Disclaimer: I do not own Angel Beats! The only things I own are the characters, places, and other events that deviate from the original storyline.

Chapter One: The Past Bleeds into the Present

I couldn't remember a single thing of my life and now it floods back to me in the final minute of it. But that's not true at all is it? I lived before this life and I just now realized it. How many times have I lived before this? I don't know and I no longer care. All I know is that I can feel my old life weaving itself back into my soul.

I lay here, in the wreckage of an airplane, wondering what I did to deserve this ungodly fate. How could god do this to me? Why did the plane crash? How am I still alive to watch my life painfully fade away from me? How is it that my entire family had the bliss of dying instantly? And how was it, out of the entire broken, shattered hopes of everyone around me, that I was the only one seeing darkness in broad daylight?

There were people that survived through sheer luck scrambling over debris trying to save other passengers and find ways out of the plane. Bodies of the dead were strewn everywhere, making the plane the perfect scene of hell on earth to my dimming eyes. The wreckage was blazing and the fuel was luggage, bodies and hope. The hull was unrecognizable and the wings were ripped off in the crash. How fitting of the situation, no wings to help us fly. All we could do was fly and we all fell but I was an exception. I was still falling.

And in those moments of painful thought, a light beckoned to me and memories of my past flooded my mind. I instantly remembered them to be dreams that would make me wake up in the middle of the night screaming a name I instantly forgot. These dreams plagued me every night. They never showed mercy, hints of making sense or hints of stopping for that matter. And they always made me cry. They were not memories from my current life, but a life I lived after death.

Every time the dream starts, I can only see a white void. It's so bright that I can't even see my hand in front of my face, if I could feel my hand or body to begin with that is. Then out of the white come the colors yellow, gold, green and blue. Blue was the best of all, for they were the color of the vast sky and a beautiful girl's eyes. The green manifests as an expansive forest over mountains and valleys as far as my eye could see. The yellow and gold was the hue of the sunset. All the scenery melded together and I could eventually see where I was.

I stood in the courtyard of a school next to a fountain at the base of some steps. I knew somehow that the school building was behind me at the top of the stairs. In front of me was the forest, the school's sports fields for baseball, track and field, and soccer. Also, an unimaginably beautiful girl stood before me. She wore what I presumed to be the school's uniform, except all the other students I saw were wearing different ones. Hers was white, sailor style with a blue collar, a red neckerchief and a strange shield insignia with SSS on the sleeve. Her skirt was blue and came to the tops of her knees. There was no skin shown on her legs, just a pair of black stockings. Her shoes were brown and normal.

Her hair was black and reminded me of the deep hue of night long after the sun set. Her skin was smooth and plenty shades above pale. Her other features were irrelevant, all forming a cliché high school girl with a skinny build, a moderate sized endowment and infinitely beautiful eyes. She looked at me with a happy face but her eyes were heavy with sorrow.

She wrapped her arms around my neck at this time and pulled me close to embrace tightly. When she pulled away, she looked away from my eyes and into the distance. Her lips would move as if she was talking but I never heard a word escape them. As she talked, she became more and more filled with sorrow until tears sent rivers flowing out of her eyes. She cried and I saw my hands enter my first person view and attempt to comfort her. She would always push them away and step back every time I tried.

I felt tears on my face with the passing of every inaudible word I couldn't hear. Then I could finally understand a few words she said, her last words to me in fact:

"I love you. But I just can't stay in this world now that I know we should pass on."

She turned and sprinted away. Leaving me standing all alone in a world that I suddenly assumed was void of real humans and was possibly the afterlife. Despair took over and I fell to my knees.

A strange feeling of reiteration hit me as I felt my last breath enter my lungs in the real world, and the memories of my past life ended with my disappearance from the strange world I was in. I suddenly felt light and all forms of pain subsided from my body. And just before I closed my eyes and gave in to death, I exhaled my last breath.

Time slowed and my breath felt like a mass of all the air in the world blowing softly out of a small crack, never coming to an end and peacefully slow. My mind raced as it began to shut down and become clouded with nothingness but a single thought crossed my mind as my religious side came into thought.

Was God behind this?

Was it by his decisions that I ended up here now? I was a good soul that never so much as raised my hand to another living thing on this earth. I was good and I was flying back to Japan to visit my grandparents. I had no business dying here and I promised my little sister that the plane would be safe. And now I'm dying, fully aware of my two lives, my unfair situation and two thoughts left in my head.

I can never forgive god for the way my life ended. Both of my lives, the one now and the one from before.

And then I felt the memory of the girl I loved in my past life and one last thing popped into my mind. I knew her name. And her name was the last word I breathed as my breath emptied my lungs and left me without life.

"Hiromi."

Then, I remembered more. My vision faded in the life before my current one. Just as I was losing vision and vanishing from that world in the afterlife, I turned my head. I saw another girl looking down at me from the top of the stairs. But it was too late for me to understand why she was there and why she looked so familiar.

She was gone...

I was gone…

And now nothing else matters…