Chapter 1: Continue? (Y/N)

  The st thing Kaoru remembered was the sound of metal crunching.

  A fsh of headlights. Screeching tires. Then nothing.

  Until now.

  He woke to a blinding neon sky, pixeted clouds drifting zily overhead like bad renderings from an old arcade cabinet. The ground beneath him felt artificial—bouncy, like a retro game texture stretched over something more solid. His ears rang faintly with the hum of chiptune music, muffled and distant.

  "Where am I?" Kaoru muttered, sitting up.

  He was in a city, sort of. Everything around him looked like it had been pulled from a 1980s game cartridge. Buildings were made of chunky blocks, their outlines jittering ever so slightly, as if the environment couldn’t decide if it was real or not. Hover cars glitched in and out of existence above him. Signs blinked with looping animations and unreadable fonts.

  Kaoru checked himself. Same hoodie and jeans from earlier. No blood. No injuries.

  "Am I dead?"

  The question hovered in his mind like a prompt.

  >> WELCOME, KAORU SHIROGANE.>> LIFE STATUS: TERMINATED.>> INITIATING AFTERLIFE PROTOCOL: PHASE 1.

  Text floated before him in blocky white letters, just like a game HUD. A series of rapid beeps echoed around him.

  "What the hell is going on..."

  The message blinked out. A new one took its pce.

  >> TO EXIT SYSTEM, COMPLETE 8 STAGES.>> WARNING: SYSTEM INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. AI OVERLORDS HOSTILE.>> BEGIN?

  >> [Y/N]

  Kaoru stared. A decision? A literal game menu? This had to be a dream.

  "Y," he whispered.

  Everything around him flickered. The world dissolved into static. A loading screen appeared with a chirpy jingle.

  >> STAGE 1: BLOCKTOWN BRAWL

  The sky turned blood red. The buildings warped and reshaped into a side-scrolling ptformer skyline. Kaoru now stood at the edge of a street with floating coins bobbing in the air and monstrous pixeted figures patrolling the nes. He barely had time to process it before something screamed and lunged.

  It was a glitched human—like an NPC gone rogue. Its face was smeared with jagged code, limbs bending the wrong way. It moved fast.

  Kaoru ducked, his instincts kicking in. He sidestepped the creature and sprinted.

  "I don’t have a weapon!"

  >> ACCESSING STARTER PACK...

  A glowing cube appeared before him, hovering midair. He spped it in panic.

  >> ITEM RECEIVED: BASIC BAT

  A pixeted wooden bat materialized in his hands, light but solid.

  The creature snarled behind him. Kaoru turned and swung. The bat connected with a satisfying thwack, and the monster exploded into a cascade of colorful pixels. Points floated above him.

  >> +100

  Kaoru stood panting, bat still raised.

  "Okay. This is real. Or at least... real enough."

  His gamer brain kicked in. He scanned the environment, noting ptforms, enemy spawn points, and a faintly glowing building in the distance. That had to be the level's end—or a boss fight.

  He moved forward, dodging enemies, collecting coins that seemed to heal him or boost his stamina, and smashing his way through Blocktown. Every corner brought new glitches: floating textures, AI characters looping their animations, buildings flickering.

  Then he saw it.

  The boss.

  A massive, blocky figure made of shifting Tetris-like parts, its face a static smiley mask and its arms two wrecking balls of code. It shrieked in distorted digital tones and charged.

  Kaoru dove aside.

  "This isn’t just a game. It’s a test."

  He used the terrain to his advantage, leading the boss into unstable areas where crumbling ptforms would colpse under its weight. After a few minutes of dodging and counterattacking, the boss glitched violently and burst into a pixel explosion.

  >> STAGE 1 CLEAR.>> REWARD: SYSTEM KEY FRAGMENT 1/8

  A glowing shard floated toward him. As Kaoru touched it, a surge of energy passed through his body.

  And a memory surfaced.

  He remembered a conversation.A white room.A woman in a b coat.

  "Kaoru Shirogane, you have been selected for Project Afterlight. Your death will not be the end."

  The memory faded as fast as it came.

  >> LOADING STAGE 2...

  Kaoru looked up at the sky, which now rippled like water.

  "So this is the afterlife?"

  He gripped his bat tightly.

  "Fine. Let’s py."

  TO BE CONTINUED...