Cold Case (Vengeance of Her Demise)
After everything that had happened recently, it was a relief to sit down and do some desk-work. Gumi was usually pretty quick with hers, so the Bureau had gotten in the habit of sending other paperwork to her for handling. Sometimes she even happened across something entertaining to read.
Not this time, sadly. Pretty much everything in the pile had been dry, dull, and boring. Only when she reached the end was there something even remotely interesting... and these were ones that she had the least amount of work to do.
Even with all that the Bureau had at its disposal, there were still times when they lost track of souls under their protection. Usually, someone was able to determine what had happened... but in rare circumstances, not only did those souls cease to exist, but no trace of them remained, no hint as to the cause of their disappearance.
In most cases, with no possible way to recover the soul, there was little point in looking after several years. Even without the proper rites, a bereft soul with no purpose would eventually discorporate on its own, dissolved into raw soul-stuff and absorbed back into the aether. Thus, all she could do in most of these cases was agree with the statement of the last case worker, and mark the file as closed.
Reading through these cases always made her a bit melancholic, so she was already in a gloomy mood when she reached the last file. The lost soul in question here was a little girl, very young and very sickly. The disease she suffered from hadn't been curable in her time, so she'd been consigned to an early death. At least she had family to worry and care for her in her final days.
On the surface, the case file looked like a simple case of mismanagement; the girl passed on roughly a week before she had been scheduled to, and by the time someone got around to looking in on her, her soul had already disappeared. It never turned up in processing; of course it would be marked as lost. The pink-haired reaper was just about to set the file aside when something pricked at her perceptions.
She rewound the file to the last recorded image of the girl - pale and looking weak, but still cheerful. Next to her was a tall clean-shaved man with glasses and a small boy with buckteeth. Her family, most likely... and from the file notes, the picture had been taken by a nurse at the hospital, so that was all in order.
It was the bear in the girl's arms that caught her attention. After a few moments, she realized why. The bear seemed brand-new - a gift, surely, meant to comfort her - but it was wearing a distinctly unusual outfit.
A black tailcoat with knee-length pants. A yellow vest over a white shirt. A tiny yellow bow tie.
And, atop one ear, tipped rakishly to one side, a black boater hat.
Gumi leaned forward in her seat, as though disbelieving the image. That outfit could have been a coincidence, certainly... but she stopped believing in coincidences twelve years ago. This was definitely the sort of thing she needed to look into... because if a dream eater had been involved with this girl, there was a chance, however small, that he was responsible for her early death.
She collapsed the file back into its natural cubic shape and stashed it away in her vest, mentally checking on her parolee's current location as she did so. Briefly checking the level of the cat food in the bowl along one wall of the room, she called out into the apartment for the only other occupant.
"Grim! I'm going out, don't know when I'll be back. If you go hunting, PLEASE leave something for the reapers to collect?"
A black feline shape on the couch raised its head disdainfully for a moment before dropping back to the upholstery; with a sigh, Gumi stepped sideways into the aether and made her way towards her destination.
It was time to ask Baku about the rest of his kin.
[ adelectabledream ] [ your-dream-has-a-flavour ]