Hello! My name is Keira. American name, but I am just a short, skinny, unattractive girl from Japan. The only thing special about me is I speak Japanese and English fluently. But, I'm from your world. The world where science is the head of EVERYTHING, and you fit in your nice little niches in society, right where you are told to go.

I used to fit there.

But now, I had tasted something new, something different, I'm not sure I could ever go back.

To the way it was…. before.

***FLASH BACK***

"Honestly. That new girl Ashleyn is SUCH a bitch! I, like, offered her my sheet music in class, and she was all like 'No. Thanks.' Then that soprano Elle offers her HER music, and she is all like 'thanks no one offered me their music!'" I said, rolling my eyes, and picking up a pair of chopsticks and begun to eat the sushi I packed from home.

I was in choir, but bad at it. My voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard, and the teacher thried to get me to transfer, but all the other classes didn't want me either. It was lonely.

It was lunch at that time, three years ago. I was a eighth grade student. I sat at the popular table...but I wasn't anything special. I don't know why I sat with them.

"Seriously? You want me to, like, embarrass her or something?" Eleanor said, examining her nails she had done at the nail salon. I couldn't afford to go with everyone else, to the salon.

"Nah. I'll get her." I said, waving a hand.

My Dad worked at the sushi bar in the city, and my mom worked at the nail salon Eleanor and her group had just went to yesterday. Luckily I was at my dad's shop yesterday, so I wasn't there.

"So you wanna come with us to Lee Spa Nails tomorrow?" Eleanor asked, after swallowing.

"Sure. If my mom let's me." Lee Spa Nails is where my Mom worked. There is no way I would let them see me.

But I realized they were not talking to me. They were talking to Alex, another popular sitting next to me! My face heated up, embarrassed.

"You can come too." Eleanor said as an apparent afterthought.

"Thanks. I might." I said, pretending not to drool over the thought of getting my nails done. Even though my mom worked there, she didn't give any manicures away for free. We barely kept up our apartment.

I work there, at Lee Spa Nails, in the back, refilling Acetone nail polish remover bottles and cleaning up the broken nail polish bottles, cleaning the bathrooms. Behind the scenes.

My parents weren't educated, and that's why they worked there. I was worried about taking over my mom's business, not anything else.

So that is why the doctor's news shook me.

***FLASH FORWARD***

(*-translated from Japanese)

"What did he say honey?"*My mom said. She had a hour break before going back to work.

I was still staring at the doctor. I really didn't believe him. There was NO way. That stuff happened to OTHER girls. Not me!

"I want to send you to ******** hospital for..." the doctor said, flipping through paperwork.

"Keira! Are you def?"*

"Mom- I have-" my voice choked-" cancer."* I said, still staring at the awful poster of human anatomy on the wall. Wishing it wasn't real. Wishing I was staring at me band poster in my room. Instead of being in this claustrophobic ROOM!

"We what the hell is cancer?!"*

"Its REALLY, really, really, bad mom."*

"How much money?"*

"Mom-" I said, slipping into English and hugging the old, exhausted woman. She seemed shocked by this display of affection.

"Most likely from the unsafe and cancer causing chemicals she was exposed to as a small child in the salon you work at Mrs. Yukusine..." the doctor was saying, but I wasn't listening.

***FLASH FORWARD***

***1 YEAR AGO***

I...was in Boston. A long way from where I used to live. But the place I was located was irrelevant. In fact, I was surprised I managed to remember that.

I had been in this white room for months.

Hooked to an IV, barely clinging to life.

My hair was long gone. I Probably looked like a mess. I hadn't moved for weeks. I only knew the time because of the news playing on the TV.

I was miserable. My everything hurt, despite the painkillers.

I...wanted to...die.

So, with the last of my living energy, at three thirty in the morning on...I soon learned of Friday-

I pulled out my IV

I took of the oxygen mask.

I unstuck the little suction cups for the monitors

And I lie there.

Looking at the white tiled ceilings.

I was sixteen now. Three years ago I was told I had lung cancer.

I had gotten it from breathing in and being exposed to the salon chemicals as a small child.

They were able to slow the cancer down...but they told me I wasn't going to live to see my seventeenth birthday.

I actually used to think I could beat this. The cancer. My" friends" helped me, to look good and get publicity...then threw me away as soon as I got old.

My parents were too busy to come see me.

Apparently mom had a kid while I was here. They never told me. No one came to see me anymore.

I was the burden

No more.

I actually heard my heart stop.

It was as if a ringing in your ear you had all your life vanished. It was strange- it felt unnatural.

And then, I, well, died.

I was rather excited to see what came next.

But what I saw was nothing like I expected.

I appeared in my hospital gown, but it was pulled every which way by a breeze I could not feel. I felt energetic. Like my cancer meds had vanished, leaving me as happy as I could be.

I ran around, laughing in. This white, endless land where I felt neither felt cold, nor hot.

until, I saw...a white dot.

Don't tell me how I knew the difference between the two whites...but I could just...tell.

It grew larger as I walked- walked! I hadn't walked in two years!

It was the silhouette of a person!

"Hello. Who are you?" I asked.

"Some people call me God. Or the universe. Or truth." The silhouette said.

"What do you want with…me? Aren't I...supposed to move on?" I asked.

"Yes. But to where?" It asked, and it's mouth stretched into a slight smile.

"Are...you...asking me?"

"Yes." Truth smiled. It was...odd.

"I don't know. Isn't that your job?"

"Interesting. So you do not beg at me feet. Wishing to return to your earth, for just one more day- or anything of the sort. Just like you, Keira, as a special person, I am giving you a special...treatment."

"What?"

"Your story isn't over."

"What do you mean...my story isn't over?"

"You have more time left."

"Don't send me back to the hospital! I feel so-"

"Free?" Truth asked, smiling. How did it know-"what you're thinking?"

"How-"

"I am God. I am the universe. I am Truth. I am perhaps all, or just one. I am also-"

"You." I finished, without knowing how I knew.

"That's right." Truth said. I suddenly noticed there were two large gates- one from behind me- and one behind Truth. They were there the whole time...but I didn't notice-

"Keira. You have trespassed on this place. Leave. Continue on your path…..but in a different…world. "

The gate behind Truth opened, and a single grey eye stared at me, and I suddenly felt exposed. Like it could see right into my soul.

Sort of like how I felt when my mom gave me a whoopin' when I brought home a awful grade, that piercing stare. But even more so.

It studied me, and I walked towards it, slowly picking up speed.

And I ran through the gate as fast as my feet would move, and many black tendrils engulfed me.

The blackness forced open my eyes, and I bore witness to-

I can't put it to words.

It- hurt.

I was screaming, but the thundering noise covered my loudest screams... I writhed around, yelling, but there was no one to hear. I felt my voice craking, my voice being yelled raw. But I didn't really care. That pain wasn't even registering. My brain was being overloaded from the sight. The images whent by so fast, I couldn't focus on one, they zommed past, into nothing. I felt tugging at my arms, and coolness, maybe a bit wet.

My skull burned, my eyes felt like they were being pulled out by the little cords- optic nerves- and being cut apart, peeled back like layers of a onion, and being burned and abused, put back together with a rusty needle. Rinse, wash, repeat.

The pain stopped, all of a sudden.

And I was standing at a glass table.

I couldn't see my hands as I touched it. I knew where they were, despite being it.

A silver keyboard appeared.

And a screen appeared. Truth appeared on it, the white, genderless body.

And next to it were things you so u of see in a child's dress up game, but in the Japanese art style.

What was it called- oh yah. Anime. The TV was manga. I got it.

And above that, my name.

I was choosing how I could… look.

I sent straight to work, not noticing the black tendrils swirling around me, watching me.

There was one glitch- the model, sorry- I had a two missing arms. And a missing leg. Odd, but I made the avatar beautiful.

She- or rather, I- was now a pale beautiful girl, with chest length navy, teal, mint, a the most beautiful blues made up my hair, and it fell in graceful twirls, and bangs swept across my acne-free forehead, almost covering full, thick eyelashes and navy and lime green eyes. She was slightly short..so she would have to stand on tiptoe to kiss someone. Those couples were the cutest….

I was no longer a skinny, flat chested girl, but now I was full of curves, and I have to say, very attractive.

I chose a white, creamy top, and Jean shorts to wear.

I looked for the accessories icon, and didn't find one.

There was a 'SUBMIT' button.

I pressed it.

And with a burst of pain, I vanished from the Gateway.