PROLOGUE
Rinne
Greetings. This is not a tale of humans, though it involves humans. This is a tale of us, the Reapers. We are not mortal, we are not human, though to humans we generally look like them. With some exceptions, of course. Most humans are not nine feet tall and built like a Greek statue. Most humans do not look like they are in a perpetual state of just past their teenage years. And most humans do not have a full-time job of managing some aspect of existence. God created the Heavens and the Earth. Angels manage the bureaucracy. As for us, we are the "backstage crew". They seldom speak of us, except to spread that horrible legend about Reapers claiming souls. My friend Yomi does do that, but she always walks around like this pained look on her face. Being a Reaper of Death (or as all humans call her, a Grim Reaper) is hard. My other friend Seishi, the Reaper of Birth, always tries to lighten the mood. When I was first paired with the two of them, I thought she was just goofing off, and not serious about her job, but then I noticed she has even more souls to deal with on an average day than Yomi. They are old friends, and by old, I mean they have been around since Creation, and friends for almost as long. She can usually tell when Yomi is feeling depressed about her job, and these pranks of hers are well-timed.
Our job isn't as difficult as it sounds, though. We do get assistants. You've even seen them. The Pales look like bees or crows, or in some cases midwives. There are only seven Reapers, but thousands upon thousands of Pales assisting in the minor tasks. These assist the role of the Reaper, and all of us get them, except for two of us. Jin, Reaper of Free Will, has very little to do, since she only has to act when free will is threatened, so she has no need of assistants. Bosatsu, the only male Reaper, on the other hand, has a job nobody else can do; as Reapers, we exist in the Unseen World, the world governing the underpinnings of nature, physical laws (including even the magic that you humans wield), and so on. We draw our power from existence in this world, yet Bosatsu someone creates the rules of the world that creates the rules for your world. My head hurts just thinking about the logic of this.
Besides Yomi and Seishi, and those two I just mentioned, there is also Chiku (Reaper of Nature), Engaku (Physics), and me. Who am I? I'm Rinne, the Reaper of the Afterlife. I work together with Yomi and Seishi most days, because birth, death, and the Afterlife are all intertwined. Likewise, Chiku and Engaku work together sometimes as the natural world needs physical laws to help things happen, but even though that erupting volcano needs mathematical extrapolation on how fast its lava should flow, and the force that boulders roll down a certain mountain, they generally don't get along well. Engaku is far too logical, while Chiku is the closest thing to a tree-hugger that exists among Reapers. I suppose they do better than Jin and Bosatsu, though. They never have anything to talk about.
We're a motley bunch, and I have no idea why beings like us were given feelings in the first place. When God isn't sleeping, she says something about how we need a human touch to better relate with the created world. But this doesn't make sense to me.
Each day, we carry out our tasks, relating with people, plants, animals, or even bacteria, and touching their lives. Their lives touch other lives, so much so that a horse not having a shoe might lose a war, or a bee stinging one man to death might result in the world never having a cure for a certain disease. The smallest detail matters.
And sometimes we do not realize this until it is too late...
