--- It happened in an instant.
One moment, Kai was sipping lukewarm coffee in the flickering haze of his office's fluorescent lighting, scrolling through debug logs on his dual-monitor setup, and the next, everything went white.
A honk!
A crash!
Pain!
Then silence!
Then—nothing!
No tunnel of light. No warm embrace. No afterlife reward.
Just... floating in a silent, dark place.
A soft void, cold and still, a dark place like time itself had frozen.
And in that silence, Kai's mind began to stir.
Memories emerged—not just of the accident, but of his life. Or rather, the fragments of what could loosely be called a "life."
---
*Flashback – Office*
Thirty-two years old. Full-time backend developer at a mid-tier software company. The kind of job with decent pay, stable hours, and soul-crushing monotony. The kind where your name is less remembered than the last Jira ticket you closed.
"Kai, can you fix the login bug before lunch?"
"Kai, sorry to bother you again, but we need this new feature by tomorrow morning."
He was always available. Always reliable. Always forgettable.
The "Quiet Guy from IT."
---
*Flashback – Apartment*
A cramped one-bedroom apartment. The walls were off-white with little personality, adorned only with a few dusty anime posters he never took the time to frame properly. His bookshelves were stacked with half-finished manga, unwatched movies, and game discs still in shrink wrap.
There was always a plan to "get to them later."
But "later" never came.
---
*Flashback – Family*
He hadn't called his parents in months.
The last time his mother messaged him, he left her on "Read."
His father's birthday passed unnoticed; he only remembered when his sister sent him a photo of the celebration, his chair conspicuously empty.
He could still hear his mother's voice in an old voicemail:
> "Kai… I know you're busy. Just wanted to hear your voice. We miss you."
He deleted it during a system update to clear space.
---
*Flashback – Friendships*
Friends? There were a few from high school, university… but all those threads had frayed over time.
No one called.
No one invited him out.
No one even posted on his birthday.
He had become a ghost long before he died.
---
*Flashback – Love*
Relationships? Just a few shallow attempts via dating apps.
One ended when he cancelled a dinner to fix a server issue.
Another because, in his words, "I'm just not in the right place emotionally."
But the truth was simpler.
He had nothing to offer.
No stories.
No fire.
Just login screens and bug reports.
---
*Flashback – Karma*
And if he was being honest…
There were things he regretted. Not just the empty connections, but the little betrayals of his morality.
He once threw a junior under the bus in a code review to avoid blame.
He plagiarized a small open-source library and passed it off as his own to meet a deadline.
He ignored a desperate co-worker's silent cries for help with depression because "it wasn't his place."
---
*Flashback - The Leftovers of Life*
There was a long list of "to finish":
Hunter x Hunter: Still on hiatus. So was he.
One Piece: Stopped at episode 600.
Witcher 3: Installed. Never launched.
A novel draft: 26,000 words in, abandoned after chapter five.
A confession message: Typed but never sent to a girl from college.
So many half-beginnings, never an ending.
And now, here he was, the biggest unfinished story of all.
---
Back in the silent darkness
Kai laughed bitterly in the darkness.
TO BE CONTINUED.