I Blue : Reincarnated as a Cursed Crit-Based Swordwoman-Chapter 24: Limbo – Ashenville (1)

What could hell be like?

Some thought it was a sea of fire. Others thought it was a desert of ice. It could be anything in between and even outside of those two.

Noah didn't believe in the idea of a paradise or a hell. Maybe that was because he was afraid of not being good enough for paradise or that he couldn't conceive of the idea of constant happiness. Conversely, he couldn't accept the idea of eternal punishment as he didn't see anything he did that could justify such a thing. Well, aside murder maybe...

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"Hey! The ball, here!" said one boy with a green shirt.

"Hah! I got it!" shouted another boy wearing a blue shirt as he intercepted a ball.

"Idiot! Don't yell like that! You are helping them!" yelled a girl wearing the same shirt as the first boy.

"You are the idiot! Why did you pass the ball to me if you knew this would happen?!" replied the first boy.

"Ahh?! You're blaming me?! Is your head rotten?!!"

"Move you dumbasses!!! They are going to score!!!" yelled another boy in green shirt

"Ah!!!"

As the bickering couple turned towards their goal, they could only watch in horror as the boy who stole the ball from them shooted into their goals and scored.

"Goooaaaalll!!!" shouted the boy running through the field acclaimed by his teammates.

"Uwah..." made the girl in green.

"We will lose now. That's your fault!" yelled the boy in green.

"What?! Are you serious?! I—"

The two continued throwing at each other the responsibility of their now more than certain loss but Noah wasn't listening anymore. He was merely looking around at the scenery he saw so many times.

This courtyard, those soccer fields with yellowed patches of grass and those students running around a track field. This was how he remembered the P.E. field of his middle-school.

Though...

"Hm..."

He didn't remember that the buildings around it were that blurred and distorted. Also, those students, while they seemed familiar at first, were found to have no face at all when he paid attention to them.

It was as if the field was an island in the middle of a hazy sea and that its inhabitants had their identities eroded by them.

"So this is my hell, huh?" he mumbled.

Now that he thought about it, he did hear about a theory stating that hell was the world we lived in. While he found the idea interesting, he didn't expect it to be true in such a way.

"A perpetual P.E. Class... What a bad taste."

Even back in middle-school, there were many places he found more stressful than this field—his home when his mother was there for instance. For a hell, this place was more boring than anything.

"Aren't you going to play?"

Standing next to him was a girl wearing the same green P.E. uniform as one of the teams on the soccer field and holding a soccer ball. She, however, had a face unlike them—a face he found very familiar.

Noah looked at her for a moment , unable to remember where he met her. In the past, he did remember a girl who used to find him like this and ask him why he wasn't going to play but... no, this couldn't be her. She didn't feel the same—she felt colder just like those dark eyes of hers.

"Your team is going to win anyway. Even if you mess up now, nothing will change that," she added with a defeated tone.

The girl's insinuations hit him right in the heart. What? Was she implying he could only mess up? What an error—he was only bad at sport because it didn't interest him. If he truly wanted to, he could even score a goal two!

"I don't like playing football..." he chose to reply, keeping all of his thoughts to himself.

The girl tilted her head in surprise, "Do you prefer basketball then?"

Suddenly the field turned into a basketball court with the same two teams facing each other. Noah recognized that place too—it was the basketball court of his highschool.

"Oh... Huh?"

He held his throat, noticing his voice had changed too. That's when he noticed that he was back to how he was in highschool.

"(I must have been the same way as I was in middle-school before too...)" he thought before turning to the girl again.

She too had grown taller as a beautiful teenage girl with long light-brown hair. Her dark lifeless eyes still stuck out her face though giving her an intimidating look.

"... Are you some sort of god?" Noah asked.

The girl opened her mouth with an expression of disdain he would have never wished to be directed at himself his whole life.

"That pick up line is really bad, Ashenville. Couldn't you find something more... original?"

"Ashenville..."

"Hm? That's your name, right?"

It was. For some reason, he didn't remember it until she told him but indeed, Ashenville was indeed his last name. Most people in his life used to call him that rather than Noah.

Ashenville, the son of that Ms. Ashenville.

"Is there something wrong?" asked the girl, her eyes opened wide.

"A-Ah, huh, no," he replied scratching the back of his head. "Hm, by the way, can you tell me your name?"

"Ah? What? I can't believe you! You would ask out a girl whose name you didn't even know?!"

The girl was fuming, her expression indignant in front of such an apparent lack of care.

"No, huh, it isn't like that!" Noah said, avoiding her gaze. "I just have a really bad memory of names!"

It was true. He tended to easily forget the names of those who he didn't consider close to him or of those he didn't keep contact with for a long time. He himself couldn't exactly explain how it worked exactly.

He could sometimes remember their faces though, which often lead to these awkward situations were he needed to ask for their name again when they always remembered his.

"And you asked me out even though you couldn't remember my name?" the girl asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, I didn't ask you out to begin with..."

"Hmph... I will give you some points for your boldness, but my answer is still no. You will have to do better than that, Ashenville!"

"Did you listen to what I just said?"