Life After You

In his backstory provided in the game, Zeph had lived roughly two hundred years—including his afterlife. After You was set into the future…around two hundred years from Delilah’s time, in fact. But when Kendric hurled him into the crystal along with Delilah, the guide who knew almost everything was not expecting to be born as a baby.

Ah…hahaha. To be free of those tormenting voices is one thing, but…it’s been so many years since I was last this fragile.

More importantly, he had lived and relived his own story so many times, with each playthrough by any player across the globe, that he could almost recall word for word everything that would happen to him from birth.

Not that the game detailed everything. Zeph was, after all, only an NPC.

At least my mind is completely mine…not that it makes too much difference if I have to act like an infant.

But act he did. He behaved as any ordinary baby would, and although he did not cause his birth parents extra trouble, they still decided to abandon him at three. It was the same decision, on the same day, and the same orphanage. He met the same people, and they treated him more or less the same way. Before he turned eight, Zeph spent more of his time with the one caretaker that he supposedly would find out only later had mental issues. He spoke with her with the wisdom of a centuries-old soul but the vocabulary of a child. He turned nine in that orphanage without it burning down.

The orphanage originally being burnt to the ground by that caretaker had been a major turning point in his life, one that led him to the streets, subsequently taken in by an abusive blacksmith and then abandoned once again. Eventually, this series of events would lead to his death, under the heel of a cruel woman whose name he never learned.

The orphanage not being burnt, now, was good news. Yet…it made Zeph anxious.

I would be loathe to assume I can change my own fate. Everything else is about the same.

Furthermore…even if he did change his fate in this strange extra lifetime he never sought, it would not change the fact that he had still experienced his original life as many times as he did and subsequently spent two centuries in the afterlife. The wounds he bore would never turn to scars; while he was not intent on changing it either, if that was the outcome, what even was the point of trying to alternate this life?

Was Delilah out there, somewhere? Judging by their age, she should be—probably a sickly child always going in and out of the hospital, but she should be around.

Another year passed. The caretaker began to seek professional help. Eventually, she decided to quit her job, having decided that she did hate children after all. A month later, however, she came back to formally adopt Zeph.

Again, he was anxious. This was the same woman who’d hated children enough to burn down an orphanage a lifetime ago, after all…but then again, it was a lifetime ago.

Nevertheless, he followed her home. In the years that followed, he finished school with top grades—courtesy of centuries of knowledge and experience. A few times, it was suggested that he skip a few years and go straight to university. His adoptive mother suggested it too, but while she was puzzled at his refusal to do so, she did not question him. In her mind, Zeph was an old soul with a young face; even if his decisions seemed strange, he surely had his reasons.

And he did.

As he began high school, he met Gilad Eidel—in the same class.

There was a smirk on her older brother’s face—a rare sight. It was barely visible, in a way that would have made it negligible to anyone who wasn’t already familiar with his usual absence of facial expressions aside from one of scorn. But to Delilah, it was certainly a glaringly obvious difference. She stammered while calling his name, widening her eyes in shock mixed with bewilderment.

“I…you…” the girl continued stuttering, unsure of what she even wanted to say first.

Gilad Eidel held up a hand, gesturing for her to be silent. “Did you just return?” he asked, providing no context.

Instinctively, she nodded.

“Have you checked out and everything?”

Again, she nodded—after glancing at Otis.

“Then, let’s go.”

Without providing any explanation, the young man took hold of her wrist and led her out of the hospital.

Delilah had always been seen as a burden on the family. It was an elephant in the room each time the girl was not present—at a family gathering, or just ordinarily in the household. No one spoke of it, but everyone except Delilah herself knew. What would she know, after all, when she spent so little time exploring her own core family? So focused was she on her own physical condition and so hard did she try to evade the bleakness of her future by consuming fiction of all kinds that she may even have deliberately turned a blind eye to the truth. She had two brothers, one older and one younger than her. Gilad, the eldest, seemed to spend as little time with his family as possible; when he was with them, he rarely smiled or laughed, expressing that he was only there as some form of moral obligation and that, when he became financially independent, he would show up even less. He rarely spoke of anything related to himself, acting as a stranger in his own home.

On TV in Pistevo’s world, Delilah witnessed all members of her family discussing her being a burden to them. Gilad had seemed unimpressed by the conversation but by no means disagreed.

But then, in a “dream” in After You, he said he loved her.

Now, he was walking beside her as if picking her up from the hospital had always been his duty—it never was. It was always her mother.

After ten minutes of pondering these questions and arriving at no reasonable conclusion, the girl finally asked, in her naturally soft voice, “Why are you here?”

He blinked, his satin gray gaze shifting to her. Then, it shifted back to the road ahead of him again. At first, it seemed like he planned to ignore the question. Then, a few steps later, he muttered, “A lot of stuff was done behind your back.”

“I mean…you kind of hate me, right?” she asked in the same low volume.

“Not me.”

“What?”

“I already told you that before. I’m sure you heard me perfectly.”

Love you, Gilad had said—but that was in her dream, in a game. How reliable could her memory be in those circumstances?

Gilad sighed in Delilah’s silence. “Girls…”

“Huh?”

“I’ll give it, if you need the reassurance. I love you.” As though embarrassed, the last three words were uttered at a pace much faster than the rest. To change the subject quickly but smoothly, he added, “Don’t tell me you don’t remember that. I had to do a whole bunch of stuff just to get to you, much less trying to pull you out.”

“Pull…wait.” Despite the fact that neither of them had named any names, it was clear by now that they were indeed speaking of the same instances. “What happened?”

“Some sorcerer told me you’d disappear unless someone served as a medium for you to return to this world. He’s not from here himself—I imagine he crossed over a couple of worlds to reach me in the first place. If nobody believed in me when I did cross into the game, my soul would probably have been smashed into pieces when I tried to come back. In fact…I felt that it almost did.” Having said this, Gilad shifted his calm gaze to his sister again. “I don’t blame you for not believing me.”

“A sorcerer, you say.”

The man with dark hair.

“And then, since you woke up, Delilah,” Gilad said, “Have you checked your game?”

She nodded. “It won’t open anymore.”

“You seem confused.”

“I am. I don’t know what happened to it or…”

“Or to Zeph?”

Delilah looked up, her eyes reflecting an unusual glint. Yet, she did not speak.

“Are you scared of what you might hear if you ask?” her brother guessed. The smirk returned to his face. “You see, I’ve been told a different version of the past that I know. I think what I heard as a story might be what you’ve lived as reality.”

“What…do you mean?”

“If I weren’t worried about giving you a heart attack, I would have just called him out here. But…” Gilad sighed. “When we got thrown out of After You, your boyfriend was properly tossed back into this world. He changed his entire life from scratch with the memories he had.”

“Wait…what?! But isn’t this around the time he—”

“Instead of dying as a gangster, he’s my classmate. He’s been for years, Delilah. Imagine your best friend becoming your sister’s boyfriend seemingly overnight.”

“Hah?!”