Ren's POV
The next morning, it was the weekend, so I put on my Ikigami messenger suit to attend a meeting with my fellow Ikigami Messengers. We met up at an assembly building that used to be a Brutalist, windowless building. It was now a beautiful one in the Heian-style of a pagoda. The meeting room was warm and smelled of matcha tea and snacks for the meeting. The meeting is no longer about quotas on who is next to die, but rather, about what we did that week and hold discussions on mundane things like city utility maintenance, which portrait goes first by timestamp of their demise. The weekly meetings weren't mandatory at all. Among the attendees is Uo Gotou, a fellow Messenger who is now a supermarket manager. He was holding a photo of a 23-year-old young man who had been the owner of that supermarket. Uo had been the one who delivered the death notice to the young man. 24 hours later, the time was up, but the man held up and refused to die. Uo still had the heavy guilt of brandishing a knife at him and stabbing him to finish him. I still remember standing there on that rainy Dark Day (rainy here while sunny on the same day Francisco-san was killed in his Valencian home) after Kal's spell on us broke, and Uo was weeping so bad the ground below the alleyway shook. I still had the memory of watching him remove the burst out nano capsule from the man's heart as if to try to salvage the man's life. He did not care if his suit was soaked by the man's blood. But while he did so and smashed the cursed capsule on the ground in anger, that one did not work either, and the man passed away on the spot. I still remember saying to Uo, "I am sorry, he did not make it."
In this weekly meeting, I laid out my entire week in front of Uo and others:
Sunday - I attended the church Sakura used to attend; it was an Episcopalian one, and one of my fellow Ikigami Messengers was a priest on Sundays.
Monday to Wednesday - normal Engineering classes at Nagoya's most prestigious university for Sakura's unearned degree
Thursday to Friday - Fixing a fuse box in a home of a dead person that had been one of my victims, and just yesterday, I put white lilies and burned incense sticks at Sakura's grave and looked at the picture of Tiago Kurosawa on a screen in a nearby shopping center near the cemetery. Just last night, I finished 2 out of the 5 last chapters Sakura did not finish before her 24 hours was over. The remaining 3 would be before spring break.
After that, most of my colleagues nodded at that, one of the most mundane yet human things we always do. "That was nice, Ren-kun," my superior, Yu Kurosawa (the last name came from Tiago Kurosawa who died at 5:21 p.m. three years ago, and Yu became his "uncle" in honor of him), said to me with sincerity. "Three more chapters before the spring break at Nagoya University."
"Yes, thank you, sir," I replied with a slight and quick bow as I stared at my laptop that had Sakura's syllabus for this end of semester.
Spring break is next Wednesday, and that would be September 1.
"I restocked the shelves at the Gotou Grocers with fresh beef from Germany 3 days ago," Uo said while having his turn, "and it was sold out just last night. Our Equilibrium Grammaton Clerics really raised the German cattle well."
Others had their turns on sharing the events, mundane or not, of their entire week while sipping tea and munching on Japanese crackers and bread.
Yu understood solemnly while looking at a football keychain on his smartphone case, a keychain from Tiago-san.
"Also, guys," Yu added to all of us. "Just a little message from our Fahrenheit 451 brothers from Europe. They will come over for a short vacation. Ceo-san and others had paid leave for 5 days, so make sure the city is nice and the airport well-maintained. You know how the original Japanese people had a thing or two for the presentation of their surroundings on tourists back in the pre-Kal days."
We agreed on that.
The meeting was ordinary, non-lethal, and most importantly, human.
I can feel the spirits of Sakura, Tiago, and some of our victims blowing a gentle breeze across the room.
As a personal habit, Yu laid a metallic sheet on the center of the table. He then laid out a death notice with a crossed-out name and the word 'nobody' scribbled of the target's name. He pulled out his lighter and set the thing on fire. The paper is not what we used to print the wretched death notices; it had infused sandalwood and lavender that, when being burned, gave out a fragrant smell for us. We watched the paper burned fragrance until it became ashes of fragrance, which Yu gathered in a dustpan and sprinkled the tiny amounts out the window for the wind to carry.