“Help me truck-kun, you’re my only hope,” were Simon’s final words before he stepped out into traffic on a rainy Wednesday afternoon. For him it was a messy but mercifully quick end as he transformed from 29 year old man into an impromptu speed bump for the eighteen wheeler barreling down the street to make the light. The driver fared less well, and he was never the same after he had to use the windshield wipers to clean the mist of blood off his windshield. He did his best, slamming on the brakes the instant he saw what was happening, but he never had a chance of stopping in time. 

For Simon, the hardest part of the whole thing had actually been leaving his home while people were awake to figure out which street in the area was the busiest, but still within an easy walk from his parents house. He’d considered jumping off a bridge instead, but he was a lot more afraid of heights than he was afraid of dying, and the idea of letting someone else kill him, even by accident, seemed to be the much easier option.Dying was hard enough already and he saw no reason why someone else couldn’t help him along. Besides - to really make the stars align and get him the harem he deserved he really needed the perfect otaku ending for the hell that had become his hikikomori life.

He’d been a shut in for years, spurning real people for the constant disappointments they were and playing games to avoid messy social interactions as the world passed by without him. He’d been like this since he’d gotten laid off and moved back in with his parents a couple years ago. His friends said that he was just stuck in a rut, but they didn’t get it. They were too busy with girlfriends or careers of their own to see how he’d steadily simplified his life to what was really important. One by one they drifted off, giving up the online games they’d played together for so long. Simon didn’t care though, and once they drifted away he rarely missed them. One too many Isekai light novels convinced him that his only salvation was in another world, even if the odds of such things actually existing were pretty slim. While he might not have been any good at excel spreadsheets or showing up for work on time, after the proverbial ten thousand hours spent fighting every monster under the sun in his games, he was certain that he could save the world from the demon king or stop the undead army or whatever another world might need help with. He’d be glad to do it too - in exchange for a few busty friends and some great tavern fare along the way. 

The way Simon saw it, the worst case scenario was that instead of waking up in another world with an overpowered skill or two he would just book himself an express ticket to oblivion anyway. It’s not like stupid concepts like heaven or hell were actually real. Looking down the barrel of thirty he’d already decided that it wasn’t like he was going to find anything to do with his life that was better than gaming anyway, so either option worked for him. He’d had a good run. Anything would be better than this tedious mundane existence with his mother pestering him to get a new job, and all of these online fascists ruining his online life with their frogs and their memes. Working at fast food or retail was beneath him, and none of the game design jobs he’d applied for had called him back, despite the extensive library of rare game achievements he’d attached to the resume. 

Moments after he felt the weight of the steel bumper force him underneath its unforgiving wheels though, Simon was peeling himself off of the cool marble floor of a beautiful antichamber decorated in mosaics and marble statuary. He smiled for the first time in weeks at that. “Well it looks like there’s life after death afterall,” he said to himself as he regarded the unfamiliar room. He was standing there in the clothes he’d been wearing earlier, and as he checked himself with his hands, he seemed none the worse for the wear. 

The room had only one exit, and Simon walked through it, taking it all in. The stone arch led to a long hallway of life sized statues, each of which had a plaque below them, though he couldn’t read them. The sight gave him hope. This was feeling less like heaven and more like a light novel with every step. That was when he turned the corner and saw her: a beautiful woman sitting on a throne in the middle of the rotunda before him. The throne was atop a dias, with a flight of stairs leading up to her perch. There was a large balance scale next to her, and the walls between the columns were filled with bookshelves, but it was hard to focus on those details though, because the light coming from the oculus in the roof made her blond hair almost glow with heavenly light. All he could focus on was her beauty as he stumbled forward. 

One look at her beatific expression and he knew he’d made the right decision. This was a deity that could understand him and the difficulties of his life. She could help him find something more suited to who he really was. She could help him find true happiness. When he finally reached the top, he just stood there while she regarded him, and he fidgeted nervously, resisting the urge to bow. 

“Welcome Simon, I’ve been waiting for you.” The goddess’ voice was as beautiful as the rest of her and it filled him with hope. 

“T-thank you, your majesty,” Simon said, just barely overcoming his shyness. It was only after the words left his lips he realized that his honorific didn’t sound quite right, but he wasn’t sure what he should call her exactly. What did you call a living breathing goddess that was sitting right in front of you?

“Oh, please,” she laughed musically. “You can call me Helades. There’s no need to be so formal. This is hardly the first time we’ve met after all.”

“It isn’t?’ Simon asked, confused. He was sure he’d remember someone this beautiful, even if he walked past her on the street. 

“No one gets to try their hand at being a human without a few dozen reincarnations as a lesser animal. This isn’t even your first life as a human.” She explained patiently, “That’s what reincarnation is for. Maturing and distilling souls to prepare them for bigger and better things. It’s why we’re all here.” 

“Then why don’t I—” Simon tried to ask before she brushed him off. 

“No one remembers,” she shrugged, starting to sound a little bored. “Just like no one remembers to step on the scale before I ask them nicely to.”

“Oh, Sorry ummm… Helades,” he mumbled, turning around and grabbing the center balance for support as he stepped on to one side. The other side was empty save for a thin tome, but still, the scale barely moved. While he stood there taking it all in he realized that she probably got very bored answering the same questions and explaining the same things over and over again.

“I see,” the goddess said, lifting her arm. As she raised it, the book flew from where it was laying on the scale to her open hand, and once it arrived it flipped open, and started flipping through the pages on its own until finally stopping at something near the end of the book. 

“Ahh - yes, that’s what this is then.” she said, finally looking back to Simon, “Okay - you can get down now. Why don’t you tell me what you’d like for your next life.”

Simon coughed, clearing his throat before he launched into the spiel he’d been preparing for almost a year now. “All I want in my next life is everything I was missing in this one. Love. Meaning. Adventure. I want to be reincarnated into a fantasy world where I can grow up to be a hero and—”

“Sorry,” she interrupted, “I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.” 

“What?” Simon asked. The statement was a mental suckerpunch and left him fumbling for words. “Are there no such thing as fantasy worlds then?”

“Oh, it’s not that,” The goddess replied. “I’ve got an infinite amount of possible worlds I could send you to. More than you could imagine. But you simply aren’t cut out for such a role.” 

“B-But I can—” he tried to defend himself. 

“There’s nothing you can say that would surprise me Simon. It’s just - how would people from your world put it? You lack the experience points for that sort of class. If I let you do that sort of thing I’d just be setting you up for failure and putting the destinies of countless other souls in danger,” she said, sounding almost conciliatory. “We need to be realistic and look at lives that can better suit who you are, deep down, and what you’re actually capable of.”

“Other choices?” Simon asked, as he managed to avoid crying, but failed to keep the disappointment out of his voice. He’d never considered the option that he might get all the way here only to be cast back down into another life where he was just another nobody all over again. “Like what?”

“Well, based on your past lives I think you should give koala or sloth another try, but if you wanted to try something new I think that musk ox or black bear might be a good fit.” She smiled. “If you’d like a complete list though…” 

“You think I should be… a-a bear in my next life? A fucking bear?” As he sputtered, first with confusion, and then with outrage at the idea, but the goddesses expression remained placid. He was about ready to open his mouth again and really give her a piece of his mind when he finally opened the book floating next to him, and thought better of it. Yelling at someone wasn’t the way to get what you wanted unless they were a burger slave at a fast food resturant. He’d learned that lesson too many times. Talking to your boss like this would get you fired, he reminded himself as he opened up the book and started leafing through it in an attempt to calm down. He didn’t even want to know what would happen if you pissed off a goddess. 

“You’ve been a bear many times. You seem to do well as an upper level omnivore. I know it might be strange to think about, but if you give it a shot…” While she spoke, he flipped through the pages. Most of the entries were lined out, which presumably meant he couldn’t choose them, but most of the furry ones remained available. Koala. Leopard Seal. Llama. Manatee. Meerkat. Moose. Mountain Goat. Musk Ox. The list went on and on. 

“How short am I on experience to be human?” Simon asked finally. His mind still rebelled at the idea of becoming an animal, but if he appeared to be reasonable to customer service agents then sometimes they become more reasonable. Maybe if he played along he’d find a back door. To get what he wanted. If he could just weasel himself a path to a peasant in a fantasy world he could become the hero no matter what she planned for him. 

“Well - if a soul needs a million experience points to become an average human…” she said, pondering the question, “Then I’d say you have about 150,000. So you’re pretty far from it, but you have enough points for a red panda. That could be fun, right?”

“But that’s way off,” Simon protested. That’s like… I’d have needed to live until I was 120 just to be a person again? How is that fair?”

“Now, now,” the goddess said, her patience starting to show cracks. “You were on track for a perfectly normal next life until you ended your early. There’s a big penalty associated with that sort of thing. You lost… call it a quarter million experience points. See for yourself.” As she spoke, the book on her lap floated over in front of him. The page on the right had all sorts of entries about his achievements and failures and each one had a number next to it. The most common entry was ‘wasted day -5. There were lots of other entries that stood out thought too; have a happy birthday +300, get fired from your job -500, beat a video game +25, commit suicide -250,000. The other side of the book was more interesting though, and he turned to look at it, just for a second until she suddenly snatched it back from him. 

It had a list of his previous incarnations, along with grades next to them. There had been a lot of sloth lifetimes rated A and B+, and a handful of human lives with C- to F next to them. It was the most depressing thing he’d ever seen, and a crushing blow to his ego as it sank in. So he hadn’t just been set up to fail in this lifetime, but in all of his lifetimes? That was so incredibly unfair. 

“So you’re telling me there’s no other way?” he asked, resigned to his fate, however unfair it might be, as he sat down on the scale. “My only choice is to be an animal for another dozen lifetimes and then try again?” 

“Well,” she answered, a little hesitancy in her voice. “There are penance lives and punishment incarnations, but I wouldn’t recommend them for you. You don’t have that much bad karma to work off, so that would be needless suffering on your part.” 

“Wait, no,” he said, slamming the book shut. If there was anything he could do to avoid being a damned musk ox then he was going to do it. “Tell me more about those.”