Until the day I'm forgiven...

Short Story: A Reaper's Breakdown

A Reaper's Breakdown

A Grim Reaper job can be very depressing and eventually it causes a mental breakdown for many of its reapers.

When Gakushu had been a reaper for almost a whole year, he learnt one of the many dark secrets of the Grim Reaper.

It all started during the school holidays where Gakushu would usually be at the Department's central building that connect to all of the Branches. It was the place where reapers could easily go from Japan, to France and to America with only a simple teleportation key in under a minute.

An aspect of Gakushu was that he likes to hand in his reports on Kunugigaoka by hand himself at the front desk instead of Rilliane having to do it for him. Usually she would hand in the report as she was the one who was more often is paired up with Gakushu's retrieval shifts.

It is tradition to pair up a senior and junior together and be stuck with that for many years. Luckily this is a very flexible tradition. So if he wanted to, Gakushu could either do it alone or with someone else from his group of friends. He doesn't mind if Rilliane is paired up with him and she had said that it is good for him to socialise with other reapers anyway.

Earlier today, since he had no school due to the holidays and because his father was out of the town business, the strawberry blonde decided to take on the early shift and wasn't paired up with any one. There wasn't much work in Kunugigaoka town so Gakushu only collected four souls and all of them being the elderly.

Rilliane was trying to let Gakushu to get a bit more experience now that the school holidays were around. She was hoping that a small transfer to the Americas for a couple of days would be good for him. She was currently working out the details on when he boy would do it, if he wanted to.

He might as well do it since the amount of free time he had now, the group had been meaning to go to Disneyland together.

Gretel said that her little Strawberry was growing up to be a big boy while he was reading his list of souls on his customised phone, claiming that he was doing his shift alone. The usual routine for Gakushu was that he checks the list on his phone first before using his hard-copy booklist.

As Gakushu waited in line filled with other reapers of all sorts of backgrounds to hand in their report at the front desk. His head was suddenly filled by an ear-piercing scream and he and many others turned to where the scream was coming from.

One of the main doors used by teleportation keys that were within the Grim Reaper realm, rather than the Human realm. It was opened to reveal the same Russian and German that Gakushu knew, Ivan and Lucia.

Lucia's appearance was dishevelled, her long blonde hair tangled in knots as it covered her face. Her chartreuse phosphorescent eyes were red and puffy, telling Gakushu that the blonde has been crying. Her rectangular glasses were stained from her tears and he watched as Lucia tried to free herself from her friend.

"Let go of me! I have to find him!" Lucia was struggling under Ivan's hold as he was barely keeping her constrained under his grip.

Ivan yelled at the building, "Medic! I need medic! I need the Ward" Ivan yelled in the building, as his pale face held a panic look. As soon as he said the 'keyword', people around Gakushu rushed into the scene. As Gakushu looked around, he saw that those who went were mainly seniors rushing in to help.

"Help me! I need to find my baby!" Lucia continued to yell as more people came in to restrain her.

"Where is my baby!?" She cried out, thrashing around as people began to surround her and Ivan.

Gakushu stood there, frozen in his place like the many those who had lesser experience than the seniors, watching the scene playing in front of them.