Underworld

Down in the underworld, Ariana’s fully mature soul slowly awakened.

Memories of my short life flooded my mind. Starting from the point of when I drank Mengpo’s soup* to forget my previous life. How a short delay in paperwork had stopped me from arriving in time for the birth and almost caused me to die again. Then also how my soul was finally accepted by Ariana’s new born body and the short life I had with my family.

After a moment to process, I painfully sat up from the so-called bed. I angrily shouted to no one in particular, "Shit! Really? Why the hell did you even send me up there, just have me come right back down!"

I looked around, I’m in a room made up entirely of flat wooden planks, four walls, not even a window. The only opening was the double doors, big rectangle pieces of wood with smaller rectangle openings on the top half of the door. The opening was lined with paper sandwiched between two sets of smaller pieces of wood assembled in a simple criss crossing pattern. I assume that was to let in some light, or else the room reminded me of a large crate. The bed was not fancy, basically a plain white sheet covering a twin-size wooden plank, sitting on four wooden stools, no mattress, no soft pillow, no other furniture either, not even a chair.

A guard must have heard me. He had opened the doors and walked to where I was sitting. Now he stood before me, muttering information. Within that long speech, he had also answered my question, “The Lord of Fate asked us to bring you back down…"

Refocusing on what he had said, I loudly questioned for further details, "What does he want and what the hell, does it have to do with me?”

The guard just stared at me blankly.

So I glared back at him, but he seemed unphased. After another few seconds had passed, I was ready to give this guy a piece of my mind, this time uncensored. I opened my mouth but before a single syllable was uttered, I was interrupted by an angelic voice. “Well all will be answered. I have been assigned to be your guide.”

At the door, a handsomely dressed man, wearing a white cheongsam, a traditional Chinese robe, outlined with crimson red thread. In the middle of a matching cloth belt, embroidered in the same crimson red, is the Chinese character for “Fate”. Long glistening hair, partially pinned into a bun on top of his head, while the other half freely flowed down his back. In his hand, he held a bamboo and paper expandable fan, with a talisman with the symbol for the Lord of Fate that dangled at the end. He waved his hand, the guard bowed, excused themselves, and closed the doors behind them.

He took a few steps towards me and then pointed his fan in the direction of the opposite wall. "Well Ariana ZhiYin Nan, now look up at the screen and you will hear your loved ones' last words,” he said without a shred of emotion.

As if being guided by a string, my head turns to where his fan had pointed. Magically, there was now a big white silk screen where a blank wall used to be. Images of a hugging couple’s back appeared, they were Ariana’s, my parents, the ones that I never got to call mom and dad. Standing in front of them were my grandparents. The picture pans to the front, coming into view is the little child in their arms.

"We loved her so much, what did we do wrong? Why did this have to happen?" my mom pleaded for an answer.

Dad sadly responded, “The doctor believes it was SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. We didn’t do anything wrong. There was no way to prevent it. She was just not meant to be long for this world.” He placed a kiss on his wife's head and a tear fell.

The picture pans away, and the screen is once again white.

Slapping his fan close to his palm, he stated, "Well, now that we are done with that. On to the matter of why you are here.” Stopping to fumble around in the pockets of his robe, he retrieved something. Held in his open palm, was a bunch of tangled red strings. “This is the reason!"

I was dumbfounded, the idiocy of the situation, I couldn’t help but laugh. In between the chuckles, I spewed out a bunch of questions. "What the hell is that? Is that supposed to mean something to me? What does a bunch of strings have to do with me?”

Taking a deep breath, and becoming serious again, I asked the final question, “By the way, who the hell are you?"

The man in white must had been stunned speechless, because he did not react or respond immediately, all he did was stare at me wide eyed.

So I stared at him sternly and expectantly.

After a few more seconds of utter silence, he brought his fist to his face and coughed a few times to clear his throat.

"My name is Lau ZhiHin, I am the apprentice to the Lord of Fate. We brought you back because your entire existence is in jeopardy.” Putting exaggerated emphasis on the words, “entire existence”.

I rolled my eyes at him. What he was doing wasn’t totally lost to me, he was trying to demonstrate the seriousness of the matter but DAMN, it was annoying!

“Two of these red strings tie you and your destined one together. In each lifetime we meet a person that is our destiny. The person may look different and act differently each lifetime but it is the souls that are meant for each other. What we now refer to as soulmates."

I looked at the ball of string that seems to be getting more and more tightly entangled and I clearly see different hues of red.

With one eyebrow lifted, I inquisitively ask, "Then why is it such a ball of string now? Shouldn't it be just one other string with mine?"

Looking a little embarrassed, turned his head and he mumbled his reply.

"What did you say?" leaned in further to hear him.

"I said, about an hour ago, as we were inspecting the strings, a worker accidentally dropped the two pairs of strings on the ground. The two sets of strings are now twisted around each other.” he clearly stated this time, even stood up straighter as he talked.

"So this is your fault! Okay, then just untangle them!" It was the most logical thing to do.

"Isn't not that easy, each knot is or should be a destined meeting in each lifetime. But now the other pairs of strings have twisted tightly on those knots and now are part of your history and it may change the past, affecting the current future. Currently, it is still too soon to gather intel on what changes have already occurred. But a day here in the underworld is a year up there, so in the time that I have taken to explain this all to you, almost another half a month has gone by. So the changes are definitely more evident up above.

“Wow.” The realization of how fast time was going, shocked me.

He continued, "Easiest way to undo all this, is to send you back to your past lives where the knots are entangled by the other strings, to stop the other pair from affecting your destiny, that will undo the entanglement of the other strings and return history back to normal.

“Wait,” I stood up to face him and wildly gesturing with my hands, “there are three other souls in this equation, why don’t you ask them to do all this”

“Well the other two souls can not help you find your soulmate, that part is entirely up to you. They have their own destiny to fulfill. So, they can not help you in this process,in actuality they may be more of a hindrance to you accomplishing your goal. As for your soul-mate, unfortunately, in this lifetime he is destined to bring about a significant change to the future of humanity. So we can not bring him back at this time. Otherwise, yes it would be much easier if you both went back in time.

"Wait though, won't going back mean that I might change history anyways? I won't know what happened and most likely will do things differently" I questioned him, doubtfully.

Holding up a book, he started to explain, "Not really, I have here the book of life, summaries of all your past lives but now it is missing big parts of your story, almost as if it has been erased. You will read about each lifetime before being sent back and it should help you find your true love. I will use this information to send you back to the point in each lifetime where you are to meet your soulmate, thus fulfilling your destiny. Once that is complete, I will bring you right back and history will be as the book fills in the rest of your story. Presumably that will untangle, release and smooth out each string.

"So all I have to do is meet them? Nothing else?" I was a bit hopeful that it did sound easy enough.

Sounding a little meek and twisting a bit he said, "Well, technically you meeting them, and that should be enough but I don’t know, you might have to go as far as to get them to fall in love with you again to trigger the full release of the soul back to this realm.

"That is very different than just meeting them!" I said angrily, "How many times?"

"How many, what?" he asked.

"How many freaking times do I have to do this, to set everything right?" I screamed in frustration

"Don't know yet?" he said timidly, "The thing is, the strings are so tangled at the moment I don't know how many entanglements the other couples have in your timeline, I will only see more when it starts to loosen up.”

Plopping back down on the bed. "Do I have to?" I ask exasperated, "Can't we just leave it entangled?"

"No! Do you know how many lives will be affected, how history will be affected if we don't fix this now?" He was practically hysterical at the thought of my suggestion.

His face turned dark and very seriously said "The other way to undo the strings is to go back in time when your soul was born and directly send your soul to burn in the 18th floor of hell, and ban it from ever reincarnating. We can then pair your soulmate with another newly born soul, completely replacing you in history.”

That sounded horrible, I hurriedly said, "No,no,no. That is not needed. I'll do it." I said to quell his anger. "After all, how hard would it be since I must have already done it once before. And this time I even have the story ahead of time to go by. Piece of cake." proudly boasted.

"Okay, now that we agree, let's get started." he mused with a smirk.

I glare at him but say nothing.

*Meng Po Soup is a concoction that is drunk before a soul is reincarnated, as to sever all ties to the past life, to start life anew.

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