturbation. But lust is hardly something only humans possess. Gods have it as well. The trouble is that doing it the human way takes far too long, and it doesn't even work. A god is not greatly swayed by the flesh. So how, then, do we relieve our desire?"
He sure loves the sound of his own voice. And how the hell would I know?
I was muttering it inwardly when the old man dropped his voice low.
"Possession. When a god possesses a human body, he feels every emotion that human is feeling, exactly as they do. Pleasure included. But for a spirit of the upper realm to possess a soul of the lower realm is lethal poison from the mere attempt."
Possession? The old man was rattling off something that belonged in a novel, and his face was perfectly serious.
"For the sake of safety, there is no choice but to possess the dead. More precisely, to read again the record of a dead human's life. And so... in order to possess someone, one must hold that human's entire life wholly in one's hands."
After that I listened to him explain this and that. He talked in circles, but stripped down, it came to one thing.
"You're saying that when I die, you'll take my memories? Because you want to jerk off to them. That right?"
The old man's face lit up.
"That is precisely it. Your life becomes, for me, an adult video brimming with life. I possess the memories of the sex you had, and... aah. How pleasant it is, to be understood...!"
"Aha..."
Well — I was already dead, so fine. Possession, a deal, whatever. I got it. I got all of it. The real problem, though, was something else entirely. Memories of sex? Ecstasy?
"Um... sorry if this pours cold water on things, but..."
"Hm? Is there a problem?"
"I'm... a virgin."
That stuff. I'm the one who wants to know what the hell it even feels like.
Hearing me, the old man shook his head.
"That is no problem whatsoever. The power I mean to give you... would not matter even if you were a beast."
What the hell is that supposed to mean. That's terrifying.
"You have played games, I assume. What you are about to experience will be like a game."
"A... game?"
"Yes."
What followed, boiled down, was simple enough. He would lay over my reality a system built in the image of a game's Status Window. A dating sim made real — or rather, an adult game made real. I understood it well enough, more or less.
What actually pricked up my ears was the price he had set on the contract.
"You'll... grant me a wish?"
"Yes. Anything. If it is what you desire, then anything at all."
It wasn't a story I could swallow calmly. But I was too tired to think any harder. There was no other road anyway. I'd been hit by a car and ended up here, and by some miracle I'd met a self-proclaimed god. Believe him or not, he was offering to grant a wish — and that beat simply dying by a hundred times.
The old man bared his yellowed teeth and drew up the corners of his mouth.
"You enjoy a new life through my power, and that is good for you. I obtain your memories, and that is good for me. Two birds with one stone. A blessing on both houses."
"...Okay. I more or less follow. So if you take my life, what happens to me?"
"A human lives seven lives in all. If the life you are living now is not the seventh, you will be reborn as a new being. And your life is not something stolen — it is traded, fair and square. Should this ever become a problem and draw down divine punishment, it is I who will bear it."
"Divine punishment...?"
Of all things, now it was divine punishment.
The old man, who had been quietly studying my face, spoke.
"If something weighs on you, do not hide it. Ask. You still doubt me, don't you?"
"Yeah... then I won't hide it. There's one thing I can't make sense of. Why me, of all people? If you really are a god, you must have met plenty of others besides me. There's no way none of them came with better terms than I do."
The old man rose without answering. A cool breeze came from somewhere, and the rag he wore fluttered, small as a flag.
Ah. I think I just caught a glimpse.
"Do you see the light? That light, there. Among the gods who dwell in this place, it is called the Sun of Death."
Where he pointed, the same cluster of light from before still hung. I frowned and shaded it with my palm. The mesmerizing, many-colored blaze had grown so fierce I couldn't look at it with my eyes properly open. Seeing that, the old man lifted one corner of his mouth.
"This place is not the underworld. It is where those whose minds alone have slipped free of the flesh come to gather. The Sun of Death... is the thing that leads those still standing on the border of life and death onward into death. Souls of the lower realm drift toward that sun in a daze, and in the end they arrive at true death."
I turned the meaning of his words over for a moment, and it didn't particularly seem like a lie. The instant I had first met that light in the fog, I too, if only briefly, had stared at it and lost myself. If the god was telling the truth, then I wasn't completely dead yet.
"But now and then, there are souls who slip the sun's fascination and try to settle back into their own flesh. And among them, only a bare few — those whose Karmic Ties run thick — earn the chance to meet a god face to face. Just as you are doing now."
"Karmic Ties?"
The old man's eyes shone, keen and bright.
"Karmic Ties are a mystery that no being of the lower realm can so much as guess at without direct contact. Even the gods of the upper realm cannot fathom what they mean. I myself perceive them only dimly, so there is no need to say more."
A tie of fate...