Vanessa Cross had long accepted that her life wasn't a glamorous K-drama, but this… this was beyond even her wildest breakdown-induced hallucinations.
One minute, she was brushing ghost glitter off her shoulder in the Land of Death, getting roasted by a sentient clipboard and shouted at by a skeleton teacher for botching her first assignment. The next, someone was waving a parchment scroll in her face with an ominously cheerful:
"Congratulations, Reaper-in-Training No. 428B! You've been temporarily cleared to return to your physical body in the human world for external soul integration testing! Don't screw it up!"
"…Huh?" Vanessa blinked. "Wait, I get to go back? Like, home? With food and iced coffee and functioning digestive organs?!"
"Yes!" the clipboard-being chirped. "Temporarily!"
Her smile froze. "Temporarily?"
"Temporarily!" echoed several skeletons behind her like a cursed cheerleading squad.
Vanessa's eye twitched. "Define temporary."
The clipboard-being leaned in dramatically. "Until we call you back."
"Oh," she muttered, "like jury duty… but with death."
Before she could protest, the floor beneath her glowed with a complex sigil that looked like a cursed mandala. The last thing she saw was Reaper Nix waving with both hands and yelling, "Don't haunt your manager too hard!"
---
With a violent gasp and a flailing arm that smacked her office desk, Vanessa shot upright back in her ergonomic chair, back in her dull grey cubicle, back among the living. She looked around wildly, clutching her chest as her heart thudded like a bass drum in a rock concert.
"Vanessa!!"
She jumped so hard she nearly flung herself off her chair. Mira, her best friend and coworker, was leaning over her desk, face pale and eyes wide with panic.
"Are you okay?! You've been dead—I mean, asleep for like, an hour! You weren't snoring, you weren't twitching, I thought you died!" Mira clutched her by the shoulders and shook her gently. "You looked like a corpse! I even checked your pulse!"
Vanessa's mouth opened, then closed. She looked at the clock. 2:22 PM.
She blinked again.
It had been one month of hell in the Land of Death.
And here?
It had been an hour.
She exhaled shakily and muttered, "Time dilation. Multiversal bureaucratic bull—"
"What?"
"Nothing," she snapped back to focus. "I'm fine, Mira. Just had a weird dream. Power nap. Deep REM. Soul-level REM, even."
Mira narrowed her eyes. "You're acting weird."
Vanessa winced. "You just described my personality."
But Mira, bless her concerned soul, moved on quickly. "You better freshen up, girl. You've got that meeting with Boss Lang in eight minutes. If he catches you with desk drool on your face again…"
Vanessa froze. Boss Lang. The Boss Lang. The one she used to fantasize about personally reaping twice a week for violating basic human decency in the workplace.
"Oh no."
"Oh what?"
"Nothing! I mean… nothing important." Vanessa gulped. "Let's go. Time to pretend to be a normal employee again."
She rose shakily, legs still feeling a little… intangible. As she grabbed her notes and followed Mira toward the meeting room, she caught a flicker of movement near the water cooler.
A transparent old man in a tattered suit stood there, holding a ghostly briefcase and looking directly at her.
Vanessa's smile faltered. "Oh… hell."
The ghost waved. "Hi. Are you the intern reaper? I need help crossing over—"
"ShhHHHHHHHH!!!" Vanessa hissed through clenched teeth, flapping her notebook at the ghost like a fly. "Not now!"
"What?" Mira turned.
"Uh… nothing! I just… thought I saw a spider. It's gone now."
She power-walked the rest of the way to the conference room, sweating bullets.
---
The meeting was… surreal.
Not because of Boss Lang's usual micromanaging of projects that weren't his job. Not because of the awkward forced laughter whenever he made a joke about "team synergy" while drinking overpriced coffee from a golden thermos.
But because halfway through his presentation on quarterly KPIs, Vanessa spotted no fewer than three ghosts hovering behind her coworkers.
One was a bored teenager floating upside down above Brad from accounting. Another looked like a grandma, knitting something on top of the filing cabinet. The third, oh god, the third was a headless Victorian man peering at the PowerPoint like it was witchcraft.
"I don't belong here," she muttered, rubbing her eyes.
Mira leaned over. "Same, girl. Same."
Vanessa made it through the meeting by sheer willpower, the grace of caffeine, and pretending the ghosts didn't exist. She even managed to nod when Boss Lang asked if she was "fully recharged from her break" with a barely-suppressed "You have no idea."
But the moment she returned to her desk, the ghosts pounced.
"Excuse me—"
"I died in 1973 and I still haven't been collected—"
"Are you the temp reaper? You look like one—"
Vanessa slapped a sticky note over her forehead with the words "OFF DUTY" scribbled on it in blood-red pen and yelled, "QUEUE UP LIKE THE REST OF US!"
A beat of silence. Even the ghosts looked scandalized.
"I… I'm sorry," she sighed, slumping into her chair. "It's been a long month. I mean hour. I mean—ugh."
She buried her face in her hands. This wasn't sustainable. She was supposed to be pretending to be alive. Normal. But now she could see death's leftovers clinging to everything like a supernatural post-it note.
Suddenly, her computer pinged. A new email.
From: [email protected]
Subject: "Reminder: Reaper-in-Training Status Active"
Body: "You are now responsible for assisting souls who slip through the cracks. Please do not cause a multiversal incident. Signed, Team Fate Coordination. PS: Try not to scream at the dead. It's bad for morale."
Vanessa's eye twitched again.
She looked around. The printer jammed. The coffee machine was hissing. Boss Lang was monologuing at poor Brad again. Ghosts were whispering behind her.
She sighed.
"Back to the grind," she muttered, then straightened her shoulders. "But this time… with bonus ghosts."
Mira popped her head over the cubicle wall. "What was that?"
"I said 'I need toast.' Real bad."
"…You scare me sometimes."
Vanessa smiled thinly. "You have no idea."