The last thing Mario Mortiz remembered was silence.
Not the peaceful kind.
The heavy kind.
The kind that settled inside an apartment after someone had taken everything worth saying with them.
He sat alone on the edge of his bed, elbows resting on his knees, staring at the dull ceramic tiles beneath his feet.
The room wasn’t empty—there was a table by the window, a secondhand refrigerator humming in the corner, a laptop he’d relied on for years of virtual assistant work—but somehow it still felt hollow.
Funny.
A place didn’t have to lose its furniture to feel abandoned.
Outside, rain tapped steadily against the glass.
The streets below were beginning to flood, headlights stretching into wavering ribbons across the wet pavement.
It was just another evening in Manila.
Life continued as though nothing had happened.
For everyone else, it probably hadn’t.
Mario let out a slow breath and reached for the mug beside him.
Cold.
He didn’t remember when the coffee had gone stale.
His gaze drifted toward the framed photograph lying face down on the table.
He didn’t pick it up.
There was no point.
Some memories only reopened wounds.
Others reminded you why they’d been closed in the first place.
A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, though there was no joy behind it.
Thirty-eight years.
That was how long it had taken him to learn something painfully simple.
Being a good person didn’t guarantee a good ending.
He had spent most of his life believing otherwise.
Help people when you could.
Keep your word.
Treat others with respect, even when they couldn’t return the favor.
His parents had raised him that way.
Somewhere along the line, he’d started believing the world worked the same way.
It didn’t.
Trust, he had learned, was the easiest thing to give away.
And the hardest thing to get back.
He closed his eyes.
For just a moment, he allowed himself to remember.
A laugh.
A promise.
A future he had once believed was within reach.
Then another memory followed.
Different.
Sharper.
A pair of eyes that couldn’t meet his.
A conversation that explained everything without actually explaining anything.
By the time the truth came out, the decisions had already been made.
There had been no dramatic confrontation.
No shouting.
No tears.
Just acceptance.
Cold.
Calculated.
Final.
Mario opened his eyes again.
Strangely enough, he wasn’t angry anymore.
That part of him had burned itself out days ago.
What remained was…
clarity.
People weren’t good simply because you wanted them to be.
Trust wasn’t free.
It had to be earned.
And once broken…
It stayed broken.
His phone buzzed across the table.
Mario glanced at the screen.
Another message.
He didn’t bother reading it.
Whoever it was could wait.
Or not.
It hardly mattered tonight.
He stood, stretched his stiff shoulders, and slipped on a faded jacket.
The apartment suddenly felt too small.
Maybe a walk would help clear his head.
Maybe not.
Either way, sitting there wouldn’t change anything.
The rain had eased into a drizzle by the time Mario stepped outside.
Cool air brushed against his face, carrying the familiar scent of wet asphalt and street food from a nearby corner.
A jeepney rumbled past, splashing water onto the side of the road as commuters hurried beneath umbrellas.
The city hadn’t changed.
Only he had.
Mario shoved his hands into his pockets and walked without any particular destination.
His mind was unusually quiet.
Not because he’d found peace.
Because he’d finally stopped asking questions with no answers.
Why did it happen?
Why him?
What could he have done differently?
None of it mattered anymore.
Life wasn’t an equation.
Sometimes good choices led to terrible outcomes.
Sometimes terrible people lived comfortably until old age.
That wasn’t bitterness.
It was observation.
He accepted facts for what they were.
The traffic light ahead turned green.
Pedestrians crossed the intersection while motorcycles weaved impatiently between lanes.
Mario followed the crowd.
Halfway across the street—
Something felt…
Wrong.
He stopped.
Not because he heard anything.
Because everything suddenly became too quiet.
The engines disappeared.
The rain stopped.
Even the wind seemed to vanish.
People continued walking around him, completely unaware.
Mario slowly looked upward.
The sky rippled.
Like someone had thrown a stone into an invisible ocean suspended above the city.
Concentric waves spread across the clouds.
His brows furrowed.
“…What the…”
No one else reacted.
A woman walked past him while talking on her phone.
A child laughed as his father carried him across the crosswalk.
Cars continued moving.
As though reality itself had split in half—and only Mario could see it.
The ripples intensified.
A faint crack appeared in the air.
Not in the clouds.
In space itself.
It spread silently, branching outward like fractured glass.
Mario’s instincts screamed that something was terribly wrong.
Run.
The thought came naturally.
His body never moved.
The crack widened.
Beyond it…
There was only white.
An endless white that hurt to look at.
Then, from somewhere impossibly far away, a voice echoed.
“…Huh?”
It sounded confused.
Almost distracted.
The crack shifted.
No.
Something enormous was passing through it.
Mario couldn’t understand what he was seeing.
His mind refused to process the shape.
It was as though reality itself lacked the vocabulary to describe it.
The moment it brushed against the world—
Everything stopped.
The rain froze in midair.
Cars became motionless.
People stood like statues.
Time itself held its breath.
Mario blinked once.
He didn’t feel pain.
He didn’t even have time to think.
His body simply…
Vanished.
Not exploded.
Not disintegrated.
One moment he existed.
The next…
He didn’t.
“…Oops.”
The voice was close now.
Very close.
Mario frowned.
His consciousness returned gradually, like waking from an unusually deep sleep.
There was no pain.
No weight.
No sensation of breathing.
Yet somehow…
He was aware.
His eyelids slowly opened.
White.
An endless sea of white stretched beyond the horizon, so perfectly uniform that it blurred the line between sky and ground.
There was nothing.
No walls.
No ceiling.
No shadows.
Just endless white.
A few meters away sat a young man behind a small wooden tea table.
The furniture looked oddly ordinary against such an impossible backdrop.
Steam curled lazily from a porcelain cup resting in the stranger’s hand.
He took another sip.
Calmly.
As though this meeting had been scheduled weeks in advance.
Mario stared.
The young man looked up and offered an awkward smile.
“…Uh.”
“Sorry about that.”
Mario blinked.
“…Excuse me?”
The stranger lowered his cup onto its saucer with surprising care.
“My mistake.”
Mario frowned.
“What mistake?”
The young man scratched the back of his head.
“I accidentally killed you.”
Silence.
Neither of them moved.
Mario simply looked at him.
The stranger looked back, waiting as if he’d just apologized for bumping into someone at a grocery store.
Several long seconds passed.
“…What?”
“I accidentally killed you.”
Mario’s eyebrows rose.
“I heard you.”
He paused.
“I’m just making sure that’s actually what you said.”
The stranger gave a sheepish nod.
“It is.”
Mario looked around the endless white again.
No doors.
No windows.
No hidden cameras.
Nothing.
Just him.
And a man who had casually admitted to ending his life.
“…Am I dead?”
“Yes.”
The answer came without hesitation.
Matter-of-fact.
Like confirming today’s weather.
Mario lowered his gaze.
He expected panic.
Anger.
Fear.
Instead…
He found himself strangely calm.
Maybe because everything he’d been carrying had already exhausted him.
Or maybe because reality had become too absurd for emotion to catch up.
He let out a quiet breath.
“So…”
“I died because of an accident.”
“Correct.”
Mario rubbed his forehead.
“I have to admit…”
He looked back at the stranger.
“That’s not how I imagined this conversation would go.”
The young man chuckled.
“No?”
Mario shook his head.
“I expected something a little more…”
He searched for the word.
“…Divine.”
The stranger laughed.
“Oh.”
“I’m definitely not that.”
And for some reason…
That answer only raised more questions.
End of Chapter 1