"And that's why you have to come over!" Yokui shouted at me over the phone. Apparently she had found a new anime that I 'would just love!' and 'was the best thing since Fairy Tail!'
"Fine, Kui. I'll be right over. Let me tell my mom and get my stuff." She squealed happily before I hung up the phone. I sighed and went downstairs.
Mom had gotten home and found me sweeping up lamp fragments and Leah screaming behind the door I had barricaded. She had broken Mom's favorite lamp when she refused to play with one of my softballs outside. Needless to say I chased her through our house until she rushed into her room and I barricaded the door with a chair and the hall table.
Mom came home and saw the chaos and immediately blamed me for it. Leah was a perfect little angel in her eyes, Leah couldn't do anything wrong. Bunch of bullshit. Ever since we moved to Japan, life has been tedious at best. With no dad to vent to and no mom I could trust, I couldn't wait until I could go to college.
I found my mom in the kitchen, doing dishes from tonight's dinner. I didn't want to scare her, so I didn't pad down the stairs silently like I had a habit of doing. She looked back at me and sighed.
"Yokui call?" she asked. I nodded. Mom sighed again and waved a hand towards the door.
"If she weren't your only friend I'd keep you here," she said, like it was my fault most girls at that school were complete bitches. I mumbled something about being home tomorrow and walked out the front door.
Lord, if my mother could become any more of a control freak, I'd have to move out. Considering I could totally do that in a couple years, I wasn't having many second thoughts about it. Leah was the only one there to keep me company other than Mom. I was going insane in that house.
Now, I was in no means a deprived or abused kid, but I wasn't very happy either. I pretty much took care of Leah. I kept the house clean. I used to have a secret bank account so my mom couldn't take the money I earned at my part-time job in the States. I might as well have been living in my own house for all I did at the age of sixteen.
I hitched my bag higher on my shoulder and turned left. If I could just convince my mom I was a mature, young adult, maybe she'd stop treating me like a child. But I'd tried that. She seemed determined not to listen to reason. If only I could make her see that I was perfectly capable of taking care of myself. If only I could get her to stop treating me like a child.
I looked around at the houses. I should have arrived at Yokui's by now. I scanned the street signs. None of the characters looked familiar. I knew Yokui's street had the character that looked like a tall post next to a short something-or-other that looked like it was shining… or on fire, plus another between that and one that looked like a Y. Sakura Street was the name. I went back the way I came and scolded myself for daydreaming.
But I didn't know where I was now. Everything looked different in the dark. I didn't recognize any of the houses or any of the signs in the moonlight. I had even forgotten the street I turned off of to get as lost as I was. It looked like I had reached the edge of the city. But I couldn't have walked that far, could I? I heard a train whistle in the distance… Apparently I could have walked that far.
"Kawaii tori o mite!" I heard a boy call out.
"Sukoshi tori," another voice called. I spun around to find five boys walking up the street, towards me. I only understood 'kawaii' and 'sukoshi', but they didn't sound like compliments.
"Amerikahitodesu!" one of the boys shouted. They all laughed.
"I'd appreciate if you'd speak English. I know you can." They stopped laughing and looked at me with peculiar faces. The lead boy, Hakuro, grinned widely and sauntered up to me, running his fingers through what little black hair he had.
"Yes, but where's the fun in that, eh American? Your face is so cute when it's confused." I took a step back. Had he not heard of personal space?
"I have a name, baka." Hakuro laughed.
"Not one important enough for me to know, American." I glared up at the boy, straight into his dark eyes. No schoolboy was going to intimidate me when I could probably deck him and run.
"So, little bird, what are you doing out so late?" One of Hakuro's friends asked. I honestly couldn't remember his name, but I remembered his unusually bright red hair. I was almost sure he dyed it, but not absolutely positive.
"What's it to you? Trying to ask me on a date?" A couple of the boys snickered, but Hakuro silenced them with a look.
"Not if you were the last girl on Earth," Red replied. Hakuro glared harder at him, then turned his gaze back to me.
"Sayuri told me you called her a fat cow today. Now, normally I would agree, but she's my little sister. I can't have the foreigner insulting my sister and getting away with it." He stuck his hand in his pocket and took a step towards me. I backed away, but he kept coming forward. My back hit the brick wall of a building. Hakuro slammed his palm into the brick next to my head. "So, American, let's see if your blood is as foreign as you."
I saw the flicker of a switchblade in Hakuro's hand. My heart started hammering against the restraint of my chest, pounding louder than the drums at a rock concert. Hakuro's grin mutated into a horror the Cheshire would wince at. His friends all mumbled vaguely and shifted their feet.
"Hakuro, this is not going to go down well," one said, the one with the wire glasses. He was one of the smartest boys in the school and I often asked him for notes. Rin, that was his name. What was he doing with Hakuro? Hakuro flicked the tip of the blade in his direction.
"Don't worry about it. You won't get in trouble if you keep your mouth shut." When he turned his face back to me, I lashed out and decked him. He yelped and jerked back, allowing me just enough room to wiggle out and start running down the street. Five sets of hammering feet chased after me and five sets of hammering feet my heart echoed in my chest.
I used to run a lot back in America. When we moved here to Japan, I quit Track and settled for nothing. My new school didn't have much in the way of soccer or softball… go figure… so I just didn't play any more sports. But my running skills had deteriorated in my laziness. My breath was coming in ragged and leaving in gasps.
Something hit my back, right between my shoulder blades, and I fell flat on my face. I didn't have time to scramble to my feet before Hakuro's foot made an introduction to my kidney. He rolled me over on my back and sat his fat ass on my hips.
"You know, American, if you'd just keep your mouth shut, you wouldn't be in this situation." Hakuro flicked open the switchblade again and tapped my nose with it. I went to punch him again, but Red-Hair grabbed my arms, pinning them to the concrete. "Where should we start? Hideki?"
"I like her face, let's mess that up first," the broad boy said. I knew Hideki from math class. He was always falling asleep and being a pain in the ass for everyone else. More than a few times our classmates tried to see how many pencils they could stick in his ragged brown hair before he woke up from one of his naps.
"And I like your thinking, Hideki. Let's start with her face." Hakuro gripped the blade in his fist and brought it close to my face. I panicked and squirmed. His fingers slipped and he gouged my cheekbone. I cried out from the pain but he stuffed his hand over my mouth. "We can't have you waking the neighbors, now can we?"
The look in his eyes wasn't just revenge. It looked like he wanted to carve me into bits and burn the pieces. The look in his eyes was pure murder. I didn't know if any of his so called 'friends' knew he was so unbalanced, but they couldn't be okay with this! I knew Rin wasn't, but Hideki and the red haired boy were just going along with it. The other one just stood there, like a shadow among the rest. He said nothing and did nothing, almost like he wasn't even there. He just stared at me with his piercing blue eyes silently.
Hakuro slashed the same cheek again, adding another stripe of pain that crossed over the first. I screamed against his hand, but it muffled anything I could try to yell. Rin's face turned green as he saw the blood spilling from my face. I hoped his Karma would fuck him over later. Since neither of the two onlookers would do anything, I took it in my own hands… err, feet.
I kicked up, thanking all my childhood years of gymnastics for the flexibility, and hit Hakuro straight in the back of his head. His hands flailed as he lost his balance and pitched forward. The hand with the knife went straight down, sending piercing pain through my chest just under my shoulder.
Everything screamed out in pain and I did the same. Hakuro hopped off and dropped the knife. Hideki let go of my arms and followed Hakuro. I felt numb now, like everything was detaching from me. All of my energy was just draining away. I tried pulling myself up, but the moment I moved my left arm, the piercing pain shot through my whole left shoulder. I fell and landed in a puddle of something sticky. I coughed, feeling the air going the same place as my energy.
"You fucked this up big time," Hideki said. I barely heard him over the heartbeat in my ears.
"Shut up and grab my knife!" Hakuro responded as he turned tail and ran with the rest of his friends. The heartbeat in my ears got louder and louder as the air in my lungs dwindled away. I don't know when, but I realized I was dying. Hakuro had stabbed my heart and now I was dying in a pool of my own blood. I coughed and tried to make my lungs work again. I couldn't die. Not now. I still had to go to college and have my own family.
My heart beat erratically in my ears. It wasn't going to last much longer. I tried reaching into my bag for my phone. Yokui was on speed dial. If I could. If I could just. My numb fingers found the phone, but they weren't working right. They were pressing random buttons. Something finally went right and the phone starting ringing.
Each second felt like an eternity, an eternity marked by each thundering beat of my failing heart. Each ring of the phone was drowned in my ears by my heart, it seemed like it wanted me to know I was dying so very slowly.
"Hello? Hello…?" someone finally answered. It sounded like Yokui. But it was so hard to breathe, so hard to even get the air in my lungs so I could tell her to get help. "Who is this?"
"Help," I said before my heart beat one last time, plunging me into endless darkness.
But then something weird happened. I kept waiting for something to drag my soul away to Heaven, or Hell or reincarnation of whatever happened when you died. But nothing happened. I was conscious, but everything was black and silent. I sat there and wondered what was happening. Could this be Limbo? Am I stuck here because I didn't do anything really good or really bad?
To be honest, I was always curious about what happened after death. Those old lines about seeing a light and family members always seemed to ring hollow in my mind. Here was my chance to see what happened and nothing was happening. Well this sucked…
"Ah! There you are!" a voice interrupted my out-of-body sulking. I tried to look around and see who it was, but then again… detached soul drifting in endless blackness… didn't quite work out. "Reilly Claire, isn't it?" I tried to respond, but I had no larynx to speak with. The voice giggled like a little girl- something that made me very uncomfortable. "Sorry about that Reilly. Let me fix this."
A bright light flashed, driving away the endless black and filling my vision. When it finally faded enough for me to see, I found I had my body back… or at least a body. It looked like mine, but it was half formed and I could see the rug through my feet. Of course, this didn't quite faze me. I was dead. It stood to reason I was a ghost or whatever. I was actually more surprised that I seemed to be in a familiar living room. And that someone was sitting on the floor by the coffee table.
"Over here Reilly!" she called to me and waved her arm. "I know you're not quite yourself, but just do what comes naturally and it should work." I decided not to have a mental breakdown as I sized up the child-sized girl. Her hair was pink, as in bubblegum pink, and pulled pack into a long and straight ponytail. Her bright blue eyes were large and innocent, but there was something about them that unnerved me. I sat on the floor on the opposite side of the table.
"Where am I?" I asked, sounding like I was nothing more than a passing breeze. I cleared my throat and tried asking again, only to sound the same. The little girl winced and apologized.
"This is the spirit realm. This is where souls go to be reborn, find Elysium, Heaven, Hell, or whatever happens."
"Then why does it look like a cozy living room?" I asked in my nearly nonexistent voice. She shrugged.
"It takes the shape of whatever your fondest memories are," she said. "Is this your home?" So that's why this place seemed so familiar. It was my grandmother's living room. She had died not long after Leah was born. Grandma and I had the best times together at her home. I missed her a lot.
"No," I replied simply, not feeling very open about explaining where it was. The girl frowned, but continued talking anyway in spite of my rudeness.
"Well, you see, I'm here to offer you another choice. Sometimes, when souls' lives are cut short, we like to give them another chance to live longer. And I saw that you did not have many opportunities to be very happy in your short sixteen years of life. So how about it, do you want another chance?" I blinked and hesitated in responding.
A second chance? A new life? I thought to myself. What kind of new life? Would I retain my memories? How about my knowledge? I wouldn't want to be some simpleton in another life. As if she had read my thoughts, the little girl started talking again.
"You'll retain your memories, that is, if you want. Some souls I offer this deal to would rather forget their past lives and start with a clean slate. I can't promise what your new life will entail, or even if you'll still be a girl, but it is a new life."
"Wait a minute. You can't promise I'll 'even be a girl'? What's that supposed to mean?" Ms. Bubblegum laughed nervously and scratched the back of her head.
"See, the transition from one world to another is a bit, um… unstable. There have been a few genderbending, even species switching, problems in the past. But we've fixed most of those now!" I wanted to hold my head in my hands, but it went right through them. So much for even the impression of being solid.
"So, I can move on and go to wherever souls go when they die, or I can go to a different world with the possibility of not even being the same gender or species for a second chance?" She nodded vigorously, like she was excited I was being skeptical.
"You got it!" she said happily. "So, what's your choice?" I thought about it for a couple minutes.
On one hand, I could go to Heaven or Hell or whatever and finally figure out what happens after death. But on the other… Go see a different world and live out the rest of my life in a new place? I didn't even make it to college. I didn't have a job for more than a year before we moved. I never got the chance to write a book- hell, I never even finished my fanfictions! My followers were going to be so disappointed in me…
Even though I was fascinated with the thought of what happened after death, was I really ready to die for real? Here was a little girl offering me a way out and with nothing hidden either. Was I really ready to die? A cold shiver went down my spine. No. I wasn't ready to die just yet. I would take her offer.
"I think… I think I'll take you up on your offer. But I want to retain my memories. I have a few that I'd like to hang onto, if that's all right." She beamed at me and clapped her hands like the child she resembled.
"Great! We'll send you over right away!" She jumped off the floor and ran to the front door, struggling to open the handle that I knew wouldn't open for her. It used to stick all the time and there was a trick to opening it. I laughed and joined her in the entryway.
"Let me," I told her and grabbed the handle, glad that I didn't go right through it. I started jiggling it back and forth to get the tumblers working. "You know, you never told me who you are, or where this new life will be." She giggled and I threw my shoulder against the door.
"Oh silly, I'm Mew," she answered as a bright light outside the door filled my vision, blocking everything out. I hardly even had time to throw her a look filled with confusion before something pulled me out the door and into the vast, white expanse. The last thing I remember before I blacked out was her innocent smile and the sight of her pink tail waving behind her head.
Welcome one and all to my first ever story! I hope you all enjoyed the first chapter and any reviews would be appreciated, especially if they point out grammar mistakes and spelling errors. Please help me become a great writer!
About this story: All characters will be OC except the usual Gym Leaders and villains and others who are known in the Pokemon Emerald game. You've already met Reilly, an American that recently moved to Japan before she was killed. (Sorry Reilly) Next chapter you'll be meeting a few more! See you next chapter! ~Sylva