Chapter 14: my job as a grim reaper

Sadly, being a shinigami was even worse than training. It wasn't so much the fighting as it was the paperwork. William put me and Ronald through hell every day, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. Still, I had tons of things to do. It seemed like every night I would have at least ten cinematic records to go through, review or piece together, stacks of papers to look through and to die lists to fix.

I had judged my very first soul a few days ago. Judging a soul was basically deciding if the soul on trial was destined for heaven or hell. It wasn't so hard. I was given a list, and I had to look through that soul's cinematic record. If they had done anything that corresponded with that list, they would get sent to hell, and if the list was clear, they would get to go to heaven.

I willingly worked overtime daily partially because I loved my job and partially because I was trying to stall the whole 'buying the dress' thing as long as I could. I had managed to do a pretty good job of that, as there were only two days left until the ball, not counting tomorrow when William, Ronald and I have to go to the human world.

However, any excuses I made, Grell would always counter it with a perfect solution. It seemed like there was nothing I could do to try to skip the ball. It's not like I could call in sick because shinigami didn't get sick unless they were poisoned. Finally I decided grudgingly that it was no longer worth the struggle.

I would also solve other people's problems as well. If an idiot grim reaper screwed up the process of converting a cinematic record into book format, I would be the first person they'd come to so that I could put it back together again. I finally got why William was always so annoyed when someone screwed something up. It was really annoying to have to correct other people's mistakes when they weren't watchful enough. Nevertheless, I did my job with a smile daily.

I was assigned to teach the spells class because of my apparent 'amazing magical and spell casting abilities' as said by one of the people from the managerial class. I began to wear my glasses more often, but I would always take them off whenever I could. I didn't want to rely on them, especially since I didn't need them. I put them on only when I taught lessons, which was the greater part of the day. The other smaller half of the day I spent either talking to William because our lunch hour was the same, or sitting at my desk fixing other people's mistakes.

I was at that part of my day, trying to piece together a cinematic record that had been ripped apart. Putting all of the events in the proper order was like a mind breaking puzzle. I took my glasses off for a couple of seconds and took a break. You know you really love someone when you're willing to wear glasses all day for them. I thought. My cell phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hey Lee-lee"

"Oh, Grell, it's you. Where are you? The connection is terrible." I said, straining to hear him talk.

"In the human world, darling. I'm going to come back at five. I'll be waiting for you outside the library. We need to go shopping today. When else are you going to go? Today's the last day. You can't stall any longer."

"But… I have… extra papers to do for work. Some idiot accidentally ripped a cinematic record in half. I've been trying to piece it back together for over two hours now."

"Don't worry, I'll help you fix it after we come back from shopping. Finding a good dress for you comes first."

"You have some pretty weird priorities."

"You're going to regret this if you don't do as I say. You're going to miss out on the best night of your life!"

"I'm not going to miss anything…" I grumbled. Though if I got to dance with William that would be nice….

"Oh come on. No excuses now. I'm waiting for you at five o' clock sharp."

"Sure… be careful while you're coming back."

"Yeah… see you later."

"Bye"

I hung up and went back to piecing the cinematic record back into place.

"How is it coming along?" William asked as he walked to my desk.

"Horribly." I said, staring down the cinematic record. "Honestly, who can be so careless as to cut and mess up an entire cinematic record? I'll have to work overtime again…"

"You're starting to sound like me."

"Am I really?" I asked absentmindedly.

"Would you like me to help you?"

"YES PLEASE. This thing is killing me." William smiled, like he was about to laugh, but of course he never did.

"Well we can't have that, can we?"

He dragged over a chair beside mine and viewed the cinematic record.

"You've done a pretty good job so far."

"Yeah… only a million and a half memories left to go…"

"Most of them are in a chain order." He pointed out. "At least they were broken off in reasonable chunks. I've seen cinematic records that have been broken down to every tiny memory."

"I wonder how many grim reapers that must have taken to fix…"

"Quite a few"

We sat together for a little while, piecing together the cinematic record. I tried not to pay attention to the fact that we were sitting so close together. It made me slightly nervous but in a way I also wished he wouldn't move away. The clock turned to five.

Well… time to go dress shopping…