Paris, night of 31 December to 1 January 2025
A gentle breeze rises and lifts my hair. I feel it caress my cheek. I enjoy the gentle touch it makes on my skin, but I don't linger long. A sound to my left catches my attention. I concentrate. Below me, the sleeping city glows with its night lights. The moon shines high in the sky.
"What a beautiful night..." I think, admiring the view.
Then the noise reappeared, furtively. Completely focused on my task, I bend my knees and push the hilt of my katana with my thumb. A split second is all it takes for me to leap up and thrust my blade into what looks like a shapeless moving shadow. No sooner had my blade pierced the thing than it began to ooze. The purification has begun.
I put my second hand on the handle to tighten my grip. This one's tough. To speed up the process and, above all, to ensure its success, I breathe a little of my spiritual power into the blade. Blue sparks begin to fly across it. The task becomes smaller. The purification is almost complete. As I gradually release the tension as the shadow shrinks, something suddenly strikes my katana.
With my attention relaxed, I can't keep the blade straight and it rasps. Instantly, the shadow rips open and breaks free of my grip.
"There was another one!
Without wasting a second, I leapt over the edge of the building's roof in pursuit of the two shadows. Remnants of wills, to be more precise. As I hurtle towards the ground at full speed, I propel myself against the facade of a building with a swing of my blade. Immediately, my feet make contact with the cold stone and I start to run along the wall.
The shadows slide down the walls like water on a smooth surface. They have no consistency as such and are not very harmful, but if they take hold of a human body, they can become much more dangerous. I need to purify them before that happens.
With a leap I land on the ground and propel myself forward, overtaking the cars on the street below the building I was standing on. I slalomed between them with ease. They don't see me. All they feel is a bit of wind as I pass them by. Of course, I have to avoid going right through them or they'll suffer what's known as a "felt death" trauma. It's very violent, and the most fragile can even die. Shinigamis have to avoid this at all costs, otherwise they get a warning.
Difficult to achieve when you have to work in a city populated by over three million human beings, you might say. But I'm a seasoned shinigami. This sort of thing is a mere trifle to me, and my last warning was more than thirty years ago. To tell you the truth, navigating between these bodies that I have to avoid despite my speed being far superior to theirs is a game to me. I'm exhilarated by the speed and adrenalin rushes through my brain every time I brush against a body almost uncontrollably because of an unexpected movement.
This ecstasy washes over me as I continue to run behind the shadows. They turn right into a narrow street, and I dash after them with determination. I've got them cornered, they're finished. In such a narrow street with no pedestrians, they can't escape my speed. With my foot on the corner of the building, I rush towards them, katana raised. In less than a second, they will disappear under the purifying effect of my blade.
"Final purification: cleansing of resentment!
Inevitably, I bring my katana down on the two shadows as they try to flee by separating to one side each, but I slice the ground with my blade, cutting them cleanly in two and infusing all my spiritual energy to purify them instantly. It takes a lot of energy, but at least it's very effective. Trapped, the two remnants of my will evaporate as they come into contact with the blue light emanating from the blade of my katana.
I inspect the ground for a moment to make sure they've disappeared, then yank out my katana and put it back in its scabbard, satisfied. I'm about to turn back when my heart misses a beat. My eyes meet those of a human. A human looking straight at me. I can feel the blood pounding at my temples.
"Can he see me?" I say to myself.
I take a step backwards, but he steps forward. All of a sudden he throws his arm forward to try and hit me and I'm about to jump back to avoid him when I stumble and topple backwards. I knew I shouldn't have eaten the energy ball Mago had given me a few hours earlier - it was a strange colour. Since then, I'd had trouble adjusting my movements and controlling my spiritual energy. It was probably because of this that I'd failed to purify the soul earlier! I tried to persuade myself, but deep down I knew that my sudden clumsiness was due to something else. Something else I would understand much later.
In my panic, I managed to avoid the human's arm. Or so I thought. But just as I think I've averted disaster, an electric shock shoots through my body. It was too late. The damage had been done.
I catch myself at the last moment and stand up quickly. In front of me, a human who looked young enough to be a schoolboy was holding his head and moaning in pain. He was in the process of suffering the trauma of felt death. Except that he wasn't a human like the others. He could see me. She'd had her doubts when she met his gaze, thinking it was simply fixed on something behind her, but when he reached out to touch her, and now that he was writhing in pain, calling out to her for help, she was certain.
This human was an Arcanian, a human gifted with too much spiritual energy for their nature. Humans don't normally have any spiritual power, sometimes just a little. Those who have enough to distinguish between what belongs to the world of the dead are called Arcanians. But among these arcanians, those capable of seeing shinigamis were extremely rare. In all my years as a Shinigami, I've only met two. Which is a lot in the space of sixty-eight years.
But obviously this one was completely different. His reaction when he saw me clearly showed that it was the first time he'd seen a shinigami, otherwise he'd never have tried to touch her. On the other hand, it has to be said that the first two encounters were part of my work. These arcanians worked with the Shinigami on missions where human assistance was required. Arcanians were as dangerous as they were practical for the shinigami. That's why they were monitored by the Arcanian Control Committee, which supervised them and kept them informed of their situation to prevent them from going through what that teenager was going through when he inadvertently touched a shinigami.
I cringe. An experienced shinigami like me should never have made that mistake. I look at the boy with pity. Gradually succumbing to the pain, he had collapsed to the ground and was now clutching his ribs. His spirit would soon break, and he would either die and become a wandering soul, or lose control and go into Berserk mode. Either way, his life would come to a miserable end. Worse still, his soul might never rest and wander between the two worlds for eternity. He might even turn into a calamity...
My eyes dart from side to side in anguish, searching for a solution. Facing the wall, I clench my fist. I had to face the facts. There weren't ten thousand solutions to this situation. In fact there was only one. And I had to do it quickly or this poor boy would suffer the worst fate of all because of me, and I'd end up with a lot more than a reprimand when the news got out.
After one last look at the human dying at my feet, I close my eyes and take a deep sigh.
-Too bad, I've got no choice," I say with a sigh. You might be angry with me after this, but I can't just let you be corrupted like that. We'll work out the details later.
I raise my hand in front of me and invoke a spell. A necromancy spell. I'm going to have no choice but to kill this boy and bring him back to life to make him survive. A large purple pentacle of light appears in front of me. Once the spell is activated, I propel my spiritual power outside myself. A translucent arm emerges from my body and enters the boy's body. The sensation is unpleasant for both him and me. He lets out a groan of protest, but I continue.
Once inside his body, I grab hold of the core of his soul. It's not easy because he's protected by his extremely powerful spiritual power. I strengthen my own power and frown with effort. After a few seconds of struggle, I finally manage to grab hold of the core. Painfully, I extracted it from his body and placed it in the centre of the pentacle. The trauma of death instantly stops the moment his soul leaves his body. This is the only way to stop the phenomenon for someone who has been awakened. For others, a few hypnosis sessions are usually enough.
But taking the soul out of the body is tantamount to killing the person. Even if the body can survive without the soul, and the soul continues to exist as such, the link between the body and the soul is definitively severed once the core of the soul leaves the body's envelope. To bring the body back to life in its entirety, i.e. to reattach the soul to the body, we need to recreate a new link between body and soul. And that's exactly what I'm going to do with this pentacle.
With my arm still raised, I pronounce a rather long and complex formula. At the end of my recitation, the core of the boy's soul begins to glow and a name appears above it.
-Nakamura Akira," I read aloud.
I take a deep breath before continuing.
- With this contract, I bind you to me and give you a body in which to carry out your duties in the world of the living. From this day on, our lives will be linked and you must continue your apprenticeship under my orders, carrying out the tasks incumbent upon a shinigami.
With a wave of my hand, I propelled the boy's soul into his body. The core returned to its place, and he jerked on impact. At the same time, the pentacle began to glow until it dazzled me. I raised my arm to shield myself from the light and waited a few seconds. Once it was dark again, I lowered my arm.
In front of me, the boy slowly comes to his senses, still on his knees in front of me. Before my eyes, a thin blue thread emerges from my chest, connecting me to him. Suddenly, I feel my heart beating painfully in my chest. The binding hurts. It was to be expected, I had just created a bond with a mortal being. It was a big risk for a shinigami.
He blinks and looks around. Normally, he can only remember as far back as his traumatic experience of felt death. He sees me and gives an "ah!" of surprise.
-You're the weird one with the sword... that disappears into the ground," he says, looking at me, his eyes wide.
I sighed. My problems started here. Because of that outdated ball of energy I'd ingested a few hours earlier, I was now responsible for the life of an Arcanian who had now become my apprentice and who could endanger my existence at any moment because of the bond we shared. Great.
-I'm Shiki, the purple-eyed shinigami, and you, Nakamura Akira, are now an arcanian bound to me by a contract. From now on you'll be my assistant. Nice to meet you and welcome to the club of those who don't have a friend to spend New Year's Eve with," I say, holding out my hand in front of his astonished eyes.