The Clock Hand Kept Chasing Me, and You Are the Number Next to Me

Wish

From the day you're born, you're assigned a number written on your wrist. This indicates what age you're supposed to die. The death can be caused by anything from an unexpected illness or a car crash. There are, however, some instances where the person manages to escape death's grasp.

For instance, let's say someone was supposed to get hit by a car. All of a sudden, their friend pushes them out of the way, and the friend gets hit instead. The person somehow avoided their own death.

When instances like these happen, it's the job of a grim reaper to visit the human realm and make sure that that person finally meets their end. Here at Reaper Inc., grim reapers are given a human client that they're tasked with killing.

Kenma Kozume was one of the reapers working there, and preferably one of the best. Everyone referred to him as "Kenma the merciless", known for immediately finishing off his clients without a second thought. Truth be told, Kenma just finished his jobs faster so he could get back home and play video games all day.

In the shadow realm, the job that earned the highest praise was becoming a grim reaper. It was in Kenma's blood to become a reaper, after all, his parents were reapers themselves. That wasn't what he really wanted to do for the rest of his long life span, but it's not like he could argue with tradition.

He's been in this business for 4 years and quickly rose up the ranks. Now nobody would pass by him and not know who he is. During his 4 years of working at Reaper inc., the only clients he's ever been tasked with killing have all been a lot older than him. Today was the first day he'd take on a job with a client the same age as him.

It wouldn't make a difference in the end. After all, he's "Kenma the merciless", age doesn't matter. He was gonna find them, kill them, bring back their soul so they could be sent to the afterlife, and his job would be over.

"Hey hey! Kenma!". The tall, silver-haired person running towards him was Lev Haiba. Lev was still just a reaper-in-training, so he usually just accompanied other reaper's on their jobs to gain experience. Kenma's jobs typically took a lot longer to complete whenever Lev tagged along. This was mainly because the taller boy was not very good at hiding quietly. He also became way too entranced with the surroundings of the human realm and wandered off on his own.

The last time Kenma let Lev come along with him, it had been New Years in the human realm. While Kenma was waiting for their client to be alone so he could kill them in private, Lev ran off, claiming that he "wanted to get a good view of the fireworks."

"No Lev, you cannot come along this time.", Kenma stated dismissively. No way was he letting Lev come along this time. "Aww, but I promise I'll behave this time! I swear." Lev pleaded.

"Can't you accompany your sister this time?". Lev's sister, Alisa, was also pretty famous around here. "She's out on another job again."

Kenma groaned. He was still intent on not bringing Lev along. "Fine then, but I just passed by Tora and he said he was about to leave on a job after he was finished with his lunch. I'm sure you can stick with him." Lev still wanted to go with Kenma, but there was no convincing him, so he just nodded.

"Okay then. See you later then Kenma!" Lev waved before he ran back to the lunchroom to find Tora. Kenma breathed out a sigh of relief. That interaction alone just took 100 years off his life.