"Your figures on section four are all wrong! Redo all fifty pages before 8:00 AM or you're fired!"
"Gah!"
B sat up with a sudden jolt, her heart hammering wildly inside her chest. Her small hands clutched tightly at the soft blanket, her chest heaving as she let out fast, panicked breaths. Cold sweat clung to her forehead, and her pitch-black pupils were wide with absolute terror.
She scrambled to look around, her vision searching frantically for a glowing computer monitor, a screaming manager, or a mountain of white paper folders waiting to be typed up.
"Where's the report?! I need to submit the-"
She stopped.
There was no screeching printer. There was no fluorescent lighting humming above her head. There was no angry boss in a cheap suit pointing a finger at her face. And there were no toxic coworkers who would make use of her at every possible chances
There was only the quiet, warm interior of the small wooden cabin. Sunlight was streaming softly through the thin, faded curtains half-covering the wide window, casting long golden boxes across the clean floorboards with warmth.
B let out a long, heavy sigh, her shoulders slumping as she slowly uncurled her small fingers from the blanket.
"Right... i forgot." she murmured, still somewhat not used to her high-pitched, child-like voice echoing in the still room. She rubbed her eyes with the back of her small hand. "I died. I don't work at that awful company anymore. No more papers. No more spreadsheets. No more screaming bosses."
She sat on the edge of the worn-out brown couch for a few moments, letting the lingering panic of the nightmare of failing to finish the report melt away into the quiet morning air.
Looking toward the window, she noticed how bright it was outside. When she had first woken up in this body, the sky had been dark and grey, somewhere between late dusk and early dawn. But now, the sun was fully up, painting the sky in a bright, clear blue. So she had slept till morning, a refreshing start of her new life.
"Time to start the day, I guess," B said, swinging her short legs over the side of the couch. "Got to do the job if I want to keep this sweet setup. Dont know who my employer is nor do i want to piss them off with not working on the first day." She said to herself, her habit of being a boot licker for her boss is still there.
She stood up, carefully lifting the long train of her floor-length white hair so she wouldn’t step on it again. She shuffled over to the plastic door with the small blue 'Bathroom' sign and pushed it open.
Inside, she walked over to the ceramic sink, filled her small hands with cool water, and splashed it onto her face. The chill of the water instantly washed away the last traces of sleepiness. She wiped her face dry with a small hand towel hanging on the wall and looked up into the mirror.
She stared at her reflection. She still wasn't completely used to seeing a fifteen-year-old girl staring back at her. Her snow-white hair spilled over her pale shoulders like a heavy waterfall, contrasting sharply with her fair skin. Her eyes were white, but her pupils were unusually large, two deep, void-black circles that seemed to absorb the light around them and a seemingly endless well of darkness, her expression is also rather blank which combined with the eye is giving her a naturally distant and sleepy expression.
Then, B looked down at her clothes.
She was still wearing the exact same simple pale white dress and short black pants she had woken up in.
"Hmm," B muttered, plucking at the thin fabric of her shoulder strap. "I can't wear this one dress forever. It's going to get dirty really fast once I start sweeping dirt and scraping moss."
She needed new clothes. At least a couple of simple shirts and trousers that were easier to move around in. She made a mental note to visit the nearby village she had seen from the cemetery gates yesterday to find a local shop.
"Wait..." B paused, her pale face turning blank. "How am I going to buy anything? I don't have money."
She quickly left the bathroom, stepping back into the cabin's main room to search for any leftover cash her mysterious employer might have left behind.
She checked the tall wooden shelf first, peering behind the neat rows of canned food, bottled water, and basic cooking supplies. Nothing there except salt, pepper, and beans. She moved over to the wooden table by the window, checking under the faded curtains and looking over every inch of the smooth wooden surface. Still nothing.
B scratched her cheek, looking around the small room. Aside from the shelf, the table, the bathroom, and the couch, the cabin was completely empty. There were no hidden drawers, no fancy locked chests, and no secret compartments.
"Did the boss forget to leave the first week's envelope?" B wondered, feeling a tiny bit disappointed.
Then, her eyes landed on the worn-out brown couch.
She walked over and carefully lifted the thick cushion where she had slept last night. Beneath the cushion, resting on the dusty wooden base of the couch frame, were four folded pieces of thick, crisp paper.
B picked them up, her pitch-black pupils widening slightly as she unfolded them.
They were banknotes, but they looked nothing like the paper money from her previous world. They were made of a sturdy, smooth material, colored in a deep shade of blue with complex silver patterns stamped around the edges. In the center of each note was a large bold number 50.
"Fifty..." B read the number out loud, turning the bill over in her hands. "Fifty what? Yen? Rupiah? Dollars? Ringgit?"
She had no idea what the economic scale of this world was like. Was fifty of this currency enough to buy a full set of clothes, or was it only worth a single piece of bread? She couldn't tell.
'I'll have to figure out how much this stuff is actually worth when I visit the village later,' B thought, carefully folding the four blue bills and slipping them into the small pocket of her short black pants underneath her dress. 'If fifty is worth a lot, I might even be able to buy a nicer blanket.'
With her potential money secured, B decided it was time to finally do some actual work. If she slacked off on her very first day, her unseen boss might fire her, and she would lose her comfy couch and quiet life.
She walked over to the heavy metal door beside the window, unlocked the latch, and pushed it open.
The warm morning air immediately washed over her. The cemetery looked remarkably calm in the daylight. The tall ironwood trees rustled gently in the light breeze, and the bright sunlight filtered down through the leaves, casting soft patterns across the hundreds of grey stone graves and old crosses.
Right beside the porch railing, leaning against the wooden wall of the cabin, was a long wooden broom.
B walked over and picked it up.
The broom was surprisingly heavy in her small hands. The handle was made of smooth, polished wood, and the straw bristles at the bottom were thick and sturdy. Standing the broom upright next to her, the top of the handle reached all the way up to her forehead, making it almost as tall as she was.
"A bit big for this body..." B muttered, testing the weight by sweeping it back and forth across the wooden porch floor. Swish. Swish. "But it works."
She stepped down off the porch and placed her boots onto the dirt path that wound through and around the center of the cemetery.
She took a deep breath of the cool morning air, smelling the fresh scent of grass, damp earth, and pine leaves. There were no toxic exhaust fumes, no smell of stale coffee, and no crowded subway trains filled with angry commuters.
Holding the long wooden broom tightly with both hands, B let out a soft, relaxed sigh.
"Alright," she said to herself, setting the bristles onto the ground. "Time to sweep some leaves."
She began to walk slowly down the main stone path, dragging the large broom behind her and pushing small piles of fallen ironwood leaves off to the side of the trail. Her long white hair swished gently behind her ankles, brushing against the grass as she worked at a slow, completely unhurried pace.
It was boring, mindless work, but to someone who had spent years staring at soul-crushing spreadsheets under artificial lights, sweeping dry leaves in a quiet graveyard felt like pure bliss.
Author's Note
EliteToeCollector
Thanks for reading!