A man was on the verge of death.
He had been vomiting blood in the toilet.
His body collapsed.
Cold sweat broke out, and his heart was pounding violently.
Darkness closed in on his consciousness.
“So it’s finally over…”
The man muttered to himself.
It had been a dull life.
A hopelessly fallen existence.
Day after day, working without purpose or joy.
No sense of fulfillment whatsoever.
No family.
Not even the love of his parents.
Loneliness.
He had lived for quite a long time, yet had never shared affection with anyone.
Not a single lover.
He could love no one, and no one loved him.
No friends.
A life parched dry.
—It’s finally ending.
Now I won’t have to feel anything.
I don’t want to start over.
I just want to disappear like this.
The man felt a trace of loneliness… and a great sense of relief.
When he came to, he found himself in a world without horizon or skyline.
He felt no gravity.
His body floated lightly in the air.
Someone stood before him.
The figure wore a mask.
A mask as simple as could be with only eyes and a mouth.
The crescent-shaped mouth was arranged in a way that resembled a smile.
To the man, it looked like a sneer.
“So this is hell. And you’re God?”
No answer.
The mask said nothing, but it seemed the situation was moving forward regardless.
The man’s body began rapidly moving in a single direction.
It felt like falling… or perhaps like rising.
“Hey now. I thought there’d at least be a trial before I went to hell, but you’re telling me there’s not even that?”
Verdict: Sentenced to hell for the crime of killing your father.
“That’s what it’s gonna be anyway, isn’t it? God’s work isn’t much to write home about.”
***
He heard someone shouting right by his ear.
The man pried open his heavy eyelids.
“■■■■■■■■■■?! ■■■■■■■■■”
“Ugh…”
His mind was foggy.
In front of him, a man who looked to be around thirty with Caucasian features was shouting something incomprehensible.
His right arm hurt terribly.
Confused, he shifted his gaze.
His upper arm was dangling unnaturally from the wrong place.
A jagged white bone had pierced through the skin, jutting out.
An open fracture…
The moment he fully registered what had happened, a burning wave of pain crashed over him.
“Aaaghhh… it hurts!”
He writhed in agony, still without understanding the situation.
The Caucasian man grabbed his broken arm and, without hesitation, forced the protruding bone back into the wound.
The shock was enough to make his eyes nearly pop out.
The pain was far beyond anything bearable. Like being beaten all over with an iron rod.
“■■■■■■■■■■.”
The incomprehensible words came in a resonant, almost chant-like melody.
The man could hardly believe what he was seeing.
The stranger’s palm began to glow.
He brought that light over the wound.
Right before his eyes, the open fracture began to close.
The pain vanished as if it had never existed.
What the hell…?
He had no idea what was going on.
Was this a dream? A hallucination? But it didn’t end.
The man looked up at the mysterious stranger’s face.
He wasn’t so young as to be called a boy, but not old enough to be middle-aged either.
Most likely around thirty.
He could easily be counted among the handsome.
A masculine, sharply defined, strikingly gallant face.
A well-shaped, prominent nose.
A perfectly proportioned mouth.
Firm, chiseled cheeks.
And eyes of deep blue that carried a faint edge of sharpness.
His expression held not only sternness but also a trace of concern and kindness.
His hair was a dull blonde.
The man tried standing up.
He felt sluggish but somehow managed to get to his feet.
Immediately, a sharp sense of confusion hit him.
His viewpoint was low.
The white man in front of him looked like a giant.
Right in front of his eyes was the man’s upper thigh.
What the…? How tall is this guy…?
No, wait.
He looked down at his own palm.
Small.
It was like the soft, fluffy hand of a boy.
It wasn’t the big, knotted, calloused hand he knew to be his own.
“Is this hell? What happened to me?”
“Abel… ■■■■■■… Abel.”
He couldn’t understand a word of it.
It didn’t even resemble any foreign language he could recall.
And yet, one word caught his attention.
Abel…
It felt like a name.
“Ah…bel. Abel.”
When he spoke the name while looking into the white man’s eyes, the man’s expression grew complicated.
Relieved, yet also troubled.
By instinct, he guessed that “Abel” must be his own name.
But perhaps now was not the time to speak further.
He looked around again, carefully observing his surroundings.
When in trouble, the first thing to do is observe closely and find the cause.
Once you’ve found the cause, you decide how to deal with it… or how to run from it.
Right nearby, a horse lay dead.
Its head was crushed and its neck was twisted at an unnatural angle.
Looking up, he saw a towering rock wall.
It was only natural to conclude that he and the horse had fallen from a cliff.
Unconsciously, he ran his hands over his own face and head.
They came away coated in thick, still-damp blood.
—Could it be that my head was crushed like that horse’s…?
And this guy healed me with something like magic…?
The caucasian man, who had just performed such a strange and unbelievable act of healing, effortlessly lifted the man into his arms and started walking.
—Come on… a princess carry at my age is embarrassing.
He thought so but kept quiet.
After being carried for a while, he spotted a small stream.
That’s where he was set down.
He walked toward the water’s edge.
Reflected in the calm surface was the face of a child. He looked caucasian too, maybe three or four years old.
It was an unbelievable sight, but it was reality.
No matter how he looked at it, this was nothing like his former self.
Blood clung to his cheeks and hair.
For now, he washed his face in the water.
Once the grime was gone, a young but well-shaped face emerged.
Eyes of deep blue.
Features so perfectly formed they could be called beautiful.
His throat was parched, but drinking straight from the river was dangerous.
He held back.
And in a small voice, he muttered:
“Reincarnation…? The cycle of rebirth?”
—No, wait. Could it really be that convenient?
This has to be hell.
I’m probably just going to suffer all over again…
Such thoughts churned inside him.
“Abel… ■■■■■■, ■■.”
A voice came from behind.
He turned to look.
A face full of concern was staring at him.
In games, situations like this were often made easier by skills that let you understand the meaning of things. But it seemed this wasn’t going to be so convenient.
There was no tutorial, no status screen.
This was reality, through and through.
Breathing in through his nose brought the green, raw scent of plants.
Touching the soil with his hand revealed a cool, damp texture…
Above, the blue sky just as if it had always been that way held white clouds adrift.
— This is my father. Probably. At least, I think so.
The man thought as much.
A faint smile filled with resignation formed on his face.
—I’ll live my life as Abel.
So… that’s my hell, I suppose.
A new Abel was born…
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