[ A - Day 2,651 A.D. ]

[ L - Day 1, A.D. ]

Aimless hours ticked away on the clock above my head in an unceasing, continuous rhythm.
Around here, clocks serve little practical purpose beyond being a monotonous soundtrack for an equally monotonous life. Or... existence, I suppose. I wonder, if the very concept of time ceased to exist here, how much would it really affect us?

I was sprawled out comfortably on an armchair behind the library's front desk, half-absorbed in a book and half-speculating over what Jameson would discuss at the meeting later today. The House's library was my favourite place to be, because it wasn't as modern as everything else in this enormous building. It felt like a library built a century too early, comfortable but unmistakably elegant, took up  half the floor, with tall ceilings and a maze of mahogany shelves crammed with nearly every book one could imagine. A bookworm's wet dream. Its stillness seemed embedded within the very walls. I spent nearly all of my free time here, for hours and even days on end without ever leaving for so much as a glass of water or bathroom break. Which, I suppose would sound impossible, if you didn't understand where exactly I was.

I'd been reading this particularly long book for what felt like eternity, and my attention had faltered considerably. Although the protagonist was hurdling towards the climax of a suspenseful, wonderfully written story, I still found my gaze drifting to the doors only I ever seemed to go through. Only a handful of people regularly check out books, so I barely considered the position of librarian my 'job', especially when it was secondary to my primary, much more important occupation.

I heard a meowing coming from underneath me and looked down. Pomp had come to visit me again. He was this little black cat with pale grey eyes that lived here with us. Somewhere along the centuries one of us got bright idea to name him Psychopomp, and now he's been stuck with a ridiculous name for who knows how many years.

Pomp leapt onto my armchair and stepped on to my lap, clearly looking for attention.

"Hey, Pomp." I said with a little smile, closing my book. I rubbed behind his ears and he let out a low purr, pressing his forehead into my chest. But right as he was settling down, the ground shook beneath us, and my phone loudly began to go off. The cat yowled and dug his nails into my thighs before leaping to the floor and darting down the row of bookcases and out of sight. I swore and called the cat some choice names before collapsed into the chair with a flop.

"Duty calls..." I said with a small sigh. I tossed my book on the coffee table and turned off the buzzer on my phone. The time read 4:05. Well, at least there's an upside. Jameson's meeting was at 5, so at least I would get to skip it this week. I'm fond of all my fellow Initatives, but I was the sole introvert, and all their socializing wasn't my cup of tea.

Maybe I  should explain. I currently hold the noble title of Senior Initiative (not to be confused with Head Initiative, Jameson). The 305th Senior Initiative since they started keeping records. This position is held by the person who's lived here the longest, and are graciously bestowed the honour/burden of welcoming new members of the H.H.S.A into our community. Whenever the ground shook like it did just now, it meant we just got a new arrival. You know, I really wish people would just stick to heaven or hell. Somehow, the universe not being able to properly sort people into neat categories of 'good' or 'bad' suddenly turned into my problem.

I got up from my armchair and took my time, stretching and trying to blink away my fatigue before I composed myself. To be honest with you, I would really rather not have to deal with another disoriented wreck for the next few weeks, but hey, that's the job. Once I felt somewhat alert, I exited the library and headed for the Alien Room across the hall, still shaking the needles of sleep from my legs.
On my way, I took a deep breath and prepared myself, and wondered what I was in store for this time. For my sake, I prayed they were the quiet type.

The Arrival Room is a white, sparely furnished room, named because it's the room all new Inhabitants wake up in. Dumb name, I know. It's also loving nicknamed the 'Spawn Point".  We usually get new arrivals usually appear once a month or so. They leave at about the same rate, so our population has stayed relatively consistent in all the years I've lived here. Personally, I hated this room. I've spawned/arrived her more times than I should've, and every time I'm here, I'm reminded yet again that I'm dead. We're all dead. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you really can forget. Just not for very long.

I hesitated before I approached the door, listening for noise. People are almost always in a very fragile, often volatile state when they appear, and I would most likely find someone in crisis on the other side of the door. Sobbing, hyperventilating... any form of having a nervous breakdown you can think of, really.
Once, this teenager lunged at me when I entered, acted completely feral. Since it's a little too late to kill me, I was completely fine, but it still hurts to get body-slammed. Not that I hold a grudge. He was actually a great guy, just deeply traumatized. But after years of doing, unless the situation is an intense one, the job had gradually begu not feel so tedious and exhausting that any charisma I might've possessed had vanished.

My job is essentially this — I take the Inhabitant to the third floor if they're a danger to themself or others, and once they're relatively stable, help them adjust to life in the Halfway House for Soul Anomalies. Pretty much everyone who comes through this place has some form of mental illness, usually stemming from trauma, and the act of dying itself is almost always somewhat traumatic. So in addition to having a Senior Initiative and support groups to help ease their transition, there's also a hospital on the third floor that is mainly psychiatric. Mental illness is ugly, and it's my job to hope for the best while preparing for the worst.

Well, didn't hear anything from the other side of the door after putting my ear against it, which seemed to rule out an emotional outburst. Meaning the new Inhabitant was either passed out, catatonic, or just a very quiet crier. Either way, it was probably safe to enter. Sometimes if the Inhabitant's having a fit I'll wait awhile before entering, but since it was silent I figured I might as well go in.

Cautiously, I opened the door to reveal a the hunched back of a man in a wrinkled white shirt and plain denim jeans. He was thin and lanky, his shoulder blades jutting out of his curved spine, so curved that I could barely see a tuft of black hair peeking out above his hunched shoulders.  He appeared remarkably calm. And he was sitting — no, squatting? — in a bizarre position on the floor, reading a letter written by an Above Asphodel welcoming him to the Halfway House for Soul Anomalies, and assuring him that I, Above would explain everything to you soon. I'm Above, by the way. I could barely even see the back of his head from my angle.
A wave of uneasiness hit me. The man's silhouette... it felt very familiar. It had resurfaced an old memory that had been buried so long I almost forgot how much I wanted it gone. A memory from when I was alive, and not a fond one. Because if anything reminded me of my time on Earth, it was sure to be related to something bad. And suddenly, I was paralysed with fear completely unexpected of me, and creeping feeling of dread.

Before I could even process my shock, the man sensed me and paused, then turned his head. I caught hold of two luminous black eyes, and my heart nearly stopped. The color drained from my face.

Oh, no... I must be mistaken. That's— that's just absurd. It's not possible. My lips parted, trying to say something, but I couldn't bring myself to speak. A million memories flooded into my head, and I fought to block them out. I must be losing it, I told myself. There's no way...

I knew that face all too well. Eyes like pits, looking like they'd scarcely seen sleep. An intense expression and a pale, gaunt face. Wild disheveled hair, plain clothes and angular features. Abnormal, bizarre, and completely disarming.

I'd seen those eyes before. Only once, when I was sixteen. A few months before I died. He must've been seventeen or eighteen then, and I could never forget that encounter, no matter how hard I tried. His face completely fractured my sense of self, tore my ego into little pieces. I remembered how those opaque eyes scrutinised me, picked apart my very soul. I could feel him looking down on me then. I was overcome with a burning sense of shame, and the urge to flee.

Looking at him, for a few moments I was my living self again, alive and filled with terror. He was a bit older now, more tired, but I could never forget those fucking eyes.
Finally my mouth began to move. I was only able to get a single word out.

"L."

I saw the man's face flicker with recognition. Then, it dropped, and a wave of emotion washed over him. Shock. Guilt. Something else I couldn't place.

"...A."

☥☥☥

...So, this is what I imagine the average person knows about L — that he was the century's greatest detective, the international face of justice, of order. And the only one with the balls to stand up against the tyranny of Kira.

What most people don't know is that there are more of him. His caretaker, Watari, used his money as an inventor to found an institution that cared for a handful of extraordinarily gifted children in a small orphanage in Winchester, England. There they would give us the skills needed to be a detective of L's caliber, so that if he were to die the torch would simply be passed on to another capable mind. He was so prolific a detective that the world had grown dependent on his crime-solving abilities, and crime rates would surge were he to vanish. So Watari and his associates founded Whammy's House to fill this vital need.

I was the first child ever to be raised under the pretext that I would one day succeed L. I was just a kid, an orphan who was deemed highly intelligent, and when they asked if I wanted to make the world a better place of course I said yes. How was I supposed to know what that meant? They discarded my name and told me that from now on I was A, and nothing else. For nine years I suffered indescribable agony by the hands of Wammy's House and now, it makes me angry just to think of it. The pressure that was put on me to live up to L's impossible standard killed me after nearly a decade of enormous effort.

Do you know what it was like to live that way, being pushed to go further than your legs can run and kicking you down when you fall? I'm weak by nature; weary of heart and vulnerable to bouts of uncertainty and depression. Every day was torture, and my will to go on eventually gave out.
So like a coward, I took the easy way out. When I was seventeen, I snuck out into the orchards outside and hung myself from a tree I used to climb as a kid, rigging myself and our cabin to burn.

The pain... it was indescribable.

After I lost consciousness, I was pulled with a total blackness and an overwhelming sense of peace. I came to in the room I was standing in now, greeted by the Senior Initiative at the time. She told me that the circumstances of my life had made my soul unable to be fairly judged, and so I couldn't yet proceed the afterlife. I and a bunch of other 'wayward souls' were put here after death, to rest and heal their souls until our emotional wrinkles were smoothed, and we could move on into our next stage of existence, whatever that entailed — heaven, hell, reincarnation, or something else entirely.

Once this all began to sink in, I remember feeling a mixture of both dread and relief; relief because I had successfully escaped the clutches of Wammy' s House, and dread because I feared the afterlife. I remain a coward long after my end.

I've been here longer than any other Inhabitant of the Halfway House. Seven years, three months, and... three days, to be precise. Most Inhabitants' stay here ranges from a few months to two years before they Crumble and turn to dust, and it's assumed they've gone on into the full afterlife.
Upon arriving here, I spent some time in the hospital recuperating, and have since enjoyed a quiet life. But it was all a daydream, and it was over now. When those black eyes met mine, I was violently thrust back into my living self. A.
Now, I realised, I couldn't hide behind the silhouette of Death, not when faced with L himself. It felt like waking up from a long dream.

I looked back at L, trying for appearances' sake to keep my composure. But his reaction was hard to decipher, and I didn't know what to say. Usually I'd recite this speech to new members, but all of that was thrown out the window. When I realised he was waiting for me to say something, the first thing I managed to say was,

"...Why are you dead?"

"A psychotic teenager with a shinigami." He said, glancing down at the letter. "...So that's how it is. I suppose my death was rather unfair."

Unfair.
Suddenly I remembered my speech, and regurgitated it without warning.

"...This is the Halfway House for Soul Anomalies. It's a place for people who's actions were either too morally convoluted to be properly judged, or experienced undue hardships that create an anomaly of the soul. We are being held here until that anomaly is healed. You can expect to stay here anywhere from a few months to a year or more. Everything you need is here. You can't go outside and you can't be killed, so don't bother. No one knows where exactly we are, but it isn't Earth. There are ten floors, a basement, and a roof. There are exactly sixty-seven people here now, including you. You don't need food, water, sleep, or even oxygen to survive, but you can still partake in these activities if you wish. Would you like a tour of the building?"

My voice was shaky, and even I could hear how clearly forced it was. But that was leaps and bounds better that than melting into hysterics, like I'd prefer. I shoved my hands into my pockets to hide the fact that they were trembling.

"Uhm, sure... " He was giving me a strange look, carefully gauging my reaction. He seemed like he wanted to say something, but didn't. Slowly he got up to his feet, and stretched his hand out to me. Our eyes met and for I moment I thought we were of the same height, until I remembered his poor posture and realised he must be quite taller than me.

I stared at his hand, mortified. Bony, pale, and calloused. A wave of nausea crept up my throat like bile, and my empty expression curled into a sickened grimace. I lifted my hand out of my pocket but then stopped myself, curling it into a fist and then turning away, and walked out of the room without looking back.

...So. L was the newest Inhabitant of The Halfway House for Soul Anomalies. And I'm responsible for inducting him into our community. He'll be here for months, maybe even years depending on the nature of his anomaly. I tried to register this as fact, but my mind rejected it with as much disgust as my body had refused his handshake. The thought was horrifying, unthinkable. It was all I could do not to hurl.

Every muscle in my body was rigid and my jaws were wired together, teeth gritted. I tried as best I could to wipe my face of emotion, steeling myself for the days to come.

☥ ☥ ☥

__________

H.H.S.A Guidebook for New Inhabitants
Originally published in 803 A.D by V. Atticus
Edition 34

1. The Halfway Houses for Soul Anomalies serves as a place of rest and rehabilitation for those with unable to move onward into eternity, halfway between death and eternity. It's name comes from earthly halfway houses; centres aiding former drug addicts, prisoners, psychiatric patients, and others as they adjust to life in general society. An unknown number of Halfway Houses exist in the universe, roughly divided by age and language spoken by Inhabitants. This particular Halfway House provides for those fluent in English from the ages of sixteen to twenty-five.

__________

[ A/n ]

To any readers, one quick thing before you go on.
In this story, Above Asphodel is written with gender-neutral language and they/them pronouns, and I try not to describe their physical appearance as much as possible.  There are two reasons for this — the first is that A's gender is never specified in the original Japanese. The second reason is so that anyone of any gender, race, etc. can read this comfortably. I myself am transgender, and I would like to remain inclusive to everyone. I also ask that if you refer to A at all in the comments, to use they/them pronouns in order to respect this.

That said, I hope you enjoy the story :)

— 朝火再生「 Asahi Saisei 」

3044