Yuki dreamt of a life.
She dreamt of the sterile glow of a pregnancy ward. She dreamt of a girl's laughter scattering across a playground. She dreamt of a young woman's sigh fogging a cold office window. And finally, she dreamt of that life ending on a snowy pavement.
Then, the memories began to dissolve. One by one, they faded into a silent, consuming cascade of muted gray sand, like light being swallowed by a void. The last thing she dreamt was the sensation of waking up.
[Welcome, Soul Reaper Yuki!]
Familiar text carved itself across her vision. Yuki groaned, her body heavy with the phantom weight of a deep, unnatural sleep.
She pushed herself up. The stiff, unfamiliar suit constricted her shoulders. She didn't mind the discomfort; it was a tangible anchor. A loud yawn escaped her, and she stretched, feeling stiff muscles protest.
"Where am I?"
The question surfaced from the quiet in her mind. Her eyes adjusted. It was a moderate-sized bedroom. A single bed sat neatly in the corner, a plain cabinet beside it. A mirror hung at head height next to a wooden door.
Yuki's eyes darted, her instincts screaming that this placid whiteness was a lie. But nothing moved. Nothing changed.
"Okay. Let's start with what I know," she whispered, the sound swallowed by the room. "I'm dead." The conclusion was cold and solid. The memory of bleeding out on snow was visceral.
But before that? A blank page. As if her life was a story that started in that moment on the snowy pavement. She grimaced, pressing her fingers to her temples, trying to force a past to exist.
"My name is Yuki. I was a... a citizen. I was born..." The words died in her throat. Or maybe they had never even been there in the first place. She still remembered what she was, but somehow, she couldn't recall who she was.
"I don't know." Her voice was small. "I don't know... Who am I?"
Her wide, frightened eyes scanned the sterile white room, searching for an answer in the nothingness. Her dry mouth trembled slightly. Her grip tightened on her bed sheet.
Suddenly, the door swung open. A figure appeared, holding a tray of drinks. She stood there, startled, as Yuki locked eyes with her.
In that pause, the woman smiled. Her words were alien, yet Yuki understood what the woman was saying.
"Ah, you're awake."
———
Yuki sat uncomfortably in her seat. She was one figure in a vast, murmuring sea of black suits, all perched on identical, flimsy chairs that seemed to be specially designed for discomfort.
The space they were in right now was unmistakably a lobby of some sort. There were tiled marble floors, fluorescent lamps with a faint flicker illuminating the room, and numbered counters with clerks with weary eyes behind them.
"Are you new here as well?" Yuki asked with an awkward smile, her first attempt to strike up a conversation.
"Don't talk to me." The person scowled. Yuki's smiling face quickly turned back.
Alright... This one is not friendly.
Suddenly, her shoulder was nudged. She turned her head to find a young man sitting beside her.
He greeted her with a smile on his face.
"Hi, I'm Hou Lian. Are you new here as well?" he said. Hou Lian had pale skin. His eyes were sharp and the skin of his palms was rough to the touch. His lanky body fit the suit that he wore and his posture seemed rigid despite being relaxed.
"Ah— I'm Yuki." She said, awkwardly shaking his hand. In her head, she cheered. She was finally able to talk to someone.
"Where are you from?" Hou Lian questioned. Yuki hesitated for a second.
"Ah... I don't know..." Yuki grinned. "I don't quite remember where I'm from, to be honest."
"Amnesia?"
Yuki nodded. Hou Lian rubbed his hairless chin for a second, thinking.
"That sounds more like a Japanese name," he said.
"J— Japanese?" A familiar instinct pulsed in her head. She had heard that word before... Was that where she was from? "I don't know, maybe?"
"Haha, don't worry. I'm sure they can help you with your problem." Hou Lian pointed towards the row of clerks. Yuki just nodded.
"What about you?"
"Ah, I'm Chinese. Don't worry, I'm not holding anything against you."
"What?"
"Ah, right. You're an amnesiac. Don't worry about it." He chuckled.
They chatted for a little while before Hou Lian left after his number was called. Once again, she sat there alone, waiting for her turn.
Sometimes, she glanced at the other people waiting alongside her. A couple of them just sat there, their lifeless eyes wandering randomly just like hers. But a couple others had been busy with a floating black box.
The same black box that hovered in front of her.
[Welcome, Soul Reaper Yuki!]
It read. Alien text was displayed in white; what was even weirder was her ability to read it.
"It changed," she noted. She had never paid it much attention after learning it didn't do anything. But it seemed she had been wrong.
"What had it called me before... Lost Soul?"
She deduced that the label had changed after she woke up. By spying on others' systems, she had noticed that they were labeled as well. And there was a variety of at least three labels.
Soul Guider, Bureau Clerk and Soul Reaper.
And she had been assigned as the last one.
"Oh, right. If it changed then maybe I could interact with it, no?"
She touched the black screen. The screen rippled, the text dissolved into the ripples. Before long, the screen grew larger, and white text began forming from the ripple.
[Name: Soul Reaper Yuki
Rank: F
Rank Progress: 0
Mission: (None available)
Completed Mission: 0
Recollections: [Snow White(F)], [Gray Sand(???)]
Saved Construct: None
Friend List:
Soul Points: 0
Titles: Soul Reaper]
"Woah." She read the text, line by line, trying to understand what each of them meant.
However, one of the lines stood out to her.
[Recollections: [Snow White(F)], [Gray Sands(???)]]
"What does this mean?" She clicked the screen. Instead of a ripple, another screen appeared on top of it.
[Snow White
Memory:
"The memory of a girl's first snow"
Effect: Summon a knife.]
"Summon a kni—" What? She read the line again. What did summon a knife mean? What did it have to do with snow?
"Snow white?" She read the name. And then, something weird happened. As if a piece of her memory had surfaced. Her word echoed a second time as if she were chanting an ancient spell.
[Snow White]
In the lobby, a surge of darkness emerged. A torrent of black mist swirled around her. It continued to spin into her hand. Within a moment, the mist formed a solid shape. The process ended when it solidified into a handheld knife.
She quickly looked around, worried that people might freak out over her knife. However, nobody seemed to pay her any mind.
Yuki let out a sigh of relief before examining the knife.
Its blade was a dark metal, glinting with a fierce aura. The handle was a bit worn, like someone had already used it. And her hand... It felt like she was meant to wield it.
And then, a dark twist formed in her stomach.
She recognized the knife.
She didn't quite remember it well, but she had been killed by a stab wound, and had been left bleeding in the snow. And this knife...
This knife was the one used to kill her.
Startled, she dropped the knife. As soon as it left her hand, the sharp knife dissipated into black mist.
"If the knife was my murder weapon then the [gray sand] here is—" She paused. She wasn't ready to continue.
Her face showed a faint discomfort. Her skin somehow remembered the feeling of sand clinging to it.
"So, it wasn't a dream." She had doubted it, had hated it; she had thought it was just a distant dream but alas, it was real.
The desert was real.
Before long, her number was called. She awkwardly walked towards the counter.
"Name?" asked the clerk, a man in his forties. He had weary eyes that rested behind dark spectacles, yet he displayed a warm smile as he saw her.
"Yuki," she answered shortly. The man nodded before typing something on his computer.
"Huh, weird. Did you say you were new here?"
"Yes."
"My system says that you have been dead for five years..."
"I'm sorry?" Five years. The number didn't compute at first, then it hit her like a physical blow. Her breath caught; the sterile air turned thin. Five years of nothing in that gray void, while this world hummed on without her. A cold, profound loneliness seeped into her bones, and her hand began to tremble against her will.
"I'm not sure how to process your information here. I won't even be able to find if any team would accept you." The man spoke. The word barely made sense to her, but she listen intently. Then, faintly, she can see that he stole a quick glance towards her.
She knew that look. Even when her mind is empty, she can recognize it. It wasn't malice, but the cold efficiency of a mind cog spinning. A look that screamed of a chance they must grasp. Yuki squirmed in her seat, feeling small as ever.
She wanted to say something but ended up swallowing her words as she continued to observe him. It was as if you could hear the cogs in his head turning, and a lightbulb flicked on behind his eyes.
"How would you feel about being a team leader? It's a temporary job; I just need this off my hands for now. Are you up for it?" The man words shoots out like a bullet.
"Wha—?" She didn't even get to respond. The man's hand had already moved before her mind could process it.
"Your assistant will explain it to you. Congrats on getting promoted."
"What?" Suddenly, her system changed. The screen shone brightly, blinding her. As the light faded away, she took a glance at it. The alien text formed on the screen as it displayed.
[Welcome, Team Leader Yuki!]