The Shinigami King grew tired of his play, so he asked an old soul to change it.
Otherwise known as what happens when an eccentric, morally questionable, teeny tiny overpowered old soul is gifted an Evil™ sword and thrown in a couple thousand years...
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The fourth division barracks were pristine and perfectly normal. They, like many of the other barracks, favored a traditional Japanese-style building with shōji doors, tatami mats, and a lack of color diversity. Although the fourth division opted for Western furniture instead of the standard floor seats and low tables.
Retsu declined letting me carve anything into the wood, either. There were next to no plants, hardly any hung portraits, and really a general lack of personal touches. Anyone coming into the fourth division would find it clinical and detached.
Retsu was a minimalist. She kept very few personal items for herself, finding joy in momentary pleasures and memories rather than materialistic things. It reflected in her office, which only ever kept necessary paperwork. Retsu didn't need the paperwork—she had superb memory—but her fodder did.
One of the unique things about the fourth division barracks, though, was the morgue underneath it. It was conveniently attached to the prison cells.
The morgue was brightly lit, well ventilated, and had an excellent drainage system. There were hoses hooked up, and plenty of spare autopsy tables.
I sat on one of the tables next to a fresh corpse—it hadn't even started to smell—while I chatted with Retsu.
"All I'm saying is that maybe they had it coming a tiny little bit," I complained to Retsu.
"Mm-hmm," came her placating murmur. "Rirī, would you please—?"
I held out the pan for her to dump the heart she had ripped out of the cadaver she was working on. Retsu had been experimenting with a new hadō technique but it hadn't worked out on the unlucky prisoner. Which meant she had to dissect the fella afterward to see what went wrong. As a supportive friend I joined her in the autopsy room to keep her company. Dissections could get boring after the first few centuries after all.
Plus I wanted to hide a body and the best place to do that was at a morgue. Retsu was a dear so she would happily turn a blind eye. Especially if I made her an orange blossom cake.
Curiously, the heart she pulled out looked like it had been used as a pin cushion. Even that surprised me since the hadō technique wasn't applied near the heart, nor was it intended to affect the cardiovascular system. "Huh."
