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She vanished just as the year ended. "On the nose, like a clock," Felder muttered, toying with the stem of an unlit pipe—an accessory from his boulevardier past that he was desperately trying to suppress. Nobody knew if he still secretly smoked it. It didn’t matter. His movements, sharp and calculated, were as unreadable as his expressions. Kate lingered at the intersection of now and then, her borrowed human form still buzzing with the static of sensations—shoyu clinging to her nostrils like the aftertaste of a dream, the weight of the ladle pressed into her palm like an inheritance she wasn’t sure she deserved. She gripped her chest, fingers probing, searching for the faintest thrum—a rhythm gone, leaving only absence. The borrowed heart wasn’t there. And soon, everything else would be gone too. Time. The thing about time is—whether measured in seconds, minutes, or centuries—it doesn’t care. It keeps going anyway. One moment, she was standing above the pot, the scent of boiled pork and bubbling broth in the air. The rhythmic chop of Hiroshi’s knife against the cutting board. The lulling hiss of the broth boiling. The faint, warm light of early morning. Then she blinked. The shift was like stepping through a door you didn’t know was there. The blinding fluorescent lights of the Bureau snapped her back to her reality, where the linoleum floor felt slicker than ice and the air smelled like industrial cleaner—sharp enough to erase any trace of human warmth. Felder didn’t even glance up from the folder in his left hand. He exuded that air of clipped, military-grade efficiency that had become almost comical to anyone in this place. “Did you find it? Is it done?” “Yeah, I found the grave,” Kate muttered. “His bones are burned. It’s done.” In a move so practiced it could’ve been ritual, he nodded once, placed the pipe between his lips, and scribbled something illegible on his notepad. Then, with perfect timing, he tossed the folder aside, just before it vanished in a cloud of black smoke—discarding the dead weight of another successful mission. “Good. You look like shit, by the way,” he added. “You won’t need this for now. Let’s take it off, shall we?” He gazed at her form, a muscle twitching near his mouth as he raised his hand. Just like that, any physical evidence of her time up there began to disappear. Kate watched as her borrowed body melted away—the weight of the year she had borrowed shedding like a wild beast’s coat, too heavy for the summer. But there were no summers here. She closed her eyes. It was easier to drown in the river of memories than face whatever it was that Felder had to say next. Her mission had started like any other. A plain, black folder was handed to her with a name scrawled on top—Emory Cutter. A name everyone knew and avoided, like a bad joke nobody wanted to hear twice. His file sat on her desk, thick and yellowed, curling at the edges like an old paperback forgotten on a dusty shelf. Kate traced the bureaucratic scribbles across the page. He was a French soldier who cheated death three times before meeting it at the edge of a knife. First, at the Marne, where he crawled out of a crater filled with the bodies of his fallen comrades, drenched in blood and mud. Then, shrapnel embedded itself in his chest, leaving him alive but broken in ways no one could fix. And finally, the gunpowder incident—he survived a blast that should’ve incinerated him, leaving behind only cinders of rage and misplaced terror. His time in both hells transformed his tormented spirit into something darker than a demon—an almost mythical figure with a cult-like following that grew with every passing year. A dangerous faction with the sinister mission to break the veil between the living and the dead. A mission that would surely end in the destruction of the living world. The Bureau had to stop him, of course. So they gave Kate the task of finding his grave and burning his bones. A librarian promoted to field agent for the occasion. So Kate found herself in Paris, 2024, in a borrowed body, with just a year to complete her mission. When her feet hit the unfamiliar ground, the city’s rhythm hit her like a wave, its pulse alien and threatening. The air tasted different, sharper—infused with the scent of a life that had evolved beyond her understanding. Everything was faster, noisier, more crowded. “God, grief! The world sure has changed.” The last time she was up here, she was alive—a woman in her early thirties, full of ambition, living in Texas in 1943 when the world moved at a slower pace. Her search began in archives—documents, maps, letters. Cutter’s existence, like most things these days, was buried in half-truths, scattered across continents and decades, lost to time and history. Weeks at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris felt like an eternity, digging through damp records, military dispatches, and obituary columns. But there was no mention of Cutter or his unit. She then scoured old bookstores, second-hand shops, and flea markets. Months passed. Her time started running out. Then, in a dingy café, she met an old history professor from the Sorbonne. Damn, she should’ve thought of history professors herself. Her search would’ve ended much sooner. But her inexperience was evident. Well, she had all the time in the world to learn from her mistakes—literally. As long as she burned Cutter’s bones in time, of course. The professor mentioned an eccentric collector obsessed with World War I soldiers' diaries. And that’s how she found herself with the diary of one of Cutter’s comrades—a good friend. The brittle, yellowed pages were nearly illegible, but one entry stood out: the author’s last wish—to be buried next to his friend, Emory Cutter. Fantastic! She thanked her beginner’s luck and set off to find the grave in the unmarked cemetery just outside the city mentioned in the diary. The ritual was quick and simple—dig the grave, burn the bones, scatter the ashes. The fire crackled and popped, filling the air with the acrid scent of burning bone. Kate’s hands trembled as she scattered the ashes, feeling Cutter’s fury like a storm breaking the night sky. The wind howled, as though it carried his rage. But then, as if the universe itself exhaled, it was done. She had two weeks left—fourteen days of borrowed life before the clock ran out and she was yanked back to the Underworld. So she went to Tokyo. It wasn’t meant to be anything—just a final moment in the chaotic world she’d begun to enjoy. But her beginner’s luck found her again when she stepped into a small ramen shop nestled in an alleyway. Hiroshi, the owner, welcomed her with a bowl of shoyu ramen. She’d never tasted anything better. So she returned the next day. And the next. And the day after that. Until she gathered the courage to ask Hiroshi to teach her the art of ramen. Hiroshi was happy to oblige. He’d been looking for an apprentice, and her foreign mien intrigued him. So she spent her final moments on Earth learning how to slice the pork belly, boil the bones, combine the broth with soy sauce, sake, mirin, and salt, cook the noodles, and select the best ingredients for the toppings. But, of course, time waits for no one. On her last night, Hiroshi handed her the ladle, his smile warm, promising to teach her the secret for the perfect broth—tomorrow. In that moment, Kate wanted to tell him everything—the truth, the mission, the countdown on her borrowed life—but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, she smiled, savoring the last taste of something real. And then, without warning, she vanished. Felder’s voice snapped her out of her reverie, pulling her back from her memories. “You’re quite good at this after all. Management didn’t expect you to succeed. They’ve got another mission for you.” He slipped a new file into her hands. Kate stared at it. For a moment, she considered throwing it all away—walking out of this sterile office, trying to find a way back, like Cutter. But she knew better. The Bureau was a machine—relentless, indifferent. And she? She was just another cog. She opened the file. Another mission. Another veil. And somewhere, deep down, she knew this wasn’t over.

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Of Ramen and Bones

SophieC

Sophie C.

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Of Ramen and Bones

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