Time passed.
How much, Dave couldn't say. An hour? Two? Maybe more. Maybe less. Time didn't matter here anyway—Mika had said that. And yet… it felt like time was moving. Like something was gently ticking in the background of his thoughts.
But he still didn't know how to feel.
He knew he was dead. Mika had told him that clearly.
But knowing wasn't the same as feeling.
His mind kept turning that fact over, again and again, like a coin he couldn't quite believe was real.
He felt… alive. Breathing, thinking, aware. His body—if he still had one—felt solid. Warm. Awake. Nothing like what death was supposed to be.
Maybe that was the problem.
He hadn't felt himself die.
He hadn't seen blood, pain, or darkness.
There was no final gasp, no blinding light, no montage of regrets flashing through his mind. Just sleep… and then this.
It was weird. No—not weird. It was normal. But even that word had stopped making sense.
What was normal, anyway? Being dead and still thinking clearly? Sitting across from a literal elf in his manager's office?
Was this some fever dream? Hallucination? The aftertaste of life clinging to his consciousness like fog?
He didn't know what to think.
He wanted to feel sad. He thought he should feel sad. Hadn't he always imagined, in those late-night isekai fantasies, that dying would hit him like a brick? That he'd mourn his life, his family, his youth?
But now that it had actually happened—now that he was here—there was… nothing.
Or maybe not nothing.
It was more like everything at once, a tangled storm of emotions that refused to take shape. He couldn't figure out what part to feel. Grief? Shock? Regret? Hope?
None of it fit.
Maybe it was because there'd been no real end to his life. Just sleep. Just… cut to black. And now this.
How could he be sad for something he hadn't even felt happening?
His thoughts spun, looping in broken patterns, and the more he tried to understand it, the worse it got.
His mind wasn't working right.
Or maybe—it was working exactly how it was supposed to. Just… overwhelmed.
Dave pressed a hand to his forehead and exhaled. He wasn't crying. He wasn't panicking. He wasn't angry.
He was just... confused.
Mika sat across from him in silence, watching the storm behind his eyes.
She could hear his thoughts, yes, but more than that—she could feel the turbulence in his soul. A whirlpool of noise, contradictions, and silence all fighting for space in one fragile consciousness.
She sighed softly.
'Human minds are so… complicated,' she thought.
It wasn't judgment. Just a statement of fact.
She didn't understand them—not fully. Not deeply.
She had studied human souls for thousands and thousands of years, observed their births, deaths, regrets, loves. But understanding? That was different.
She was an Elf. No—more than that. A High Elf. A race born with the universe, bound to the eternal cycles of life, death, and rebirth. Guardians of the Great Loom that wove reality's threads.
Their kind did not die. Did not love. Did not mourn.
Not in the way humans do.
They endured. They observed.
And sometimes—like now—they intervened.
Even so, Mika tilted her head as she watched Dave spiral.
'It's always like this,' she mused.
"Aaah, fuck, I don't know anymore."
Dave groaned and ran both hands through his hair, gripping it at the roots in sheer frustration.
No matter how hard he tried—he just couldn't feel sad. Not in the way he thought he should.
So… screw it.
'Whatever. Fuck it. Guess it was a mistake trying to force it,' he thought bitterly.
He let out a sharp breath and glanced back toward the woman in front of him—Mika. She was still watching him with that unreadable expression. Was it amusement? Curiosity? Clinical interest?
She looked like a researcher observing some rare bug crawling across a petri dish.
Dave didn't care. He'd seen that kind of gaze plenty of times in his life—from teachers, co-workers, even strangers.
It didn't bother him anymore.
"You said I died, right?" he asked, cutting straight to the point.
Mika nodded. "Yeah. You died. Totally."
Short and blunt. No sugarcoating. No hesitation.
Dave nodded slowly, chewing on the words again. Then he said, "You mentioned something earlier… about a wish? A power or whatever?"
"Yeah," Mika confirmed. "You can wish for any kind of power you want."
"Any kind," Dave repeated, raising a brow. "Like, literally any kind?"
Mika gave a small nod. "Yeah. Any kind. Though—" she held up a hand, "—there are limits. If you wish for something like reality-warping, timeline rewriting, or multiverse-level destruction, it'll be nerfed."
"You'll still get a powerful version of the ability, but it'll be locked to a planetary scale. We're not in the business of creating universal threats, you see."
Dave let out a low whistle. "Damn. There go my dreams of becoming the next anime villain."
Mika smirked faintly, but said nothing.
He leaned back in the chair—if it could even be called a chair in this space—and exhaled.
'Okay... so I get one power. Any kind, within reason. This is the real deal. Shit.'
He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to focus. His thoughts were still buzzing like a faulty fan, but they were beginning to stabilize now that he had something concrete to aim for.
"I get it," he said finally. "Alright then. I'm going to think about what power I want."
"Take your time," Mika said gently.
Dave nodded again and turned inward.
The whole I'm-dead thing? Screw it. He didn't care anymore. Or rather—he couldn't care. His brain refused to process it like it was real, so he was just going to roll with it.
He was alive. That's what it felt like. So that's what it was.
And this beautiful elf lady in front of him?
Clearly dumb. Or trolling him. One of the two.
'Yup. Definitely dumb,' Dave thought.
Mika, still tuned into his thoughts, tilted her head slightly.
She didn't know how to respond to that… but she chose not to say anything.
'As long as he's thinking clearly, I suppose,' she mused.
And so Dave sat there in silence—finally, truly starting to brainstorm.
Not about how he died.
Not about who he left behind.
But about what kind of power could help him survive whatever world he was being thrown into next.