The Takamori Story

Mistaken

Mori Calliope was the first apprentice of the grim reaper. Logically, the job of bringing souls to the afterlife couldn't be done by a single entity. Every day she'd take a long shift in which she took care of anyone who had a death mark. The death mark only appeared on someone once they died, or (in very rare occasions) had to be killed. Calliope would swing her blade to slice a soul and store it within her scythe, and at the end of her shift she released all the souls when she arrived at the underworld.

She never bothered to understand the feelings of the ones she took, at most she'd hear their last words before finishing them off, but other than that, she just made sure not a single soul slipped.

That is, until the day she met someone special. Instead of having to kill a human, she saw the Death mark laid upon a creature. Seemingly a giant bird, and it wasn't dead yet. This was odd, but it was her job to make sure everyone with a death Mark reached the afterlife.
She slowly approached the creature with her scythe already out. The light started fading as the world around them vanished into a gray void and a black ground, an enviroment that always showed up when Calliope was about to reap someones soul. When suddenly,the giant bird noticed the change in the environment, but instead of being afraid it turned around.

-"Hey, haven't we met?"

Another not-so-pleasent surprise, apparently the bird could talk.
With a tired tone, Calliope answered.

-"Sorry, you must have mistaken me with someone else, everyone has only ever met me once..."

She held the blade up high.

"... When they die"

-"Wait!"

But that was the only thing the creature got to say before it was cut in half.

However, this was another first, no one ever recognized Calli, and the normal representations of death humans made up were nothing like her. There was no way someone could have met her twice.

But nonetheless, she cut it short to keep working, it couldn't have been important, she wasn't going to see the creature again anyway.

Finally she arrived in the underworld and released the souls, counting them as they hovered out of her scythe. She rubbed her chin when she noticed the amount of souls released wasn't equal to the amount she reaped, there was one missing.
But without thinking about it too much, Calliope just thought

-"(I probably missed one while counting)"

And returned to her home to rest before her next shift. After all it had been a strange tiring day.

With just enough doubts to not care about, she decided to relax. In the end it wouldn't matter, there'd still be work to be done.