After talking to Sora, began to realize that I never explained who gave her the sandwiches. lol. damn those sandwiches, randomly appearing on her table. Not like Mr. Bobbit would come in and give Harin sandwiches. 

The Adventures of Byun Bora

Click.

A door opening.

I was standing in front of a panel of judges.

Snap.

A flash from a camera.

The bustle of people and the rustling of papers.

My eyes remained open when one of them spoke.

“Name?”

“B-Byun… Byun Bora,” I managed to say, taking in their white clothes and their notebooks in front of them. “Byun Bora. Medium, Clairvoyant.”

I was in a daze and all I remembered was shooting up and awakening in a white room that had people sitting on high chairs. They glanced at me from time to time before they began to shoot me with questions. They seemed done for, unlike how deities should be, but they looked like they didn’t give two damns.

“Plans?”

“A-Ah…” my voice stuttered and I still had no idea what I should do. My mind went back to Matthew, my friends and my brother. My family that I had left behind without a goodbye. My stomach twisted and turned and all I could think about is that I was no longer human, that I had died.

“Is this the afterlife?”

“Yes.”

“And are you the management team?” I asked again, earning another nod. A grunt from all of them, paired with a sigh. I wasn’t at all special to them, despite the sacrifice I had made for the world to bypass judgment day. 

“Fill this out and we can guide you with a plan. Most mediums, handlers and clairvoyants end up reincarnating by choice if you have enough holy points,” one of them droned on. “Most of them go to heaven and most of them repent their sins before going to heaven. Your choice….”

His voice trailed off in the background and I saw that a paper had appeared right in front of me. The management team began to speak in hushed voices, all of them saying something about a change in regulation but all I could do was stare at one place.

There were already tags on the paper that had been written, such things as “Eligible of choice” and a few other things but there was only one thing that caught my mind. My eyes fell onto the bottom of the page and I blinked, my hand going to rub it.

“Eligible”, it read and I was about to ask for a pen when it appeared and I reached for it silently, ticking it.

Grim Reaper, it said. Eligible for me to be a Grim Reaper.

The paper disappeared and I looked up at them, one of them already reading my form when they looked at me and then back at the form.

“You need to have a resume,” one of them said and that’s where I found myself in the record room, grabbing my files and bringing it to them so I could I fill out my resume. Achievements, skills, personality and characteristic attributes and so on and so forth when I straightened up and announced to them that I was done.

She’s done, they had chorused and I passed it on nervously to them. How many years would it take to come back onto Earth? Seven years? If I worked hard like Matthew? How many years until we would be reunited?

“Grim Reaper, she said, she wants to be a Grim Reaper.”

“Attached, they all are. Mortals.”

Whispers traveled through the panel when I found myself blurting out a question, all their eyes looking towards me in question.

“Excuse me?” I began, wringing my hands together. “Is there a faster alternative?”

The question stilled in the air and they didn’t say anything, a slam sounding as a stamp was brought down onto the paper when a bell somewhere rang. One of them scowled at the alarm, saying that the gates to the afterlife had so much backlog. Each soul was going to be screen checked and the amount of security regulations that would be added was horrifying.

I was feeling ignored, to say the least when a door opened and a man walked through, the management team giving him a bow. I wondered if he was God, because he sure felt like it. He seemed kind and before I knew it, he asked me where I wanted to be most as I walked beside him.

“Home,” was what I answered, the male chuckling. He had clean-kept hair, hands behind his back when I asked him if he was the big boss, the male shaking his head. “Has anyone ever met the big boss?”

“I have,” he answered, a hand snapping in the air and I found myself in my old small town, where I had grown up at. “But there are some things that aren’t meant to known.”

I didn’t push any answers, both of us walking among the trees.

“And you are?” I asked, the male looking at me and smiling.

“I’m every person’s guardian angel.”

“Must be hard.”

“It is, especially when some don’t deserve it,” he replied as we stalked past the trees and the leaves crunched under our feet. “You want to be a Grim Reaper?”

“Just to be with the one I love,” I answered and I expected him to not understand, but he did.

“Tell me about him,” he said and I looked up at him, a kind smile on his features.

“Why would you want to know about such measly things such as love?”

“Because it seems like it’s the biggest motivation for most. In other universes, too.”

I blinked; my hands intertwined.

“It’s simple,” I told him. “with the one I love. It was never forced. Sometimes, I didn’t have to say anything and I didn’t. I just want to be with him.”

My words seemed to put him into deep thought.

“He’s a Grim Reaper, took seven years for him to come back but he did. I want to do the same.”

“Grim Reaper, seven years…” he murmured, looking at me. “By any chance, are you talking about Matthew Lee?”

“Oh,” was all I said in response to his question, surprised at he knew. “You know him.”

“I know all of them,” he answered, smiling. “He was so adamant on staying on here. We almost gave him a choice to venture to other places but he brushed us away and said that he didn’t need to. That he’d stay here because there was someone he had to go home to.”

I smiled, the male sighing softly.

“It would have been faster; however, he just had his sights set here.”

“Faster?” I echoed, the male nodding. “How fast?”

He gave me a number but I didn’t know how long it would be in human years but he simply assured me that it would be faster.

“Will I be able to come back here after?” I asked, the male nodding. “Why didn’t he take it then?”

“Young Matthew Lee wanted to keep in contact with a few of his handler friends and he spent most of his time in the Vision Room.”

“Kyungsoo,” I whispered, thinking to myself how Kyungsoo knew of Matthew coming back.

“We decided not to propose the idea to him.”

“And if I take this… route, I’ll have my records wiped clean?”

A nod and my stomach dropped, but I couldn’t imagine being away for seven years. I had my brother to take care of.

“So… it’s like a fast-track master’s program,” I said to him and he looked puzzled when I realized that he didn’t understand what I was talking about.

“Education,” he mused. He seemed to finally get it. “This choice isn’t given to anyone, child. It’s hardly even brought up but with what is about to come in other universes, they need more Grim Reapers.”

“What is coming?” I asked, the male pressing his lips together.

“War.”

With a snap, the trees had dissipated in thin air and I was back in a white room, multiple screens flashing in front of me when I stepped forward to read them. Multiple universes, I realized, the charts of each going up and down.

“Is this like a competition?”

“To some, yes. That is why this particular universe really wants to unite their four worlds,” the man said, chuckling to himself. “Different management teams, different ways on handling the world. We’re all part of something big. We decided to keep it simple in ours, a panel of judges and Grim Reapers to help with afterlife duties. Other places, however…”

His voice trailed and I watched as the graphs and charts moved.

“Some places have what we call here, hyper-realism. Some places are overridden by infested people that eat people,” he chuckled. “If you were to choose this route, you’d be where they need you most.”

“And that place I’d be stationed in, will there be a management team, too?”

A nod, “They are called the Illuminati.”

“There is also Illuminati here too,” I said and he nodded.

“There is an Earth there, too. Their world is much more complicated than ours will ever be.”

“And what is this place called?”

He smiled, a hand going to motion to the screen.

“Exodus.”

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The moment I reached Exodus, I found myself in a basement, Hermione Granger telling me the gist of it. I wasn’t born in his world, I found out. I was supposed to be the first child but died by a miscarriage but a Byun Bora was born—she just wasn’t me. Baekhyun was alive and well. There was a lot about souls that I had to learn about. A lot were duplicates but it was important to know that they aren’t the same people, they just look alike and their