I should have stayed home. That was my last thought before the truck slammed into me. I froze under the bright harsh light. My feet would not move. I was not meant to end like this. I saw myself sprawled and twisted, a gory disgusting sight. I hoped my parents would not have to see me broken like this.

  My spirit, now free from its earthly vessel, soared high above the sky and into the stratosphere. Ghostly tears fell like dew. I am sorry, mom. I checked before I crossed. I did not see the truck coming. I know I should have been more careful. I love you.

  I do not know how long I rose. I do not know where my form was going. I could not control my ghostly limbs, yet somehow the tears kept falling. As I flew, regret slowly turned into curiosity. Is this the afterlife? This is not how I imagined it. Was I flying to heaven or hell? How long would I keep soaring? The darkness gave no answers.

  For a long time I saw nothing but darkness. To calm myself, I observed my own form like I used to during vipassana meditation. Only then did it hit me that I was no longer breathing. I felt no bodily sensation. Only my racing thoughts. If I had no brain, how did I still think?

  I passed time with endless mind chatter. Moments of stillness brought me closer to the essence of who I was, yet I never truly understood what that essence was. Eventually I realized I was accelerating. After thirteen days of floating at a constant speed, I began rushing toward something. A plum-colored speck appeared in the endless dark, growing larger as I drew closer.

  Was this my destined heaven? Maybe the plum seas were full of wine. Maybe the colorful land was full of fruit. I felt no physical hunger, but I would kill for a rotisserie chicken grilled cheese sandwich right now. My strange journey ended when I was slammed into something immovable.

  I woke up crying. I felt disgusting, and every inch of my body hurt. I had a body again. A tiny baby body. The cooing around me made me cry harder. Everything was blurry. I did not understand how I was reborn on this purple planet with memories of the blue one still inside me. I would rather not have these memories. I did not remember being born on the blue planet, so why now? I did not die heroically or mystically. A truck hit me on my way to 7-Eleven. I died pathetically.

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  Maybe it was my fault for reading Isekai. Is this the fate of every Isekai reader? The world works in strange ways, and maybe this was mine. Maybe my soul wanted rebirth in a magical world more than any religious heaven, so this became my afterlife.

  Months passed with nothing but cooing and crawling. My eyesight finally developed, and yes, I had fantasy parents. At least a fantasy mother. In this life, my mother had pink hair. I was not sure if it was dyed by magic, but it was pink from the roots. I plucked one strand to be sure.

  I still had not identified my father. The only males I saw were boys who could only be my brothers or cousins. Unless this world worked very differently from my old one. We also had the cutest black cat and a good dog that looked like an Australian shepherd. Other than strange hair colors, this world looked mostly the same, except for the purple sky and the blue-plum colored grass.

  It took me over a year to learn that we lived on a farm and that my father was fighting in a war. I was conceived before it started. He left when my mother was five months pregnant. My mother and brothers cared for the farm while I crawled within the boundaries set for me.

  One day, as I practiced escaping my little containment area, the ground began to shake. I cried loudly. I did not want to die again. Being reborn was exhausting, and who knew if I would get a kind family next time too?

  I cried, and magic I did not understand leaked from me, wrapping me in a glowing bubble of safety. The walls cracked and fell, but I was untouched. I rolled in my bubble and slammed into the door, making more debris fall. I calmed myself. The shaking stopped. The house still stood. I was safe for now. I needed to chill if I didn’t want to cause more damage.

  My mother came running. When she saw me floating in my bubble of safety, she started crying. I smiled and laughed to show her I was safe and happy and she really didn’t need to shed any tears for me.

  It would take me three more years to understand why my mother cried that day.