His unconscious mind took him to a metaphysical place. The familiarity of the heat it emanated made him feel like he was lying on a bed made of marshmallows.
He felt like he was back at his apartment, the sun creeping into the window. Lighting up the whole room with a beautiful orange hue. He always gave himself credit for choosing this apartment, because the sun let him know when it was rising, same thing when it was setting.
And Jonathan loved it.
It was a beautiful few seconds of a reminiscent past that seemed so far away from him now. He wouldn't be able to reach it even if he tried.
That's until the place gave him sight, fear paralysed him immediately. He was in the sun's core, or something close to that. His world wasn't exactly technologically advanced but he knew this from the artificial pictures released a year prior his death.
"Don't be scared, accept it, this is Gi."
'Don't be scared? Are you mad? Aren't you supposed to be a saint, a guardian? Offer something more useful.'
"Just relax."
That wasn't helpful to him at all, even if that were the case, he couldn't help but panic. He was human or something close to it, it came naturally.
The sun was hotter than anything known in his previous world. And it seemed to be aware that he was scared of it, the more he released those negative emotions the hotter it became.
'I have to get out of here before I turn to dust.' He wasn't standing on anything, he was just afloat, midair, so he tried to swim away.
"Don't be an idi β I mean don't be like that, if it was going to kill you here and now, you'd already be incinerated."
'Great choice of words.' He said remembering the fate of his own soul should he fail to redeem himself.
The more he panicked, the heavier the surrounding energy was and he was sinking to its deepest parts, parts he didn't wish to see. More than his strength, it seemed to be siphoning his conscious mind too.
'Okay you idiot, relax, calm down. The only thing dragging you down right now is your panicking.' He tried talking himself down.
He'd been in worse situations, one could argue that being embarrassed in front of a girl you liked, constantly, was a much worse fate than death or having your soul erased β to human teenagers anyway.
And he'd been there already β he'd been humaliated more times than he could count, enough to last a lifetime. Now all he needed to do was calm down. He only had his soul to lose, nothing of significance to him.
"Having your soul erased isn't a walk in the park. You get to experience a much worse pain, over and over until the end of time." The system told him. "Which I can sure you, time is infinite."
'That isn't really comforting. Are you really a saint?' He was floating up toward the centre once again.
"I am a saint, but I'm also here to guide you. So when I tell you to calm down, it's usually a good idea."
The system had a point which he was willing to accept. So he tried to let himself go, bit by bit the dense energy moved away from him until his body floated to the core once again, that's when he could feel his entire unconscious mind enveloped in Gi.
'Ha! It's not so bad, it's-it's warm.' It melted his anxiety away.
He didn't know what it felt like being in the womb, but he imagined that it would feel like this. He was tiny, with nothing on and surrounded by an energy that he was warming up to.
'Mm, I wonder why I can remember my birth but not being in the womb.' He pondered about unimportant things.
He hoped that the system would read his mind and give him a reasonable explanation β but it never came. Its job was to guide him in this life not tell him about his previous one.
Jonathan was fully relaxed now. The less he was scared of it, the more it embraced him. The energy felt alive, it felt like a mother he never had, he'll never have, in both of his lives.
The space he was in stopped looking and feeling like a monster that was ready to devour him, it stopped feeling threatening. He swam around to get the lay of the land.
But no matter the distance he swam and the direction he swam to, it seemed he was just swimming in circles. He never really went far, he just kept coming back to the centre.
The gravity in that tiny little core was unbelievable, it was clearly made so that it could handle any being that came asking to tame it.
Even then, he felt something happen to his muscles, the more he used them to transport himself around its core the better. They were getting firmer, stronger and much longer.
"Yes, you're growing. Time works a little different in here."
So that's what he did, swam around in an ocean of energy. Unlike the ocean, the energy was always calm and not at all hostile. It opened itself up to be a playground for this little creature that roamed within it.
"He's absorbing more than his tiny body can handle but he seems far from exploding." The system noted the unnatural phenomenon.
This was its first time guiding a being but it was sure that this was something that was unheard of. Looking through its information, there was nothing. It just accepted that the boy was an irregularity.
It couldn't wait to experience the new world with him, it was sure he hadn't changed from his previous self. Remorse was needed in order to redeem ones self, and the saint system couldn't get a whiff of that from him.
"Well, my job is to punish him severely should he go astray."