Cool breeze grazed my ears.

He whispered softly, a language I thought I knew.

I could feel his feet coming to rest on the ground, slowly but surely he landed, bringing incredible heat, so hot it was almost cold. My eyes still stayed closed, but I wobbled slightly. Not used to the weird sensation, it felt like falling.

I realised at that moment I was standing, even though it felt like my back was resting on something hard and solid.

"Very good. You're almost stable." I tried to move, but found that I couldn't. He sighed, moving closer to me - it got hotter. "Not yet. You're forgetting the basics Junhong. Open your eyes."

Hastily, I opened my left eye.
I saw flashes of pastel powders in different shades, and a navy dark blue, all blended together with a single base note purple. My right eye opened and I suddenly became aware of the neon green, and white. Speckles of it, everywhere like sparkles, like stars. Note values flashed through my head, everywhere I looked I heard, no, felt music. It felt different, but at the same time all too familiar. I looked around this mini galaxy and saw him leaning against air, smiling at me. I ignored him for a second, wanting to absorb everything. We were alone. It was massive... Wherever we were was breathtakingly huge; but small and intimate at the same time.

"Are you ready?" His mouth didn't move, yet his voice still resounded in my head, soft but powerful.

"Who are you?" I shocked myself by speaking. I didn't care how direct I was being at that moment in time, but my mouth didn't agree with my head before speaking like it usually does.

He shook his head. "Irrelevant. Try asking something that matters... In the grand scheme of things."

I tilted my head, preparing to try again. "Where are we?"

"Better." He outstretched his arms, sighing into the air; his breath turned into streams of dust, settling amongst the fake stars. "Welcome to Room 342. You're our newest guest. It's never the same for any two people but this is drastically different..." He trailed off gesturing to the golden blue globe behind him. It crackled and pulsed, overflowing with electricity.

I wasted a few seconds to staring at it; it looked like it would break at any given moment.

"Are you God?"

He laughed. "Far from it, I think you'll find."

"I'm sorry if I upset God."

"Don't worry about it."

I frowned, expecting him to tell me more about God. I wanted to know which God existed, what he was like, if there was one. It seemed like there was one, I imagined someone must have been controlling this. However I felt religion and spirituality was a subject he was avoiding."Why am I here?"

"You want to be."

"Why do I want to be here?"

He frowned, and put one hand on his chin. "Most people come here because they want one last look."

"At what?"

"Their life." He paused, peering at my face, floating towards me and then floating backwards again. "But you aren't most people are you Junhong?"

I looked at his smug face and the final piece of string holding my composure together snapped. "I think it's awfully unfair that you get to call me by my name, and I don't have anything to call you apart from 'Irrelevant'."

He broke into a wide grin. "You're so preoccupied. You don't even care that you're floating right now do you?" I stole a glance at my feet, realising that he was right. "You can do anything you want in room 342, but you're hell bent on knowing my name." I sighed waiting for him to fess up. He shook his head. "You can call me Time Keeper. That's basically what I do."

"Are you human, Mr. Time Keeper?"

"I was once." He shook his head once again apparently fustrated that he actually answered my question. "Seriously... Since you can't make up your mind on what you want to do first, I'll guess you'll watch clips of your life. Like most people."

"Clips? How long are the clips?"

"They usually range from four to seventeen minutes. But they can be much shorter and much longer." I knew he was a Time Keeper, but the precision in those numbers scared me. The whole ordeal seemed realer. "They're not usually in chronological order. They're not going to be the clips you think they are... And usually there's about twenty of them."

I simply nodded, absorbing in all the information.

"You're quite calm. It's surprising actually. I thought you'd be kicking and screaming by now. Claiming to not be dead or something."

I coolly ignored his comments. "When do I leave this room?"

"When you want to I guess... I just keep time. In here, you control it."