She had big eyes, mostly pupils, and faintly red lips. Her skin was the same hue as snow. Her jaw was rounded yet straight, framed by her dangling, vividly white hair. She was small and appeared to be a child, but what a breath-takingly fantastic child she was.
“…Wha…” Daiki stammered.
He couldn’t form words, let alone blink.
“If you’re going to fly,” the girl continued, “then you need to spread your wings. Or… would you just rather die?”
She fixed her large, black eyes on his. Her childish, soft voice sounded strangely mature.
“If you fall from here, it will be quite painful. Unless you wish to kill yourself, of course.” The girl laughed softly.
Daiki quickly regained his senses. In trying to maneuver away from the girl, he ended up edging away from the window.
The girl had appeared, to begin with, as if she had popped out of his head, then tumbled into this world. She looked to be a bit younger than Daiki. She wore a white, one-piece dress and seemed to float in the air like some bizarre dandelion seed. She was overwhelmingly white, the monotony broken only by the shiny red shoes that adorned her feet.
In her hand, she held a long pole, which was about as tall as she was. At the top of the pole was a dull-colored, exaggerated L-shaped blade.
As his eyes began to focus, he saw a cat beside the girl. It was a black cat, with golden eyes as bright as the moon in the night sky. It wore a red collar with a large bell attached to it. Only the tip of its tail, which pointed towards the sky, was white.
The cat nimbly hopped onto the windowsill, which Daiki had perched himself upon just moments before. The bell hanging around its neck tinkled with the creature’s movements.
And then, it spoke.
“Whoa, it’s pretty high up here…”
The black cat opened its eyes wide and deftly put on an expressive face, shaking its body. Its voice was that of a young boy.
“Daniel, come here,” called the little girl, and the black cat scampered over. She seemed to take no notice of the unbelievable occurrence of a cat speaking. To the girl, this was apparently a normal event. Or rather, the girl herself was not normal. She emitted a mysterious aura that was even stranger than the fact that the cat had spoken.
And what’s more, she wore only a thin dress… in the middle of winter! Regardless, she stood there casually, as if everything was quite ordinary.
A tremor, something close to fear, raced through Daiki’s body. Though his heart was beating fast, no blood flowed to his brain. Or at least that’s what it felt like to him.
What the hell is with these guys…?! his brain screamed.
“Oh, we haven’t introduced ourselves,” she answered, perhaps hearing Daiki’s thoughts. Or was it because Daiki had, without noticing, actually voiced them out loud?
“Daniel…”
Prompted by the girl, the cat named Daniel stood on two legs and curled his tail to the front. He then skillfully grabbed hold of the white tip with his front paws. Thus, the cat formed a “ring,” and into this ring, the little girl inserted her hand.
“…?!” Daiki almost lost his breath.
The hand the girl inserted into the ring did not emerge on the other side. It was as if the ring had become a link to another dimension.
“Huh?” the girl muttered. “Where did I put it?”
“Hey…! Stop moving so much! Ow!”
Ignoring Daniel’s struggles and protests, the girl inserted her arm further inside until half the length of her arm, up to her elbow, disappeared inside the ring.
“Owwwwwwwwww,” Daniel bawled.
“Oh… there it is,” she announced. “Oopsy daisy…”
“Hnff!” the cat snorted.
“You don’t have to fuss about everything,” she answered back. “That’s why I hate doing this.”
She removed her arm from the ring and withdrew a white object, which looked like a card case. Frozen like a doll, Daniel plopped to the floor. The girl continued to ignore him; she fixed her attention on Daiki.
“Here…”
She opened the case, took out a card and brought it to Daiki’s eyes. The card appeared to be some sort of identification, large-sized, with a photo of the little girl wearing a surly look.
shinigami #a-100100
“Er…'shini…gami'…?” he asked, perplexed.
“If saying #A-100100 is hard for you, then you may simply call me ‘Momo,’” the girl explained. “Daniel calls me that. And I do like it better.”
The girl—Momo—spoke these words, which under normal circumstances might have sounded like a joke, without the hint of a smile. She was dead serious. That made it even harder for Daiki to believe.
“A shinigami?”
That word seemed larger than the rest of what she’d said and tugged at something in his heart.
“Yes, I’m a shinigami.”
Momo nodded as if nothing else could be more ordinary. If what she said was true, then this was—beyond a doubt—a genuinely idiotic situation.
In this world, the only persons who went around calling themselves something like that were either martial artists with a chip on their shoulder or complete nut jobs.
But Daiki was flat out of sighs and couldn’t possibly manage to expel one more, despite the absurdity of the situation.
In any case, he thought, Did they think they’d shock me with something like this? Or maybe this is someone’s idea of a bad joke? I must’ve come across some people on a totally different level of wattage.
Still, Momo looked neither like a martial artist nor a complete nutcase. Although she definitely held a large sickle-like thing in her hand, Momo’s appearance was nothing like the publicly held image of a shinigami.
Rather, she wore a white, one-piece dress and cute shoes. There was no way this innocent-looking little girl could be an instrument of death or bring about a person’s demise. She couldn’t possibly be a shinigami.
“Don’t mess with me.” Daiki’s throat was parched, and he spoke in a low, croaking voice.
“I’m not lying,” Momo retorted. “Though, yes, I have been told I don’t look the part.”
Daniel spoke, shifting his weight from his hind legs to all fours. “That’s right. Momo is the genuine article, a bona fide shinigami. Of course, she doesn’t quite look like one, though.”
At this point, with all the craziness going on, the fact that a cat was speaking seemed but a small part of it.
“Ha ha, a shinigami? A shinigami? I see. Okay, shinigami. Then you came here to kill me, is that it?!” Daiki asked, somewhat hopefully.
“No,” Momo answered flatly. “I felt the presence of death. And then here you were. That’s all.”
Without making a sound, Momo approached the boy. “You’re trying to kill yourself, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Er…” Daiki hesitated. And it wasn’t because his throat was dry.
“That’s odd. You do want to die, don’t you?” Momo asked. “Then why don’t you just do it?”
The boy’s body trembled upon hearing such words uttered without even a hint of emotion. Without warning, Momo giggled and moved away from him. She pointed towards the open window.
“Go ahead.”
As if hypnotized, Daiki was unable to look away from her childish yet straightforward gaze.
“If you jump from here, your wish will come true… Right? Then you’ll surely be dead.”
That word again. Death.
“Momo,” Daniel interrupted in a small, albeit urgent, tone. “Don’t you think this is wrong? He’s not on the list. If we take back an extra soul, we’ll get in trouble with the director again.”
“Are you talking about the fact that Heaven’s packed with so many souls they can’t accept any extras?” Momo asked. “The important thing is if he wants to die, I think it’s better to just let him have his way.”
“But Momo…” It was Daniel’s turn to stammer, as his head spun from the words of his mistress.
Turning back to Daiki, Momo urged, “Now, come on. Why don’t you just jump?”
“……” Stunned, Daiki was unable to move a muscle.
“What are you doing? You were about to jump because you wanted to die, weren’t you?” Momo let out a big sigh. “I guess you can’t kill yourself after all. What was that now, just some spur of the moment thing? You can’t even kill yourself of your own free will. How sad.”
Momo looked at him with cheerless, pitying eyes. “At this rate, you won’t get the death you so desire. You probably confused the aura of death around you for your own, didn’t you?”
Momo’s words rang in Daiki’s ears and then slowly traveled to his brain. Slowly being absorbed. Melting.
“As proof, even though we’re supposed to be invisible, you can see us,” Momo continued. “You are surely emitting the scent of death. But it isn’t yours. Remember that. Okay then… See you.”
—Ring.
In an instant, everything went white. Daiki was taken aback. He looked around, and, of course, nobody was there.
“So what was that just now?” he asked. “A dream?”
He felt sick and dizzy, and struggled to avoid collapsing.
“…It was just a bad dream,” he said to himself. “I had a bad dream. Maybe I came too close to death…”
He had let his chance slip away. Death was now estranged from him. Now it seemed better to get far away from this place. At least for today.