Pitch black and empty. Soaked in a lost sensation. One only recently reclaimed.

Pain.

Acute and unrelenting, an energy ball of lava superheated his idle, almost lifeless heart and jump-started it.

Vin's already teary eyes blasted open, and he flung forward from the ground. Or not.

A lustrous pure white light snuffed his vision, but he could feel the surface he lay on wasn't solid. It was cushiony and, fluffy?

His hand clenched his racing heart, and he breathed laboriously. His eyes showed no signs of adjusting to the light, so he shut them again.

He swallowed largely and sniffled. "I'm here." Sure he'd landed in heaven.

"Real or not. I already miss you guys," he thought, reminiscing what he'd believed to be his family.

Vin regretted not being able to say goodbye. Real or not, the Macy and Gavin he knew were genuine, for they cared for him as he did them. Still, he could only imagine the trauma he inflicted on his actual family, where or whenever he left them in his first life.

Long tears gushed down his cheek. He was relieved he could cry in the afterlife, feel strong emotions, and sense pain and comfort. He heard hazy sounds and could smell the pungent bleach that defiled the space he sat in.

"Clorox?"

He used his hand to mop the water mess from his eyes. Then, he made another attempt to see. Slowly opening his lids, the light flooded in. It was discomfiting, but he kept his wet iris fixed open, just like a newborn seeing for the first time.

The anticipation was brutal and frightening. Vin wondered what divine images awaited him in the great beyond. Unfortunately, he believed his angelic form was feeble and heavy. It felt nothing like his previous body, and he labored just to remain upright.

"Almost," he thought, wincing in discomfort while rays and blocky shapes materialized. Slowly, the early manifestation of heaven faded in.

First, round edges, then a brown, wooden frame, and a tall transparent cylinder. More colors, shapes, and a subtle sweet smell previously overwhelmed by bleach.

Vin wanted to reach out and touch it, but he'd surpassed his limit. His body gave out, and he fell back on the soft platform behind him. He caught his escaping breath, finding breathing alone a chore as if it'd cease to function if not for his manual command.

It was irksome and limiting. Not at all what he imagined the kingdom in the sky to be like. He was tired, and his fresh mind was masked in murky palls of haze.

"I'm cold, my head hurts, it's too bright.... this sucks," complained Vin, who'd begun to think that maybe the place he was transmitted was hell. With an astute inhale, he gathered his strength, aiming to conquer whatever needed to be overcome.

He visualized the large numbers of a race countdown and prepared to launch. Subtracting from 5, 4, then 3. One command of the imaginary horn, he leaped.

Vin's left arm rocketed onward first, hauling the rest of his body with it. He gripped the object in front of him like a claw machine and stretched his eyes open.

"..."

Deep red, pastel yellow, and faint greens, all clustered inside the translucent cylinder. Vin felt the delicate, soft colors and began to see them for what they were. "They're flowers, a lot of them."

He felt the glass vase that housed them, then rubbed the brown wooden table that kept it. His mint eyes adjusted to the light. Not the radiance of heavens gates but the large open windows at his left.

Vin narrowed his vision, then canvassed the environment more. Four pristine white walls, each swathed with flowers, gifts, and balloons. There was a single door at his right, while his bed was against the back wall. It was an earthly room.

**"We're live from seasons university. The principal, Jane Langley, is on stage once more with her dazzling golden lion. She has promised to show us more of what's in store as we enter day two of their awaited opening."

**"That's right, Jessy. I was skeptical seven years ago, but I've been proven DEAD wrong. A lot has already transpired, so we have much to cover, starting with the first official student race and the reveal of the candidate system."

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

**"No kidding, Bob; I, for one, am ecstatic that the first candidate is a girl from my home country, Poland. Emilia has already shown great promise after dominating the competition and being recognized live, on stage in front of millions."

Vin fixed on a holographic screen that displayed two reporters who stood in front of a familiar setting. Out of everything he'd experienced thus far, that was the most discombobulating.

He stared at the screen. Completely void of thought or will. He recognized Jane, though her appearance was more precise than his recollection of her. The live broadcast continued, citing things he'd experienced only hours ago. The problem was, he wasn't there. In place of Vin was another student.

A girl stood in his position on the stage while Jane recited the exact words he'd received.

There was indeed a clutch race before the assembly, but the unfamiliar female hosted it, not Vin. Nothing made sense. "That candidate badge was mine; me and Miyo were supposed to use that t-"

"Mu-" he mouthed, finding it challenging to speak aloud. "Mii-" he attempted again.

"Miyo! Where are you!" he yelled internally, scanning the white room a second time. The little phoenix was nowhere to be seen. Vin scrambled about, pushing the wooden board and flower vase away and moving as much as possible with his novel body. As he did so, he halted and realized the frail body that quickly exhausted wasn't his own.

His scarred arms and wrists were thin, like narrow planks. His usually-kept black hair was scruffy and drew nearly to his chin. The pigment of his brown skin was washed and wilted, and he could feel his flesh clinging to his ribcage.

Wires and pins pierced his skin, connecting to IV drips and other technologies he didn't understand.

"M-Mu, Mii," struggled Vin, respiring and sweating expeditiously. He grew frustrated and overwhelmed, trashing more, knocking the glass vase to the ground and shattering it.

Both his eyes and nose ran amok without blockage, wetting the blanket that covered his lower half.

[[

"It will always be by your side..."

"I named it Miyu, short for 'me and you,"

]]

His father's broken and wistful voice flickered inside his head, and Vin quivered violently. He forfeited his sense and hauled his brittle body over the bed's protective railing and onto the hard floor.

A soft, unnerving snap emitted when he hit the ground, and he lost feeling in his left shoulder. It went limp, but he trudged onward. The bed cover went with him and netted his legs, not that he could walk anyways.

Grunting, he crawled toward the lone door with his thin arm. Slithering like a soldier that touched base on a hostile battlefield. He wanted, no, needed his companion.

With intense, wet, fierce eyes, he violently groaned, "Miyoo!" The door he peered at burst open, and a woman in a blue nurse uniform hurried through. She was notified when his monitor device was torn off and entered just in time to hear his pained scream and see him crawling with a dislocated shoulder.

She halted as if she'd seen a ghost. Lingering in the doorway with outstretched eyes and gasping beneath her covered mouth.

The woman was irrelevant, and Vin screamed his partner's name a second time. Once he did. The blanket stuck to his legs crawled with him. Something struggled to break free, sliding from the tangle of cloth near his hips and making way for a clearing.

Shook, Vin scrambled while unwrapping himself. A slight bulge in the cover managed to crawl up, then out the top where Vin saw them.

"Miyo?" Breathed Vin, who glanced at the emerging dark figure. Once it was uncovered, he gagged on the air in his windpipe. For, the creature that toiled to drag itself forward wasn't the Miyo he knew.

It was just barely in the shape of a bird. Half of its shadowy body was melting, and its wings drooped like liquid. Miyo's face was only half-formed, and its lone eye shifted left and right in desperate search of the owner that called its name.

The nano bots of the summon were unstable. In the same way that ice cream melted when taken from a fridge, Miyo was dissolving after lack of maintenance.

Its sensors were shot, and it could hardly process sound or movement. Vin extended an arm toward his only present family but found it impossible to comfort the confused machine. He left it to its madness.

At that moment, Vin confirmed it. That reality wasn't heaven; it was, in fact, hell.

That picture of his thin, shaky arm reaching for his broken brother was enough. He wailed without restraint, letting his mighty sorrows echo from the room throughout the entire hospital ward.

By then, he more or less comprehended his circumstances. Still, he would have rather died in that dreamland where he and Miyo could race without worries. Where they both shinned and contested beautifully.

The nurse overseeing his spectacle had fled and returned with a doctor. They attempted to calm Vin but had no luck. He was ultimately injected with a sedative and slowly lost the energy to resist. Before fading, he heard more fanatical individuals enter the room and exchange words.

"His vitals were normal minutes ago; I- I don't know what happened."

"It's okay; first, let's get him back on the bed." replied a labored male. "Get a technician on campus; we'll repair his support summon before he wakes up again."

"Doctor, that's what's bizarre. The patient never had a nanosphere registered to him. His father purchased the summon AFTER he went into a coma seven years ago, so this should be their first time meeting." rambled an unnerved nurse.

"I spoke with his father, and he told me the creature's name was Miyu, then the patient woke up calling it Miyo."

"Doctor, artificial intelligent or not, I've never seen a nanomachine respond that way, like- as if it was alive."

She continued, but the end of her ramble was lost along with Vin's consciousness.