There was a feeling of a fresh breeze touching his skin, so the man opened his eyes. He found himself standing in an open grassy field that stretched for kilometres in front of him. Looking up, he saw the sky being clear blue with the sun shining its beautiful light down on him.

“Huh?”

He was puzzled, confused even, by this unprecedented turn of events.

“Why am I… alive?” He asked, and looked down at his hands.

This man was the husband who had vanished into the brilliant destructive light from the nuclear attack that had hit where he lived at. He remembered clearly that he had died together with his wife, whom he had kissed one final time thinking that he would never get the chance to see her again.

“Could this be heaven?” He wondered aloud.

There was nothing to explain such a thing, and he felt heaven would look like a better place than this. He shook his head, reasoning that this was not heaven, but a different place, perhaps a different world. It was unclear how he knew this, but he somehow knew that he was in another world.

“Skye,” he whispered, calling out his wife’s name and realising the implications of him being alive meant. He began turning around while calling out her name by, “Skye! Where are you?”

He glanced around at his surroundings, hoping to find his wife there. Instead, he saw an unfamiliar woman lying motionless on the ground. She was young, beautiful, and looked slender, wearing beautiful clothes.

“Who’s this?” He muttered curiously as he did not recognise her at first.

As she continued to lie there motionless, he grew worried that maybe she was dead. However, when he saw her chest slowly rising and falling, he sighed in relief. Unfortunately, one bad habit of his surfaced when he glanced at her chest.

“A little bigger than Skye’s?” He questioned himself, feeling unsure.

The one thing this man always did was glance at a girl’s chest and compare it to his wife’s chest. He even went as far as stating his opinion to his wife, to which she would chide him for being a pervert. Thinking about what she would have said if she was there made him become depressed at the thought that he would never see her again.

As if in reaction to his thoughts, the unconscious woman stirred and moaned softly as if she was waking up from a deep sleep. She slowly opened her eyes and peered groggily up at him before widening them in shock and sitting upright.

“W-What’s going on?! Where is this place?!” She exclaimed in a shocked voice.

“Calm down,” he told her in a soothing voice. “As for what’s going on, I have no clue either.”

“Oh,” she said slowly, looking sad when she suddenly remembered something and began shouting, “Leyton! Leyton! Where are you, Leyton!”

The man became alarmed by her sudden shouting and asked in a surprised voice, “Leyton?”

“It’s the name of my husband!” She said while continuing to glance at her surroundings.

He was taken by surprise by this revelation and made him slowly ask, “D-Does that mean… you’re Skye?”

“Yes,” she replied, turning and facing him with a curious look on her face. “That’s my name, but… how did you know?”

She was looking curiously at him, but he was staring at her as if he could not believe what he was seeing. He slowly raised a hand and placed it on his chest to indicate as he introduced himself to her.

“I’m Leyton, Skye. I’m your husband.”

There was a momentary pause in which her eyes widened with shock, and she whispered, “You’re… my husband? That can’t be…! You and my husband don’t look alike!”

“And you and Skye don’t look alike either!” He replied, looking equally as shocked as her.

“But your voice… it’s the same as my husband’s voice…”

“Yours also sounds the same as my wife’s voice.”

The man and woman stared at each other in silence for several seconds before the woman broke it.

“Okay. This is strange,” she said, commenting about the situation they were in. “You have the same name and voice as my husband, but I can’t accept that you’re him.”

“The same goes for me too, miss,” he replied, looking seriously at him. “My wife is my wife, and the only thing you both share in common is your names and voices.”

The woman nodded, but a slight hesitation came over her, and she asked, “Yes, but… what if you’re my actual husband?”

He blinked in surprise and asked, “Well then, ask me something that only you and your husband shared only between yourselves.”

She nodded in agreement and asked, “Alright. What’s the one thing you know about you, something that you always proudly share with your wife about and she always chides you for?”

Her question made him blink in surprise before he responded with, “Um… Comparing her chest with others and feeling proud about it, I guess.”

His response shocked her, and made her widen her eyes while making her go silent.

“That’s… That’s what my husband does,” she replied in a quiet voice.

“Huh?!” He exclaimed, looking alarmed. This made him quickly ask, “Okay. Uh. Tell me something that you call your husband when you two are alone.”

She looked at him and blushed a little before she replied with, “Leyley.”

It was his turn to become shocked by her response before slowly saying, “That’s… right! Does that mean…? Skye!”

“Leyton!” She called out to him as the two finally realised who the other person was.

Overcome with emotions, the two rushed forward and hugged each other really tightly. Skye was crying into his shoulders while he too was crying into hers. For a while, the only sound came from the sobbing the couple made as they released the emotional distress they had been feeling ever since coming to this world.

“Leyton!”

“Skye!”

“I’m so glad to see you!”

“I too feel the same way!”

They remained like that for several seconds before they pulled away while wiping their tears with the back of their hands. Then they smiled at each other, happy and glad to see each other again, although the feeling was slightly different because their outward appearances were different.

“It feels kind of strange that you’d ask me the one thing you knew I would respond with all honesty,” he said, smiling bemusedly.

“I had faith in you,” she replied with a sweet smile that touched his heart. Then she became curious at their appearances and asked, “Still, why are our bodies so different?”

“I’m not too sure,” replied Leyton, looking puzzled. Then he guessed by saying, “Maybe, we look like this because our old bodies were destroyed in that explosion and we needed new bodies to live in this new world?”

“Wait. New world?” She asked him, looking amazed and glancing around her surroundings. “I just thought we were in heaven.”

He chuckled and stated, “That’s what I thought at first too, but I also thought that heaven might look differently to this. So, it’s reasonable to believe that the two of us got transported into another world.”

“Really, because all this talk sounds like something that happens in a fantasy novel.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” He asked, grinning at her. “Still, I wonder how we ended up getting here.”

“Yes. I was sure we were a goner,” his wife admitted, looking sad.

Leyton noticed the sadness of his wife and smiled as he wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her into him.

“It’s okay. We’re still alive, and we are together again. I don’t see us not being able to solve any problem now that we have each other.”

“You’re right,” she said and smiled sweetly at him.

As they smiled at each other, the wind suddenly began to blow quickly, and ruffled their clothes. Then they heard the sound of flapping wings coming their way, and they turned in that direction to see two unknown figures flying through the sky towards them.

“Leyton…?” Skye asked slowly, looking worried.

“Stay behind me, Skye,” he said while facing the unknown figures with a serious look on his face.

She obediently hid behind his back and peered over his side at the two unknown figures that flew over to them. As they drew closer, the two of them could make out that they were young girls with wings sprouting out of their back; one possessing white wings while the other possessed black wings.

“Angels?” Leyton asked curiously as it was the first thing that hit him when he saw who they were.

The so-called Angels flew through the air and landed gently in front of the couple before getting into a kneeling position. This surprised Leyton and Skye, who still was hiding behind her husband’s back and looked curiously at them.

“Greeting to the individuals from another world,” they greeted them in a polite voice.

Leyton widened his eyes in amazement and whispered to his wife, “They know about us.”

Then the two girls looked up at him and pleaded, “Please, save our world!”

 

 ==== + ==== + ==== + ====

 

Closing the Book

 

“Well, I’m glad they’re reunited and everything, but what is this strange turn of events?” The boy asked, looking up from the book at the man sitting across the table to him. “They died in their own world, and now are requested to save this new world?”

“Quite fitting, don’t you think?” The man asked with a small smile. “They weren’t able to save their old world, but now, they get the chance to save their new world. Sounds interesting to me.”

“Yes, but with what confidence did those angels ask them? I mean, they probably looked like your everyday folk you come across the street,” the boy commented. “By the way, there are Angels, so does that mean there are other races too?”

“Sure,” the man said, nodding in assent. “They’ll probably appear later on in the story.”

“I see,” the boy said and nodded in understanding. “What about my question about the angels’ confidence in our protagonists?”

The man eyed him with a raised eyebrow and asked, “Don’t ask me about every single thing that goes on there. Try to read, understand, and analyse. It’s not that hard, you know?”

With that, he winked at the boy, who raised an eyebrow in a bemused way.

He relented and said, “Fine, but I can’t ignore just how strange their exchange was to check that the other person was really who they think they are.”

“Is there something wrong with it?”

“Well, they could’ve done it differently by asking different questions, you know? Like, asking when their birthday was, or what was the first gift that they bought for each other. Instead, the wife asks something strange, and the husband gives her a really strange response.”

The older man chuckled and replied, “You’re right. They probably could’ve done that, but they did what suited them best. Like, anyone could learn about their date of birth and gifts are easily forgotten. Instead, they chose to ask the other person what best distinguished them from the rest and showed their strong bond and how well they knew each other.”

“It does show that the husband is a pervert,” the boy said dully.

There was a momentary pause before the man replied with a wry smile, “Are we really going to have a conversation about that?”

“Seriously, though!” The boy pressed on, ignoring the man’s obvious exasperation. “It’s so weird for a husband to compare… well… you know what I mean.”

This made the man burst into a hilarious laughter before he admitted, “You’re certainly right on that one. He is a pervert, but you could argue that this kind of pervert is better than a savage pervert.”

“What? There are two kinds of them?” The boy asked, raising an eyebrow in bewilderment.

“Yes,” the man replied with a nod of his head. “This kind of pervert, also known as a closet pervert, is one who enjoys his fetish while keeping it to himself, or shares it with his friend or partner. A savage pervert is someone who openly describes his fetishes and has no control over it, leading to them doing some really dumb things like attacking people and so on.”

The boy stared at him in shock for a moment in silence before saying, “I can’t believe I just heard that.”

“You don’t need to believe it; just accept the fact.”

“But—!”

“And, if you didn’t realise already, we’re talking about something really silly,” the man said, smiling wryly at him. “Just accept those parts as one of the author’s strange sense of humour and move on.”

His words made the boy look at him wearily and sigh before asking, “Fine, but the author sure is a little strange in the head.”

The older man laughed at those words before the boy looked at him and asked in a curious voice, “Before I move onto the next chapter, can you at least tell me if there’s more of this kind of humour?”

The man blinked at the boy’s question and shrugged his shoulders as he said, “I don’t know. Find out for yourself by reading the chapter. But, believe me, it starts to get very interesting,” and he winked.