The after-life

*Narrator's pov*

In 2022, at a hospital in Canada, a 25 years old man is on his deathbed because of the covid-19. This young man's name is Edward Smith. The last thing he will see is his white hospital room. Edward knows he will die in a few minutes; he can feel it, but strangely enough, he is not scared of dying anymore. Even though a few hours ago, he was telling the nurse how frightened he was of it.

'I can feel it now. I'm dying. I need to say some good last words. Hhhhuuuuuuuuuummmmmm.'

"The unholy offspring of lightning and death itself. Never engage this dragon. Your only chance: Hide and pray it does not find you." said Edward while remembering his favorite movie. 'AH! I nailed it. I wish I could watch the How to train your dragon saga one last time. Because of this saga, I started to study how to train all kinds of animals, from dogs to birds, without forgetting all kinds of lizards and, most importantly, how to take good care of them.'

As he released his last breath, a white flame, that no one could see, left his body and flew toward space. This white flame was Edward's soul, and it was traveling through space along with a stream of similar souls toward a gigantic portal.

The portal gets all the souls to a strange place where all they seem to gather. Everything here is so white that you could add color simply if someone breathed air in there. Here, some ghost organizes the souls in several different lines. Each line is the same as the other. Since the number of souls is gigantic, the number of lines cannot be counted.

Edwar's soul doesn't react to anything he sees along the way. It looks like he can't see anything as long as he is in this floating white flame shape. Soon enough, one of the ghosts put his soul in one of the lines.

And then he starts to wait. Edward's soul waited and waited and waited. By the time he got to the end of the line, seven months as passed. Even though seven months had passed, Edward himself didn't feel any of it. Once at the end of the line, he entered a door leading to an office where, strangely, everything inside was yellow. The wall, the roof even the chair and desk were yellow.

"Hello, little soul." said the man owning the office. "Let me give you your conscious back for a start." Then with a wave of the man's hand, Edward's awareness returned to him.

"*ragged breath* Hugh! What happened? Where am I? Who are you? WHY YELLOW??" said Edward in rapid-fire still in his white flame form. Because of the weird situation, his last question seemed to matter a lot more than the three first he asked.

"I'm glad you asked! The reason for yellow is simply because it's my favorite color." said with energy the unnamed man.

"..."

"..."

"Hum, I asked four questions. Why do I get an answer for only one of them?"

"Oops, sorry, I thought we were talking about yellow. I was waiting for your next question."

"*sigh* Okay, then would you answer my three first questions?"

"It's a shame, but I will do it. Answer number 1: you died. Answer number 2: you are in my office. Answer number 3: you can call me Mr. X" tells the now named(?) Mr. X.

"Are you messing with me?"

"Yes, I am."

"..."

"Hahahaha, thanks for the good laugh. With a little training, you could be a good tsukomi. But now is not the time."

"You're the one wasting time. Anyway, can you explain the situation now? More clearly!" said Edward's soul, who was floating around.

"Yeah, so like I said before, you are dead, and once someone or something with a soul dies, depending on its condition, it will be sent to two places. If its soul is like a mindless animal, it will be sent toward the path of reincarnation, where it will get into its next life or, even later, a mind. But if it got a mind like yourself, souls will be sent to one of my colleagues or me.

Just for your information, having a soul with a mind is more complicated than you think. Our boss created the path of reincarnation to transform the mindless soul into a mind soul, and even then, it can take numerous tries. It has taken your soul 12 try living life and dying before gaining a mind." explained Mr. X professionally.

"Why do you need a soul with the mind?" asked Edward.

"Because my colleague and I need people to help us do mission in all the multiverse, were severely lacking people everywhere, even here in the afterlife we are lacking people to give a mission to a soul who gets a mind.

And we are doing all these missions to protect ourselves and get stronger. We don't know why, but by doing these missions, we get some abilities. Some can throw fireballs or fly. Others of us even get godly power. But if we stop, our soul would disappear, and a new mindless soul would take its place."

"I was thinking, will I ever be able to see my family and friends again."

"It depends on many things for short, no, but there is a chance. You see, not all humans have a soul with a mind. Having a mind is hard to do. There are special conditions. So, if you see your family or friends again, it will be because they had a mind at the time they died.

If not, all their memory will be wiped by the path of reincarnation, but even then, you need to complete one mission. Before allowing each soul with a mind some freedom in the afterlife, they must do their first mission."

"What kind of mission?"

"There are so many different missions that it can be anything, but all of them have for final goal to protect or create a soul with a mind. So we could send you with a living body to another world where a demon king is creating havoc that you would need to stop or even become a soul reaper to collect souls with a mind that manages to escape our grasp.

Maybe we could send you to our scientific team to help us upgrade the reincarnation path or something. I have never seen anyone from the scientific team doing anything. Well, that's not important."

"The thing you describe looks like just a big company trying to fetch workers."

"It's exactly that. Now to the important part: giving you a mission. You are quite lucky that I'm the one giving the mission because I heard some of my fellow 'workers' like to act like a god, which is super annoying. I think you prefer to have some quality time with me in the best yellow office there is in the whole afterlife." excitedly said Mr.X.

"... Hum, I guess."

"I knew it."

Mr.X continued, "So as was saying: giving you the mission. I looked into your file, and when you were living in your previous life, you gathered a lot of skills that could come in handy for some missions that we have, but I'm not sure which one will fit you the best. Any preference?"

"Well, since I was one of the best animal trainers in my country before dying, it could be a mission linked to that?"

"Hugh! You are a newbie. In the multiverse, there are more animal species than humanoid ones, soooo ..." said Mr.X.

"Sooooooo?" continued Edward.

"*Sigh* So much more of the minded soul come from animal than humanoid species. Take me as an example. My soul is the soul of a cat!"

"A cat?"

"Yeah!"

Edward looked at the top of the head of Mr.X and saw two black cat ears on its top." Why didn't saw this sooner? He even has a tail which is acting like a belt." mumbled Edward to itself. At the same time, he was floating around, Mr. X.

"Let's get back to your mission."

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(If you spot mistakes tell me I will correct them. Thanks)