The Challenge

Oliver glanced at the white tiled ceiling through the space between his hand while he stretched his arms out. He squinted from the bright lighting in the room which painted the whole area in dazzling white.

When Oliver looked down, he found himself dressed in the same white collared shirt and fancy dress pants from when he met his client.

"You're finally awake," the girl skipped towards him with a light twirl in the middle.

"Where am I?" Oliver stood in the middle of the wide empty room.

"The afterlife," The girl twirled her finger in her long silky hair from boredom.

The modern square room was bare of any furnishings. The presumed 'afterlife' was nothing as Oliver had imagined to be.

'Wasn't the afterlife supposed be to like a field of flowers? At least try to make the setting more realistic.' Oliver got disappointed from the prank.

"You died an hour ago," The girl explained when Oliver stared at her with a dumbfounded expression.

"Why?" Oliver couldn't understand the reason for his 'early death'.

"You said you wanted proof for my existence and here it is," The girl conceitedly answered his question.

Oliver quickly searched for an exit with the corners of his eyes. However, he could not find a single door or opening to the room he was held captive. He sighed as he wondered why a delusional young girl would kidnap him to such a place.

"I mentioned that everyone had their own beliefs. Now please let me go," Oliver pleaded as he searched for his briefcase.

Oliver sighed again when his briefcase that carried the important documents signed by the client were nowhere to be seen. He knew that he would have to report to the office soon. His manager was in a bad mood lately due to the declining partnerships and sales this quarter.

'My salary is going to get deducted again,' Oliver was about to cry.

"You still don't believe me?" The girl appeared to be greatly shocked as she elegantly covered her lips with a white feathered fan to hide it.

"What is there to believe?" Oliver clenched his hands into fists. He wanted to go back to the retro coffee shop to search for his briefcase.

The girl hit both of her cheeks to cheer herself up after getting over her initial surprise. Instead of showing more of her smug arrogance, she calmed herself down after coming up with a great scheme inside her head.

"Then let's make a deal," She proposed as she lifted Oliver's chin with her delicate fan made from the feathers of a holy swan.

"I'll let you go if you win this game." The girl dazzlingly smiled.

Her silk white robes followed her every movements. For a young girl obsessed with make-belief, her outfit suited her self-assigned role.

Precious embroidery decorated her flower-patterned robe. She wore a pastel blue dress that appeared to resemble a school uniform with its simplicity. Her bright golden eyes twinkled with anticipation as they strangely appeared as if they were glowing.

Oliver decided to go with her delusional little challenge as he just wanted to go out of the room as soon as possible. It was the only choice he had since he could not find an exit to the room. He nodded for her to continue as the girl softly coughed before explaining the rules of the game.

"You said that God doesn't exist and isn't needed in this world anymore," she started off.

Oliver nodded once more. He considered himself to be a relatively rational person who praised science for its fine proofs of the world's most interesting mysteries. God wasn't part of that equation and it would never be.

"My proposal is that if you manage to live one day without me out of one hundred days, I will admit my defeat and acknowledge that God isn't needed which makes God inexistent in this world." The loli finished explaining the challenge.

'Acknowledging that God isn't needed doesn't make God inexistent in this world,' Oliver instantly spotted some holes in her statement. However, Oliver pretended to agree to participate in her little proposal from his small intuition that it was his only key to get out of the room.

"Let's start the game then," Oliver confidently replied as he rolled up his sleeves.

Oliver rushed into the overpowering white light that came from a newly appeared door at the other side of the room. He didn't think of the sudden appearance of the door to get out of that crazy loli's place as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, Oliver would have had more of a chance to win the challenge if he was careful from the start to cautiously look back before carelessly entering the playing field.

A hollow screen instantly popped up as it projected onto one of the white walls of the room.

The scenery in the screen was placed in Oliver's office in the big city of Manhattan. The buildings twinkled from light bouncing off from its glass windows. The polluted stench from cars and buses filled the air as people busily walked around with a mask.

Oliver immediately crashed onto the ground in the lobby which consisted of the hard marble-tiled floor after stepping out of the door.

His coworkers whispered among themselves as they pointed to the middle-aged disheveled man with a wrinkled shirt and dirtied dress pants.

The loli wickedly smiled with clear evil intentions as she amusedly watched him carelessly enter her schemes.

Oliver slowly rose up as he was drowned by the stares from his gossiping colleagues. The crowd that surrounded him scorned him while pretending to pity him simultaneously. While some of them were nice enough to subtly insult him through gestures or indirect hints, others bluntly yelled out his unsightly sudden appearance.

'Was it all a dream?' Oliver tried to tidy himself up while he ignored his coworkers who immersed themselves in the newest drama in the office.

The loli sneered from the cold reactions from Oliver's colleagues.

"Let the game begin," She announced to her empty lair with her arms raised with joy.