Just a Cup of Tea - 1

With my eyes shut down and my senses numb once again, my body hits something hard. Did I break my backbone or what?! Or is it that I am still alive?!

While lying on a familiar surface, I open my eyes to look at the blue sky and the nomadic clouds. On my bottom is a wide field with soft grasses growing over it. This gives me a feeling that I am somewhere but that somewhere's somewhat familiar. I am still lying on the surface, trying to understand my current situation.

Since I felt a little pain on the back of my body, which is dead now, it is subtle to assume that I fell with my face towards the sky. I must have fallen from a relatively low height, or I would not be lying here with whatsoever no injuries.

I tilt my body towards a more comfortable direction and stand up on my legs, with minimal effort.

"Phew, What is this place anyway?" I expunge the imaginary dust from my clothes which I think may have stuck to my clothes in this unblemished field. One thing is clear now, it's not Earth since we are not nature-caring people and this kind of heavenly place can't exist there.

"Did I startle you?!" A clean but mature feminine voice addresses me from behind. I slowly twirl myself in the direction of the voice and look at the white embodiment sitting on the white chair.

She should be denominated as the genuine snow-white, and I am not kidding. She's not wearing something too unusual but it's not that usual on Earth. The dress leaves her shoulders mostly uncovered and flows down into a closed clamped neckline. It's a tight fit that accentuates her breasts, but it does so in an elegant manner.

She just looks like a goddess.

Her arms have been covered all the way down to her wrists. The sleeves start loose and tighten towards the bottom where they wrap gracefully around her wrists.

Although it's not much visible, I can kind of imagine it. The dress' waist is wide, but it's a slim fit. A bow has been wrapped around her and rests gently on her lower back. Below the waist, the dress widens ever so slightly and has an accordion style.

The dress reaches all the way down to her feet and is the same length all around. I can't see her feet since it's covered with the dress. To top it all off, her white hairs vacillating in the air compliments her body features.

But one particular feature stands out the most: her blindfolded eyes surrounded by a black strap.

She is sitting on a white chair with a white table in front of her, all embellished with traditional embroideries and a black-white strapped umbrella covering the entire setup together with an empty chair placed vertical to her, near the table.

"It's been a long time." She looks at me with an obscure smile, which I am unable to comprehend the meaning of. What long time? It's my first time meeting you. "It has been quite a while since I saw you so perhaps I was too eager." She says with the same beguiling tone, making me nervous.

I back off a little because I am feeling a little overwhelmed as I look at the lady there with a wrinkled forehead.

"Are you going to stand there forever?" She says to me while waving her palm indicating me to sit on that empty chair.

"Ah, Damn it!! I can't think straight right now." I shout in dismay and agree to her offer. Are these entities supposed to have this demeaning aura?! Of course, they are. As I walk closer to her, I feel my guts getting compressed, conferring me with fake throw-ups.

Somehow, I sit on the chair under the shade of the umbrella and stare at her with restlessness.

Many questions pop up in my mind at the same time which I don't know the answers to. But call it instinct or whatever, I think she has all the answers that I need.

"If you look at me like that, I won't be able to continue." She closes her eyes and shakes her head in response to the stare. "Despite how I look, I am quite bashful by nature!" She concludes the talking with a single sentence describing a personality completely contradicting her mature and enticing appearance.

"So, what am I supposed to ask right now?" I ask her since I am completely lost. I don't know the priorities of the questions revolving in my mind.

With her palm pointing to the white cup and teapot, she loosens her chin and says, "For now, why don't you have a sip before the tea gets cold?"

I look at the cup suspiciously but then, it doesn't matter since I am already dead. Without thinking much, I gulp down the tea in the cup in a single sip.

"It tastes good." It's really good. It has that aroma of the one that I had a long time ago which was the best I ever had.

"You are as awfully brave as usual." She says with an impish smile, "Nonetheless, I missed this unvarying and perpetual personality of yours since then." What's she talking about? Like what the hell is this tension between us? And I am about to puke.

"All that aside, can you get m-" While I am speaking, she gets up from her chair and kisses me deeply while holding my face tightly with her right hand. I can't speak up. I can't move away or even think straight. It's just too sudden and I am feeling weird. Our tongues mingle with each other, a few times, and then she loosens her grip. Getting back into my senses, I instantly separate myself from her and back off a little bit.

"W-W-W-What are you trying to do?" I shout at her as I finally realize what just happened. I have lost my kiss. The precious one-time package that I had to offer to the future 'someone special' on Earth.

"Your soul was squeezing itself too arduously so I just maintained the balance." She gives a short but exact answer to my panicking self. "I don't want you getting shattered in front of me after I waited for you for so long."

The kiss was sudden but it's also true that I am feeling so calm right now that it's creepy.

"I will ask it up bluntly," I look at that hysterical face of hers and continue my blabbering, "I don't know if this is just my assumption, but I don't think that me dying on Earth in such a way was by any means coincidental." I mean, as I already said, it all feels scripted. "What do you want from me?!" Although feeling overwhelmed, I put up a brave front.

"Nothing, really." She rests her chin on her palm and looks at me with those blindfolded eyes. "Just because the way you died seems unrealistic doesn't prove anything." She holds her cup of tea and slowly takes a sip. "I suggest you keep it just as an assumption because you are dead right now and that's your reality."

"So what's going to happen with me now?" I ask her since my previous call has already been rejected.

"Yeah, Yeah, there's a reason why you are here," She puts down the cup of tea with a BAM and adjusts her position perfectly.

"Aren't you curious as to your cause of death? "

"I am not curious because I know the series of the events that took place." She is intentionally trying to pick up that topic even though I am avoiding it. "I don't need you to brief them." I try to clear out the misconception she has in her mind.

"You have got it all wrong." She looks at me with a face that will almost burst out of laughter if not for that blindfold keeping my expressions off her. Who knows what can happen here. Maybe she can see me clearly after all.

"I reassure you that you didn't die of the reason you think you did!" She drops another bomb.

"What do you mean? Didn't they cut off-" I stop my running mouth with my palms as I realize that I was about to embarrass myself.