Human’s seek purpose. ‘Why am I here?’ is the question that still plagues us daily. People find this purpose several ways, be it through love, career, religion, skill in a hobby, or anything else people pour their time into.

“I have the most friends, so my life is fulfilling.”

“I have a high-ranking position and am paid a lot, so my life is fulfilling.”

“I am closest to God, so my life is fulfilling.”

“It’s all rubbish,” I mutter to myself, as I slowly pack my books in my dorm. I check the clock, and it reads 2:30 p.m. Another morning passes where I could not be bothered to rouse myself out of bed. Luckily, I didn’t miss any obligations, so I can tell my parents that I’m still listening to them.

I open the door into the bleak hallway, and lethargically make my way out into the insultingly bright outside. The sun beats down on me relentlessly, but I don’t feel warm. I trudge my way towards my one class for the day, environment gray and dull.

My whole life has been about classes. I needed to do well in school to get into a good college. A good college so I can get a good job. A good job so I can support myself and maybe a family if any girl ends up desperate enough. It’s a boring path. Work and work. Do well and keep doing better. Force kids to do the same. Die. How utterly ordinary.

These years I’ve realized something about purpose. It’s that it doesn’t exist. People whittle away their lives in a desperate attempt to be something worth remembering, so they can feel that they had a higher calling. That they can change the world. But they’re wrong. You’re born, you grow up, you work some ordinary desk job, and you die. Even most of the talented live this way.

I was always praised by those around me as smart, as someone who could eventually make a difference. “You’ll cure cancer!”

“You’ll make a breakthrough in the field of science!”

“You’re a genius!”

They were all wrong, of course.

I’m not special. I’m one of the ordinary, another face in the crowd. Maybe my crushed expectations are what make me feel so empty.

I slowly meander up to the crosswalk between my dorm complex and the rest of campus and begin to wait for the signal to change. A small handful of people, all like me, unremarkable and generic, surround me.

“Why don’t I just kill myself?” I wonder once again. I’ve lost track of the amount of times this thought has crossed my mind. But I already know the answer, and that’s my family. I may not care about myself, but I should not spit in the face of the few people who do. “But if I die in an accident, that would be convenient.”

Like God himself answering my idiotic prayer, a horn sounds and a large truck careens off the road and crashes into the crowd of people. I wasn’t paying much attention, and don’t react at all. The truck slams into my body and I fly backwards, right into the pole from which the street light hangs. I can feel my bones shatter, and my organs get pieced. With the wind knocked out of me, I slump to the ground, bleeding profusely.

I chuckle as I slowly sink into darkness. “I guess I got what I wished for.” I wasn’t even helpful upon my death, how lame.

And then I died; I can finally rest. The end.

Or at least, that should have been the end.

I slowly regained vision of my surroundings, to find myself in a picturesque forest. The sun gently broke through the canopy, lighting up the area around me in a soft green. And because I lived in a desert beforehand, I was clearly nowhere near where I was before. I looked down at my body to confirm my condition, to only be met with a horrible, horrible shock.

I was still, in a technical sense, dead. I was a skeleton.

Haha, how funny. Was the god of comedy in charge of this “reincarnation”? My head begins to swim. Rage, despair, guilt, sadness. Horrible emotions are taking over my mind. I sit entirely still in a stupor caused by my brain trying to desperately sort information for an unknown amount of time.

The largest debate in my head was whether or not I should continue to live. I did not particularly want to keep living, and if this was some kind of twisted wish granting, many people back home were probably caught up in that accident. Do I have the right to continue on anyways?

On the other hand, I would collectively be spitting in the face of the others who may not have gotten a chance like mine, and this world has the opportunity for adventure, or a way to find my own purpose, as futile as that may be.

After deliberating for a while, I decided to continue living. “After all, I can always kill myself later, but I probably won’t come back to life again,” I thought. For a short while, anyways, I would continue to carry the burden for those who died because of my selfishness.

First, was to figure out my situation. Because I have seen monsters, and because I am one myself, I have concluded that this is ‘another world’, like from various cliched novels I have read. If this is indeed another world, the hope is that I have some sort of stat screen, so I can check my condition.

If that isn’t the case, I’ll be so embarrassed I’d die. Well I’m already dead, though.

“Status,” I chant, half-convinced.

Thankfully for me, something appears. A blue screen that gives a small list, including skills and stats floats in front of my skull.

Name: None Race: Sapient Skeleton Level: 1 Stats - HP: 12/12 MP: 7/7 Attack: 2 Magic Power: 1 Defense: 3 Resistance: 1 Speed: 2 Dexterity: 2 Skills - [None] Titles - [None]

Well, it’s as you’d expect. No notable strengths, no skills, no nothing. Actually, isn’t this even worse than average? Ah, I want to die, again.

Well at least I’ve confirmed that this is some other world, and an awfully generic one at that. “Next time please put more thought into the setting,” I mentally sighed to no one in particular.

It was time to get moving, however. I couldn’t sit in the dirt all day. I slowly picked up my body, picked off a branch from a nearby tree, and stood it up completely upright.

“Whichever way this stick falls, I walk in that direction,” I then dropped the branch, and began walking. Time to begin the adventure I was thrust into. “Let’s hope my undeath will be better than my life was.”