At 4:33 a.m., six embalmers had spent nearly seven hours and finally repaired the corpses of the disaster victims.
Outside the main door of the Mourning Hall, there was a streetlight, and under it stood someone, borrowing a strand of light to watch the dim corridor of the Mourning Hall.
"Rae."
It was Frederick, whose full name was Fernandez, and he was a year older than Rae Bennett. He was a permanent staff member at Museum Village. Rae Bennett was not; she was a contract worker.
She withdrew her gaze from the distance and called out, "Frederick."
"Why haven't you left yet?" Fernandez shook his car keys in his hand, "Let me give you a ride."
The wind at night dispersed the girl's voice, making it sound somewhat ethereal, "No need," she politely declined, "I still want to eat something before going back."
Fernandez waved his hand, "Alright, then I'll leave first."
In their line of work, they didn't say goodbye to people.
Fernandez's car drove away.
Rae Bennett looked up, the moon in the sky fell into her eyes: so round, she thought, wanting to pluck it down.
She made a phone call, the saved number was—Doghead.
It took a while for the call to connect, and a low voice answered, "Hello."
It was a male voice, which meant... it was a male dog.
On the other side of the streetlight was a green belt, where the grass was emerald green, the strap flower had sprouted new shoots, and the nameless purple flowers poked their heads out, looking up at the moon, their petals spread wide in a splendid smile.
Rae Bennett leaned against the guardrail separating the greenery, her fingertips resting upon it, gently tapping, "The phone rang for ten seconds."
Doghead said, "I was just in the shower."
She responded lightly and in good humor, "Oh, is that so?"
Doghead: "..."
Anyway, it was very terrifying.
The conversation paused for more than a dozen seconds, Rae Bennett didn't rush to speak, and Doghead followed suit in the silence.
The wind blew for a moment, carrying the clouds along, the bushes shedding a few withered leaves, with an autumn chill in the air, hinting at a change in weather.
"If you were to pledge yourself to someone, what method should be used?" A clear, cool voice rose, the tone was truly pleasant, but a woman's voice from the mortuary late at night, no matter how sweet, could make one's skin crawl. One shouldn't listen too closely, for in the distance there might be the faint sounds of weeping.
Doghead: "A hero saving the beauty?"
The fair fingertips that had been tapping on the guardrail, unhurriedly, suddenly ceased.
A hero saving the beauty, eh...
She liked that.
She thanked him, sincerely, "Thank you."
Doghead muttered to himself wholeheartedly: No, ancestor, don't thank me.
The next day, it was cooler.
It was just before dawn when a shower of autumn rain had fallen, introducing a chill with each drop and drenching the verdure, bringing along a cool breeze. How many souls had this cool night sent off?
It wasn't even eight o'clock yet, and Rae Bennett had already arrived for work. The Plastic Surgery District had only one large office, and Madam Raven always arrived first.
After hanging up her bag, Madam Raven asked her, "Didn't you work overtime yesterday? Why did you come so early?"
It was quite unusual.
Rae Bennett wasn't a permanent staff member. The director favored talent and was lenient with her. Her working hours were flexible, she was called in for difficult restorations, but she did not do much of the regular makeup work.
She answered like this, "Because the weather is nice."
Madam Raven looked outside the window: Is the weather nice? It looks like it's going to rain heavily.
In the morning, no special corpses from abnormal deaths were delivered, so Rae Bennett wasn't very busy, only attending to the makeup of three deceased. The Farewell Hall was overwhelmed, so they asked her and Madam Raven to help with the arrangements.
There was a child crying by the roadside.
The child must have been playing mischievously, tumbling over the guardrail and falling into the grass on the other side, crushing several purple flowers.
The child wailed pitifully, with no parent in sight. Rae Bennett approached the crying child and asked, "Can you climb up by yourself?"
She usually had a way with children.
Without any cajoling, the child stopped crying. Seemingly unharmed, they gripped the guardrail and pulled themselves up, their small legs kicking in the space between the rails, but their hands couldn't reach, so they stretched their arms out and cooed, "Sister, hug."
Actually, by taking a few steps around the path, you could walk out of the green lawn without having to step on many of the purple flowers.
As Rae Bennett reached out her hand, a woman who had run over pushed her away, "Your hands are dirty, don't touch my child!"
The woman had used quite some force in her push.
Rae Bennett's arm hit the stainless steel guardrail solidly, and a piece of sharp metal protruded from a broken horizontal tube of the guardrail.
Her expression unchanged and with a calm demeanor, she clarified, "My hands aren't dirty."
The woman's tone was very unpleasant, "You've touched the dead."