MIRARI WRESTLED with her hair, a
losing battle she'd fought a thousand times. The curls had declared war,
springing in every direction like rebellious noodles. Her straightener gave up
first, landing with a dramatic clunk on her desk. She sighed, slipping on her
glasses—now foggy from marathon gaming sessions that had fried her retinas.
It could've been a decent day. Birds
chirping. Sun shining. But no... today was her grand debut as a certified
"corporate slave."
"Ugh, it's literally day one and I
already want to bail," she mumbled, cheeks puffed out in protest.
Mirari didn't hate work. She just
didn't believe in forcing herself into a mold she didn't choose. Goals? Meh.
She lived life by vibes alone. Unfortunately, her parents were dead-set on
dragging her out of her comfort zone with motivational speeches and ominous
warnings like, "Time moves fast—you'll wake up irrelevant if you're not
careful!"
Knock knock. Cue performance mode.
"Mirari, hurry up! Your brother might
leave without you!" her mom shouted from behind the door.
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" she yelled,
putting on her best "busy and productive" voice.
"We'll wait for you downstairs,
alright?"
"Got it, Mom!"
She checked her reflection and
groaned. Brown eyes—melancholy. Hair—chaotic. Nose—sharp as ever.
Outfit—standard-issue officewear with a side of existential dread. She looked
like she belonged in an ad for "Have You Lost All Hope?"
It's okay. Just survive one month and
you can rage quit with dignity, she whispered like a pep talk from a tired
anime protagonist.
Backpack on. Shoulders squared. She
clomped down the stairs like a reluctant gladiator entering the corporate
coliseum. Her parents glanced at her like art critics assessing a very confused
painting. Her brother, Silver, raised one groomed eyebrow mid-sip.
"What happened to you?" her mom asked,
adjusting her blazer like she was realigning a satellite.
"I'm fine," she replied, voice
cracking slightly.
"You sure?" Dad chimed in without even
looking up from his tablet. "If you hate it already, you can just skip work."
"Rico, don't encourage her!" Mom
gasped. "Silver needs help too!"
"She's not great with people," Silver
muttered, stirring his coffee dramatically.
"I'm fine," Mirari repeated like a
broken record. "Let's just see if I'm secretly amazing at this job. If not,
I'll bail. Simple. So… what department are you throwing me into?" she asked.
"You'll love it, sweetie! It's
computer work. You like computers, right?"
"Death services and life insurance,"
Silver added, smirking like he'd just dropped the plot twist of a drama series.
Mirari blinked. "Ah, okay." Beat.
Then: "Wait… WHAT?!"
Mirari's brain had officially clocked out. Kate was halfway through a death policy
tutorial—yes, actual death—and all Mirari could think about was lunch and how
her dream job probably didn't involve logging corpses.
"So ma'am, did you get that?" Kate asked, hopeful.
"Huh?"
"The part I just explained…?"
"Nope." Blank stare. Total glitch.
Kate exhaled like she was rebooting her patience. If Mirari weren't the owner's
daughter, the folder in Kate's hand might've become a frisbee. Instead, she
gently slammed it on the desk with the grace of a disgruntled librarian.
"I know computers, okay? But these policies are like hieroglyphs. Can we just eat
before my brain melts?" Mirari pleaded.
Kate disappeared, and not subtly—Mirari could hear her ranting about her just three
desks away.
"Talk all you want," Mirari said coolly. Silence hit the office like a spilled coffee cup.
"We're just—uh—going to eat, Ma'am Mirari," stammered Lilia, clutching her lunch like a shield.
"Suit yourselves," Mirari muttered, twirling back toward her screen like a melodramatic villain. The database stared her down. Endless rows of dates, names, insurance codes—it was bureaucratic chaos, and she didn't even know where to begin.
Her brother Silver had bailed on this branch, leaving her as the understudy to a very boring opera.
Then, without warning, someone entered the office.
"May I speak with Silver?"
Mirari didn't look up. Her eyes were glued to the screen in determined apathy. "He's
not here. I'll give you the company address. Hold on." She scribbled like a bored receptionist and handed it over. "Call his secretary. They love scheduling."
"Oh, so you're the new boss now?"
That caught her attention. She finally looked up—and boom. Cue inner fireworks.
Eyebrows: slit and stylish.
Eyes: mysterious novella.
Smile: faint but magnetic.
Hair: slick under a cap.
Jawline: offensive in its perfection.
"Cullen!"
"It's Kuya Cullen," he corrected, and her face crumpled like bad origami.
"That sounds ancient!"
"You crawl out of your cave just now?" he teased, tossing his cap like he was
auditioning for a boy band. Mirari visibly swooned.
Cullen had been Silver's ride-or-die since elementary school. She used to tag along
with the two cool dudes in high school, drawing gossip and admiration. Life was
simpler back then.
"You haven't aged. Still hot as ever," she grinned.
"And you still look… abandoned." Classic Cullen jab.
"Kidding," he added before she could hit him with a stapler. "I'm here on business. Can I
look up Mr. Haji Buenaflor in your database?"
Mirari hesitated. Her inner fangirl was screaming, but her role as
intern-slash-confused-newbie was sobering. "I'm not sure I can… I don't even
know what's classified yet. Better wait for someone who actually knows things."
Cullen leaned in, hand on her shoulder, voice low. "Just for a moment. I really need
this."
Her heart launched into a dance routine. Voltage surged. Brain fried.
"I really can't. They'll roast me alive." She said, pushing him gently. "Also…
it's suddenly 100 degrees in here."
Cullen backed off, offering a crooked smile. "I'll make it up to you."
"Huh? Why the sudden apology?" she asked.
But before he could answer—WHACK. Sharp pain to the back of her neck. Vision
blurred.
BAM. Face meets keyboard.
Cue dramatic blackout.
Mirari bolted upright.
Roosters? That couldn't be right. She
should've been buried in spreadsheets at the office—not waking to the distant
crow of farm animals. But the room around her said otherwise. She was seated at
a rickety dining table inside a stranger's house—aged, grimy, thick with dust
and time.
CLANG.
A bowl of porridge slammed down in front of her.
"Eat up, 'tay," sneered a woman with a
grin too twisted to be kind. The cheerfulness in her voice felt like poison.
Mirari's hands trembled. Wrinkled. Her
body? Weak. Feeble. Not hers.
Before panic could rise, a man barged
in, wielding a remote like a weapon—and WHACK. He struck her with no
mercy. Over and over. Her world spun in violent spirals.
She tried to scream. To fight back. To
run.
But her voice was gone. Her limbs defied her commands.
What's happening?! Why can't I move?!
Why can't I speak?!
"You disgusting old hag! Why aren't
you dead yet?" the man shouted, while the woman cackled, forcing spoonfuls of
food into her mouth like she was nothing but a prisoner.
"Let it go. Feed him first. Eat now, Dad. That's your last supper."
Tears blurred Mirari's vision—and then
came the terrifying truth:
She wasn't in her body anymore.
She had landed inside someone else's living nightmare.
Scene shift.
She blinked—and now she was in a wheelchair, positioned at the edge of a long,
brutal staircase. Her stomach clenched.
Behind her, the man smirked—and
pushed.
"Say hi to your favorite kid when you
get to the other side."
CRASH.
Pain. Blood. Screams swallowed by silence.
As her consciousness dimmed, a
silver-haired man appeared from the shadows of reality.
Crisp office suit. Cold stare. A wicked scythe cradled in his arms.
"Come with me, Haji Buenaflor. You'll
never be hurt again," he murmured.
Then two souls shimmered into view—one
elderly… the other was Mirari herself.
Invisible. Yet feeling everything.
"You monsters…" she whispered as the
twisted couple continued their laughter.
She turned to run—
—but a firm grip closed around her arm.
The reaper.
And behind him… the spirit of the old
man.
"Who are you?" the man in the suit
hissed, eyes narrowing like twin daggers.
Mirari yanked herself free. "Let go of
me!"
"Miss…" the old man asked gently. "Who
are you?"
She stared at him—dead and fading. Her
hand passed through his chest like vapor.
"I said: WHO ARE YOU?" the reaper
growled, lifting her by the collar. His glowing green eyes pierced through
whatever soul she had.
She opened her mouth to speak—
But the old man vanished.
Gone.
The reaper cursed and dropped her like
dead weight.
"CODE RED!" he roared. "The
soul escaped! Stop it before it turns vengeful!"
Then his hand closed around her neck.
Mirari screamed—and the sound shattered across dimensions.
"AAAHHH!"
She shot up, drenched in sweat.
Her office. Fluorescent lights. Humming monitors. Coworkers frozen in shock.
Kate rushed over.
"Ma'am, are you alright?"
Mirari wiped her face. "Y-yeah…"
But her eyes darted to her screen.
A glowing file stared back: Haji Buenaflor
Cause of death: fall down stairs
She froze. The dream. The pain. The
man.
She called Kate again, voice
trembling. "This guy… has someone claimed his life insurance yet?"
Kate sighed, vaguely annoyed. "Not
yet. We're still investigating. Could be an accident. Or foul play."
Mirari's pulse thundered in her ears.
What kind of dream was that? And that
man—
what was he?
Mirari's family sold burial plans and
life insurance—a business steeped in grief, but strangely impersonal to her. People chose their own packages; in Haji
Buenaflor's case, he signed up for both. Mirari didn't care who bought what.
What troubled her was the dream—disturbing, vivid, and inexplicably tied to
that man.
She was trying to grab coffee from the
vending machine when it froze. She waited. Nothing. So she started thumping it
like a frustrated drummer.
"Ma'am, let me help you," said a
short-haired woman with a warm smile and almond eyes. "This machine's broken.
You have to find what tickles it."
"Why don't you report it to management? It's been broken for days and no one's fixed it. Where's the manager?"
"Vacation leave. Been gone a while.
You'll hear more when she returns."
"Unreal. Kuya Silver just allows this to happen? That manager was supposed to train me."
"Sorry about that. By the way, I'm Lynn," the woman said sheepishly.
"Not your fault. I'm Mirari," she
replied.
Before Lynn could respond, shouts
erupted at the front desk. Mirari's heart skipped. She rushed over—and froze.
The people causing the commotion were the same two she saw in her dream. And
suddenly, she realized the old man from the vision was Haji Buenaflor himself.
"Why won't you release my daddy's
insurance? We need the money!" the young man barked, voice raw with fury.
"The case is under investigation,
sir," the clerk said carefully. "The findings could change based on police
reports."
"My father's dead and you're making us
suffer even more?" The man kicked over a chair. Other clients stared, but no
one intervened.
"We want the manager!" the woman beside him added.
"She's not here," whispered Kate,
another clerk.
"She's on leave," said someone Mirari
didn't recognize. They all knew she was only there because her brother had
pull.
"Wow. An insurance company with a
ghost manager. Pathetic. I'll tell everyone not to buy a single thing from
here."
Mirari took a breath, grounding
herself in silence before stepping in.
"I'm Mirari. I work here," she said
plainly, no smile, no effort to charm. The dream still gnawed at her. It wasn't
just a dream anymore—it felt like memory.
"So what? If you can't help us, get
out of the way!" the woman snapped, frothing with rage.
Mirari bit her lip. Her temper,
usually dormant, surged. "Wait for the investigation," she muttered.
"Why wait? It was an accident. The
autopsy confirms it!"
"The police suspect foul play," Mirari
countered. "Push for the money and I'll label it suspicious. Why so desperate?
Got something to hide?"
"Are you accusing us?"
"Yes." Her voice didn't waver. The
crowd stirred, whispers bubbling around her.
"Record her! This is abuse. Insurance
fraud! I'll make sure this company burns."
They looked like they might stage a
full-blown protest. Mirari had her suspicions—they were probably married.
Then she tested her theory.
"Say hi to your favorite kid when you
get to the other side," she said flatly—the exact words she heard in the dream before
the murder.
The man froze. Eyes wide. Trembling.
She turned to the woman. "Let it go.
Feed him first. Eat now, Dad. That's your last supper."
The woman staggered backward. "You're
insane."
Mirari's smile grew unsettling. "Not
really. Just quoting a teledrama. That one where the guy smacks his dad with a
remote and dumps him from the second floor. Wild family, huh? Sometimes I
remember things that actually happened."
No more protests. The two strangers
picked up their dignity and left quietly—watching Mirari like she'd just
crawled out of a horror film.
"Ma'am... that was amazing," Lynn
breathed. "How did you do that?"
Mirari shrugged, unbothered. She
gathered her things and headed for the elevator. She didn't care that it was
still office hours—once her mood soured, she was immovable.
Then she saw him.
A man leaned beside the elevator.
Silver hair. Emerald eyes. Staring through her like he knew her soul.
Her mouth opened. Nothing came out.
She stepped back instinctively—but her
feet betrayed her.
He dashed forward and caught her just
before she fell. His hand firm around her waist.
She gasped, breath caught. His eyes
shimmered with something unearthly.
"Who are you?" he whispered. "How did
you return to this world? Are you the missing soul?"