My Love Rival Is Me!

Awakening...[1]

"Am i... dead?".

The words felt foreign in Renji's mouth, almost laughable. "No no no, I ca-n't be dead!" That's impossible!" He screamed, repeating it like a broken record. But each repetition made the silence louder—and the truth harder to escape.

Silence.

A heavy, suffocating kind that numbed all his senses. Time unraveled slowly—his thoughts blurred, feelings dimmed, until only the ache of nothingness remained. In that stillness and confusion, he tried desperately to make sense of it all, but his mind could barely hold itself together.

"I mean... how can I be dead?"

"Okay, Renji—calm down. Calm down. It’s not what you think. Let’s... backtrack, The last thing I remember... I cleaned up my room, took out the trash, walked down the stairs. Ohhh then again—maybe Mr. Yuta forgot to change the bulbs. They kept flickering for some reason, and then..."

"My slipper caught something..."

"and I..."

"I fell..."

The realization hit like a bullet train. In that instant, the last shred of denial shattered.

“I fell... hit the railings and—yeah, that’s the last thing I remember.”

“…”

“Oi, oi, oi—this is a joke, right? It has to be, right?!”. “Who the hell dies from taking out the trash?! I mean—I sh-should’ve just slept! My life was crap, sure, but I didn’t want to die!”

“ARGHHHHHHHH!”

“*$@#!… ¥€π×!… @√§%!!!”

He screamed until his voice broke, hurling out ceaselessly, every profanity he could think of. Then, breathless and trembling, he collapsed into silence. Tears streaked down his face. The truth sat heavy in his chest—cold, absurd, final. “God... if you can hear me,” he whispered, voice cracking, “This isn’t what I meant when I said I wanted something more.”

Then—silence again.

But this time, he didn’t fight it. He let it swallow him whole as he sank deeper and deeper into the abyss of his own thoughts until time lost shape.

"So this is what happens after death, huh?” he muttered. “Just... floating in a void?”

Everywhere he looked—nothing. Just endless black. Until—

A faint glow.

At first, he thought it was a trick. But then he saw himself.

“Hold on a minute. Okay, now I really am dead. Because last I checked, I wasn’t made of—what is this? Light?”. He looked down—or at least, tried to. His body was a hazy silhouette of milky white light, pulsing gently in the dark. "...Huh. It’s kinda cool, I guess,” he muttered with a half-hearted laugh, clinging to the only positive he could find in this cosmic joke.

"So... what happens now? Do I just float here for the rest of time or what?”

Nothing. Not even an echo.

Only silence.

He lay there, haunted by the thought of existing like this forever. No sound, no color nor sense of time—just the weight of awareness pressing down on him. So with nothing left to do and no one to calm the storm that raged in his chest—he wandered through memory, replaying his vivid yet painfully short life piece by piece.

A grey and utterly mundane existence, bereft of meaning and purpose. Caught in the never-ending cycle that was: Waking up, dragging himself to lectures, studying only when guilt forced him to, indulging endlessly on junk foods, fantasizing about Aya...

"...Aya"

He froze mid-step—the thought struck him like a blow. Her bright, captivating smile, the curve of her figure, the warmth of her presence—everything he had ignored, everything he had taken for granted—flashed through him. Regret surged, heavy and bitter, filling him entirely. He realized with a sick twist in his chest, how much he had squandered, how much he had never dared to reach for.

“I wonder if she’d remember me...” he whispered. “But then again, you can’t remember someone you never really knew, now can you?”

His voice trembled, laced with both sadness and mirth.

“I didn’t live the best life. Hell, I don’t think I was ever truly happy. But even that—” he gave a small laugh, empty and cracked, “—beats being dead. I was always wanting something more. Always hesitating. I had time, had chances, should’ve just taken the risk and talked to her, done something".

"Guess it doesn’t matter now, huh?”

Regret tightened in his throat, heavy and suffocating.

"At least I was alive.” he whispered.

Silence greeted him, cold and unyielding, wrapping him up in its empty embrace. Then, with a hollow chuckle, he murmured, “Well then... might as well get comfy. Let’s see how long eternity lasts”.

There he lay—still, weightless. For the first time since his death, his mind felt quiet, no panic nor anger or sadness—just a dull acceptance. 'Maybe this is what peace feels like', he thought to himself. His will dissolving into the void that surrounded him. Just as he finally came to terms with his situation, the void began to stir. And from its depths, tiny motes of light appeared, swirling and weaving through the darkness like fireflies in a moonless sky, until the emptiness was consumed—into a brilliance that rivaled the glow of his own ephemeral form.

The light reflected in his eyes, growing brighter with each passing second until it was all he could see.

"What the...?" Renji stared in confusion, eyes wide open as the light wrapped around him.

"Am I... going to heaven?"

He gave a nervous laugh, "Well, that was fast. Pheewwww, I was starting to think I'd go insane in here".

He exhaled, grinning weakly, trying to convince himself that it was over. "Heaven, here I come."

But just as the radiant whirl reached its peak, just as the light swallowed the last trace of darkness—his senses shattered. His vision blurred, and a sharp splitting pain shot through his head. "Uggghhh, my head" he groaned weakly. Slowly but surely, his awareness crept back in. When he finally came to, he blinked in disbelief. The world had changed, the overwhelming light replaced by a dim familiarity.

"Where... am I?" His voice came out raw and unhinged, "Is this Heaven?"

"Well, not gonna lie, this isn't what I expected it to look like," he muttered, eyes darting around in half-amusement, half-confusion. “No angels singing on clouds, no golden gates in sight... no booming divine voice telling me I’ve made it. And... hold on a second—”

He squinted upward. “Is that... a ceiling fan?”

The thought alone made him chuckle weakly. “Well, damn.”

But the humor didn’t last. As the brightness faded from his vision, shapes began to solidify around him. He blinked several times, each one sharpening the blur a little more—until the scene before him began to unravel piece by piece.

A chair stood in the corner, its wooden frame burdened by a stack of clothes. Beside it, a desk cluttered with textbooks. His gaze shifted slightly—an old ceiling fan spun lazily above, wobbling as if it might come apart any moment, its blades conjuring half noise half air. His eyes trailed farther, drawn to the wall opposite him. Hanging there, exactly where it always had been, was an oddly familiar black laptop bag— one with a frayed strap and a faint white bleach stain at the bottom.

Renji’s smile faded. A chill trickled down his spine.

“This... can’t be,” he whispered. “This looks like... my room.” He frowned. “But... how? I thought I'd died. How am I suddenly back here?”

His heart began to pound. Something felt off — a strange stiffness, like he wasn’t really there. The edges of his sight felt narrow, confined. And then, from the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of something lying still on the bed.

That arm... It was unmistakeable.

It was him.