Chương 1: Buying New Shoes and Dying?!

Chapter One Buying New Shoes and Dying?! Alice watched the hand slap her across the face.

"Are you listening to me?!"

"I'm listening..." Alice said softly as her cheek began to sting.

"No, you aren't!" Mom said with a scowl.

"Why can't you concentrate for more than five minutes?" Alice said nothing. It was often best to say nothing. She simply watched as a dozen different cars whizzed past the crosswalk.

"Your brother doesn't give me nearly this much trouble," Mom said. Her scowl became thunderous as she continued.

"The school called again. Did you know that? I never receive calls about your brother."

"I'm sorry..." Alice said as she watched a particularly beaten-up convertible blur past them.

"It's humiliating!" Mom huffed as the crosswalk signal remained a defiant red.

"You may not care, but it makes me look like... like some kind of awful mother!"

"I care..." Alice said, the words almost as mechanical as her previous apology. Mom did not seem to be listening, however.

"And after all the trouble you cause, here we are buying you brand new cleats for baseball." Mom shook her head and shot Alice a venomous look.

"Maybe we should just go home. Hmm? Your brother's old cleats should still fit. Do you really think you deserve new cleats?" Alice said nothing. She did not say that she had outgrown her brother's cleats more than a year ago. She did not say that her feet had begun to bleed whenever she wore them to practice. She certainly did not say that the only reason she even played baseball was because Mom signed her up every year.

"Well?!"

"I... I guess I don't need new shoes," Alice said. She was not sure what Mom wanted to hear. But it clearly was not that.

"What?! We come all this way, and you don't even want them?! Ridiculous! No, no. We are getting you those cleats. Come on." Alice would have laughed if she had the energy. She had just been so tired lately, though. Everything seemed to demand too much time and effort. She stepped into the street and began a mournful trod towards the distant strip mall. She had hardly taken three steps, however, before she heard a loud gasp. And then the loud honking of a horn.

Alice turned around and found Mom still waiting on the sidewalk, her eyes wide with shock. Mom's panic did not hold her attention for long, however. With another blast of its horn, an enormous truck drew closer and closer. Alice could even see the petrified face of the driver. She could almost feel the hum of its engine as the mass of metal descended on her like an avalanche. Something pulled hard on her arm, and she tumbled out of the truck's way.

Its horn slowly disappeared as the truck vanished off into the distance.

"Could have gotten yourself killed!" Mom screamed as she yanked Alice another couple feet onto the sidewalk.

"Do I need to hold your hand?! You need to pay attention! How many times do I have to tell you that?!" Mom might have said more, but the crosswalk signal finally turned green. She did not, in fact, hold Alice's hand as she stomped across the street. She muttered darkly the whole while, however, the words barely audible over the hammering of Alice's chest. That could have been the start of an isekai story. Mom's mutterings did not quiet even after they had arrived at the sporting goods store.

She was a constant stream of frustration as the pair of them walked up and down the aisles in search of reasonably-priced cleats. Traffic was still heavy at the crosswalk on the way back, an overlarge shoebox in Alice's hands. She would have liked to throw the cleats into the road and watch them turn into pancakes, but that would have taken too much energy. And besides, Mom would probably still make her wear them. Mom was uncharacteristically quiet as they waited for the crosswalk signal to turn green again.

Alice imagined it had to do with the clearly drunk man stumbling beside them. The front of his t-shirt was stained, and he was staggering left and right as if the ground was spinning. Alice watched him with a wry smile on her face while Mom tried her best to pretend he wasn't there. Alice had to stop herself from laughing as the man performed a dramatic karate chop, a slurred hi-yah included.

Her smile quickly vanished, however, as the man followed it up with a kick, lost his balance, and stumbled towards her like a bull. Before she could even think to react, the man slammed into her with the force of a cannonball. She stumbled herself. Right into the road. She winced as she fell face forward. Bright lines of pain raced up her arm where she scraped them against the road. She tried to blink away her hurt, and was pleased to see she had managed to hold onto the shoebox. Love this novel?

Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. Mom's scream cut through that relief, however. Alice turned towards the shrill noise, and her face froze partway. An enormous truck, at least twice as large as the metal menace that had honked at her earlier, was barreling down the road. She could almost see her own startled face reflected in its polished grill. Time seemed to slow down as Alice realized, with an icy certainty, that she was about to die.

She was going to be reduced to a pancake, all because of some stupid shoes. It seemed so terribly cruel. If the first truck had flattened her, Mom might have saved a little bit of money. But then the truck swe ee rve d suddenly out of the way, and time seemed to speed right back up. There was a cataclysmic BAAANG as the enormous truck hurtled into oncoming traffic, and oncoming traffic slammed into the truck's enormous trailer.

Alice's ears rang with the violence of a warzone as a dozen different cars crashed into one another. The air filled with the sounds of metal and human screeches. Mom raced over to Alice, her face pale. Mom's bottom lip was trembling as if she was on the verge of tears. The frightened look shocked Alice more than anything else.

"I'm... I'm OK," Alice said weakly as her scraped arms continued to burn and bleed.

"Get up!" Mom hissed, and Alice's chest turned icy.

"I can't take you anywhere! Look at what you've done! Come on! We need to leave!" Mom did not wait for Alice to stand. She grabbed and pulled Alice to her feet. And then pulled and yanked on her arm like a stubborn mule as the pair of them ran across the street. Alice could hear the faint whine of sirens in the distance as the massive accident disappeared from view.

"Not a word of this to your father!" Mom said. She seemed to be on the verge of hyperventilating. She opened the back door of their dumpy car and waited, impatiently.

"He'd have a heart attack. Not a word!" Alice looked down at the shoebox in her hands, at the torn sleeve of her shirt. She could still hear bits and pieces of the accident in the distance.

"Come on!" Mom shouted angrily, and she shoved Alice into the back seat. Alice was barely inside when Mom slammed the door shut with a loud thunk. Right onto her head.

"Gah!" Alice shouted in pain as the door tried to crack open her skull like a mallet.

"Are you serious?" Mom said, exasperated. Alice's head spun with hurt as she stepped out and away from the car. She took a second step, but the ground seemed to slip out from underneath her. She tumbled backwards, almost drunkenly, the world tilting all around her. The blue sky appeared with a flash. And then... Thuunk. She felt the back of her head connect with something hard. There was another flash of bright red pain, but it was quickly extinguished by a soothing cold.

The last thing Alice heard before that same cold swallowed her whole was Mom's sour voice demanding that she stop playing around and get into the car. And then... everything went black. She could not feel her arms or her legs. The world seemed to be encased in ice, and she could not thaw even a single thought free from its glacial grip. [Alice.] A voice appeared amidst the endless darkness. Its every syllable radiated a furnace heat, and Alice could feel the icy prison of her thoughts begin to melt.

[Poor, Poor Alice.] [You have died... but death need not be an ending.] With each word, Alice felt fresh life pour into her formless body. She tried to speak, to open her mouth, but she quickly realized she did not have one. [You shall be reborn... as an eagle! Not even The Fates shall clip your talons nor bind your wings.] Nothing she heard made sense, but Alice felt a flash of excitement fill her chest. She was going to be reborn as an eagle?

She supposed the Buddhists had it right with all that reincarnation talk. An eagle, though... [You do not wish to soar across the endless blue skies?] Alice did not have a face, but she still felt her phantom expression color with surprise. It was almost as if the mysterious voice had read her thoughts. Because the truth was she did not really want to be an eagle. The idea of having to flap her wings every minute of every day sounded exhausting. [An eagle, you need not be. There is another Master of Nature!] [You will be reborn as a shark, and not even The Fates shall...!] [...] [You don't want to be a shark either?] The Voice was very clearly reading Alice's thoughts. No sooner had The Voice mentioned being reborn as a shark did Alice remember how sharks had to remain in constant motion. If they ever stopped swimming, they would die. That sounded even more miserable than having to flap your wings constantly. [You need not worry, Alice.] [Not a shark. Not an eagle.] [You shall be reborn as...] Time seemed to move differently wherever Alice was. The Voice offered up animal after animal in search of Alice's perfect reincarnation. She learned nothing important about the mysterious voice, but after more than a dozen different animals, she did learn The Voice could lose its patience. [How can you object to becoming a sloth?!] The Voice's words had once been filled with a spring day's warmth. Their words were now the frost of a snowstorm. [What could be more relaxed than a sloth?!] Alice could not help but feel bad for The Voice. She did not mean to turn down reincarnation after reincarnation. Unfortunately, The Voice could read Alice's thoughts, so there was no deceiving them. Perhaps if Alice had not spent so much time on the internet, she would have never known about how sloths had to climb down and back up their trees each and every time they went to the bathroom. [Unbelievable! I'd offer to turn you into the tree, but I imagine you'd find photosynthesis to be too much work!] [You don't want to be a wolf because they lick their own genitals. You don't want to be a lion because you don't want to cough up hairballs.] [Maybe you'd be happy as a rock!] Alice's nonexistent eyebrows furrowed in confusion. What kind of animal was a rock? [Not an animal. A rock. You know, those round things you find on the ground? Would living as a rock be more your speed?] Living as a rock... The Voice's mocking words seemed to open a locked door in Alice's mind.

As a rock, she wouldn't have to worry about food or sleep. She wouldn't have to worry about pain or discomfort. She wouldn't have to worry about... anything. [Eh?] [H-Hold on a moment, Alice.] Living as a rock! [No, no, no.] [You can't...] [I was just...] [That was supposed to be a...] Alice wouldn't want to be a very big one, though. Not a boulder. Just an ordinary rock. [You're serious...] [You really...] [...] [Haaaaaah.] The formless world fell silent for a moment, but then The Voice reappeared, the regal composure it had shown at the start of their conversation back on display. [You have died, Poor Alice, but death need not be the end of your journey.] An alarming sense of vertigo consumed Alice. The world around her, though still blank and empty, began to spin and distort. Sight and sound started to scratch at the distant fringes of her senses. [Your story shall continue as... as a rock!]