She whites out, and when her vision clears - 

She isn't in pain. She isn't in... Anything, really. She's oddly disconnected from anything that might be a body. The world looks unreal, washed out and hazy and ill-defined.

There's an athletic woman in front of Tasara - a pretty one, with red hair and eyes and clothes. She's the only thing with a definite form, here. She's smiling. "Welcome to the afterlife," she says, cheerfully, "And congratulations."

"Uh," she says. Or something. It's hard to tell, given how- absent everything is.

"Thank... you? Why are you congratulating me?"

"You've been selected for a very rare opportunity for your next reincarnation," she says, still cheerfully. "One where you'll have far more control over the circumstances than usual."

...Tasara can't blink. That's a little annoying.

"How much control is usual?"

"None," she admits. "There's a lot of people dying at any given time, so we normally automate the process."

"Oh. That makes sense."

"Who is 'we'?"

"The lower ranked staff working for the Bureau of Support for the Ineffable Wills of the Multiverse." She shrugs. "There's always some pet project or another going on, though, or some push to test run different processes."

"And is this a pet project or a test run?"

"A pet project," she says, cheerfully. "Though we might use data from projects like this to refine our automated sorting systems."

Suppose that's maybe a bit better.

"All right. I guess I don't really have a choice in participating."

"No, not really! But you get choices in how you shape your next life at least." She pauses. "Well, some choices. There's a bit of a theme..."

"Ah-huh. A theme."

"We have brochures, even! There's three - though they haven't exactly been updated for this specific run..." She produces three glossy brochures, helpfully labeled 1, 2, and 3. "Ignore the parts about your fiance being male, and the yuri heroine perk - you, the heroine, and the love interest are all female. Also, you have two free perks - you're at normal difficulty, there."

She starts skimming through the options.

"...Making this a game feels like an odd decision."

"Oh, there's a very popular fiction genre about getting reincarnated into games in one of the more influential branches of the Multiverse."

"Fiction is one thing. But an afterlife that actually exists and getting reincarnated is another."

Shrug. "Many of the pet projects are stranger than this."

"Mm."

She taps on one of the flaws, Late Start. "What's the point of this?"

"Some enjoy the extra challenge! Though we have had a few people who didn't want to bother with the storyline and just picked 'Impoverished' or 'Nunnery' and ran with that. Apparently some people think being a magic nun sounds cool? Still, taking it seriously is usually more fun..."

Tasara doesn't especially want to bother with the storyline.

...And she thinks she has the beginnings of a plan to have her own kind of fun with this. Line up these flaws and those perks- Yeah.

"All right. Do we start from the top?"

"Yes, normally."

"First page. Hime cut, brunette, human, faux medieval, medium magic."

There's a sense of things being noted down. "Got it! Any opinion on the time period aesthetic? If not, I'll just pick one that fits with the overall shape of your other choices."

"I do not believe these choices align very well with my experiences. I would like somewhere warm, if that is possible."

She nods. "That's very possible, yes!"