{Second, friendship is not reciprocal. Just because Display is a friend of Storage does not mean Storage is also a friend of Display. If you want two classes to be friends of each other, both must declare the other as a friend.
[Alex's note: Sorry if this one hits a little close to home!]
}
There was silence in the room, except for the occasional sounds from the laptop's cooling fan.
I just had my dinner half an hour ago. Mom and Dad were not at home. Thus, I ordered it from a nearby restaurant.
I am capable of cooking, but it was late at night and I did not feel like cooking something.
I skimmed through my work, checking the answer sheets as soon as I finished my dinner.
I like to teach. It was a hobby of sorts. A new one that I acquired after graduating as a CS student.
I have been teaching at a high school since last summer. It was a part-time job of sorts outside of my main work.
Alex was one of the more intelligent individuals, I had come across. I tend to disregard his jests as long as they are not hurtful.
Soon, I was done grading all the papers.
I gathered all the test papers and put them in my bag before rising from my computer table.
It was a beautiful piece of work. Table, I mean. I loved it from the day I bought it.
Made up of ebony wood. It was by far the most visually appealing furniture in my room.
Sigh
I grabbed my phone from the charging stand and shut down my laptop.
The stand was on the wall just behind the computer table.
It was the same wall that separated my room from the kitchen.
I did not have many things in my room.
A bed, a computer table, a bookshelf embedded inside the wall behind the bed, and a cabinet for clothes.
I laid down on the bed and made myself comfortable. My left hand reached for the Air conditioner remote and I hit the button to turn it off. It had been running for some time and the room was sufficiently cold now.
Organically, I looked at my phone's screen. It was a daily ritual. I like to use my phone before I fall asleep.
There was a notification from Telecord that I received a message while I was doing my work.
{I won't be joining you in the night today. I need to work on a project whose deadline is close. Take care of yourself and sleep well.}
It said.
It was from my long-distance girlfriend. Usually, we end up talking before the day ends.
On days when I was not joined by her, I tended to read some books online to pass my time, and it was one such day.
Half an hour later, I dozed off to sleep.
...
(Soul's P.O.V.)
And then...
Then I died.
Unaware that I would not be waking up in the morning, due to food poisoning.
I tried to make this realization more interesting, more meaningful by remembering all the events that happened just before my death and what meaning they held now.
Trust me, it is all nonsense at this point.
***
I do not remember what caused my death but dead is what I am.
I wish I knew what caused it while being perfectly aware that I would change nothing.
But then again, there are many things that I wish for. It is but one of them.
Remorse is a terrible feeling. Especially when you have nothing else to do.
Fuck, I could have done so many things in life.
I was just about to complete a quarter of my life. Assuming that I could have lived till a hundred.
I-.
I left so much.
I left so many. I am sure they will be sad.
I wonder how she will react. I have told no one that I was dating someone. Only our mutual online friends at the server in Telecord knew about it.
None of my online friends had a way to reach out to me outside of Telecord. Not even her.
To her, it might appear that I just disappeared from her life one day.
It was a terrible thought.
sigh
…
…
Fuck, I can't let myself think about that yet. Or ever. Where was I?
Yes, Death. I died, and instead of blissful nothingness or an afterlife, I get this.
It is still nothingness as far as I can tell for now but no way is it blissful.
I have an unnatural, chilling certainty that I am long dead.
I also have sufficient clarity of consciousness to torture myself about it.
What now then?
***
Afterlife limbo is not like how it is usually portrayed in teen supernatural dramas. It is not some black void that I am suspended inside. It just exists, which shouldn't be possible because it is nothing.
How can I float inside something that is nothing? It surely falls outside of my pay grade.
And so, time passed just like that. A moment, or an eternity was debatable. I lacked the intuitional accuracy to tell them apart in my current condition.
There was no time, not really, just nothing. Just me and The Nothing.
It was all terrible if you ask me.
How am I able to decide that without a brain is the subject of another debate... The soul, I suppose.
How am I still me?
Are my memories anchored to my soul? Can you think with just a soul? Or at the very least a rough equivalent.
***
I do not remember how long I stayed in this static permanence but then it only took one moment for everything to change.
A pinprick of light joined me in the void, and with it came a calling.
A summon. Time was moving again.
Before I wondered how I recognized it as light without eyes or a brain, the void started to tear apart by the light.
It felt like I was watching an egg cracking from the inside. I felt myself joining the world outside of this shell of Nothing.
Soon I was one with the light and then I was melting in it. Becoming part of it.
Rather than fighting against it, I accepted it with open arms in the metaphorical sense. It just felt like a right to do.
Soon, I was lost completely in it and then I could feel it again.
The feeling of being alive. After an untold time of being dead, I can instinctively tell that I was alive again.
I felt the pressure. Discomfort. Disorientation. I felt the pressure building and building until blissfully, it was relieved.
The touch of air on my skin became the next sensation that I started to feel again.
It was a euphoric feeling. I was unable to control myself. The sense of liberation. Freedom.
I cried. I cried my heart out. I cried like a newborn baby.
In that very moment of adrenaline-fuelled clarity, I got a sense of my body and the all-too-baby-like proportions.
The panic set in. Then it got worse. I am a baby.