a simple question; (cw: death/dying discussion)

[icanhearscreams]

[An unsigned note appears on the bulletin board, written in extremely neat handwriting. There's a few smudges on it from erased lines, as if the author wrote it over and over again.]

Is anyone else here dead?

[Just five words. No signature. He'll see how this turns out.]

Comments

[birdchasingecho]

was in the process of choking out.

[unsheathedfromreality]

Yes.

[Also no signature.]

[ohaiyo_isekai]

Possibly. Even probably. Answering that question is one of my top priories.

[icanhearscreams]

Rough way to go. ... No way out of that one?

[icanhearscreams]

At least I'm not the only one. It's weird when people insist I'm not.

[icanhearscreams]

... How do you not know?

[aetherialshackles]

It's complicated? My death was imminent but I don't remember actually dying.

[icanhearscreams]

So there was a chance.

I remember fading away.

[ohaiyo_isekai]

Stopped at what might be an afterlife before coming here. Also possibly just a different life.

[again, print letters, no signature.]

[icanhearscreams]

... So the afterlife's real where you're from? Possibly?

I'm pretty sure there isn't one where I'm from. Just dying hallucinations.

[unsheathedfromreality]

Agreed.

Can't blame the living too much though. Conventionally they are the ones to declare things dead.

Not often the dead have a voice in the matter.

[birdchasingecho]

I was a little busy at the time to really see if there was anyone to save me. In hindsight, I'm not even sure if the perpetrator wanted to kill me. But whether I will have survived or not is not in my power to see.

[aetherialshackles]

Only a very high chance of me being dead and not realizing it.

That sounds horrible. Being aware you are fading. Perhaps worse than just knowing you are doomed regardless of what you do.

[icanhearscreams]

So there's some kind of statistical possibility, at least.

But realizing you're shutting down... it's terrifying, isn't it?

[icanhearscreams]

Not usually, no. And I can't decide whether or not to be mad that I'm here rather than just gone.

[knockingatthedoor]

Nooot my first run as kidnapped in another world.

People who died in their original place who were brought back to life... Weren't that rare.

I am pretty alive tho. Like. Super alive.

[icanhearscreams]

I see.

... Oh, I know I was doomed. I signed up for what I did knowing that. Others didn't know what they were getting into.

But with people nobly dying around me, I couldn't just let the world they fought for die without a fight myself.

[icanhearscreams]

Good for you.

[Bitter? Nah, he's not bitter.]

Where I'm from, the dead don't get to come back.

[knockingatthedoor]

I mean here we are both alive.

Hard same. I mean. If they did then things would have been much easier back home. Still magic seems to weird stuff

[birdchasingecho]

There's always a possibility, at least back home. Revenants are a known quantity, there. But... Yeah.

[icanhearscreams]

Not where I'm from. The dead stay dead.

And knowing that, going to that nothingness... it made me feel small. Helpless, as much as I hate to admit it.

[icanhearscreams]

You might be alive. Me... I'm not so sure.



'Magic seems to weird stuff' is not an explanation.

[birdchasingecho]

Even back home, it's rare. I can count on one hand the cases I know of.

[aetherialshackles]

That sounds very noble of you despite the... Circumstances. I cannot imagine how your companions felt.

Still. Better than my 'doomed'. My last actions weren't probably perceived too nicely by my kin.

[steelfeathered]

Are you a spirit, or do you have a seeming of life? Breathing etc?

[Also no signature but her usual style, the ink brush with the calligraphic aspect, is undisguised.]