Darkness in every direction floods your vision, and you begin to question if you’re still asleep, especially since you can’t even see yourself.

“Don’t worry. It’s not like you’re dead.”

You turn on your heels toward the voice. Your muscles tense and relax in preparation for a fight. Surprise is a deadly advantage, one you hate to see in the hands of an adversary. Your eyes focus quickly when you catch sight of him.

“What?” Inquires the man monotonously. A lanky, old man, completely bald and wearing a set of spectacles with a chain going from one end of the eyeglass frame behind his head to the other is sitting in a rather over stuffed, high-backed chair. He’s wearing a full suit and bow tie, sitting with rather impeccable posture, and doesn’t seem at all alarmed that the both of you seem to be surrounded in all directions by absolute nothingness. “Don’t act so surprised,” he intones pointing a long finger at you, “I’d be surprised too if this wasn’t my bloody job.” He pauses for a moment looking you dead in the eyes. You begin to open your mouth to speak, but he cuts you off before your mouth is even halfway open. “In a few words I may say you’re at a juncture in your life.” He stands up, voice growing louder as he speaks, “In a few more, I might bother to tell you this is going to be one hell of a juncture.” His face bares neither a smile nor frown. “But alas, as much as I enjoy bantering with the guests, I must digress. Down to business. You,” He points at you once again, “in the physical sense, have ceased to exist.” He extends two fists, palms forward into the air and extends all his fingers wide in a single motion before letting his hands fall back to his sides. “Understand?”

You shake your head slowly. Quite honestly you don’t. This man says you’re not dead, but you don’t exist? His unnerving stare seems permanently locked on your face.

The lanky man sighs, “Okay, let’s start simpler than that,” he says taking his seat again. “How old would you say you are right now?”

What kind of question is that? Well, you haven’t looked at a calendar since you were younger, but you took up your martial training when you were sixteen. Swore an oath to develop and master one technique a year. You’ve never broken that oath, so you’d be…

Your legs collapse beneath you with the realization. Too shocked to even question how a chair found its way under you, you recount the five hundred and seven techniques. All of them memorized down to the last detail. Five hundred and twenty three years old.

“Pretty big shock isn’t it?” the man intones, “And no. It’s not impossible. You ever here the saying, ‘if a tree falls in the deep of a wood and no one is around to hear it, does it make a noise?’ Well it does, and you know it’s quite the racket at that, and you know why? Because people believe that trees fall and that when they do, they make a damn noise. You on the other hand, became too famous, too well known and honored to possibly be human. Everyone believes you’re some god incarnate, and when you turned, what? One hundred fifty years old? And could still strike fear into young men’s hearts, making them shit their collective trousers. At that moment, no one could believe you’d ever die. And just like those bloody falling trees HAVE to make noise because everybody thinks they HAVE to, YOU couldn’t possibly die because no one THINKS you ever will.”

Absorbing all of this is a bit tricky. You have to calm yourself. Breath in. Breath out. You recount most of your life; All of the simple things that occupied so much time. When did you stop keeping track? And if you couldn’t die…

“If I can’t die, then what did you mean when you said I ‘ceased to exist’?”

“Good! The man has a brain!” his expressionless face still doesn’t change as the emotion in his words do, “Belief is a powerful thing. And people don’t believe you exist. They can’t. Who’d believe in immortal people or that they’d ever meet one? Funny isn’t it? You can’t die and yet can’t exist all due to the power of belief.” He pushes his slipping spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. “Makes you wonder why all the lonely men in the world don’t just believe, as hard as they can, in a private land packed to the brim with beautiful, bi-curious women. Doesn’t it?”

He continues to stare into your eyes in the same fashion he has since you first saw him. As the silence drags on, you can’t help but wonder if that was a rhetorical question or not.

“Maybe one day someone will actually get that joke,” he says almost too quietly to hear.

Again he stands, towering over you in your seated position. “So here’s the deal. You are currently here.” He points down at your feet. “And soon you must go there.” Your eyes follow his finger as it points off to your right.

Where nothing was before, an immensely oversized painting hangs in the middle of the darkness. Mountains, rivers, forests, and tiny houses litter the canvas with more detail than you could possibly imagine. At first, you had mistaken it for a window in the sky.

“Gensokyo! A land where most all mythical beings like yourself end up living!”

The lanky, old mans voice begins to boom. He lifts the index finger of his left hand into the air. “You can either go there as the myth men believed you to be: Nigh immortal, driven to kill for honor, and the best at what you are. A youkai as they call them in gensokyo. The mythical creatures… Or,” He raises the index finger of his left hand, “you go there as the man you believe you are: A five hundred twenty three year old man. In which case I could only imagine you would be alive for a few moments at best before your body gives way.”

The lanky, old man continues to stare, waiting for an answer.

[ ] Not much of a choice, live as a youkai.
[ ] You’d never forsake your humanity, die as a human.

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