My name is Kannaki Saya, I was 28 years old, but now I am dead. I vowed to kill God and so I must, to avenge my boyfriend’s death. My story is not the happiest one, yet I plan to end it on a high note.

The year was 1999 as much as I can remember. Those were the times when I had been working as a saleswoman at one of the most competitive and aspiring corporations of the time, somewhere in central Tokyo. I used to live in the smallest possible apartment, or so it had always felt to me, but somehow sharing it with another beautiful soul made it seem more open and comforting than in reality. My boyfriend, a couple of years younger than I was, worked all day on his truck, yet he always made time for me, a time I’d never seemed to have, as much as I could’ve tried. Everyone wants something from you, especially when your simple nature as a woman, in a men’s world, working a mid-tier job for a constantly growing company, kind of owes them any favor possible. But however hard I had to work, Akimitsu was there for me when I returned home to brighten my day and give me the love I know I deserved. It was special.

One day though, on a blistering day of June, the bus dropped me off to an empty house, our house. The late hour did not appear to take away any of the heat, the skirt I happened to wear had been discomforting me all day, my black office outfit absorbed all the sun’s had to offer and, in all honesty, I was sweaty and exhausted in such a way I had never been before. But, as much as I just wanted to jump onto my bedsheets and sleep the rest of the evening off, the silence upon my arrival startled me ever so slightly. I opened my phone. I texted. I called – no response. I texted again. I called again. The silence just grew by the second. Only after taking a shower and starting preparation our dinner for the night, I received a call from an unknown number – the police.

“Yes?”

“Miss Kannaki speaking?”

“Yes, mister, what’s going on?”

“Do you know Muzukashi Akimitsu?” the cold voice replied.

“That would be my boyfriend, yeah.”

“I am sorry to inform you.”

I do not even have the strength to recall what was said next anymore. The whole world shook in disbelief together with my crashing heart and trembling voice. “No” I cried out. Simply just “no”. That is all I could muster to say.

I had collapsed completely, ruined by the news and riddled with anger and shock. How has this awful thing just happened? Less than half an hour later, my blood had begun boiling inside of me, wishing to find whoever was responsible for this and make them pay. I even wanted to take it up with the police, fight them, squabble on and on until they found my answer. In the meantime, the ramen soup I had been preparing was boiling same way as me. So, I cursed the skies and all the heavens I had ever heard of, and cried my eyes out for the remainder of the night.

The autopsy could not find any evidence on how my boyfriend died, which was something I could not understand in the slightest. How do I have to be darn perfect every single minute of every single work-shift for much more meaningless tasks, but those people in charge of bringing justice to a bloody death are this incompetent. What does “the entrance wounds certainly point to a weapon, but none that we know of” even mean?! How can someone’s life be taken away with a completely unknown weapon? Why did it have to be Akimitsu..?

….unfortunately I was bound to find an answer.

Ten days had passed and I had started investigating myself. I even went to the scene of the crime, asked around everyone I could find. I guess my sleepless eyebags and messy hair did not convince anyone I worked with the police. I had also tried stealing the murder reports, but would you look at that, it hasn’t even been classified as a murder! They ended up tying the noose by concluding it must’ve been “a terrible accident”. Five bloody wounds in the chest, two in the neck and one in the skull, but it was an accident… I could not take it. Work became as difficult to go to as trying to make sense of everything, so I just lost all control. My friends stopped talking to, probably thinking I had gone mad or something. Perhaps I did.

All I know is that after almost two weeks of missing work and grieving, I carried my tired and weak legs to that office building just to enter the coldest environments possible. My desk was utterly full of papers, unfinished reports and countless cancelled contracts. I tried tidying everything up and pick up where I’d left off, but it was in vain for I could not calm down. I picked up the cancelled contracts and old assignments I had had before taking my leave, while waiting for the branch boss to clock in so I could explain to him what happened, face to face. None of my colleagues seemed thrilled for me to be there, but I wasn’t either. However, I could not have predicted what happened next, although it now seems very obvious.

Boss walks in carelessly, yet somehow in a foul mood. I hesitated to walk up to him because I had learned from past experiences that he does not like women talking first, but I knew I had to confront him. During his brief stay in his center office, I began shredding the obsolete documents I had been holding in my hands, one by one, boiling once again. I couldn’t wait for the shift to end.

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Then my boss comes to my desk and drops the bomb.

“You can stop. Pick up your things. I don’t want to see you here anymore.”

I asked desperately “What?!”

“You’re fired.”

With the most evil of looks I stared him dead in the eyes, still shredding documents, only this time I did not stop whatsoever. Once the paper turned to confetti inside the shredder bin, I continued to press my fingers into machine. The most haunting of sufferings came across my body, but it stopped somewhere above my neck, while I kept staring my boss in the eyes. Everyone turned in horror to watch me shred my hands. The blood squirted all over my face, nearby desks and the tin ceiling above my shaking head. I did not hold back a single second. I felt my fingerbones slowly cracking and grinding into dust, my skin flying in bits, and so my hand lost more and more strength, but something devilish came over me. I did not stop. I could’ve even tried to fit my head in, had I had a big enough shredder. If I had the chance I would’ve made everyone around me feel my pain from that moment, but I just wanted everything to end. Yet, it did not.

I passed out, expecting to wake up in a hospital bed without any of my hands, but a very similar workplace unfolded before me. Still, it was different enough. The walls were the purest shade of white I had thought possible, there were no chairs and the desks were much bigger. However, the space did not feel big even though it was. I was just sick of seeing offices.

All of the sudden a polar bear two-footedly walked towards me out of thin air. With a certain aura around him, I sort of got hypnotised and followed it to the biggest office on this apparent floor. The door opened by itself effortlessly, and I was greeted with a raspy voice calling me in. The bear stood menacingly right by the door, urging me to obey with its looks. I was very confused. First, I had thought I made it to hell where I’d be cursed to relive my every god forsaken work day for the rest of eternity. I tried to remember all the stories about after-life I had heard from my parents, from my aunts and uncles, even from school, but there was no prophecy – just another corporation.

I walked in, only to meet an old looking fellow, bald but wearing a long and heavy grey beard, with glasses like an IT guy. I had never pictured a divinity as this. The same raspy voice sounded again.

“What is your name, lady?”

“Saya-san, mister. Kannaki Saya. Wouldn’t you know?”

“Saya-san, how did you get here?”

“I thought you would tell me. Is that not how things are done around here, or did I stumbled across the wrong purgatory?”

“Well, I know the truth and only the truth. But the truth is boring if you don’t hear it from someone else; and no, this is not purgatory.”

“Then what is it?”

“After-life. Well, the main office of deceased.”

I could not believe this, I must’ve been in a coma, I thought. The old man opened a book full of handwritten notes and tables. He muttered: “Deceased number 301, hm…” I remained silent.

“So you have taken your own life.”

“Yeah, how’d you guess?”

“Not funny, lady. You know, we don’t take well to those who disobey their very existence and end it by their own hands. Have you never been grateful for life so as to do such an awful deed?”

“Awful deed? How about my boyfriend?”

“Hm?” he reacted curiously. “What boyfriend?”

“I assume you have it in your notebook, God. Not even a month passed and you already forgot? His name is Muzukashi Akimitsu.”

The old man quickly looked over his book. Brutally honest, he gave away a stare of total discontent at the written paper. The name was there, but somehow he did not think it would be. “What a God” I said to myself.

“Yeah, found him. Mister Akimitsu. I did not know he was your boyfriend, I’m sorry.”

“Really? What else did you not know about him? What a sweet and wonderful person he had always attempted to be, especially to his close ones?! What sacrifices he’s had to make to make ends meet, to help me, to help everyone..? How he got brutally murdered and no body did anything about it?!!”

“Well, that was not intended, Saya-san. I am afraid there has been an error.”

“Excuse me!?!”

No blood left in my young woman body, but from throat to feet, from ears to jaw, from chest to every other spot, I was boiling once again. There was no way I heard that right – no way any of this was real. But it was. Akimitsu was wrongfully killed off by those beaurocrats of life and death – how incompetent everyone can be! – instead of a local Yakuza by the name of Aki Hiromitsu, in the monstrous manner not even heavens could have wished for. “An error” he said to me.

“Don’t you think you ought to do something about it?”

“Protocol is not set up that way, and if somehow a good obedient soul found out we made a mistake, he would come together with many others and go against us, against me. That would be worse for him that the already sealed fate he’s left with. I’m sorry.”

“Are you??”

I raged on yelling till I felt my non-physical lungs collapse like they would have if I stayed in that wretched realm (somehow the fact I was here made me dread after-life more than the real one). A nearby telephone chirped and rang as I was raging in God’s face. He did not care much for me. It looked like I seemed insane to him as well. He just picked up the phone and lowered it back down.

“Time’s up” he said to me, ignoring my words. “You are to join another world, to learn your lesson, to value life as you have it, while you have it. I will not sit here and listen to you bickering all day. I am your creator. Be gone, ungrateful woman.”

Right before my consciousness tumbled down a weird worm hole of space and time, I cursed him right to his face. That was the moment I decided I will one day kill God in revenge for Akimitsu. And then, I got here, stuck between other four white walls. My body – weaker and much smaller – awaited tired as it were in this small messy bed. The sheets pressed hard against my skin. With my vision blurry and members unresponsive, all I could do was scream and cry. A woman dressed in red rushes to me. She appears much more exhausted than I was. She tends to me in nothing but spirit, telling me to shut up and calm down. The only words left that I could muster to say..:

“THIS IS NOT OVER!”

I shall fulfill my task no matter what. Akimitsu, I’ll see you again, and we’ll be back in the same world. God, you’re dead to me.

END OF CHAPTER ONE