Chapter 01
I was at my grandfather’s funeral. When I was five years old my father disappeared. The police searched for years but couldn’t find him. The only living relative I had was my grandfather, and so he raised me.
Dad was never married to mom, I never saw her picture and I didn’t know how she looked. All I knew was her name, Emma Mai. She was supposedly half Chinese and Japanese. I never bothered to ask about her because I was five, but when I went to school and saw the other children with their moms picking them I asked dad about it but he told me it was something he would talk about with me when I grew older.
Well…
Older never came with him around, and when I started first grade I had no parent to bring me home from school.
I mean… I tried to forget about the past, but it always flared up in my face when I was around the other children. I couldn’t escape the fact I was alone. Grandpa took care of me but grandpa was old and was on a fixed income. Everything was about saving money and hoping I could get to work and get out.
Now at eighteen years old, my grandfather died just as I graduated from high school. I’m going to start college. I took out a government loan to pay for it, something I’ll never be able to pay back unless I actually get a job after. That’s life in America. I was going to get a job and I had no one except maybe one friend who played way too many video games, but friends aren’t family. They won’t always be around.
Should I keep going even though there is no one left?
After the funeral was over I went back home. I inherited the house since there were no other living relatives. The house smelled like an old man’s den. It always smelled like old spice, or some other old man’s cologne.
My thoughts were a mess as I went online and started reading some novels. What fascinated me the most was the what it was like to have a mother. Someone of the opposite sex being there for you. The reason I question this is because the way I viewed women was based solely on whether I would want to do it with them. Maybe that was unhealthy but that was all I could think of when I looked at someone of the opposite sex.
I remember what Grandpa once said.
Grandpa (Past): “Roy, you have to remember your mother even if you never saw a picture of her. She was the one who gave birth to you. Your father suffered when she died… I hope when you find someone one day you won’t have to witness her death like me or Joseph had to witness it. It’s a shame you never had a chance to live with your grandmother either. Roy, remember, women are different from men. The warmth of a mother is something you’ve never experienced and it’s regretful.”
Grandpa was never a good speaker but I didn’t care. He’s gone now, I don’t want negative memories of him.
The years continued to pass on by. Before I knew it, I was in twenty five and working a dead end job while avoiding everyone. I wasn’t antisocial. I made bad financial decisions and got into debt.
Then one day I lost my job because a woman at work whom I wasn’t attracted to said I was harassing her. I tried to appeal but people won’t listen to me. They just followed the trending hashtag of ‘believe all women.’ I had nothing left.
Without work there was no pay. Without pay I couldn’t make property tax. Property tax was due at the end of the year and I wouldn’t have it. This also included the fact that I couldn’t buy utilities, food or other things. I could sell the house but then there was nothing left. I was at the end of my rope.
Remember those online novels I read? I went to a website run by some guy in Australia. It had a story translated from Chinese to English about man born from two women and they both considered him their son. I don’t know why but even the more intimate and touchy scenes written about them didn’t bother me. I just wondered what it was like to be loved just for your birth.
Besides those novels there was one other love I had. It was for a new Japanese Pop idol named Erisu Moto. Moto Erisu perhaps it’s how it would be said in her country. I wasn’t sure of her age because it was not listed anywhere but I was sure she was at least sixteen which was the age many of them started becoming popular.
It was legal in Japan. Her body though was adult like and her body didn’t look like a child at all. I don’t know what my obsession with her is, but that straight black hair and the beautiful skin of hers… along with her youthful looks makes me wish I could have been a classmate of hers somewhere in Japan instead of the life I currently lived. That’s all fantasy though.
I always have weird fantasies when I’m depressed but I kept thinking what if I could reincarnate into another world. What if life could be different. I tried to stop looking at a Erisu since she was a girl I’d never be able to meet.
I didn’t have much left in the rest of my savings, and as I was looking at the last few hundred dollars my phone rang. It was my only friend, Justin.
Justin: “Hey Roy, are you doing okay man? I heard you haven’t been able to find another job. If you need some money I can help you out bro.”
I don’t when I would be able to pay him back. I didn’t want to take more from him when I don’t know when I would be able to find another job. Harassment on the background check follows you for a long time.
Roy: “I’ll be fine man, don’t worry about it.”
Justin: “Alright man, you can call me any time.”
The phone call ended.
I didn’t know what else to do. I decided to read the fan-fiction then another novel that the author of the fan fiction wrote before going out for a walk. After finishing each of the novels that involved some sort of parent relationship, I took a walk into the street. A truck was coming by and I felt surreal. I had to speak out loud.
Roy: “Ah yes… the famous Truck-Kun. This is so cliche.”
I died.
At least I think I’m dead.
Am I dead?
No really? Am I dead? I mean, I got hit by a truck and it hurt for a moment but I think I’m definitely dead right now. You know… if I knew I would die I would have just driven to Nevada and hit up a prostitute so I wouldn’t have died a virgin. The last few hundred would have at least bought me that.
It’s kind of sad that the last thing I did before dying was read some online novels about some guy going with his mother inside his daughter and living degenerately ever after. I guess I’m one of those guys who rubbed one out that probably shouldn’t have. It wasn’t that bad reading it since I didn’t have a great imaginations but I kept wondering how it would look in real life. Probably shouldn’t wonder.
But, when you’re down on life though… what do you expect.
I never had sex. This all sucks.
Man.
Voice (Unidentified): “Sex isn’t all there is to life.”
That was a voice I the darkness. I heard a voice.
Roy: “It doesn’t matter because I’m dead so I’ll never experience it.”
Voice: “Take it from me… Sex isn’t all there is to life and if you think it is and have as much of it as I did you will always want a break from it.”
I heard the voice again and begin to question it. Why would I be hearing voices now? I’m supposed to be dead.
Roy: “You don’t know my life… but I’m not going to argue with you.”
Voice: “You shouldn’t argue with me. You don’t know what it was like living through it all when all you could do is read it on some website.”
Roy: “Author? What? Wait… are you serious? Don’t tell me?”
Voice: “I’m a floating spirit. The ending wasn’t the ending. The real ending of those stories was very different. You can call me Dong Chen.”
In the darkness a man with a long pony tail and blue clothing showed himself in front of me. He looked vaguely similar to the artist drawing on the page I read the novel on. This was Dong Chen?
Roy: “You can’t expect me to believe that you’re really that Dong Chen that was in the novel I just finished after reading the fan fiction of that other novel can you?”
This is ridiculous! I did read that there was interaction between Dong Chen, or what should be Jordan Lin in our world and him trying to get a hold of the author but now that I died this is the person I’m talking too? Not some god of the underworld? Not world religion? I’m talking to Dong Chen of all people?
Dong Chen: “Unfortunately time doesn’t flow the same rate in between worlds. My world has ended, I lived until the end of time of this world and there were countless worlds. I had more sex than I ever wanted to have… I lived in the wombs for years at a time for girls that should have been my daughters… and I had relations with those who were blood related despite the taboo.”
Seriously?
I mean, seriously?
This is not believable by any standard. Still… no… it can’t be…
