Between the worlds - Doors of the past E-Book

Amy Strauß

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 234

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Yukimi Kawaki and Lilya Evergreen are involved in a terrible accident after many inexplicable events. They wake up in a world in which they are constantly accompanied by the worst deeds they have committed. These are always felt and are made dependent on how one has lived and how well closed the door is that keeps the monsters of the past behind the door frame. Is there always an enemy behind it, or is there occasionally a friend? Time no longer exists. Rain can feel like a relaxing massage, but also like fire that painfully burns the skin. Kawaki and Lilya get to know themselves in a new way. Will they find the right key to help them find their way back to life?

Leseprobe

Chapter 1

Who am I?

1.1

"... If I hadn't opened this door ..."

"Wheream I staying? What can I do if the time for the meeting is so overrun?" complains a man as he opens the huge glazed entrance door of an oversized building. "I don't see you!" he finishes his complaint with a searching expression. "I'm standing here at the same time and just as bored as usual," snores a woman with brown hair and protruding glasses on her nose on the other side of the line. "Please don't say such garbage! I have a bad headache. Oh yes, and shouldn't you know that you shouldn't talk like that to the man who's funding you?" he replies bluntly to the woman. "I know ... you're sensitive to volume, but you never usually have a headache," the woman immediately worries, ignoring his follow-up comment. The man then immediately spots the waving, outstretched hand on the other side of the road. She is just getting out of the car. "WATCH OUT! GET OUT!" shouts the startled man into the phone. His conversation partner was almost run over by a speeding driver who appeared out of nowhere. "You'd be lost without me. That's clear," the man hangs up full of heroism. After the woman escapes death by an eye and her boss hurries towards her with a racing heart, she yawns coldly as if nothing had happened: "It's about time, get in quickly." She opens the car door for him and then runs quickly, but carefully, to the other side of the expensive limousine. "Can you go any faster???" he grumbles harshly at the woman. "Has the hero in you disappeared again? I'm already doing it. Why do I always have to put up with so much stress? Why did I volunteer to be your manager?" "As I said, because without me ... you'd be screwed." The man literally jumps into the long vehicle and his manager does the same.

"We only have 15 minutes left. Please choose the quickest route possible," he croaks in a hurry. The chauffeur sitting in the front of the car limply stretches out his arms: "All right, Mr. Kawaki." However, he only listens to him with one ear, because what is playing on the radio is much more interesting.

"And now the news for Thursday,November 2nd, 2022,"the radio plays.

"Oh, and ...", Kawaki-san remembers after hearing the newsreader's voice, "please turn off the radio, I have absolutely no nerve for bad news now, let alone good news or for the songs that are played far too often on the radio", he orders his chauffeur imploringly. "All right, Mr. Kawaki!" he replies sadly, because his favourite song is about to come on the radio. "And are you ready? Today will show whether your efforts have paid off," the manager inquires in her very high-pitched voice, whereupon the suit-clad Mr. Kawaki suddenly looks at her with even more stressed eyes. Kawaki ignores these words. Today, he seems to be working even harder than usual. That's why the manager decides, for once, not to tell him about his busy schedule today. Firstly, she didn't want to start another discussion about her voice and secondly, she knew that Kawaki was more than just excited today. Even if, as always, he was anything but showing his feelings. In his mind, he wasn't in a moving limo. In his mind, he is not having a conversation with a person who is too engaged for him, something he generally prefers to avoid. Of course, this is not because he doesn't like his manager or his chauffeur. At least not exclusively. The chauffeur does get on his nerves a bit, as he never contradicts him and always does exactly what he's told. His manager reads him his boring appointments over and over again, which gets on his nerves so much you can't believe it. It's like a song that you actually like to listen to.

But if you listen to it every day, it starts to hang out of your throat at some point. It annoys him so much that it always says the same thing. He can almost recite his entire diary in his sleep.

This is precisely why he is grateful to the manager for skipping this morning ritual today. Because something is happening today that never happens otherwise. His schedule has other plans for him today, November 2, 2022. Today, Kawaki is supposed to land a big job. He has a very important presentation about the structure of a planned shopping center, which starts in just eleven minutes. Kawaki has been working as an architect for the market-led ingenyours company for a few years now. Today he is to present his elaborate plan for the internal restructuring of a research institute that has not been in operation for some time. The building was sold to a construction company a few years ago and is now to be converted into a shopping center. This building still bears the name REwind. We will see whether it will stay with this name. Kawaki must manage to sell himself as well as possible in his presentation. If he gets this order, it could lead to the long-awaited recognition in his company, for which he has been fighting for a long time. He only ever gets the smaller jobs, but this job could be a stepping stone into the right pool for him.

The nervousness and fear of failure, which are a rarity with Kawaki, came accordingly. After the manager (whose real name is Carol, by the way) notices his cold feet, she gives herself the task of cheering Kawaki up and loosening him up a little. "Here they are!" Carol squeals happily and puts something on his lap. With a fixed stare out of the car window and his voice relatively dozy in contrast to Carol's, all that comes out of him is a limp: "Who's there?". Instead of giving him an answer to his question, she nudges him and points to his lap. You're probably wondering what it could be. Possibly something to relieve stress or maybe it's pills for Kawaki's headache (which, by the way, has already been completely forgotten)?

You almost got it right. It's and now hold on to your hats ... LETTERS. In the morning, Carol takes his letters out of the letterbox outside Kawaki's house at half past six on the dot. He often reads these letters between his meetings, if he still has time after his daily schedule. Normally, he wouldn't open them before such an important event, but to calm down a little mentally, he decides not to skip reading the letters today. Mostly it's just utility bills or advertisements. But there's no harm in checking. The first glance at the letters directly loads tons of feelings onto his back, which is already burdened in his early twenties. The first thing he sees is a renewal contract for his temporary position at the company. Carol looks at him and can't help laughing: "Here's to the next five fucking years!!!" Kawaki doesn't feel like laughing. He almost left the company a few weeks ago, but for various reasons he couldn't afford to. To everyone's surprise, another letter also comes from his company. "They've never sent me a letter before and now two at once?" Astonishment spreads through him. But this letter is not from just anyone. It comes personally from his boss, the only person he will listen to. His boss goes by the name of Mr. Chabi. To be honest, he is the worst kind of boss you can imagine. How he became a boss would be inexplicable to outsiders. He knows something about work, but unfortunately nothing at all about dealing with his employees. There really is hardly anyone in the company who dares to look into his brown eyes for more than three seconds. Even though making eye contact with him is an impossible task in itself. Mr. Chabi is not available at ANY time of the day. It used to be different and Kawaki and he got through a lot together. It's a shame, however, that this was mostly in a negative context. Kawaki is curious and anxious about what HE might receive from HIM in the form of a letter. "It's probably something to do with money," he ponders aloud. "Or maybe it's about the job you're about to get," suspects Carol. But before he can take a closer look at what he has to tell him, the car comes to a standstill. He looks up from the most exciting letter of all time. "What's wrong now?" he asks his chauffeur bitchily and at the same time sees that lots of vehicles in front of him have also come to a standstill. "I think there's roadworks here, sir," the chauffeur informs him. "A roadworks site? You must know that!!! Since when has there been a building site here?", he says, seething more and more. Carol isn't exactly thrilled about these circumstances either, and a glance at the clock, which she hides from Kawaki, doesn't make it any better. Her desperation must be great, because something inappropriate slips from her lips, which she would otherwise never say with such a disrespectful undertone. She utters the provocative words: "That's exactly why you listen to the radio when you're driving, they warn you about roadworks like this." Kawaki, whose next effort was not to wring Carol's neck, asked himself in a panic: "Great, now what? How am I supposed to make it now? I simply can't be late. I'll ruin a good and important first impression." For Kawaki, "being late" is by no means rude. In his opinion, it is simply unprofessional. After a few seconds of deliberation, he stuffs all the letters into his briefcase, frantically opens the car door and jumps out of the car twice as fast as he got in. All without saying a word. "What's it going to be when it's finished?" Carol asks. "What's it going to be? I'm running to the construction company! It's my only chance of getting there in time!" Carol doesn't say anything in response. She just pulls a surprised face and secretly thinks to herself: "Running ..., you ...? Don't make me laugh." "Mr. Kawaki, do you even know which way to go?" The chauffeur wants to make sure that Kawaki doesn't get lost. He points to a sign next to one of the roadworks traffic lights. It hopefully shows the quickest route to the construction company. "See you later then," he shouts (still motivated by his plan) before the car door becomes a thunderclap. He walks up and away in no time at all. What he didn't know was that the traffic jam was quickly cleared, as the traffic lightsturned greenagain shortly after he left. Fortunately for Carol, Kawaki doesn't notice any of this. He runs as fast as he can after the signs. He does his best not to run over the people who cross his path.

Which turns out not to be easy. He weaves his way through a group of senior citizens, dodging countless baby carriages, where the thought always pops into his head: "Who has the time, inclination and, above all, the nerve for children these days?" He also can't get past the cliques of today's "cool" teenagers (from whom he gets a load of smoke in his face, which doesn't exactly help his lack of sportiness). As an architect, all these people don't interest him half as much as the various buildings that pass him by. He even passes buildings in which he was involved in the construction. One of them is a Chinese restaurant. He remembers this restaurant as one of his most difficult jobs. Not because it was complicated in terms of construction or drawing. No. In fact, if he were to go by that, it would have been one of his easiest jobs. It was down to the customers. They became more and more demanding and could never be satisfied. But unfortunately, the customer is always king. A few houses further on comes another building that he had helped a lot with. He is stunned. He thinks his eyes are playing tricks on him: "They've turned it into a bookshop now? Seriously?" His horrified face cannot be hidden: "Why this beautiful building of all things? And I'm not even being informed," he sadly turns his eyes away from the disappointment. It was his first real job as an architect.

"OUCH! Watch where you're going." Is the floor complaining? Kawaki is almost scared to death and looks down. He bumped into a woman, from whose broken bag all its contents fell out. Which, to her sigh of relief, are only a few items. Kawaki doesn't really feel like breathing a sigh of relief right now, more like exhaling (like an 82-year-old grandpa). His bag also fell to the ground in the collision and unfortunately he can't pick it up (because of his back pain). Since he doesn't take the woman seriously from the start because of her bag, he actually has the audacity to tell her: "Give me my bag!"

"Tell me ..., are you still alright? How dare you knock me over, not even apologize for it and then give me orders? Such a ..." You can't (rightly) stop her at all. He simply ignored her as best he could, given her insulting words. The woman can no longer stand his ignorant face: "Fine, I'll give you the bag if YOU ask me to." "You're right. Excuse my inappropriate behavior. Of course, I'll help you up first and foremost before anything else happens." He holds his hand in front of her as if to offer her peace. The woman wants to believe in the good in people, which is why she reaches for the "helping" hand without hesitation. Kawaki takes it, raises the woman halfway up, moves his face dangerously closer to hers and whispers: "Must be your unlucky day. First you fall to the ground, then your bag..." Kawaki lets the poor, confused woman plop back down on the floor ... "And then it starts all over again." Stooping, he picks up his briefcase himself, pays his last respects to the woman: "Next time, take better care of yourself," and simply strolls on as if nothing had happened. At first, the woman can't quite grasp this humiliation, this behavior from this man. She only starts impulsively when Kawaki is already meters away: "HEY, what the hell! You're the worst person I've ever met!!!! What a DISGUST." If looks could kill... You can't blame her angry green eyes. Kawaki continues walking after this exclamation without looking back. Believe me, this woman's loud organ is impossible to ignore. Even the scariest animals for Kawaki, the pigeons, startle on the other side of the street. Not to mention the people, most of whom are not afraid to openly reveal their whispering. "He must have dumped her," most of them suspect. Kawaki turns around for the first and last time after hearing someone make this claim. He communicates clearly without speaking: "I don't know this crazy woman." If this "crazy woman" wasn't in a hurry herself, she would probably have gone off on Kawaki in anger after this last facial move by Kawaki (which pissed her off the most). But as all her excitement about him (and not just in her mind) comes to an end, she begins to worry about the important things in life again. She distracts herself from her "bad" thoughts: "Did I forget to turn off the stove?" When she finds an answer to this question after a few sequences of walking in and out of the kitchen, she finally gets around to picking up her things from the floor. To be honest, these things consist only of her purse (in which there is not a cent to be found). Out of this wretched bag fall pictures of her siblings, a long-expired meal voucher for her favorite Chinese restaurant and with it the question: "How could I have dared? How dared I not use this treasure?". The last thing she does is pick up her identity card. This bore the name "Lilya Evergreen." Now that she has picked up everything in her purse (why did she have the purse with her?), she gives a few more fleeting thoughts to this man. Ousting him wasn't as easy as she thought. "If I ever see him again, I'll rip his head off."

She hopes never to waste her thoughts on someone like him again and especially not on the invalid Chinese restaurant voucher. After all the excitement and the last idiots making fun of the situation, she finally decides to continue on her way. It should lead to the pink-painted building on the pigeons' side of the street. However, as she takes the first step, she notices something lying on the floor: "A letter? It can't be from me," she realizes immediately. She is right about that. "Then it can only be from YOU ..." She smiles with glee and utters the only word that does justice to the situation: "Karma." Bending down, she takes the letter in her hand. Her first glance naturally wanders to the recipient of the letter, or rather the culprit, who doesn't know the word "sorry". "Yukimi Kawaki." After Lilya reads this name, she is inexplicably a little less angry. "That name ... it sounds very familiar ... Yukimi? Hmm," she ponders and ponders, but comes up with no denominator, "as if I know it. As if I know someone who's like him." Her eyes then immediately wander to Kawaki's address, whereupon the inevitable thought pops into her head: "He'll be looking around." From the suit he is wearing, she can tell that he must be someone with a lot of money. She starts to make plans for how she could egg his very expensive car or wrap his house in toilet paper. However much this thought satisfies her, it has to be transformed into the thought: "If I don't hurry now, I'll be late. That would be rude and ruin a good first impression." Because Lilya wants to avoid this, she puts the letter in her trouser pocket (her handbag is no longer usable). She then sprints briskly into the building, which happens to be right opposite her favorite bookstore. It is a building painted an old pink color, which must be about five stories high. She literally floats up the steep stairs to floor 3, walks along the long corridor and comes to a halt in front of the office of a certain Ms. Vorenz. Lilya is bursting with excitement and fear. Fear of what might happen in the next few minutes. Because she has to convince the woman in this office of her worth. Hopefully she will become her new employer. Lilya has applied for a job at a research institute. Ms. Vorenz is the head of this institute. Despite incomplete

With her application portfolio, it must be said, she invited Lilya to a job interview. However, before Lilya finds the courage to knock, she checks that she has set her cell phonetosilent. The scenario of it ringing during the interview gave her nightmares last night. She pulls her cell phone out of her left trouser pocket. To her horror, it is not her cell phone that she now has in front of her, but the letter from Kawaki.

"Lost? Lost? ... Lost ...", she fears, "at least it can't ring ..." It vibrates in her right trouser pocket. "Thank God." Lilya won this cell phone at a basketball game at the last Spring Festival held here years ago.

If she wasn't so good at shooting baskets, she certainly wouldn't have a cell phone to this day. A new message pops up on the lock screen:

"I know ... your interview is about to start. I just wanted to wish you good luck again. Don't be too excited, because you don't need to be."

Lilya is more than happy about these kind words. But the end of the message should change that very quickly:

"Besides, you always make such a funny face and talk so much when you're upset or excited. So calm down. You don't want to scare her away."

At first she gets a little angry and asks herself: "How can you start so well and then spoil it so much? The list of people I have to get back at isn't exactly getting any smaller. Who is this message coming from anyway?" More important than these questions, however, was: "Is the message serious? Does my face really look that ugly?" A few self-critical thoughts later, Lilya notices how her nervousness drops significantly as a result of the message. At least until the old white door of Mrs. Vorenz's office finally opens. A slightly older, chubby and very angry-looking gentleman steps through it.

"You COULD HAVE TOLD ME THAT BEFORE!!! Now I've driven here for the dirt... You should at least pay me for my gas. Unfortunately, money doesn't grow on trees." This angry man doesn't just shout into the office, his roar also lands in Lilya's ear, which is hidden behind the door "You open this door to the outside?", aching little stars circle above her head. "Always complaining! You're really getting on my nerves," came a grumpy voice from the office. "I'm really not up for that kind of crap," the conversation is ended by the slamming door. Incidentally, it is slammed shut with such force that it opens again of its own accord. Mrs. Vorenz, who drops back into her chair from her aggressive posture, doesn't notice Lilya despite her little "ouch". She chews sourly on one of her pens. Lilya knocks on the door, which is already open. "Hello, I'm Lil-ya E-ve-rgr-een. We have a job interview at this time of night," she says as politely as her bleeding nose will allow. Mrs. Vorenz jumps up uneasily at the knock, as she thinks the man from a moment ago has returned.

came back. "Ah right!" she breathes a sigh of relief, "come in. I really must apologize to you, did you have to see that? Oh dear! You're bleeding. Don't move, I'll give you a handkerchief." Mrs. Vorenz pulls out a handkerchief, her neck full of guilt. "It's all right. It's half as bad as it looks (It is worse). It's not your fault if others can't control their temper. If anyone needs to apologize, it's the gentleman from just now. Something similar happened to me today. Some impertinent man knocked me over and ha-" Lilya abruptly ends her much too fast talk. She decides to start the sentence all over again: "I'm very upset, you know. I always bleed from my nose when I'm as excited as I am now," Lilya smiles at her own poor explanation of how the blood supposedly came about. She checks her facial expression against Mrs. Vorenz's large window pane (which doesn't help much, as the handkerchief covers almost everything). She wanted to check whether the message (the one with the ugly face) was meant seriously (yes, she painfully realized). "Have I already introduced myself? If not, I'm Mrs. Vorenz. Nice to meet you," she shook Lilya's hand, which was also covered in blood, "Do you really get nosebleeds when you're upset? If so, the blood can go away. You don't have to be upset at all. We're just having a little chat about you and the conversation will be over in about ten minutes anyway." She carefully and gently escorts Lilya to her desk. "Please take a seat," Mrs. Vorenz points to the empty chair with her hand. Lilya sits down and Mrs. Vorenz paces around the office (perhaps to shake off the last of her aggression?). "Before we start, I'd like the rest of the application documents you promised me," Ms. Vorenz asks. Lilya mentally hits the next door in the face. Now she knows why she's been feeling like she's forgotten something important all this time. But she knows for sure that she can't say: "I forgot these at home." That would come across just like when you used to say in front of your teachers: "My dog ate my homework." "Just a moment please, I'll get them out of my bag."

It's all right, we have all the time in the world." Even when Mrs. Vorenz (whose first name is Christina) notices how demolished Lily's bag looks, she keeps her mouth shut. "You know," Lilya starts her next sentence, stuttering, "I must have lost the documents when I collided with that man. Man, he was so fast, I didn't even notice what fell out of the bag." Mrs. Vorenz casts an eye over Lilya's bag and raises an eyebrow at her. "The hole was also made in the collision ... Man, I don't even remember what that puke looked like, he was so fast ..." Lilya digresses from the topic and feels like a complete failure. But at the same time, she thinks: "The encounter with that jerk must have been good for something." The "idiot" finishes his lecture at the same time. Even though it was actually planned to last a few minutes longer. But after just seven minutes, the exclusion had enough. "Why? Did I just talk too fast?" he tries to find an explanation, "Honestly, you always talk faster during the presentation than during rehearsals. I'm not alone in this, am I?" He had more things he wanted to talk about and points he would have liked to at least touch on and elaborate on. But nothing is lost yet. It's only just getting started. It's time for the Q&A session! His audience simply listened to everything he had to say without any questions in between. That's why it's now crucial what questions are asked and, above all, how he answers them. The "question phase" is always an important phase in a presentation. Let's go out on a limb and say that it is just as important as the presentation itself. The first question is asked by a lady who, like Kawaki, appears to be in her early twenties: "That sounds all well and good, but why do you think we should arrange the walls like this and take most of the pillars out of this building? Wouldn't it be too unstable that way? Aren't there already too few pillars supporting this heavy building? Wouldn't it perhaps make more sense to handle the restructuring differently?" Are the endless question marks from this annoying woman finally coming to an end? "It could actually be that at first glance you seem to be right and my ideas seem subtle. But believe me, her version would be a very unwise choice with the goods we have at our disposal. Besides, my concept offers much more compared to other options. Not only is it more profitable, but, even if you don't believe me YET, it's so much safer." Kawaki explains a few more boring things that I will spare you. Let's jump back in at this point: "... different doesn't always mean worse," he is about to finish his answer to this one question, until he remembers, "Besides, in reality, things are always different from what you think. For example, if we keep the many pillars, it would take up far too much of the room. Which would also mean the desired number of stores would be unthinkable." With this one question, Kawaki has answered just about every question in the minds of the team assembled here. He successfully presents everything as if his solution were the only conceivable one. Even if the main reasons for his model are actually different: "It's more work, costs more money and the planned opening date will probably have to be postponed, but in the long run it brings in a lot more cash." That would have been the right answer to the question.

"Why do you think we should give you this job?"