NEW QUEST [YOUR FIRST REAPING]
“Richard… Smith?”
Those were the last words Momo spoke before the coffee table in front of her promptly fell out of existence. Her mouth agape, she watched as the Nether unstitched itself before her, consuming first Valerica’s beloved table, then her two comfy stools, three Dutch-blue tea cups, a giant heap of Morgana’s unopened mail, and then finally, the nearby cupboard.
Momo crawled frantically backward as the sinkhole set its sights on her. She slapped the side of Valerica’s face, briefly panicking at how cold her cheek was before remembering that this was, in fact, Valerica, and she was always the temperature of a glacier. The other woman groaned before her eyes lazily fluttered open. Momo tugged at her sleeve.
“Get up! Get up!”
“Darling, please keep it down. I have such a headache. Major mana hangover.”
“The floor is trying to eat us, Valerica!”
“That is a common enough occurrence here that it doesn’t require raising your voice.”
Momo’s feet dipped beneath her, and she yelped. The hole was up to her ankles now. Actually, ‘hole’ might have been a misnomer, because it was most definitely a rift; Momo could see an entirely new world unfold blurrily on the other side of it: blue skies, white clouds, and what looked like the San Francisco skyline rendered in the style of an Impasto painting, splotchy radiant blues and greens constructing skyscrapers and seagulls and city streets.
San Francisco? No. Was she really seeing that correctly? This was not the time for a homecoming. She had been planning on visiting her parents eventually of course. She wasn’t a total degenerate. She was just planning to do it in like… a few centuries. Maybe two, tops. When her parents were finally old enough that they could hopefully no longer see, hear, or generally remember her.
Ok, yes. It was embarrassing, but she had developed an entire fantasy around it. It went something like this: she’d find out the location of their nursing home, politely sedate one of the nurses and steal their uniform (like in the movies), make sure that her parents were still breathing—and that her little brother hadn’t accidentally killed himself—and then carefully, politely, silently make her exit before they had the chance to get a good look at her.
It was a foolproof plan. One that minimized any unwanted emotional crises.
“Ah. I see,” Valerica said. Momo had failed to notice that the other woman was now floating beside her, arms crossed apathetically as she watched the rift consume most of the room. “You’re being called for your first reaping. Not the finest timing, but when duty calls…”
Momo’s face was flushed with panic. “My first what?”
“Reaping,” Valerica clarified helpfully. Momo flew up to join her, watching as two more bookshelves fell through the ever-expanding orifice. “It’s good you get it done now. Seeing as you haven’t completed your initial domain quest, I imagine you’ve only received a very small sample of your godly powers. A spell or two at most. If you have any hopes of solving our Kyros issue without a hundred-demon army, your full godly repertoire is quite critical to have. Also.”
Valerica grabbed her suddenly by the shoulders.
“As wonderful as it has been to watch you grow into the wicked woman you are today.” Valerica smiled widely. “I think it’s time you let your other family see that progress, hm?”
Before Momo could muster a complaint, Valerica seized her by the shoulders and hurled her into the rift. Momo barely had time to shriek in protest as she was sucked through the swirling vortex, the fabric of reality warping and twisting around her. She felt weightless for a terrifying moment, and then gravity took hold with a vengeance. The next thing she knew, she was plummeting through the sky like she’d been thrown from a plane, the world spinning violently around her.
She landed with a bone-rattling thud on what remained of Valerica’s coffee table. The wind was fully knocked out of her, and she took several staccato breaths before she could fully inflate her lungs again. As she struggled to breathe, the harsh scent of old grease and discarded food scraps filled her nose. It was definitely not a pleasant scent, but at the same time it was vaguely… comforting? Like a hug from an overzealous relative. Even without tasting it, she recognized those flavors.
Groaning, she carefully stood up, wiping a greasy noodle off her leg. She stepped through crushed cans and soggy takeout containers until she caught sight of a neon sign flickering above her. It was an old, battered thing, with faded red and green tubes that buzzed faintly as they struggled to stay lit. The sign depicted a stylized dragon coiled around the restaurant name—"Dragon Lotus.”
“Chinese food,” Momo nearly cried out.
Life’s greatest pleasure.
She’d been so utterly deprived of it.
Valerica was right—partially. (As it always went. If Valerica was ever completely right, that was very bad news.) Indeed, it was time for Momo to return to Earth. But not for some silly, inconsequential reason like addressing her deep seated familial issues. No. She was about to absolutely gorge herself.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
But first, an appraisal of her situation: the restaurant’s back alley was dimly lit, narrow, and stifling, with steam billowing out from a nearby vent. Above her, the clattering sounds of a bustling kitchen filled the air, chefs shouting orders in rapid-fire Mandarin.
It was a far cry from the grand entrance she might have imagined for her trip back to Earth, but then again, she was never one for grand entrances.
Smelling like day-old udon was actually a substantial upgrade from landing in a pile of ancient hay and rat-piss. Sorry, Morgana’s Dawn.
Momo gingerly stepped around the debris, startled as the restaurant’s back door swung open, and a harried-looking waiter emerged, tossing another bag of trash into the already overflowing dumpster. He glanced at Momo for a brief second, blinked, and then went back inside without a word. Clearly, a woman standing in the middle of a demolished coffee table wasn’t the strangest thing he’d seen today.
She was grateful that at the very least the giant hip-wound the nether demon had inflicted on her had stitched itself closed. Dumpster loitering was one thing, bleeding out onto someone’s garbage was another.
A soft chime echoed in Momo's mind. A notification popped up in her vision, startling her.
RICHARD SMITH
AGE: 54
12 DAYS:13 HOURS:15 MINUTES:2 SECONDS
PERSONAL NOTES:
Smith is afraid of: balloons, small children, weddings.
Smith is comforted by: money, penthouse suites, lasagna.
It took Momo a moment to parse what she was looking at, until the realization dawned on her. That countdown… it was a death clock—Richard Smith’s death clock, to be precise. It ticked down ominously, the seconds steadily decreasing. Her eyes widened as she noticed a glowing, ethereal chain connected to the ticking clock, leading somewhere into the distance. It was Richard’s soul chain, and it dragged along the ground like a heavy, burdensome tether.
Her stomach churned. She knew the Reaper was responsible for escorting souls to the afterlife, but she assumed that happened once they were dead. She didn’t realize her job required coming onto the crime scene a full twelve days early like some sort of woefully incompetent police officer. He was only fifty-four years old, for gods’ sake. She didn’t want to watch him kick the bucket in front of her—she’d rather save his little penthouse-enjoying life for the time being and go back home.
She crossed her arms indignantly, watching through the foggy restaurant window as the same man from before, most likely the restaurant’s sole waiter, flew back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room. He was carrying plates of steaming hot noodles and broccoli, fresh from the wok.
Her stomach rumbled like a thunderstorm. Her legs had started walking toward the food before her mind had even noticed it. Momo decided then that whatever Richard’s unfortunate fate was, it could wait. She hadn’t tasted broccoli that wasn’t a sad imitation made of toilet brush in over a year. Some things were just simply more important than life and death.
***
The savory noodles and tender vegetables were heaven on her tongue, and for a brief moment, Momo forgot all about her divine responsibilities—and about the fact that she smelled like molding soy sauce. Thankfully, the restaurant saw enough… interesting… clientele that no one seemed to mind that she smelled suspiciously like the dumpster outside, and it was only when it came time to pay for her three individual entrees that Momo realized she had lived in Alois for too long.
Random enchanted trinkets and royal pardons were not exactly commonplace payment for goods received around here. People in America tended to only accept something that had become completely foreign to Momo in recent months—actual, tangible money. Dollar dollar bills, baby. Doubting that there was an ATM that converted Aloisian bucks to USA, she frowned as the waiter approached, his feet unknowingly stepping over Richard’s soul chain.
If only she could have accessed Richard’s life savings along with his life.
“Pay with card? Apple Pay?” the man said impatiently. His hair was graying, the skin below his knees sagging, and he had deep wrinkles worn into forehead. Yet despite his weathered looks, he couldn’t have been more than a day over forty. There was still a potent youth there, even if it had been beaten down with the hardhammer of life and restaurant management.
Not just youth—but familiarity. The longer she looked at him, the more she felt like she knew this man. Like she had stumbled into a memory.
The hanging lanterns suspended above the tables; the paintings of serene rural landscapes and calligraphy scrolls; the rickety nineties speakers playing classic Chinese hits with an intermittent crackling noise. Everything came sliding back like an avalanche of nostalgia when she heard the faint beep of the fire alarm—the batteries never once refilled—echo across the dim room.
She had been here before, quite a few times. Back in elementary school with her mom. The waiter back then had been a young boy, sixteen or seventeen, the son of the cranky owner that Momo had been petrified of. That old man back then had to have been in his late eighties; he could barely see, and he walked with a cane that scratched up the wood floors every time he walked.
The floor here had the same scratches. Layers of lacquer tried to mask it, but it was still there.
Her mother had been good friends with the old man—Old Man Liang, she remembered suddenly, with a clarity like it had been yesterday—her and him had played Mahjong on the weekends at Momo’s family’s apartment. Momo had always dreaded those weekends; they were always yelling as much as they were talking, and her mom would force Momo to come out to greet Liang, to “pay him respect,” she’d say like he was attending their sacred temple, and not visiting their house in his shorts and a worn down tank top.
Momo and her mom had stopped going to the Dragon Lotus once she had entered sixth grade, or some time around that. Momo blossomed into her social anxiety around age twelve, and refused to go anywhere where she might actually know somebody after that. Eventually, Liang stopped coming to the house, too. Momo never asked why—she didn’t want to know the answer.
And yet, here she was, asking.
“Does Old Man Liang still work here?”
The man’s brows creased. His lips downturned into something between a frown and a scowl.
He immediately dropped the professional niceties, if there were any to begin with. “Where have you been?” he said grumpily. “I buried my old man years ago.”
Momo blinked.
“Your… old man?”
The man sighed, letting her plate clatter onto the table. “Damn, you got his hearing too?”
“You’re Liang’s kid?” She grabbed his wrist with an urgency. “How old are you now?”
“Why do you need to know?”
“I’m Momo,” she said breathlessly. “Momo Lim.”
His eyebrows lifted, looking like he’d seen a ghost.
“The missing Lim kid? Don’t think so. You’re supposed to be dead.”
“How old are you?”
“God? You’re alive. Fuck. I’m forty-two, man.”
“Forty-two,” she repeated.
Her hand flew to her mouth.
“It’s been twelve years?!”