◆ The “Punishment” for a Life Lived in Vain
A reddish hue slowly bleeds into my vision. It is suffocating. A thick, clinging warmth envelops my entire body, an unfamiliar sensation that feeds my growing discomfort.
A crushing pressure, a pain as though my very body is being ground into pulp, assails me. The sensation is akin to being squeezed dry, my entire being caught in an unrelenting vice.
――― Is this purgatory?
I thrash desperately, struggling to escape. The place that had once been warm, a source of comfort, has become a hell of agony and torment. Terror grips me as I fight to break free. I struggle. I writhe. I push forward…
There is but one path of escape—through a narrow, suffocating gate.
At last, after a final desperate push, light floods my vision, blinding and absolute. I have escaped. But from what? And to where? No sooner have I drawn breath than a new sense of unease takes hold of me.
――― My entire body is exposed to the air, slick and trembling.
I gasp, my mouth opening hungrily. Something thick and clinging is expelled in great heaves from my throat, leaving an emptiness in my chest. My breath begins.
I suck in air, my deflated lungs struggling to expand, and with a terrible crack, my ribs groan in protest.
I can feel it—my chest cavity widening, stretching, forcing itself into its proper shape. My bones, still frail and unformed, grind together as they desperately adjust to their intended form. The sensation is agonizing, overwhelming, terrifying.
Pain. Fear. These are the only things that exist to me now.
――― And then, suddenly, understanding dawns upon me.
Yes. That is why newborns cry. It is not mere instinct, but a cry to drown out the sheer agony of birth. No—more than that. The pain and terror serve to wash away the memories inscribed upon the soul, allowing one to be born anew, pure and untouched.
But for me, the mercy of “forgetfulness” never came.
The pain persisted, yet my mind was consumed by something else entirely—so much so that I could not even cry. Something far greater, far more profound, had enveloped me—no, myself—no, the man I once was—
For on the day of my birth, something else settled within me.
The memories of an aged man.
Memories belonging to a man who lived before I was born.
―――― The memories of an old man who had surrendered everything.
A newborn child I may have been, but in my mind dwelled the bleak recollections of an aged man, one whose life had been nothing but a series of resigned, weary days.
A man who had lived a harsh, desolate life, whose heart had long been consumed by disillusionment. And yet, he—I—was reborn into this world, burdened with the weight of that past.
This world was entirely removed from my previous one. A world of rigid hierarchy, where one’s birth dictated all. A world where rank, not merit, decided a man’s worth.
I understood this, for I remembered.
For I knew what had transpired at the moment of my previous death.
The “god” of that world had spoken to me.
As punishment for a life lived in vain, I was to be cast into a world utterly unlike my own.
“You shall be reborn into a world where freedom is strangled at every turn, where you may act only as your station allows. A world wholly unlike the one you squandered.”
I had not even been granted a moment to comprehend my fate.
A cold, dismissive decree. Impersonal. Absolute. There was no room for my pleas, no space for defiance. I was discarded without so much as a second thought.
Just as it had always been.
Lived in vain?
Is that how it appeared to that thing?
Had I been watched? Or was I simply found by chance?
For in my previous life, there had been many others like me.
No, wait. Had there been?
Perhaps it only seemed that way.
Perhaps I had only wanted to believe that.
Perhaps they had each found some meaning, some small joy, in their own ways. Perhaps they had lived, however humbly, with a dream, a desire—something I had never grasped.
But I could not.
I had been raised by what my world called “toxic parents,” beaten down before I could even conceive of hope. No expectations. No affection. Only violence, neglect, and indifference.
I never sought connection, nor did I desire it. My existence had been that of a pawn, a piece on a board played by others. Any desire, any personal will, was crushed the moment it surfaced.
I endured a childhood of silent suffering, cast off to the care of the state, raised in a welfare facility until my so-called education was deemed complete.
Higher learning was never an option. Instead, I was sent to labor—placed into a company that sought little more than bodies to use.
A cog in the machine.
The company dormitory was no better than a prison cell.
Seventeen-hour workdays ground my body to dust.
No one saves you.
No one lends a hand.
I lacked the “power” to escape. I lacked even the will to fight against my circumstances. Life had no purpose beyond existing.
I worked. I ate. I slept. That was all.
The workplace suffered from ceaseless turnover. The senior workers had no patience for men like me, men with no aptitude, no connections, no promise. No one taught me anything.
Years passed. Decades passed. And I remained the same—unskilled, unnoticed, disposable.
There was nowhere else to go.
The meager wages I earned were siphoned away as “dorm fees,” leaving me with scraps barely enough to survive. I could afford only the simplest necessities.
A barren room.
A thin mattress, a rickety table.
A few notebooks and pens.
A collection of discarded books, left behind by those who had quit before me.
Company-issued uniforms, and the underclothes I purchased for myself.
That was everything I had.
A fateful encounter?
A moment that could change my life?
I had nothing of the sort.
The factory stood in a remote, desolate town. Few ever passed through. The people who worked there were all like me—burdened by circumstances beyond their control, each keeping to themselves.
And so, the years simply passed.
I lived, performing menial tasks day after day. My only solace was in the books left behind by others.
I ate. I slept.
I caught colds but could not afford to rest.
I swallowed cheap medicine and dragged my aching body to work.
Until, at last, my body gave out.
The final day of my previous life.
The company met its end, consumed by the ever-turning wheels of society.
Retirement was not an option.
No severance. No savings.
I had nowhere to go.
The factory dormitory was marked for demolition.
With nowhere left to turn, I simply sat in its shadow, staring vacantly at the sky.
Then, without warning, pain surged through my chest.
My body, long overworked, finally collapsed. A heart attack.
There was no fear. No regret.
Perhaps, at last, I could escape the hollow, endless cycle of my existence.
No one wept for me.
No one even noticed I was gone.
A single, useless thing was discarded.
And then—
I arrived in the white void.
Was my very life a “sin”?
Was I denied even the right to hope for something more?
If such was the will of the gods, then they were naught but cruel arbiters.
A floating sensation overtook me, as though I had been cast away.
The white void turned to black.
My senses dulled, fading into nothingness—
And then, in a suffocating world of red and black, I felt only the faintest of heartbeats.
And so, this was the “punishment” they carried out upon me.