The moment my expression turned distant, I could see them starting to fret. "You shouldn't have said that", "How was I supposed to know?" and the such.

I ignored all of it.

Of course I would never simply believe that I was dead, just like that, especially not when I couldn't even remember the life I should have lived before waking up in that white room.

There was no way they were being serious, it didn't click in my head.

I blinked back into this reality and straightened myself.

"Okay, okay..." I put my forehead into my hand. "Clearly, there's been a mistake somewhere. I can't be dead, I don't even know who I am. What's really going on here?"

The three of them looked at me in silence for a moment, I could see the regret seeping into Claire's face.

"That is what's really going on here," said Antoinette, deadpanning at me. "You're dead. You can drop the amnesiac act, I won't fall for it."

I frowned at her attitude, feeling myself getting frustrated.

"I'm telling you it's not an act, what part of that don't you get?" I snapped. Was she treating me like a liar? The only thing I hated more than being tricked like this was getting called a liar - blunt honesty is one of my only good virtues! I wasn't going to stand getting tricked this way.

"I think this might be a good moment to step back," said Kristina. "Antoinette, you need to get ready for your shift, remember? Claire and I will handle this."

"Like that's fair. A new roommate is responsibility of all of us, but if this guy isn't going to come clean then clearly it's because he's hiding something. I can't be the only one thinking it's an incredibly weak excuse to say that he's the first one in this whole place that can't remember he's dead, can I? Come on, it's obviously a lie."

"It's not a lie," I said, raising my voice. Claire flinched from the side. "And I'm telling you again to cut it out with all this death bullshit; how dare you accuse me of lying when you're spouting the more unbelievable bullshit?"

"Alright, alright! Fine, keep your secrets, I stopped caring. I don't have- or want -to deal with your hissy fit, but this better be cleared up by the time I get back, okay?" Antoinette stood up abruptly, marching to the door with a scoff. She opened the door, and then she was gone.

Frankly, I felt relieved. I couldn't believe she wouldn't trust the word of a stranger with an unbelievable story like that! I folded my arms, glaring at the door. Just unbelievable, it's as if she wasn't trying to look at things my way, which was obviously the only way to look at things.

"Claire, honey, go find a snack, okay? I'll deal with this," I heard Kristina say. Claire quickly stood up and stiffly walked to the kitchen, where she stood still for a few seconds. Was she nervous? With the tension from before, I wouldn't be surprised- but that's not my problem, I had more important things to deal with.

"If-"

"First things first," Kristina raised her hand in a stop motion. I immediately stopped. "You need to understand something. Arguing or violence is not allowed in this house, understand? If you want to argue with Antoinette over silly things, you take it outside."

"What if you're the one arguing?" I said, trying to be clever.

"Don't be ridiculous, I never argue. Second of all, let's take this one step at a time; acceptance is never an easy thing: when Antoinette first found out, she panicked and broke someone's arm."

"That was my B," muttered Claire, returning with a bag of chips.

"The way we'll do it is much simpler and doesn't involve a song like last time. All I ask is that you put a hand to your chest, and hope this doesn't end disastrously."

Now I wanted to hear about that other story, but I figured I wasn't going to get anywhere before I did this. As I raised my hand, I hesitated, the possibility that maybe it was true after all suddenly weighing on my mind. If I put a hand to my chest, I'd feel my heart beat, wouldn't I? That is if I were alive. If I was as they said, then there wouldn't be anything there... that's how I assumed this would go.

Despite wanting to find out so badly moments ago, suddenly I didn't want to prove or disprove anything.

But I also didn't want to be seen as a coward for that, so I put my hand to my chest and immediately realized there was no heart beat.

At once I was aware of my surroundings, the way I held my breath but felt nothing of it, how they were both staring at me, how I could feel myself- I could feel my hand on my chest but I couldn't feel my heart.

I felt dizzy all of a sudden.

"Sebastian, stay with us," said Kristina.
I could barely hear her. More than the shock of suddenly being told I'm dead, I couldn't believe that I didn't even know who I was. I'd lost my entire life and didn't even know; my "life" only started once it was over.

It was getting hard to breathe. It was only after Claire put her hand on my arm that I realized how tightly I was holding onto my shirt. I quickly let go, as if it'd shocked me.

"This may seem like a lot to assimilate all of a sudden-"

"Ya think? I don't even know who I am and now I'm dead!" My hands ran up my hair, taking handfuls of it as I tried on my own to regulate my breathing. "It feels like a sick joke, how could this happen? H-How could I lose everything?"

How? That was the only question running through my mind at the moment. I paid no attention to the rest of the room, how Claire had gotten close to Kristina again, how the curtains swayed gently, how I realized I'd gotten distracted rather quickly.

I took a deep breath and put my head in my hands, looking up at Kristina as she spoke again.

"Well... think about it this way. If you don't remember who you were, and have no memory whatsoever from before arriving, then can you say you really lost something?"

"I-" In a strange way, she was right. Looking at it from that perspective... I was getting angry for something I didn't know.

She was right, but it didn't mean I was any less upset. I was just mad at the fact I couldn't remember, but I didn't know what that even was in the first place.

I took another deep breath, forcing myself to nod. I'd just have to direct my anger into finding out why they were gone, then on getting them back... somehow. Maybe that face on the screen would know, as much as I didn't want to speak with it.

"Good. Now that that's dealt with, how are you feeling?"

Admittedly I was feeling a little calmer.

"Like I need to find out what happened to my memories," I said. "And another thing. If this place really is after death, then why do you even have food? Shouldn't all those things be pointless now?"

"It's a silly reason, really."

"It's 'cause we need the energy," said Claire. "the food we eat is like our power source, just like water and air and all the stuff you take when you're alive. I asked Greg about that, and he told me it was because Paradise was, like, imitating the real world, somehow."

"Minus the death part," cut in Kristina.

"Not true, remember what happens if you get hurt?"

"Right, right. If you get damaged enough, it will feel like you're dead, but you wake up after a couple of hours with no injuries."

I frowned. It seemed awfully convoluted.

"Okay, and what about all this junk on the floor?" I gestured to everything around us, specifically the helmet Claire had tripped over.

She flashed a sheepish smile. "Yeah, that's my B. We don't have enough rooms to store all this junk, and I've got like... a hobby, I guess, of collecting things."

"A hoarder, got it."

"It's not-!"

At that moment, the door opened again and Antoinette stormed in, heading straight to the hall.

"Forgot my bag," she said, disappearing from the room.

I glared at her as she left, still ticked off from before. "And what's her deal?" I asked, jerking a thumb in her direction.

"She works part time as a babysitter," said Kristina. "And I would suggest not angering her. Antoinette is a nice girl, but she isn't very social. Claire and I think it's because of her temper... similar to yours, actually."

"I don't have a temper," I snapped back, to which she gave me a smug look. I looked away in shame, not wanting to think about that. I was still ticked at Antoinette for being so close minded, but that didn't mean i had a temper, did it?

When she came back into the room, I immediately looked over, as if that would have helped me figure out. She frowned at me and I reciprocated.

For a moment we held the eye contact as I tried to figure out where that similarity could be found- which was ridiculous because I definitely didn't have a "temper."

It felt like neither of us wanted to look away; it would be a sign of weakness to yield.

Then she looked away with a roll of her eyes, heading back to the door. "I'll be back in a few hours," she said on the way. "Hopefully by then our new roommate will have stopped being an idiot."

"Cut that out!"

"Make me!"

I felt the burning desire to respond with something else, but she'd closed the door before I had the chance to even think of anything.

I clicked my tongue, folding my arms again as I leaned on the table. When I noticed again, Claire and Kristina were whispering to each other again.

"Hey! Stop with the whispering, that's rude," I hissed, snapping my fingers at them. They stopped for a second to look at me blankly before returning to their whispers. I felt more annoyed at the fact Antoinette was right about this than the fact they just ignored me.

As they did that, I decided to ignore them as well and get to cleaning this mess of a room, to at least put everything away into a corner to fully clean later.

I hadn't even been able to get started when Claire spoke up again.

"Okay!" She clasped her hands together, standing up. "Me and Kristi are gonna take you on a tour, so put on some nice clothes and we'll go see the town."

"What? What's wrong with my clothes?"

"Um..." She and Kristina shared a glance. "Nothing! Nothing at all, buuut you should anyway. Into something nicer."

"You have no sense of fashion, Sebastian," Kristina said with a deadpan. "Let Claire help you, she actually knows how fashion works."

"She's literally dressed like a college student."

"It's called dressing comfortably. You, on the other hand, look like you're trying too hard."

And so, after being completely shut down by that, I was forced to spend ten minutes with Claire as she picked out an outfit for me from my watch. It was a very uncomfortable and awkward experience.

"Now you look good," she'd say once we finished, as if I wasn't already. "Nothing too casual, not too elegant; great for a walk."

Once she'd finished her own getup only five minutes later at best, we met with Antoinette outside, and so began the tour.

It wasn't anything groundbreaking and, frankly, I forgot where we'd gone the moment we arrived at the next place. Travel took place through the watch, which served as a sort of teleporter, and the only things I can actually remember are: the restaurants, the forest (where a tremendous river ran through, immediately enamouring me) and something called the Life Sphere.

"It lets ya watch what's going on in the real world, but... I guess it'd be kinda useless to you without your memories, huh," Claire had said, which deeply hurt my feelings.

The reason I hadn't been paying much attention to where we went each time was because I had yet more important things to think of. Apart from my memories and how to recover them, I was taking in the shock of my reality. If I really was dead and this was "Paradise", then I couldn't exactly escape, could I? As much as I wanted to, that just wasn't an option for me anymore. I'd lost the chance before I ever even saw it.

Which lead me to realize something even more horrific: I would actually have to live with these people. For how long, I wondered? Was this eternal? Did it end at some point? So many questions and no answers frustrated me.

Then came the people. Claire and Kristina I could get along with, maybe. They made a huge deal about me not having my memory and introducing me as the new roommate to everywhere we went, leaving plenty of people curious about me which royally pissed me off, but as long as that wasn't constant I'd be able to.
Antoinette worried me. She didn't seem as agreeable as I was, but I couldn't get her out of my head. Like a parasite. We'd have to learn to not argue, which I could already tell was goin to be difficult, considering my- her bad temper. She seemed like such a nice person too, until she started getting on my nerves.

I'd have to learn to get used to my new life after death, but I wouldn't shake off that lingering feeling that something about all this was wrong.
That was just it, though. From now on, I'd just have to do it. As we approached the end of the tour, I inhaled deeply.

This was my new life now. I could try to recover my memories all I wanted, but this was where I'd be, and as long as I had that smiling face on the watch, I wouldn't be able to forget it.