Void

"So, those who fly upward directly..." I wearily hugged the death certificate files, staring blankly at the senior squatting organizing documents. "How did they do it?"

The senior glanced unhurriedly at the messenger standing by the window – she wasn't in black work clothes today, her wings loosely drooping, as if on a day off.

"Why ask?" the senior asked lazily. She seemed never to have pondered these questions.

"Just …curious.” I opened a file. "Why are some, just dead, taken by white-winged messengers, able to choose forgetting directly at death, to ascend? Their courage is…just unbelievable. I could not imagine.”

The messenger suddenly laughed, walked over, and tapped my shoulder with her hand, "We here are too heavy, girl, can only fall downward. You should eat less haha.”

"You all know about this?"

“Well, when I first arrived, I always thought about this just like you. Asked many people; they couldn't figure it out either. No answers, so naturally stopped obsessing over it. I only know I can't forget the attachments I hate, can't avoid them. What do you think?" she asked the senior. The messenger walked along the windowsill, hands behind her head, wings slightly spread, completely casual, seemingly fully enlightened. But she hadn't let go of the past either, had she?

The senior frowned. "Some people practice death while alive. They don't let go suddenly but bit by bit, day by day, already letting go of what should be released long ago. As for us, we should accept our reality of being unable to let go and just continue living."

She gently stacked files. "The central system doesn't make mistakes. If at the moment of death you weren't judged as a light soul having let go of everything, then it means—"

"It means I wasn't ready." I interrupted, my voice almost inaudible.

The room fell quiet. Outside, snow still fell, thin and cold.

I suddenly wanted to try ascending – maybe I'm crazy. Not envy, not longing, but fear of never being as decisive as Pofei, forever trapped in the cage of attachments.

"However," the senior suddenly spoke, "even if not ascended initially, there's still a chance later. Emigrate. Said to go to another death zone, but actually ascending to the upper layer."

The messenger sneered. "Yeah, experience hundreds of waiting rituals, endure until the soul is tormented light enough—"

"Or," the senior interrupted her, looking straight into my eyes, "learn to truly let go, not escape."

I lowered my head, looking at my hands – like butterfly wings, still carrying the weight of my mother's tears, pondering for a long time.

"I probably can't do it."

"Then keep waiting." The messenger came and played with my hair. "We have plenty of time anyway, still young, can live a bit longer in the death world. No family from the human world, but friends made here aren't bad either."

The senior was silent for a moment, then handed me a note. "When I first arrived, I didn't understand either. My former boss gave me this note before choosing emigration, or so-called ascension. I've always remembered it. So I chose to continue living in this world, waiting for the second death. I do not want to fall again. But I never knew where one goes after the second death."

The note said, "Ascension is not the end, but another form of falling.”