He reached out to turn the computer off before the last glimpse of Twitter images flashed on his screen.

"What am I doing with my life?"

A big sigh followed as the 23-year-old Danny scratched the back of his head.

"What can you do... you know? Everything seems like it happened so fast."

He stood up and picked up his cheap black wallet that had lots of ripped plastic on the folded edges.

He opened it and saw the last few paper bills he had.

The rest of his money was in an e-wallet. Though he didn't really expect much from that either.

"Time to go to the convenience store to restore my weekly supply of poison..." he smirked."It's really been 3 years since the beginning of the pandemic. My...my... How far I've fallen."

He left his mostly empty room and shut the door silently as it was 2 am in the morning. The young man didn't want to wake up anyone from his parents or his siblings.

Before he let go of the doorknob to his room, he opened the door again and took one last peek at his dark room.

It almost looked like there was no furniture in his room.

His bed/military sleeping bag on the floor, a table with his laptop, a monitor, and an electric fan to keep the mosquitoes away, since the windows and walls were basically open, just covered with some dusty curtains.

He checked the cabinet where the last of his clothes were kept, and remembered he'd thrown his officer cadetship portrait away already.

He exited the house with their pack of house dogs noticing him on his way out. Usually, they would follow him to the convenience store, but this time they just stayed home.

"Maybe they know how much I need my alone time. Ha! As if I haven't had enough already," he thought.

He walked to the convenience store in the dead of night and kept thinking how lucky he was to be born in the era where 24/7 convenience stores existed.

"Imagine being born in the middle ages. Everyone had a curfew. And nobody was allowed outside at night. Where did the sad and depressed get their midnight snacks from?"

He smiled and looked up at the stars while continuing his walk.

"Thank God I am alive in the 21st Century I guess... What kind of world would it have been without girls dancing on TikTok, anime to waste your life with, and every type of junk food and beverage you can stuff yourself with until you choke and forget how sad you are."

He looked around the park that was near the store he was heading to.

"Nobody around huh? So am I really the only one suffering tonight? Or do my people have an unsaid schedule where we take turns every hour of the night."

The convenience store was open though one of its doors had been detached and just made to stay standing with some ingenuity coming from the store clerks using tables and packing tape.

He bought some beer cans with the money he had left and a small ice cream cup thinking the brain freeze could help him forget about his sorrows.

"I was going to be a military general one day. Now, I'm going to be... well... that old guy you see at the store stocking up with all the shit that capitalist corporations want to feed us with. And nobody is going to give me a second look. Not that I would care though. As long as VR and Anime are still in the future... nothing can stop me from enjoying what's left of my life. Fuck'em!"

Danny definitely did have his chances of becoming a military general. Just before Covid started, he was entering his 3rd year in the prestigious national military academy.

"Damn prestigious my ass!" he mumbled. "If I knew I was going to waste years of my youth in that hellhole on earth that's stuck in World War II, I would have just become a lawyer or a professor."

He spit and opened his beer. He chugged it and gave a sigh while raising his beer can to the night sky.

"It's not your fault GOD! But I am blaming you anyway! You made me a pussy with all that love and kindness bullshit. There was no fucking kindness when I joined that shit as a plebe! Where the fuck were you! When I needed you the most!"

He looked down and headed to the park where he could drink his liquor peacefully without his family catching him getting into his vices again.

Stolen story; please report.

He sat down in a corner and rested.

"Man... Why do I even keep talking to God?"

He giggled. "It's not like I still believe in that shit."

Danny's life flashed in his eyes as he looked at the moisture of the cold beer can and as he felt the crunchy texture of the paper bag he was holding against the rough cement bench.

"Nothing fucking matters. There is no God. There is no heaven or hell. There are no souls. Just matter. Matter that doesn't fucking matter."

As his thoughts ran through his mind, he heard ruffling noises just a few yards deeper into the park.

"I guess, I'm not so lonely after all. Probably some teenagers, trying to get busy at night. All right... I'm not staying to listen to this. I haven't reached that level of perversion yet."

As he said that, his body headed in the direction of the noise, and he hid himself behind the shrubbery sneakily.

An adult male in his forties was with a 13-year-old girl in the park.

"Who are you!" the girl said. "You're not John!"

"It's me, John. We talked online. Remember?"

The man pulled the girl towards him and grabbed her by the back of the neck.

"Come on! Let's do it! Didn't we talk about what we were going to do at the park? You promised me."

"Nooo! Get away! Help! Let me go!"

The girl struggled but could do nothing against the man's strength.

The man pushed the girl down on the grass and began to tear off her clothes.

"Hahahaha! I'm going to enjoy this, baby girl..."

A rock smashed against the back of the man's head.

Danny came to help the girl.

"Run!" he shouted at her.

The man stood up and touched his bleeding head, and he looked at Danny with glaring eyes.

"You bastard!"

The man wrestled with Danny, but it was almost a fair fight.

Although, the man was bigger and heavier.

Danny's military training vamped up his adrenaline and he came like a beast against the man.

He pressed his thumbs against the man's eyes, and it started bleeding.

Danny felt something on his stomach.

But his blood pumped so aggressively that he bit the man's ear off, and grabbed the rock again.

Then smashed it repeatedly on the man's bleeding ear, till he could feel the man's skull crack like a ceramic pot.

He pushed the body over and lifted his arms which were soaked with blood.

He tried standing up but fell on the grass again, as he lay down, he saw the girl with policemen with flashlights heading towards them.

"That fast? Good girl. Though, I wish I had been more careful. This old disgusting fuck brought a knife."

Danny's eyesight blurred and he could see the girl running toward him.

"Mister... Thank you. For... Helping me."

The girl sobbed as she spoke to him.

A policeman secured the suspect who was lying dead, and another came to apply first-aid to Danny.

"Miss... Please move away," the policeman said. "The ambulance is coming."

The girl saw Danny's eyes lose life but she noticed the smile on his face like some sort of relief made him happy in his last moments.

The girl prayed and said, while her hands were clasped together.

"God! Please help him. I know I don't go to church much, or do all the things a good young girl is supposed to do. But please help him."

In some sort of supernatural and miraculous way, the girl felt a surge of comfort and confidence that her prayer was heard from above.

She looked up and felt like something magical was happening.

Danny woke up in the darkness.

"Fucking hell... Why don't they leave some sort of light in this hospital."

The young NEET's mind really believed he actually survived that ordeal and went on with his rant.

"HAHAHA! I survived MOFOs. I'm going to be a hero. Take that, bastards from the military! You're not the only ones who can be heroes! Damn... Twitter must be trending with my hero story by now. Hey! Maybe, I'll get an offer to join the military again. But hell... it's really dark in this hospital. Like, is there a power outage or something?"

Danny began to feel himself, and there was nothing to feel.

He was a self-aware specter in the darkness.

"Shiiii- So... I'm dead. Huh? Darkness? Check. Empty void? Check."

He observed his state of existence and the external world he was in.

"Self-Awareness? Check. No sign of bright light or pearly gates? Check."

He simulated a nod and rubbed his chin in his thoughts.

"I see. So I'm either in purgatory or on the way to hell.

Seems like the nihilists and Naturalists on Facebook were wrong.

I probably should have prayed to some sort of God or Buddha before I charged that old man. Guess it's hell for me?"

Suddenly, Danny's consciousness was sucked into a current of existential matter and non-matter, like a cosmic toilet being flushed in outer space.

"Nooooooo..oooo...oooo!"

Danny's specter looked as if it headed toward a fork in the cosmic spatial current.

The one on the left seemed to go towards a bright light, while the other fork looked like a black hole of void and destruction.

"No! I'm not heading there... Bright light! Bright light!"

Danny's specter tried to swim against the current and he knew he was leaning to the right of the current that would bring him to the hole of void.

"Fuck that! No! I ain't going there!"

Nearing the fork, Danny's specter struggled hard to head toward the opposite fork where there seemed to be at least a sliver of hope for him.

Then as he neared the fork of his final cosmic destination, he heard a girl's voice from the darkness.

"Please! Please, God! Help him! Please!"

Danny's specter was almost ultimately headed to the void when a mysterious force pushed him to the other side of the current, where he was sent into the bright light.

"What was that? What..."

Danny entered the bright light and his eyes opened and he found himself staring at a woman's head.

He cried hard. "Yes! Yes! I'm alive!"

Danny sobbed and screamed in joy as a baby.

"It's not hell! Yes! It's not purgatory either! Yes! It's a- It's a-"

Danny kept crying and looked around.

A female elf was holding him.

"It's a-"

"Look, Marvia! Your child is looking at you. You should hold him."

"It's a-"

A huge anthropomorphic lion dressed in gallant robes and humanlike hands wrapped in a tight glove was behind the elf.

"Is it a boy? Good. He seems to be healthy and strong. That is good."

The giant lion talked in front of baby Danny while he was being passed to a woman lying on her bed.

"It's... It's a-"

Danny was then held by a beautiful woman who was probably in her teenage years, and she looked at him with pure joy and love.

A halo then seemed to form around the woman's head as she tried to let her newborn child calm down while she held him in her embrace.

Danny was stunned at the weird things he was seeing, one after another.

"It's a... There is only one explanation for this. I have read about this before. In many light novels. In many manga. In many Anime. This... is... a... REINCARNATION!"