Floss

I'd finally shooed my sister's kids out of my apartment, and I went to clean up the mess they made.

I'm never babysitting for her again.

The living room is a pigsty, the kitchen is trashed, and they smashed the lightbulb in the bathroom, so I can't even see how messy it is. I walk in, squinting in the dimness. At least it's Friday. After this I'm gonna stay up all night watching anime.

I trip over something in the bathroom and fall, but I don't hit the floor. It feels like I'm lying on a net. What on earth did those kids do in here? I try to get back up, but my watch is caught in the net-thing. I try and tear it loose and it rips free suddenly. I fall backwards and land sitting, my legs in the air. I realize I'm in the bathtub. Did they set up tripwires in here? But with what?

Maybe I can jump over the tripwires and get out of the bathroom. I should've brought a flashlight.

I stand up cautiously in the bathtub. It seems there's no tripwires in it. I grab the wall and the curtain rod and step up onto the edge of the bathtub.

I'll jump straight forward, as far as I can, in three! Two! One!

Hup!

Hurk!

Oh my god, there's something around my neck, holding me up. My feet aren't touching the floor.

I can't breathe!

I kick desperately, swinging around like a bug caught in a spider's nest. I try to yell for help, but no sound comes out. I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I can't breathe!

I tear at my neck desperately. It feels like steel wires are digging into my skin. My eyes start to get hot, and my head gets blurry.

I struggle desperately, and it feels like something gives. For a split-second, the wires loosen just a bit, and it feels like cool water has been poured over my head.

Then I hear a faint *snap* and the wires tighten like a vise. My vision turns bright red and I feel intense, burning pain.

Then I don't feel anything.

.

.

.

I gasp, staring down at a blank white floor. I'm on my hands and knees, breathing heavily.

Breathing. I can breathe.

I gasp desperately for breath, in and out. I've never been so grateful to have lungs. I lift one shaky hand and feel my neck. I wince in pain. My neck feels tender and sore. But at least the wires are gone.

Tears of relief drip from my eyes onto the impossibly white floor.

"Are you done?" A female voice says.

I look up. A woman is standing in front of me. She has long golden hair, small white angel wings, a clipboard in her hand, and a bored expression on her face. She's in a robe almost as white as the floor.

I look around. Nothing but white in all directions.

"Where—" I start to ask, but break off, coughing.

"You're dead. Isn't that obvious?"

"Dead? But—"

"Oh come on, get over it already. You've read and watched copious amounts of training material. You know the drill." She smacked her lips and started making notes on her clipboard, muttering to herself. "Male, good. Japanese, good. Young, few life prospects, addicted to anime, manga and light novels—good."

"Training material?" I ask.

"You know, all that isekai crap. Average face, brown hair—good. Hasn't kissed a girl before—have you kissed a girl?" She looked at me quizzically.

I realized she was asking me a question. "Oh! Um, yeah, I have."

She stared at me for a second. "Wait, seriously? You're not lying?"

"Of course not!"

She held a hand to her forehead. "Great, just great. This is terrible."

"What? What's wrong?"

She leaned down. "What were your marks in school? Average? Below average?"

"Hey! I actually did pretty good in science!"

Her face soured even more. "And what," she said, leaning closer and grabbing hold of his hair, "is this?"

"What?" I said, confused, then I realized she was talking about the bleached streak in my hair. "Oh, I dyed it white a few years back, and I liked it, so I kept it."

She leaned back and heaved a huge sigh. "This is no good."

"What?"

"You, you idiot! How do you expect to be an isekai protagonist like this?"

"I'm a what?"

"An idiot. You're an idiot."

I stared blankly.

She sighed again. "Look. It's simple. We churn out isekai stories and collect energy from the people who read them. We bookmark the idiots who read high volumes of material, and when one of them dies, we give them stupid powers and send them to worlds where they can live out an isekai story. We speed up the time differentiation, record their life as it happens, and turn it out as a new isekai story. Rinse, repeat, profit. Got it?"

I nodded slowly.

"Here's the problem. Those idiots," she pointed at me, "need to be extremely average or below average. Negligible intelligence, complete imbeciles around girls, and nothing," she grabbed my hair again, "absolutely NOTHING," she shook my head roughly, "that would make them stand out!"

I pulled away and rubbed my aching head. "Well, I'm sorry for being an actual person," I grumbled.

"You should be! Didn't you know this would hurt your chances? You should've planned your life better!"

"It's not like I wanted this! How was I supposed to plan?" I shot back.

"Didn't WANT this? You didn't just want this, you gave written consent!"

"I... what?"

She pulled out a piece of paper and waved it in my face. "Remember this? You wrote it in junior high, wasting time in class." She pitched her voice high and squeaked, "Please, oh please, send me to another world! I hate my life! Can't you just run me over with a truck?"

She scoffed scornfully. "Or that self-insert fanfic you wrote in high school, or the time you begged out loud on the way to school for a god to drop a flowerpot on your head, or the fact that you always walk really slowly on crosswalks in the hopes that a truck will run you over, or—"

"Stop, stop!" I yell, waving my hands. My face is burning. "How do you know about all that?"

"It's right here in your file. We need evidence of consent to send someone to another world."

"So... are you still sending me to another world?"

She glared at me. "Of course. We need to make good on our investment."

"Then...!" I could actually get cheat powers and live my ideal life!

"Dream on. You're not mainstream enough for cheat-like powers. I'll have to find some quirky niche audience."

"Quirky... niche audience?" For some reason, I got a really bad feeling in my stomach.

"Hmm..." she tapped her finger against her nose. "I could turn you into a bug. Those have been surprisingly popular. What hasn't been tried yet? Slug? Cockroach?"

"NO, please! Anything but that!"

"Anything? Then how about one of those ones where you live a lifetime lacking in certain, um, areas?"

I felt a chill down my spine. "O-oh, come on, no one wants to read those."

"The numbers differ," she smirked.

"The—the market is oversaturated! You gotta do something different. Unique."

"Unique? Don't be ridiculous," she said. Then she laughed. "Though it certainly was a unique way you died."

The way I died? "I was strangled, right? That's not that uncommon."

"Strangling? Yes. Strangled by tooth floss? No."

What? "I was strangled... by tooth floss?"

"Yup!" She giggled and snapped her fingers. A screen appeared, showing my bathroom in my apartment. She said "Play," and my niece and nephew ran into the bathroom on the screen and locked the door behind them. They started rummaging through the drawers and throwing things everywhere. Then they pulled out a big cardboard box.

"Oh, yeah," I said. I worked at a local drug store, and they'd had a surplus of tooth floss they couldn't sell, so I said I'd take some home... Who could've known that decision would kill me?

"Fast forward," said the lady. The video started to play really fast, like a time lapse. Threads started appearing all over the bathroom, tied to every possible surface, making a crazy tangled web. Then the threads got thicker and thicker as the kids reinforced them. I guess this was their idea of a prank. Honestly, by that point in the visit, I had just been glad they'd contained their chaos to one part of the apartment, and I'd left them alone. That had clearly been a mistake.

When the threads were so thick I could hardly make out the kids on the screen, it went dark. I guess that was when they broke the lightbulb and came out. And after that, my sister picked them up, and after that—I died.

She snapped her fingers, and the screen disappeared. I looked at her face. She was laughing silently, so hard she had tears running down her face.

"It's not that funny," I said.

"Oh, this is too good to not use," she said, ignoring me. "How about I send you to another world with tooth floss? Or you are the tooth floss?"

"WITH tooth floss! With tooth floss. No one's gonna cheer for a main character who's literally tooth floss."

"You'd be surprised," she said, wiping a tear from her eye, "but yes, that would be a pretty small audience. Let's go with, um, the only thing special about you is that you have tooth floss. And you're woefully unprepared for everything, because literally all you have is tooth floss."

"What? That's terrible!"

"Some readers like to watch the protags suffer. There's one very successful world running right now that makes the main character die over and over."

"Oh yeah, I like that one."

"Exactly! Hmm, we could do something similar here?"

"Yeah! Wait, no no no!"

"Hehehe..." An evil smile appeared on her face. "How about you experience excruciating pain if you don't floss your teeth twice a day?"

"No! Besides, where would I even get floss in a fantasy world?"

"Hmm, true. How about you always carry floss with you?" She held out her hand, and a little grey plastic box appeared in her hand.

"What if I lose it?"

She snapped her fingers. "Then it'll return to you."

"It'll run out."

She snapped her fingers again. "Not now, it won't."

"It could get destroyed."

*Snap!* "Indestructible."

"Someone could mess with it with magic, or something!"

*Snap!* "Impervious to magic."

"If it's so indestructible, it won't biodegrade. Isn't this planet polluted enough?"

She sighed. "Fine. Any floss not in the box will break down when you say, 'decompose'." *Snap!* "Happy?"

"Yeah." I actually am. This floss is actually pretty great! It might turn into one of those unexpected awesome weapons, and help me level up! And then I can learn magic, and get super strong, and except for flossing twice a day so I don't get that "excruciating pain" thing she mentioned, I can forget about that stupid floss!

I look up. The lady's face is stormy. "What..." I swallow. "What is it? I said I'm happy with it."

"You know I heard all that." she growls.

"All, all what?"

"You're in the spirit realm right now, idiot. ALL your thoughts are said out loud, whether you think you're saying them or not. Now, what was that? About forgetting about stupid floss?"

I gulp. I'm dead. I mean, I'm already dead, but... I'm really dead now.

Her mouth smiled, but her eyes flashed dangerously. "Yes, you are." *Snap!* "No magic for you!"

"What? No!"

"And I was gonna give you a new body, but..." *Snap!* "You can keep using that old thing."

"But didn't I die in this body, so this body's, you know, dead? I can't walk around in a dead body!"

"Ooh, that's a good idea."

"No, please no!" I fell down before her, begging. "Please, Goddess! Have mercy!"

"Goddess?" She stopped, with a complicated look on her face.

"Yes, Goddess! That's who you are, right? A goddess!"

Or at least that's what the 'training material' always says.

"Hmm..." she said, stroking her chin.

I waited tensely.

"Well, technically, you're not wrong. I do deserve a promotion or two. It's just that my supervisors don't recognize my talent. And all that stupid nonsense about 'regulations blah blah blah' and 'you can't be a goddess if you don't have any followers blah blah blah'."

"I'll be your follower!" I blurt.

"Hmm?"

I gulp. Too late to back out now. "I'll be your first—no, one of many followers! And if you give me great power, or a good life, or hell just please let me survive, I'll give you the credit in this new world! You wouldn't want to give a terrible fate to someone who's a walking advertisement for how amazing you are, would you?" Please please please. Please.

She stands there, considering. I'm sweating buckets. I'm not sure how that's possible, since I'm dead.

Finally, she turns to me with a serious look on her face. She starts snapping her fingers. I find myself pulled into the air and held immobile in front of her. She looks at me critically. I bite my tongue, and do my best to shut my thoughts up. She keeps snapping her fingers, and starts talking over the snaps.

"I'll let you have magic, but I'm putting it on lock until you keep your word and get me a following. You're still keeping this body, scars and all. Make sure you tell people that the great Mariana was merciful and saved your life, that this body would be dead without her. Which is true."

"..." I try to speak, but I can't move my mouth. But she can hear my thoughts. Yes, yes I will. I definitely will.

Wait, but what does she mean by scars? No, shut up, thoughts! You're lucky this lady—I mean, the great Mariana-sama, is being merciful! Merciful Mariana-sama! Magnificent Mariana-sama the Marvelous and Merciful!

She ignores me and keeps talking. "Since this dental floss is going to be your thing, I'm putting my image on it." As she talks, an engraving appears on the dental floss box in her hand of a woman with angel wings. "And my name on the back, for good measure."

Don't forget the -sama.

She ignores me again. "I expect to gain titles of reverence to my name, if you keep your word. My name on the box will change appropriately. And for you..."

For me? I'm just happy with being a living, breathing, human being. Thank you for not making me a cockroach.

She smirks. "You don't get to pick a name. I don't trust you with it. Whatever people call you most will appear on the top of the box, and will change accordingly."

On top of the box, in cursive script, appeared the word, "Idiot".

Wait, what? Is it because she's called me that a lot? That's not fair! Wait, no, shut up, me! Shut up shut up shut up! If Mariana-sama wants to call me idiot, she can call me idiot! Shut up and be grateful!

The smirk remains on her face. "I'll send you off now, before you dig yourself into a deeper hole. Oh, and—don't forget. You better make your story interesting so it gets lots of views, and I get a nice commission. If you don't, I'll stop serializing you and abandon you in your world."

And... and what happens if you abandon me?

"You'll lose your plot armor, of course. You didn't think we just let those stories run without interfering a bit to make sure they stayed on track, did you? You know how many times those protagonists would've died without a 'lucky' break? Lose your plot armor, and you lose almost all chance of a happy ending. You'll probably die immediately, or if you're lucky, get trapped in some torture pit for a thousand years or something. Then you can be a background character in someone else's story down the line."

...oh, god.

"Alrighty! Have a nice trip!"

The last thing I saw was her face, grinning evilly at me. Then everything went black.