Every Lifetime I Fall {COMPLETED but undergoing revisions}

Chapter 192: YZH - The Underworld

WYH

Layer upon layer of blankets, I could never feel warmth. The release of death allows my escape from mortal ailment.

Just after closing my eyes, welcoming the journey to the beyond, I open them to a hall with a tall ceiling of spikes.

As if a fog had dissolved from my mind, I regain conscious of my surroundings. My body no longer aches from feverish chills, breathing no longer comes out with heaviness.

"Yi Huai, please have a seat." A man dressed in dark garments with a black hat asks for me to take a seat in front of his desk.

"W- Where am I?"

"You've died. Your mortal life has ended, and now you are here in the Underworld."

"The Underworld..."

"Please take a seat." He begins to flip through some papers as I sit. "Another new soul, I don't know if I should be glad or nervous..."

He mumbles to himself while I curiously observe the other souls in the humongous hall. I can barely see the end nor beginning. He taps his desk and the sounds disappear with a sphere covering the small space around his desk.

"Yi Huai, my name is Ji Nian. From now on I will be your Soul Case Manager, help guide and elevate you through lives. Amazingly, you are a brand new soul on your way to reincarnate once more as mortal. You've done many good deeds, I see here. You've saved hundreds of people from slavery, being forced into servitude against their will. You've saved many lives and gave people justice as a Detective at the Ministry of Justice!"

"That..." I feel awkward with his praise. My father never thought of my work as anything noble. He hated that I turned out this way, giving up royal recognition until the day I died.

"I'll submit your file forward, and I just know you'll be able to have a much more prestigious next life due to all your good deeds."

"Where is Mu Dan?" I hurriedly ask before I'm sent away.

"Mu Dan? Uh, your childhood sweetheart? Let me see here... Oh, goodness. I remember her." He furrows his eyebrows, concern washes over his facial expression.

"You've met her? You're sure?"

"I'm not allowed to speak about my other clients."

"Please. I need to know where she is. Has she reincarnated? I want to see her and..."

"You're sorry about what happened in your shared mortal life?"

Unable to answer, I just nod. My heart weighed down with guilt and self-hatred.

"She's gone to reincarnate. It's been ten years. She waited patiently."

"Then I wish to reincarnate as well, to see her once more! I have to- I owe her my life."

"You cannot reincarnate now. With all your accumulated good deeds, you can reincarnate sooner. Just one year."

"One year? But will she remember me?"

"No, she will not. And you won't either."

Could this be something that Mu Dan would want? That forgetting me will give her a happier life?

"How can... I stay with her?"

"You mean meet her again in the next life?"

"I don't care if I become human, a stray cat living in the streets, an insect to live in the summer and die from the first breeze of autumn, I just... wish to be near her."