grim reapers 》 avengers

I

all the workers in the afterworld offices were human with regrets in their past lives.

The After World Guiding Office is bustling as usual. The schedules have just been distributed, and so the bustle could be classified as a typical Monday morning. Then again, the After World offices were always busy any day in the week, at any given time.

The workers there didn't exactly follow your nine-to-five schedules.

Sipping her still steaming mug of tea, Amara made her way through the throngs of weary looking men and women, carefully avoiding not to step on their respective silk robes.

Ignoring a wailing woman who is pleading for "just six more months, please, sir," to a bored looking officer, Amara carefully made her way back to a tall, dark wooden door with the label "SCHEDULER" plastered on it.

Pushing the door open with her empty hand, Amara slipped inside. The office, which she shared with her partner Edmund is a medium sized room with two desks and two chairs on the side, a big printer machine on the other side, and a giant calendar that takes most of the wall.

Edmund had always complained that their office looks like the backroom to a seedy publisher, but Amara quite liked it. There is something in the old looking office that is not there in the other overly-modernized afterworldly offices.

Seeing no sign of her associate, Amara set her tea mug on her desk before opening up her laptop. She had yet to make a schedule for next week.

Being a Scheduler is mostly desk workㅡshe have to make a list of people who's scheduled to die every single weekㅡit is a boring work, but somebody has to do it.

After the Scheduler (in this case Amara) finished her job, the schedule will be delivered to the Reasoning Department, where they will pair each person on the schedule with each causes of death.

The completed lists with the names, ages, and cause of deaths will be distributed to grim reapers on Monday each week. Grim reapers stood at the end of the processㅡtheir only job is to reap souls and ease them to the after world.

Amara was in the middle of typing Margaret Jones when the office door flew open and Edmund strode in, fuming. He threw a stack of papers to his desk with so much force that Amara was afraid the desk might break.

She raised her brows. "How's the meeting with Reasoning going?"

He groaned. Taking a bundle of paper from the stacks on his desk, he gave it to Amara. "Just look for yourself."

Taking the papers from Edmund's hand, the woman leaned back on her chair. It didn't take long for her to find out the problem, and soon she is flipping the pages furiously.

"What? What happened, Ed? Why are they all got cancelled?" Amara asks, both in confusion and in annoyance as more and more cancelled at last minute greeted her eye the more she flip the pages.

"They want us to reschedule them?" Amara asked in disbelief, looking at Edmund, then at the thick bundle in her hands with disbelief. "But this is like, a hundred people! When in the world are we gonna fit them?"

"Tell that to Reasoning." Edmund muttered darkly as he put his head on his hand. "For the first time in five hundred years, I am regretting my decision. Hell would've been better than this."

Amara ignored him as she studies the calendar on the wall. "We can fit one here... And two there... That leaves us with ninety seven more." Amara muttered to herself, growing more stressed by the seconds.

"Edmund, we're packed full for the year."

"You think I don't know that?" The man sighed as he rubbed his temples. "You should see how hard I fought Reasoning earlier."

"I believe that." Amara comments drily, her eyes already on the calendar and on the list of available grim reapers, already calculating.

"Did Reasoning told you why they cancelled these people?"

"Reasoning didn't cancel them--The system cancelled them. You should hear Cho Chang speaks earlier. She made it so believable that they did not know what happened either."

"Maybe they really didn't." Amara replied, rubbing her temples. "Unlike us, they only write orders from the system, and the system sometimes fails."

"Yes, and that leaves us in a really dire situation." Edmund sighed as he, too, began studying the calendar. "Can we fit twenty more on Tuesday?" He asked, and Amara looked at the list of available reapers before shaking her head. "There are not enough reapers, Ed. We can only fit them next week."

Edmund curses loudly, and Amara felt like cursing too.

Edmund perks up. "I'll go ask Reasoning if we can fit some on oncoming incidents then, Ames," He began, smiling slightly. "Major, minor, I don't care. As long as those hundred can fit on this week's schedule. We can't postpone them for long."

Amara nodded. "Do you need any backup?"

Edmund shook his head. "Just give me moral support and a glass of hot cocoa later."

Amara nodded as she balled her fists at him. "Fighting."

Edmund smiles wryly.