A young man in a pizza delivery uniform stood outside of a poor-looking apartment building with a red bag full of hot pizzas. He pressed a doorbell another time, patiently waiting.

Even though he looked like someone in his late teens, this pizza delivery man named Tyler Chestnut already celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday. Of course, the fact that on that day he was completely alone didn't bring him much happiness.

Maybe because he just shaved his beard today, but his face looked especially young. His short chestnut hair was probably an inheritance from the distant ancestor he gave him his last name. His green eyes, though, he got from his mother. Even if toxic and abusive, she still was the one who gifted him the opportunity to live in this world.

Tyler checked the time on his phone. In his line of work, delivery people are instructed to wait for five minutes before leaving the place. And the time was over.

Just when he turned his back to the door and was ready to leave, it suddenly opened. The heavy steel door rammed his back with a strong force, making him stagger. Maybe he could be able to restore his balance if not for the pizza delivery bag he carried in his hands. With the strong impact from behind and the heavy bag in the front, he was sent flying towards a staircase. The staircase wasn't long or high, but at the end of it was a hard concrete floor.

Tyler fell in a ridiculous way and, before he can do anything to improve the situation, his head approached the concrete at a staggering speed. He felt a powerful impact at his right temple. And then, nothing.

Just like this, the miserable life of Tyler Chestnut came to an untimely end.

***

"Such an anti-climatic end to a life with such tremendous potential. What a pity..."

Tyler Chestnut regained his sight as he heard a somewhat familiar voice. Before him, a surprisingly busty teenage girl with blonde hair and blue eyes sat on a funny looking throne in the midst of a starry sky.

"What the hell?!" Tyler said. Or at least he thought that he said it until realizing that he doesn't even have a body.

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It was a really strange state he found himself in. He could see, hear, and think, but he couldn't feel anything. He could somehow move his point of view as if he was a single point in the space that could perceive the world around it. And this world was rather confusing, a limitless cosmos with countless stars and galaxies with a single crystalline throne being the center of all of this. And, if it wasn't absurd enough, the girl sitting on the throne was none other than his high school crush... She looked the same as she did seven years ago, and she even wore her high school uniform!

"What the hell is going on?" he mentally thought again.

"Nothing special," the girl said as if she could read his mind, or, rather, she actually could. "I just invited you to my place, Tyler Chestnut. Make yourself at home."

Seeing his former crush sitting cross-legged at the throne while smiling at him mischievously made Tyler feel an unexplainable sense of horror.

"How can I be afraid without a physical body, though?" he thought.

"Because your soul is here and souls are such a thing - they perfectly emulate your brain activity. Fascinating, right?"

Tyler paused for a minute before asking, "Maybe you can first explain what is going on here? The last thing I remember is delivering a pizza and then falling by accident. And now - this."

The girl answered with a sigh, "Didn't I already said it before? You died. It was really unexpected, you know?"

"Eh?!" Tyrel was utterly shocked. To him, it didn't seem that a small incident like this could lead to his death. But, apparently, life can be very unfair sometimes. He already learned it the hard way more than once, so Tyler accepted his death easier than someone else would in his place.

"Well, shit happens," he would shrug his shoulders if he still had them. "Why did you say that it was unexpected, though? I also remember something about tremendous potential? You didn't talk about me, right?"

"Why are you so surprised?" the girl asked while looking straight at the place where he was supposed to be. "Do you have no faith in your potential?"

"I mean..." he paused for a second. "There is nothing special about me, and my life was boring shit full of problems."

"Each person has some potential, but if you give it a number, some people have three potential points, and the others have three million points," she explained patiently. "And you, Tyler Chestnut, are closer to the latter than the former. If you didn't die, there would be a high chance that you would end up being one of the most influential people on Earth within a couple of decades. It is almost a sure thing."

Tyrel was flattered by this explanation but didn't really buy it. One of the most influential people on Earth? Him? No way.

"You don't need to believe me, Tyler," the girl said bewitchingly. "Instead, I want to offer you a deal."