The Millennium After Dying Young Chapter 1

Special thanks to Puissansa from Ainus.h.i.+ for helping out!

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TL: Mikan
TLC: Nanfengmiju, Puissansa
Editor: Ame, Puissansa

Chapter 001: Entering h.e.l.l for the First Time
Summary: A youth never expected that their life would quickly end like this.

I’m a ghost messenger.

Strictly speaking, I still don’t count as an official ghost messenger.

I’ve just completed training, and am currently a ghost messenger on probation. Training lasted for three months because I was often absent-minded during cla.s.s. Whether I’m able to be a competent ghost messenger was something that I'm still very doubtful about. Fortunately, Brother ghost leader told me, that h.e.l.l had to accept over ten thousand dead spirits every day. If I was no good, there are still a lot of people that could replace me, so I didn’t need to feel too pressured.

This is probably h.e.l.l's unique way of comforting someone.

When I was alive, I was very ordinary. I didn’t pa.s.s my high school entrance exams. After I graduated from a vocational secondary school, I immediately stepped foot into the workforce, like a tiny screw of a machine in a huge factory building. To this screw, a day would feel like ten years, as the job was to stick rolled up labels on merchandise. The days off could be counted on my fingers, and my life was just a monotonous cycle of going between home and work. A few blind dates pa.s.sed by, yet in the end I still didn’t have anyone who fell for me. Thus, in one last surprise, my life of exactly twenty nine years ended. Leaving behind my old mother, I arrived at h.e.l.l alone.

When I had just arrived, I honestly thought that I had traveled through time. Because the accident that time was so severe that it scattered my soul, and my consciousness didn’t return for quite a while. When I woke up, I saw that I was lying in the middle of a wooden house with glazed roof tiles. I was wrapped in layer upon layer of white muslin, and a light muslin rainbow colored dress was also placed on top of a bamboo chair, obviously not from the same era that I came from.

After somewhat considering my situation in my heart, I began to think that I had definitely “traveled”. To be worthy of time traveling, the more ordinary you were, the easier it was for you to travel. Like me who was at the height of this kind of complete normalcy, shouldn’t have died so early no matter what. I should’ve been at another s.p.a.ce-time, doing an important activity, and making handsome men of all ages fall for me. Only then could I spend my time until my death gloriously.

Therefore, right when Brother ghost leader walked into the wooden house, I pretended to look at him very blankly, with my first words exactly being: “Who’re you? I seem to have lost my memories.” This is the most c.r.a.ppy but also the most necessary convention in time travel: losing memories.

This was the beginning of everything, though unfortunately it wasn’t my beginning. I didn’t travel dimensions, and I had really died.

Brother ghost leader took a look at me, and with a really really deadpan face answered: “It can’t be. You haven't drank Meng Po's soup[1] yet, right?”

“Meng Po's soup? You can drink Meng Po’s soup in the human realm too?” I asked.

“Of course you can't to drink it in the human realm, but you’re in h.e.l.l now.” He answered as if it was a matter of course.

“h.e.l.l? Didn’t I time travel?” My face was full of surprise.

He finally understood where the “generation gap” between us was. Displaying an understanding smile, he replied, “This isn’t the ancient times, and you didn’t time travel either. You’ve merely died. In accordance to regular procedures, all that happened is that you entered h.e.l.l.”

I was dumbstruck. I merely died. It was just this simple?

He was unconcerned, leisurely taking out a pack of cigarettes from inside his long gown sleeve pouch. After using a cigarette lighter to ignite the cigarette b.u.t.t, he complained to me, “Ever since Honourable Yama[2] became fascinated by Tang dynasty architecture, all of h.e.l.l’s buildings were changed to look like this. I wore this long gown to seek my superior’s favour as well.”

He even comforted me, saying, “You should be relieved. You definitely aren’t the first to think that you ‘time travelled’. Out of the dead spirits of women thirty years old or under from the 21st century, eight out of ten of them would think this is ‘time travel’. If you didn’t mention it just now, I would’ve really forgotten that you also came from the 21st century.”

So it seems that I had actually died. Although at that time I was so embarra.s.sed that I wanted to die once again.

Taking off the s.h.i.+rt and jeans that I wore when I died, I changed into a Tang suit. I didn’t wear that light muslin rainbow colored dress, because it looked really complicated to wear, so I let Brother ghost leader bring a long gown for me to wear instead.

After a period of time, I asked Brother ghost leader, “When can I go get reincarnated?”

Brother ghost leader smiled unnecessarily mysteriously, saying, “This isn’t urgent. I still have important matters to discuss with you. Let’s take a walk around h.e.l.l, and then we'll talk.”

Leaving the wooden house, I discovered that the sky was an overcast grey sheet. It was different from the ordinary dusk – ghost leader told me – if I wanted to see sunny days in h.e.l.l, the odds are the same as seeing the sun rise from the west in the Northern Hemisphere. He had even heard that in Heaven, every day was a sunny day.

I didn’t treat Heaven or sunny days with too much hope. Accurately speaking, I was always a muddleheaded person. Towards anything, I didn’t have overly high expectations. What’s even more, I still hadn’t completely broken out of the shock of dying, to say the least that during my living years I have never antic.i.p.ated that my life would quickly end in this way. It seemed like I had only gone to a far away place when I went out, and the place was h.e.l.l.

The streets of h.e.l.l really were the same as Tang dynasty streets. Walking out of the residential area with a great number of wooden houses, I came to a busy street. Every kind of person came and went, completely the same as the human realm. I had the kind of feeling of time traveling to the Tang dynasty again, but the cell phones in those people’s hands reminded me again that this place wasn’t the human realm.

“Not everyone likes using cell phones.” Brother ghost leader considerably hatefully looked at an iPhone in a man’s hand, “Only b.u.mpkin dead spirits that came from ancient times like cell phones from famous brands. We dead spirits of the modern times all use magic connections. Who uses cell phones! Humph!”

We dead spirits of the modern times? Apparently Brother ghost leader’s and my era wasn’t that distant. As a fellow townsman meeting a fellow townsman, similar people should mutually support each other, but it seems I got distracted again.

“What’s magic?” I asked him. Was it the kind that Harry Potter had?

“It’s just……” He extended a hand, forefinger facing the sky, as a very small flame moved on his fingertips. “To do as you please, simply think of what you want done and it'll be done.”

I was shocked by his heavenly ability. Not needing incantations, not needing gestures, so “purely natural” that I couldn't help but treat magic with extreme reverence. Brother ghost leader in my eyes, immediately was promoted from a young person with an ordinary appearance and medium stature to a person with the magic of a peerless expert.

I only realised afterwards that those using cell phones to contact others were still connecting through magic. It was only that they came from ancient times, and had never used cell phones. Thinking that it was a fresh experience, they just used magic to make one, and this kind of magic, compared to Brother ghost leader’s demonstration, demanded more intensity. In other words, Brother ghost leader’s discrimination towards them was exactly the same as city people’s discrimination against country people. It had no basis, and it involved prejudice.

I followed him through the streets for a while, and realised that this street was really uncommonly long, as you couldn’t see the end. Occasionally there were some restaurants and plazas, but on the whole there were no stores. It was probably because h.e.l.l didn’t have things that were necessary to be bought or sold. The residential area was the majority.

Brother ghost leader led me into a restaurant. The name of the restaurant was very special, as it was called “Ascending Coffin Restaurant”. But this already was, among the restaurant names I had seen, comparatively more pleasant to hear. The restaurant we pa.s.sed by earlier was called “Starving to Death Restaurant”, appeared as if it’s business was really good.

“‘Starving to Death Restaurant’ always has a full house. After all, most who have died starved to death, and since everyone shares the same method of dying, to be able to gather together in one place is also a kind of fate.” Brother ghost leader slightly explained to me for a bit, “‘Ascending Coffin Restaurant’ also isn’t bad, it’s just that sometimes you’ll meet a superior here. If you look at the person sitting in the corner, it’s just my immediate superior.”

I turned my head to glance at that person a little. That person was wearing white clothes, looks similar to Brother ghost leader, with a very ordinary appearance, without anything special.

The waiter inside the store entirely wore sackcloth clothes, neatly served a pot of sake. I inwardly loosened out a breath. I had still really feared that he would serve some things like snakes, insects, rats, ants, those things that ghosts eat on television.

Brother ghost leader helped pour me a cup, and he also poured a cup for himself. I pursed up my lips in curiosity as I took a sip. It was sweet, like fruit juice.

“Isn’t this wine?” I asked him.

“It isn’t. Whatever you want to drink, it’ll just change into that flavor.” He himself drained the cup in one gulp, “Mine is whiskey.”

I thought and thought, and when I drank another sip again, sure enough, it was grape wine flavor. “Do I need to drink water? What I mean is, I'm dead aren't I?”

“Dead is dead. To us, water is not useful, and once you drink it into your digestive system it’ll also immediately disappear, so drinking is only a kind of pleasure.” He poured another cup for himself again, “For example, when I was alive I liked to smoke and drink alcohol, but later, because of a fatal disease, I had to stop doing it entirely. Now that I’m dead, whatever misgivings I have are also gone.”

Talking about it like this, dying seemed like it was also pretty nice. Just as I thought this, I heard him mumble to himself, “If I had known earlier that after death I could smoke as much as I want and drink as much as I want, I would’ve probably given up on it early during my time alive, so that I could likely still live for a few more years.”

When Brother ghost leader was alive he probably had people he wouldn’t be able to let go of. I unconsciously thought of my mother, and I was incapable of imagining that an always interdependent daughter would die in a short time. With respect to her, it was an extremely great blow. I mutely drank another sip again, a bitter beer flavor.

“I won’t talk about this anymore,” Brother ghost leader flung out a hand, putting on an appearance of discarding his worries, and introduced to me in high spirits, “This ‘Ascending Coffin Restaurant’, is ranked as the third best restaurant in our h.e.l.l. To decide if a restaurant is good or not, you just look at if the magic of the boss behind it is great or not. The greater their magic, the more the food and drink produced satisfies the appet.i.te of the customers. You shouldn’t look at how ‘Starving to Death Restaurant’ has the most people, as in fact the food and drink there certainly isn’t equal to the food and drink here by the slightest bit.”

I somewhat numbly nodded my head to express that I understood, but in my heart I was a little confused. Could it be that people who have died all pa.s.sed their days in h.e.l.l, and didn’t go to be reincarnated? Then how many people are there in h.e.l.l?

He was able to make out my question, “Of course, the majority of dead spirits all go to be reincarnated. Moreover, dead spirits are not just referring to the spirits of people, it refers to the spirits of other living beings as well; I should say that every day among millions of dead spirits, only a very few will be made to stay behind, and you’re one of those who were made to remain.”

“Remain? Remain and do what?” I unexpectedly discovered that on Brother ghost leader’s ordinary and suntanned face, a trace of l.u.s.ter also came into view, similar to the final gleam of a person that was about to die.

He mysteriously leaned close to me, spitting out a few words, “Become—a—ghost—messenger.”

Ghost messenger?

[1] A soup you drink to forget about something. More information here: Link.

[2] Yama is the King of h.e.l.l. More information here: Link.