Alan tried to ignore the image of a unicorn he just imagined and stopped trying to link the word ‘flying’ to a ‘horse’. He wanted to say that he didn’t know anything about this soul; but before he could speak, a white card engraved with golden writing appeared, so he changed his question trying to fulfill his curiosity, “How do you do that?”

“You just write down from the card.”

“I meant that… getting things from nowhere.”

“Oh, It’s just teleportation. It is better not to ask unrelated questions during the missions.”, Razel kept in his mind that this assistant is his ticket to more free time so he tried to be as friendly as possible to prevent it from disappearing.

Alan nod in response, and begun his first task in the underworld; writing down the soul’s essentials.

Name in the latest life : Charlie.

Soul number : 291690ct.

Cause of loss : shattering.

Duration of loss : 1 week

When he saw age at the time of death he stopped for a moment; trying to remember his own age but he couldn’t so he continued to fill the cases left on the first paper: cause of death and important places in latest life, but he left the last case empty; it was: place where the soul was found.

When they arrived, Razel noticed that the soul was looking suspiciously around the living room; so he took the initiative to explain briefly, ” We are in one of my houses on earth, let’s go. I will expand on that on our way to the next destination; by the way we are using normal transport here; I will drive. “

Razel strode to the garage while reminding the dumbfounded Alan to follow him. Their next destination was the second place on the card since Razel already went to the first before and didn’t find the resented soul.

On their way, Razel continued, “It’s better to have a specific place to come down to, rather than choosing randomly. We all have a few, and a normal identity here to make the investigation easier. “

Alan finally regained his calmness, ” it’s different from what was in the book. “

“The book was written hastily by a volunteer, he described the work of the department of death more precisely than the main subject. The grim reapers from there are the ones who pluck the soul out of the body; so they don’t need to go through all this, just arrive at the place, get the soul from the body and return; only the target sees them. On the other hand we need to interact with others to find the souls, we can’t just appear from nowhere and scare them away with our looks. The solution was having multiple human identities to be able to investigate different cases.”

While Alan was taking some time to understand the situation, Razel surprised him again. He was deep in thought when light surrounded him; he looked down and found out that his baggy clothes from earlier were changed into casual wear. He waited for Razel to clear this for him, but seems that he was too focused on driving that he didn’t notice his gaze.

Razel actually was enjoying this drive, he finally got to drive his precious car again after being prohibited from using it due to some trivial mistakes he did. After hearing Alan clearing his throat, he remembered to say: “You can do what you want when we go back, but you have to look more presentable during the mission. This time you have to act as my assistant and pretend to be the target’s friend. We arrived.”

The car stopped in front of an elementary school, the name on the sign was “Hope public elementary school”, it’s the school Charlie attended when he was a kid; where he found the desire that turned his dark life upside down.

       Charlie felt that the best decision he made in his entire life was choosing to attend the optional music classes on Saturdays when he was in the third grade. Although he was not really interested in music, he could learn new things, and most importantly get a reason to get out of the suffocating house for a while every week.

But the classes were optional for a reason, there was one teacher and all she taught was just words on paper; since the school’s budget was very far from being able to afford buying any instruments. So after a few weeks, students gradually stopped coming. Even Charlie found the class boring, but for him, no matter how boring, hard or meaningless any class could be; it will always be better than staying home, so he continued attending with the few who were interested in music.

Until one random Saturday, the teacher said that she have been preparing a surprise for a long time and they could discover it the next week, she hoped no one miss the next class and suggested that everyone should bring a friend along. She mentioned that the class will take longer this time so they should notify their parents.

Since all the students were kids, they loved surprises, their eyes lit up when they heard the word, and asked the teacher if she could give them a clue, but she insisted on keeping it a secret and said it would not be a surprise if she gave a hint. So they all left in twos or threes discussing all the possibilities they could think of. Charlie also kept thinking about it for the entire week hoping it won’t be another monotonous lesson in disguise.

After a long week full of tests, Saturday finally came. Charlie woke up early, washed up, changed his clothes and left the house quietly avoiding waking anyone up. Although the class is not starting until another two hours, it’s better to go out before anyone wakes up to avoid any disturbances that may prevent him from knowing what’s the surprise was. He bought a small piece of cake from the money given by his aunt from her last visit, sat in the park to eat for a long time before heading to the school to meet the classmate he invited to go with him.

   The teacher stood by the black board, reminding the kids to stay quiet, they waited until everyone arrived before entering.

The classroom was divided to two, all the students’ desks were nowhere to be seen, but the chairs occupied half of the place. The other half was really a surprise, beside the board was a single piano, a bunch of different shaped black cases put on the teacher’s desk and four strangers sitting close while whispering to each other.

The teacher warned the students that the class would be cancelled if they don’t sit and keep silent, so they all quieted down and continued looking at the other half of the classroom with bright eyes full of excitement. Charlie’s eyes didn’t leave the black cases, he was sure he saw something similar before in a show his mother was watching but he couldn’t exactly recall what intstrument was inside.

When the teacher noticed them quiet down, she pointed at the strangers and said : “kids, let me introduce you, these gentlemen were my classmates when I was in college; I asked them to come today to teach you something new and they were happy to help. Every one of them specialize in teaching an instrument, so each one will present an instrument to you and teach you how to play it.” She then suggested taking notes so as not to forget what they learn.

The first instrument was the piano, the piano teacher explained to them how it works in simple terms so they can understand, and started writing on the board to explain how to read music sheets for the piano and follow when playing. After finishing, he invited the interested students to try to play some notes and corrected them while continuing explaining; taking their playing errors as examples, then he played a piece at the end.

 After him was the guitar and the trumpet teachers who followed the same way of teaching, Charlie enjoyed the class and wondered what the last instrument could be.

When the last teacher opened the last black case, Charlie finally discovered what was in it; It was a violin. This teacher chose to play a piece first, and Charlie was hooked from the first few seconds of playing. The explanation of the components of the violin followed, then the four notes and the fingers’ placement.

” The most essential part of the bowing technique is the bow grip. We hold the bow with our right hand; you need to put your thumb in the gap, not on….. “

Charlie was taking notes while trying to keep up with the teacher. When it was his turn to hold the violin, he was too exited that it almost fell from his hand, the teacher corrected his poor posture, then guided him to play a few notes. He didn’t know how the time passed quickly, when he was on his way back home, he remembered that he didn’t ask what was the name of the wonderful piece the violin teacher played so he planned to ask the next time.