Life After You

“I can’t believe it.”

“Pft…hahaha.”

“You’ve been laughing for almost ten minutes already, Zeph.”

“Oh, forgive me, it’s too funny…hahahaha!”

“You’re not even trying to stop.”

“Why should I?”

It was true after all. Gilad, Zeph, and Delilah experienced the same events but in completely different orders.

For Delilah, she’d been pulled into a dimension called “Pistevo’s world” soon after waking up in the hospital one day, spent an adventurous couple days there, and then chose to enter Zeph’s world in fear that he would vanish if they chose her world instead. That world collapsed, but just before it did, she was thrown back into her original world, waking up to the same morning as it had been right before she initially got pulled into another dimension.

For Zeph, he’d lived a miserable life, died forgotten, then spent two hundred years in the afterlife, becoming a guide in a game where only he knew was a game. One day, one of the many players entered the game herself and drastically changed everything. Just before his world collapsed, he was thrown out along with her—but on his way to her world, he got intercepted by Pistevo. There, he met the same girl, who did not yet know of the collapse of the game. Maybe it hasn’t happened yet, he thought. With the benefit of hindsight, he guided her through that game just as he would in After You. When they exited, he let her choose his world. After that, as the game in his memory no longer existed, Zeph was directly sent to the next point in his timeline—Delilah’s world. He was reborn, and lived his life all over again.

For Gilad, it was much simpler: he lived a life mostly detached from his family. He loved his sister but never said so, simply choosing to turn away from the rest of his family members because they did not appreciate her. Originally, he figured that as long as she was alive and ignorant of the truth, that would be fine. There was nothing extraordinary about meeting Zeph. Zeph was someone who he had been friends with for a long time—and not once had he mentioned Delilah. One day, a sorcerer spoke to him. He let his soul be transported to a completely unknown dimension, partly because his refusal would be powerless anyway, and nearly lost himself in the travel. That was the first time he learned that his sister was not so ignorant after all. Only after all of that happened did he hear from Zeph that she lived a different reality.

“You were here this whole time!” Delilah complained, “So close! And we never met!”

“Ahaha…ah, Delilah.” Taking a breath from his laughter, the black-haired young man wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close to himself. “I didn’t dare make too many alterations, you know,” he mumbled in her ear, “I had only to change enough so that I’d live long enough to meet you at the right time. Nothing else mattered much.”

“…you’re incredible.”

“Thanks.”

~ fin ~