First Assignment

Hisoka wasn't sure what he'd expected death to be like, but this certainly wasn't it.

Oh, it had started off normally enough, if you could apply the word "normal" to one's vague, derivative expectations of what an afterlife should look like. There had been the bright light people talked about seeing, and then there was that ornate room that looked like it must have been inside of a palace... but it was a waiting room, apparently. And then there was a rather normal-looking older guy in a suit who explained things to him, instead of some hazy spirit or angel of light. Just a guy in a suit. A slightly wrinkled suit, in fact, and the guy seemed tired.

And when he asked if he could please go back to check on someone before his appointment for judgment, the man paused before telling him that there were conditions for that sort of thing, and it couldn't go unregulated. Well, Hisoka had sort of expected that, but not the vague legalese with which the man spoke about it.

Now, a couple of days later, after he'd been practically interrogated by various people, had a lot of things explained to him, and was made to fully read and sign a lot of forms (signing forms, in the afterlife? Hisoka thought this was ridiculous), the man was showing him around the place where he'd apparently be working for the foreseeable future, and it just looked like a normal office. Desks, chairs, copy machine, coffeepot, and even some motivational posters. The only strange things about it were that there was a schoolgirl roughly his own age who seemed to be working there, and there was an owl flying around the room for awhile before a long-haired blond guy caught it and left, scolding it all the way - though he spared a wave and a smile for Hisoka on the way out. The man in the suit, who had given his name as Konoe, pressed a hand against his head at this outburst as if he had a headache.

"Is this the new employee, kachou?"

Hisoka looked up and barely refrained from doing a double-take at the man who had just entered the office. At first it was just that he looked very familiar... then he noticed the blue eyes. His own eyes widened. Wasn't this...?

"Yes, he is," Konoe confirmed. "Kurosaki, this is Tatsumi Seiichirou. He's my secretary. Tatsumi, this is Kurosaki Hisoka."

"Yes. A pleasure." Tatsumi nodded politely, then continued on his way through the office to another room, showing no indication that he remembered having met before - aside from a strange feeling when he heard Hisoka's name.

Unlike the other employees Hisoka had met so far, Tatsumi didn't have an undercurrent of distant longing beneath general cheer - he felt melancholy through and through, no matter how stoic he seemed outwardly. "He was..." Hisoka began, then changed his mind. "...Is everything all right?"

"Everything's fine," Konoe assured him, turning back to Hisoka. "Tatsumi's always a bit short with people; don't take it personally. Anyhow, over here is your desk -" he thumped a hand on an ordinary-looking, worn metal desk with fake wooden trim, one that could have been found in any low-budget office on earth - "and your locker is over there. You're welcome to the coffee over there, and - ahh, it looks like Kannuki brought cookies. She's an excellent cook, I recommend trying them. Later tonight, I'll show you where the employee apartments are. ...Or, if this gang of idiots continues to need me present to keep them in line, I'll have someone else show you."

Hisoka was pretty sure that something was bothering Tatsumi, because he hadn't felt like that when they met in Tsuzuki's hospital room, but he nodded quickly. This wasn't at all what he'd expected a job in the afterlife to be like, and it was kind of giving him a headache too, but at least it wasn't gloomy in this place. Even if the people working here all had an undercurrent of darkness underneath, aside from Tatsumi their surface emotions were pretty cheerful, and there were no dark, cold rooms like he would have expected in the world of death. Thank goodness - that would have brought back memories of his life, being locked in the basement. But then, the trees outside with their ever-present sakura blossoms seemed to bring back memories of something too, and something ominous at that, but Hisoka couldn't quite figure it out. It all seemed awfully pleasant on the surface...

But he didn't care if it was pleasant or not, because he really had only one reason to be there. "And when will someone teach me how to go back to the world of the living?"

"Don't be so impatient," Konoe chided him. "As I told you before, having a strong tie to the living is a prerequisite for being a shinigami. Everyone here has someone or something they wanted to check up on. You'll learn in time that the job has to come first - that's why shinigami always work in pairs, so that the partners can ensure that whatever binds each other to the living won't get in the way of work."

Hisoka nodded thoughtfully and said no more. He remained secretly impatient - Tsuzuki needed to know that he would still be there for him, even after death - but maybe it would be better to just get through all this administrative nonsense quickly so that he'd have free time sooner. "When do I meet my partner? Is it... one of the people I already met here?" Tatsumi had gone into a private office, the blond guy with the owl was who-knows-where, and remaining were the schoolgirl and a grouchy-looking guy. With dark hair and... pointed ears. All right, so maybe this place was a little strange after all.

Konoe shook his head. "We're understaffed at the moment - we have no one to assign to you as a permanent partner. One of the others can work with you if an assignment comes up, or we can send the Gushoushin along."

...Gushoushin? Well, that wasn't the first question on Hisoka's mind. "I thought you said you already had a case for me? A real easy one, you said."

"Actually..." Konoe rubbed his forehead again. "It turns out that particular assignment was cancelled."

"Cancelled?"

"It happens sometimes; our intervention becomes unnecessary."

Back in the world of the living, the room at the end of the ward was considerably less empty than it had been a short time ago. In his state, Tsuzuki couldn't have known about Hisoka's death, and how it had dragged on for weeks. All he could possibly have known was that Hisoka wasn't visiting him anymore.

For a while, the room had been swarming with doctors, nurses, hired muscle to restrain an out-of-control patient. Then it had been completely empty.

Now, the room was filled with people from the hospital's janitorial staff, who were trying to scrub the bloodstains from the floor and walls. The bed had been moved out, as it was unable to be reused - crimson had soaked it through.