If you are afraid of fire, you cannot master it.

When I grew up as a kid, I developed a weak immune system. It happened, because one day, I spent much time under the shower. In retrospect, I didn’t think it was that long.

The water was cold. There was no guarantee that I was not predisposed to developing this common condition, since birth. I merely had inflamed sinuses. There was not much I could not do, except when dealing with dusty places. I made the mistake, which I would consider a classic, of washing my hair in the morning, and getting to high school while still groggy, quite often. When the blood came to my sleep-deprived brain, wet hair in the morning, I often developed a fever. My sinuses acted out. I had friends I observed as having similar symptoms.

When I was seventeen years old, I spent copious amounts of my time, in around November, post-examinations, writing a story. I pulled all-nighters to write a thousand or more words. I often sneezed till my veins resounded painfully with the shock. Occasions came up, when my eye was red, and my head pounded behind the eye.

I had my athletic bursts in football and basketball. If I had to describe how I grew up, I would say that I opened up, and then become a hobbyist, once I got into high school. I was a bookworm, a gamer and watched some anime shows. With the exception of some subjects and grade levels, my results were average. I did well in my single year in economics. Visual Arts and Sociology had my back. I was good at English. Regardless of later results, that was it.

My one friend was a great help in getting me out of my shell. It was not only him. High school was a good place. It changed when I lacked motivation, and changed again, to the end. I was a dreaming outlier. I might as well have taken a break and written down whatever I wanted.

At one point, I wanted to motivate technological independence with writing. I was inspired to use writing to do so due to being a bookworm, among other reasons. Of course, not everyone wanted technological independence. The technical and resource-based burden would make up for a nomadic lifestyle. I watched anime. I read mangas and light novels. The audience for the subculture related to these three things was huge. I made up my mind to watch every anime which I found to be important.

I checked anime shows by the alphabet. I watched Bakuman, a manga-writer’s favorite inspiration show. I consulted episode lists on wikipedia and fandoms to eliminate shows I was not interested in. I read mangas, based on the alphabet. Of course, much as I appreciated Dragonball Super, I never completed an anime season of Dragonball. My watching spry reached its apex when I watched One Piece, skipping past episode segments, in under two episodes, sometimes, till the Marineford arc.

That was a mistake, in retrospect. Using ‘Inspect’, after right-clicking a video and charging up the video speed was another bad idea. I had no intention of doing a degree. Money – that was the ticket for any project. A headstart was good. Then, I did a 180 degree turn. I had a degree, worth the change in my thoughts. And I had scripts that I continually outgrew by the time I would look back on it. It was like those YouTubers brushing off a video they made one year or two years ago.

That was alright. I was back on writing track, from time to time. As a bonus, by my final university year, I had figured out a good study plan and carried through with it – not to the circumstance’s full potential, but in a decent way.

I used to post nature wallpapers on Facebook when I was younger. I never got likes. Then I realized that everyone was perceiving and choosing. Facebook was not ideal, simply because I had a sandbox friendlist. That was no concern for nature. Nature was just a manifest flow. It was not entitled more than the beings who thrived in it. No one knew why we were born.

People preached ‘reality’ while telling themselves they were ‘enough’. Others told you to make the sacrifices. It was never too late. It was only not enough for your present self. Even at the moment before you died, it was not enough. The question for this story was simple: ‘Do you want this battle?’

***

I went to the supermarket. I got myself a few bars of 200g Kerrygold. It was butter produced from free-range, grass-fed cows, with only seventy-nine cows per herd. It had the highest food-grade salt, though a YouTuber cited mild sea salt. Food grade salt meant as much as 99.6-99.8% sodium chloride, compared to the requirement of 97% sodium chloride. That ought to get rid of aluminium.

At 100 utils per bar, and around 56% saturated fat, I was gonna get an anti-inflammatory deal with good salt for my neurons. It was like five 40g packets of chips, though it did not compare to canned fish in grams.

At 3000 utils per month, supposing I actually did get one each day, it was a easy buy for a 9000-util budget, without the cooking. My budget was around 25,000. It was more than double the rate, so I could sustain myself and someone else. I could get free-range eggs to get my zinc and heme irons. That was definitely much less costly than butter. I could use the butter to fry the eggs or just boil them and make a salad. With tomatoes, it was a handy superfood.

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Once out of the supermarket, I made for my apartment. I did not have any poster, whether for motivation or any painting. I only downloaded the paintings into my computer. I was not in the habit of collecting figurines. My sensing for such matters was low. Perhaps it had transferred over to my wallpaper storage. When I was a child, I would put up stickers to my parents’ wardrobe, and then to my desktop table.

I was tired. I prepared my food, ate, did my dishes, and prepared to make for bed in about an hour. As I got to bed, an hour later, I wondered about how the next day would go.

Two years later, I was dead.

***

The image that followed would have once been the product of my competition to describe the most idealized woman. I had read enough novels and light novels to warrant an attempt at that. To provide a sense of urgency, her appearance in my dreams would herald some other being, which was either angelic or nightmarish, like expecting a ghost to pop out beside her. Humans experienced much more kinds of dreams.

There stood a certain woman with white hair. Her youthful skin was a stark contrast to the whiteness of her hair. Her attractiveness was bewitching. I rubbed my eyes. The woman did not disappear. Nor, as she looked at me from afar, did she seem intent on disappearing. I was not sure if she was stupid, or just being strong. To objectify my attraction, I would say she had a modest abundance at her chest.

As a writer, I thought of various ideal situations with a woman. Thinking about it echoed with me. Of course, if something did not exist in the first place, it would not endure. It was not a practical existence. The innocent woman was replaced by someone who was not an ideal. It made it easier to hold less serious thoughts and still carve stories of caring.

A pathway erected itself from beneath my feet. I looked at the white-haired woman, with careful eyes. This dream felt weird. I did not know what felt out of place. The scenery seemed too real to be a dream. The warm breeze caressed my face; the shy whispers hidden in the charm of the wind; the grass alive with erratic movement; the feeling of being examined.

The beautiful woman smiled at me. I remained frozen on spot. The pathway reached its end at the woman’s feet. The woman glided with leisure, following the pathway to its destination. I tried to move out of the way, to see what she would do. I found I was held in place. I tried moving forward. Noticing I could do so, I jogged in her direction. The wind abated. The grass faded. It eroded into dust. The pathway receded, dissolving into the ground. This made me cautious.

The woman stopped. “I like flowers,” she said softly. Flowers bloomed around us in full glory, more colorful than I could remember them to be. “I want to place a flower on my head. It’s embarrassing to do it on my own,” continued the woman, blushing like a maiden in love.

I took a breath. “You came outta nowhere. Who are you?”

“What do you mean?” asked the woman, taken aback.

“I don’t dream of daisies and lilies. I don’t dream of taking care of someone in this manner,” I said.

The woman placed a hand at her heart. “Well, it’s fine that my head remains unadorned,” said the woman. The flowers looked back at me as I gazed at them. “I should have expected that from you, Aidan.”

The woman bent over and plucked a blue flower. She offered it to me. “How do you know my name?”

“Can I not know your name?” she asked, her hands proffered with the flower in my direction.

“I am not interested. Tell me your name,” I said.

“I won’t.” The woman glided away. I kicked my leg around.

As she went, my vision blurred. I heard the sound of tin striking tin in my ears. A numbing coldness settled within my brain. A heaviness wrapped my heart. My limbs reflexively spasmed. I wondered about what was happening. My eyes saw blinding white for the first time in years. I wondered if I had drunk enough water. Maybe I had over-exercised. I could not remember what I had done yesterday. Then, the revelation came to me that I was dead. “Is that it?” I mumbled. I could not remember the pain.

“It’s not the end,” said the woman, clear in my head. I looked up. She had returned, standing some meters away from me. What was she still doing here? “Do you want my help?”

I squinted. My eyes were hazy. I looked down and heaved for a while. The heaviness lifted itself from me. I felt better. “What the hell are you?” When I looked up, the woman hovered above my face, close up. I did not move. “What do you want to tell me?”

“Are you that delusional?” The woman asked.

“I don’t know why you are here.”

The woman put her hand to her chest again. “I’m your guardian angel.”

“I don’t believe that crap,” I replied.

The woman sighed. “Well, I believe your death is early. Your foundations have crumbled. You know it. “

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m dead. You plan on reviving me?”

“Sure, I will,” said the woman.

“What’s the catch?”

“I should keep that secret for later.”

“So, you consider my death to be early. You think strength will remedy the balance you view it with?”

“I don’t know. It starts with you,” said the woman. Reality was incomplete.

“I see,” I said. The dispersed petals floating along the wind. She disappeared.