Sitting in the plush seat of my boss's office, I could see disappointment stretch across his face yet again. It was something I'd grown used to in my time here. He was a corpulent man, with rolls of fat coating the sides of his neck, and his default expression seemed to scream disappointment to begin with. Somehow, he always managed - nearly impossibly - to look more disappointed each and every time I saw him. As he stared at the old monitor, watching over the footage of my consultation with Robbie, the boss sighed.

"You're kidding me, right?" The boss said. "The kid practically gave you a freebie with the whole star thing, why didn't you take it!?"

"It felt cruel," I said. "I couldn't bring myself to let him go through with it. Souls are special, we can't just let people throw them away..."

"Souls are special?" The boss said. "We literally have a sea of infinite souls, Malarie, they're about as special as a clod of dirt." 

I sighed. There was no winning when it came to the boss. He didn't care much for mortals, save for some morbid interest in their suffering. Most immortals up here were like that. They liked watching suffering; suffering was the only thing in this world that they could never have.

"Your engagement numbers are way down, Malarie," the boss continued. "People aren't using the Isekai System because they want to watch those sappy life stories that you keep creating, they want to watch the gritty stuff - the hurt, the anguish, all of it. You're just not delivering. You cost more than you're bringing in, you know that?"

"But..." I began.

"I don't want to hear it, Malarie," the boss said. "I know that head of yours isn't completely useless, I know you could make the stuff of dreams from people’s nightmares if you just put your heart into it, but... your heart simply isn't in it, is it?"

"I... I guess not," I replied.

"Well get your heart into it!" The boss screamed. "You're haemorrhaging more money than a seven-year-old using their mother's credit card, for goodness sake!"

The room seemed to shake with the echoes of his booming voice, and I had to physically recoil from the sound of his voice. It was deafeningly loud, and if I wasn't already in the land of the dead, it probably would've killed my eardrums permanently. As the echoes began to die down, I slowly opened my eyes again.

“I’m sorry,” the boss said. “It’s just… I get so mad when I see such wasted talent, you know that? You used to be an adventurer before all of this, didn’t you Malarie?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I retired from that life…”

“For your kid,” the boss interrupted. “Yeah, we don’t need you going on a monologue, Malarie. The point is, you saw torment, you saw anguish, bring it to life! Show people that!” 

I didn’t want to make people suffer. That was why I’d left that life, raised a son, and tried to teach him not to walk the same path. I’d turned my back on the world of adventuring because I hated the suffering, and now - here I was, my boss demanding that I create that exact same suffering I’d spent my whole life trying to run from.

Still, there was no way in hell I wanted to tell my boss that. If I told him that, he’d probably have no issue with chucking me before a ghoul like Dalton and sentencing me to a horrid life in some distant purgatory.

“I’ll… I’ll see what I can do,” I replied. 

“Good, that’s the spirit we like to see here!” The boss said. “Hopefully, someday you’ll become a Reincarnator that can rival Dalton in his thrilling tales. I can see it in you, the spirit of the job, you’d have such talent in this - and really… I'd hate to see it go to waste.”

The way he phrased that last sentence, the twisted snake-like style of speech, it sounded sinister. Foreboding, almost. 

“Remember, we’re shuffling some cases around, you can take on Vincent’s new one since he’s already got a bit on his plate. She’s a woman named Andy, from the looks of it. Think you can handle it?” The boss asked.

“I’ll try,” I replied.

“That’s the spirit, feel free to pick up the file from his desk,” the boss said. “Anyway, I’ve got to get to a meeting in a few minutes, so if you don’t mind.”

“Oh… certainly,” I said. “I’ll see myself out.”

***

Snowfall drifted through the midnight air, as families danced in merriment around a warm and homely bonfire, lit in the centre of the village. As plumes of smoke rose, the cheers of the villagers seemed to sing in harmony. Over in the corner, a group of young Goliath kids sat before a table littered with empty plates - as they stared up at the man by the cooking pot, pouring them another bowl of the broth from a wooden label.

"More!" They chanted. "More, more, more! Giv' us more, Rohby!"

The cook smiled. He remembered when he was just like that, sitting at the table at their age, beaming joy lighting up their eyes at the prospect of a nice meal.  

"You mustn't be too greedy, kids," Rohby said. "Your parents will be very cross with you."

"I want more!" One of the louder kids screamed. Rohby laughed a little bit, as he put the ladle back into the cooking pot, and knelt down against the wooden table. His hulking frame was enough to make the table bend a little as he leaned down against it. 

"Do you want to hear a little story?" Rohby asked.

All the kids eagerly nodded; Rohby was as good at storytelling as he was at cooking, you never turned down one of Rohby's stories.

"Once upon a time, there was a boy who loved the stars," Rohby began, as he pointed upwards. "You see, way up there in the sky, there are more stars than the mind could even imagine... too many to count in a thousand lifetimes. The boy wanted to go up there and be with those stars, he wanted to have them for himself."

As Rohby started his story, he began to draw in the attention of the kids - their raucous cries of food slowly fading as they intently listened to his story.

"One day, the boy met a Goddess, who said she could take him to the distant stars," Rohby continued. "They were so far away, but she told the boy that with her power, he too could be a star, watching over the people from afar."

The crowd grew in size as more of the village children packed in to listen. As they flocked to the table, the young ones listened closely to the story, enraptured by his soft tone of voice as he spoke of distant worlds.

"The Goddess's power had a condition though," Rohby said. "If the boy didn't want to be a star any more, then he would never be able to go back to the life he once had. He would have to start anew. The boy accepted gleefully! Why wouldn't he? He wanted to be among the stars, to shine bright among them. He wanted the stars so badly, he left everything he had behind..."

With the cold night air beginning to creep in, some of the younger kids huddling together to keep warm as Rohby continued to tell his story.

"As the young boy told the Goddess her answer, she nodded, and cast him out as a bright star into the skies!" Rohby exclaimed "He could see everything from out there, gazing down over his family and town from the heavens, keeping a watchful eye on the world he'd left behind - but as he sat in the sky, so many worlds away from his home, he grew so lonely. None of the other stars would talk to him up here. He missed his family, and he wanted to go home, but he knew he couldn't. The Goddess wouldn't let him return to the life he had."

As the children remained fixated on Rohby's story, the call of a Goliath woman rang out, interrupting them.

"Come on, children!" She yelled. "The Osptium is about to start!"

"We're listening to Rohby's story, ma!" One of the kids replied. "Can we hear the end of it?"

The woman smiled at the kids, before turning to look toward Rohby. 

"Is it a long story?" She asked. 

"Not that long," Rohby replied. 

She nodded, as she turned her back to them, waving to the children.

"I'll see you over there then," she said. 

The children turned their attention back to Rohby's story, as they shivered in the snow. Rohby wandered over to the cauldron of broth, as he took their little wooden bowls and filled them up to combat the cold. As he served, he continued his story.

"After a while, the loneliness grew too much. He pleaded desperately with the Goddess, to let him go back to the life he'd left behind, but... she wouldn't let him. Instead, she told him that the only way he could go back is if he started a new life, and learned to respect the life he once had," Rohby said. "As he started a new life, in a new village with a new family, he had learned a valuable lesson - that sometimes, it's good to appreciate the life you have rather than wishing for the world."

As Rohby finished his story, he put the bowls of broth in front of the children, and many of them began to wolf them down. However, one of the children - near the end of the bolted wooden table, didn't touch his bowl, as he looked at Rohby.

"Is that a real story?" The kid at the end of the row asked. 

As Rohby stared back up at the stars, he thought back to that rainbow paradise he'd found himself in only a year ago, and smiled a little as he recalled his old name. Robbie; the boy who wanted to live among the stars. He owed his entire life here now to the Goddess... if it weren't for Malarie, he'd be drifting alone among the stars, but instead - she'd given him the opportunity to live this life, right here. A thousand lifetimes wouldn't be enough to tell her how truly thankful he was.

"It's more real than you might think, Kegl," Rohby replied, with a tear in his eye. "It's more real than you might think..."