All three of us remained silent for a moment. There was so much to explain, yet so little I wanted to hear. The Messenger took the risk of speaking first. “I met Alexandra around the shore earlier…” he began.

That idiot Messenger had decided to pick up the last soul I collected and invite her to stay at my place. Why? As though he’d heard my question, he explained, “The housing situation is a little difficult for new souls arriving in the Capital of Shadows right now…”

“Therefore, you decided to let this one live at my place?”

“She mentioned your name, so I thought you knew her somehow. Since you’re almost never here anyway, I thought you wouldn’t mind.” That was funny, because something in his sheepish tone suggested he knew very well I would mind.

I remained silent. Speechless. Dumbfounded. The one-eyed girl rose from the couch and walked up to me. She studied my face, the Messenger’s, and then seemed to figure out that she might be better off leaving while I blew off some steam. “Thanks so much for letting me stay here! I guess I’ll go for a walk.”

“See you later!” the Messenger said. That earned him an elbow in the ribs. My elbow. I can’t say it was intentional, but I can’t say it wasn’t either.

Once Alexandra was gone, he told me, “It shouldn’t be long before she’s ready for reincarnation.”

I took off my shoes, crossed the living room and dropped myself where Alexandra had sat a moment ago. I needed to think for a minute. The messenger hovered in the hallway like he didn’t know what to do with himself. “You want to come in for a while?” I mumbled.

His shoulders relaxed. “What’s that teacup?”

I realised I was still holding the teacup. I set it on the low table in front of the couch. “It’s just… a teacup.”

The old lady had forced me to buy one a couple of days ago. Now, I had two teacups. I guess it would be useful in case one broke.

The Messenger waited carefully by the couch, probably in case I was going to punch him in the face for getting too close. That wasn’t my intention, although it could have been. I gestured beside me and he sat down.

“How was your meeting with the Snow Raven?” he asked.

“Did you know the Seer will be replaced?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, they asked me to help whoever will have to find the successor.”

“Do you know who they asked?”

“No, who?”

He looked at me for a clue. I stared back. He couldn’t possibly be this dense. “Is it… you?”

“Yes!”

For some reason, he found the news deserved the most face-splitting grin he could manage. Was he having some kind of seizure?

“Why are you smiling? Are you sick?”

He wiped it off. I always said that serving the Snow Raven could make you lose it a bit. The Messenger had it even worse because he also served the Light Stag, who was easily ten times as bad. Overall, he dealt with it pretty well, but he had his moments.

“So, the next Seer will be human?” he asked.

“Sounds like it.”

“Just like me, then.”

I tended to forget the Messenger was human. He was some kind of special case.

“Hey, isn’t it nice though?” he added. “We’ll have a reason to spend more time in the human world.”

His boundless optimism was at times inappropriate and inconsiderate of my boundless pessimism. I sulked for a few more seconds, at which point he rose and announced, “I guess I’ll go back to work before the Light Stag starts wondering what I’m doing.”

He hesitated in the doorway. “I’ll try to find some other place for Alexandra to stay.”

It sounded as though I was slowly turning into the bad guy. I waved my hand. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

Over the next few days, I spent so little time at my place anyway that I didn’t have time to be bothered by Alexandra. My search for the Seer’s successor took me in a rural area of the human world. I figured that if the successor had just been detected, they might still be a kid, so I naturally looked up the one elementary school of the village.

The students were having recess when I arrived. I had a quick look as I walked around the school yard. A bunch of them played with a ball, others sat in a circle. Plotting the destruction of the world, no doubt.

One little girl sat by herself against the brick wall, observing the others. She had long brown hair that cascaded from her hat. Despite her winter coat, she seemed to struggle to keep warm. She tucked her chin in her lonely scarf and held her lonely knees close to her chest. For some reason, a sense of kinship welled up inside, probably because I used to be a lonely kid myself.

Something fluttered down beside me. A tall blue and silver bird with a tuft of dark feathers on its head started observing the schoolyard through the mesh fence. You might wonder what a great blue heron was doing so close to a populated area. Well, it wasn’t any heron.

We moved away from the fence, behind the wall of the school. There, hidden from sight, the bird gradually transformed. It grew taller and broader, its wings turned into arms, the claws into shoes and lastly, the feathers receded into the skin, leaving the Messenger where the heron stood seconds before. “What are you doing here?” he said.

Transforming was not a power granted to a Messenger, human or not. As far as I knew, he’d always had this ability. How he’d acquired it was a mystery to me. That said, it had its usefulness.

When I thought about it, even in his human form, the Messenger looked a bit like a bird. “I’m looking for the successor,” I answered.

“Is it ok for you to lurk around elementary schools?”

I didn’t like his use of the word “lurk.” We walked away, back toward the main road.

“Do you think she’s here?”

“I didn’t get any hunch from them, but I have a soul to collect around here soon, so I thought I might as well have a look.”

The Messenger’s smile became tense. The weather was a bit cool these days in the human world. His jacket might have been too light. “Are you ok?” I asked.

“Of course, why?”

We paused at the end of the path and looked back at the schoolyard. “What clue did the Seer give you to find the successor?”

I knew it by heart at this point. I had read it and re-read it to try to extract as much information as I possibly could. It seemed the Seer had surpassed herself this time in giving me a completely useless clue. “It says ‘They will see right through you.’”

“I see. It’s a bit vague.”

“Not very helpful.”

“Right.”

“What does that even mean? Is she going to see right through me like I’m transparent? Or is she going to figure out something about me?”

The Messenger chuckled. “I’m pretty sure it’s the second option.”

“Well, I hope it’s not too embarrassing.”

The wind whipped my coat around me. Dark clouds covered the sky. It would rain soon.

I was already getting sick of looking for that kid. This task was like searching for a needle in a haystack, but a needle that moves around and goes to school and then goes back home at the end of the day.

“Maybe you should turn into a kid so you’ll be able to approach the others without arousing suspicions,” the Messenger suggested.

That was a smart idea. As the Soul Collector, I had the ability to take whatever appearance I wanted in order to go unnoticed in the human world. I usually picked my favourite form, the grumpy guy you’ve already met.

I saw a problem though. “Won’t people wonder what a random kid is doing there all by himself?”

“I can be your father.”

My expression was all the refusal he needed. “Maybe not,” he laughed.

I let out a relieved sigh. “You’re too young to be a father.”

“I’m not that young anymore.”

I looked up at his profile. His brown skin was still smooth and his short hair was completely black. However, was it just me, or it seemed his face had grown more chiseled? Suddenly, I realised he’d grown taller than last time I had a chance to observe him. Was it true that time passed differently for humans and immortals?

A ball shot over the fence of the schoolyard. I observed it soar through the sky. Maybe there was no Seer among these kids, but there was definitely a future soccer player. A boy ran after it.

The Messenger returned my gaze. “You have a soul to collect?”

I nodded.

“Someone is about to die, then?”

I nodded again. Humans dying wasn’t a pleasant thing to think about for other humans. Even for myself, whose job it was to collect the souls of dying humans, some days were harder than others.

“There’s nothing you can do about it,” I said.

We heard tires screeching from the road, followed by a dull thump. The Messenger stepped in the direction of the noise, but stopped himself and looked at me uncomfortably.

“Maybe you better leave,” I said. If this human was meant to live, he would live. If he was meant to die, he would die. In case it turned out to be the latter scenario, it was better for the Messenger to stay away. Humans tend to feel sorry for other humans, especially children.

The Messenger heeded my advice and I approached the scene of the accident. My last soul collection of the day was also a mystery. Here was the useless waste of words the Seer called a clue: “the sky fell on him.”

What if the ball had hit the boy on the head right before the accident? Could the ball stand for the sky? Sometimes, I had to think quite far out of the box to understand these things. Even though I thought an explanation fit, if it didn’t actually click, I had to keep searching. It seemed I would have to investigate further for this one.