No one liked talking about it.
The curiosity was universal, of course, for it was a phenomenon experienced by all souls inhabiting Rukongai. But the fear too was universal, smothering the curiosity with the profound fear of being caught. Those who dared to indulge their curiosity conducted secret conversations in hushed whispers, always in some dusty private room in broad daylight away from stares and away from shadows. It felt safer that way.
There were rumors that souls who became too bold, too brave in their conversations, too brazen with their theories simply disappeared without a trace. No one knew such a soul personally, but it seemed everyone knew of someone. Souls disappeared from Rukongai every day. But there was always a trace, always a remnant, always a lone shoe or a chewed bone or a faded ribbon left behind.
Perhaps that was the reason why the Calling, as it was known, was surrounded by so much superstition and mystery.
Hisana hated it. She hated thinking about it, she ran from conversations that dipped below the volume of public discussion, she developed a habit of sleeping very lightly to avoid falling into the sort of deep sleep that might arouse dreams of her Calling.
Regardless, her best intent would fail her and every so often her body would succumb to the chronic exhaustion suffered by all the poor miserable souls who were so fortunate to be called to the outer circles of Rukongai.
It was always like this. She would find herself—neither waking nor sleeping—on a bus. She wasn't sure if it was a real memory or a dream. There was a baby. There was a crowd of people. There was the bus driver. And then she was pushed off and swallowed up by the ground.
In that transitional moment between dreaming and awakening, when consciousness bleeds and wavers between opaque and transparent, she felt something. Like a stranger breathing on her neck.
It was the prickling feeling of a foreign consciousness watching her, touching her without her consent. It was the feeling of walking alone at night with the terror of being followed. It was the feeling of scrutinizing every shadow and the acute relief from seeing the door within reach and letting her guard down only to freeze as something moved in the corner of her eye. It was the terror of seeing that harmless shadow shift and realizing that she had been followed the entire time and that her temporary relief had been granted only for the cruel pleasure of fooling her.
This, she could not stand.
Sometimes she woke up and found Rukia awake too as if some malevolent spirit had rushed over them, stealing rest. And then Hisana would crawl over to draw comfort from the motherly gesture of smoothing the fine silky baby hair away from Rukia's face. She would cradle Rukia to her chest and relish the presence of a warm body against her beating, beating heart.
This was when she loved Rukia the most.
Hisana had been told, upon receiving her Calling, that it was almost unheard of for souls to be called in pairs.
"I don't know. New souls usually come in and spend the first decade of the afterlife ignoring their calling and searching for their loved ones. But you? I don't know. How you were so blessed or so cursed. I don't know," remarked the gatekeeper who examined Hisana with bland curiosity. "Cursed, perhaps. Inuzuri is no place for a baby and a little girl."
That was how new souls arrived in Rukongai—with a slip of paper bearing a number and nothing more. For all its simplicity, this slip of paper was treated as a document of great importance like some sort of passport barring or allowing entry into the best districts. No one remembered how this slip of paper ended up in their hands, only that they had somehow ended up in an ever-growing line composed of other newly arrived souls.
Those who were assigned to the better districts soon found they had no reason to question their calling and treated it as an undeniable truth. But those who found themselves in the slums couldn't help but reject their fate. Some souls discarded their papers. Some ignored their assigned number and tried to con their way into a better district. Some attempted forgery.
At some point, the elite districts had formed a team of gatekeepers to greet the line of new arrivals. Souls should know their place, they said. Balance was the most fundamental law of the universe, they said, and therefore it was necessary to segregate the souls.
"Inuzuri?" Hisana had asked as anxiety creeped in to replace the relief she'd felt at finding Rukia in her arms.
"You'll find out soon enough," said the gatekeeper, gesturing at Hisana to follow a group of souls trudging away in the same direction. "Go on now."