The True Confessions of a Nine-Tailed Fox

Chapter 184: This Shabby Bureau of Human Lives

The grey stone columns of the Bureau of Human Lives towered over Flicker and me. Peeking out of his sleeve, I glimpsed openwork carvings of bulbul birds frolicking among plum blossoms gone dark with age. Above them, the gold, red, and teal paint was dull and flaking off the carved wooden beams. Was this shabbiness meant to evoke the humble beginnings of humankind, or had the Bureau simply run out of money to buy soap and paint?

Compared to the gaudily resplendent Bureau of Reincarnation, there was a starkness to the Bureau of Human Lives. Aesthetic choice or not, it had to feel like a comedown for the Goddess of Life.

Flicker lowered his arms, cutting off my view, to gather up his robes so he could step over the foot-high threshold. "Before we see the Goddess of Life, you should know what she's been doing on Earth."

You mean besides plaguing the humans with a literal plague?

Oh sure, the gods could afflict humans with all manner of suffering and face no consequences. Me, on the other hand – spread a divinely-ordained disease once and get a barge-load of negative karma for it. What was this system anyway?

But when I pointed that out, quite reasonably in my opinion, Flicker replied, "She's the Director of Human Lives. It is her right and duty to decide what happens to them."

But how is that fair? Why does she get to slaughter them in droves when I'm not even allowed to nip a single toddler?

During one of my most recent lives, I'd bitten a small boy who was swinging me by the tail. If his older sister hadn't rescued me, tamed me, and derived much comfort from my presence before she died from a fever (which wasn't my fault! Not this time!), I would have dropped into Green Tier.

"It isn't fair." Flicker's whisper was barely audible. "But the Accountants are doing their best...." The rest was drowned out by a rustle of cotton.

I didn't catch the last part. The Accountants are doing their best to what?

"To help."

To help...what? Or whom? All those plague rat souls, you mean? I couldn't keep the sarcasm out of my voice. As if the Accountants with their hard, cold abacuses and their hard, cold mathematical models knew the meaning of "help"!

"I don't know about all the souls who are reincarnating as plague rats, but...." Flicker hesitated, so I bumped his arm to encourage him to continue. "But...haven't you wondered why you still haven't dropped a Tier? Even after all these lives?"

Now that he mentioned it, some of the deeds for which I'd earned positive karma did seem a little nebulous. Bringing comfort to a dying girl? How did you even quantify that?

Does that mean they're on my side? I could use a very heavy finger on the scale.

"They're not on anyone's side. They are fair."

Are they now? I thought I did an admirable job keeping the sarcasm out of my tone, but Flicker started to bristle, so I threw out a different question: Do they have their own Bureau?

I could work with a Bureau of Creative Accounting. I had many, many ideas for creative accounting that I would be happy to impart to it, for a little extra consideration, naturally.

"They do not have their own Bureau." Flicker dragged out the words, as if ashamed on the Accountants' behalf. "They applied to form one but were denied. Instead, they're individually assigned to different Bureaus."