His Remembrance.

When he opened his eyes, he saw a blue ceiling from which warm sunlight fell with grace. Not a cloud was on the horizon, and the wind was gentle.

“…What was that?”

It felt like he had forgotten something. The more he tried to remember, all that he gathered were fragments. What he knew for sure, was that he unfolded the sticky note.
In other words, he could very well be under the effect of the artifact.

“Am I in a dream… No, it feels different. Way too real.”

Getting back on his feet he looked at the scenery. All around him, a field of verdant plains stretched to no end beyond his eyesight. What caught his attention were the wooden stakes.
The stakes that were inserted everywhere in an orderly fashion, expanding all the way to the horizon too.

“Those are tombs.” a voice corrected him. “Not stakes.”

It came from below. Not from below the earth, but just right in front of him. When he hung his head down, he saw the owner of the voice.
A white crow. White as that sun above.

“You finally came, it has been hours since I called you here.”

“You called?”

Saburō had no recollection of ever meeting a talking crow, or ever seeing a white one. In seconds, his sharp wit led him to a single conclusion. If the crow did call him, then how? The answer was evident.
It was when he read the nonexistent words in that blank document, telling him to come.

“So you remember.” the crow guessed correctly. “Welcome to the Graveyard of Remembrance, Savior who has yet to become one.”

“Savior… I feel like I’m about to get thrown into some messy stuff.”

“Oh, so you are like that too!” The crow shouted, his beak still closed. “A savior who doesn’t want to become one, it’s been a while since I met your kind.”

“No wait, that’s not the point.” Saburō quickly retorted. “Where are we? Why did you call me here? And what do you mean savior?”

“Just as usual.” the crow sighed, even though he shouldn’t be able to. “I’ve heard those questions countless times. Well, not so countless since I could very well count them. But my answer stays the same: Take a walk with me, I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

“…Alright. Lead the way.”

“Good.”

The crow took flight, flapping his somewhat dusty wings. Using the never-ending wind current he flew in front of his guest. With steady and slow steps, the manager followed behind. Carefully walking between the wooden stakes serving as tombs, he stared at the white crow that seemed to blend with the sky.

“To start with, tell me about your life.” the crow instructed.

“And why should I tell you?”

“This is a realm of remembrance. If you want something, you must leave a trace of your memories here.”

“And if I refuse?”

“The realm will trap you here for eternity. Your flesh immortal and mind undying, until you finally speak of yourself.”

“Alright I see the better option now.”

Taking a deep, relaxing breath, the ordinary senior manager at the Artifact Management Department began to tell his tale.

“If I were to tell you about my past, like my childhood or the days I spent skipping class in high school, you would be bored to death. So there’s at least something, something that I feel like sharing with you.”

“Oh? You got me curious young savior.”

“Young?” the wrinkle-less man questioned. “Nevermind that. What I want to tell you is the reason I applied for this job.”

“So you have a job, as most of the people remembered by those tombs. I suppose that’s how the human race outlived everyone else.”

“Oh, we’re not that noble. Maybe the ones that created the machine called ‘Civilization’ had this purpose in mind, but as an insignificant cog in that machine, my only desire was my own comfort.”

Taking a pause, the man put his hand on one of the wooden stakes, opening up his heart a little to the white crow.

“Our desire had always been our own comfort. That’s why I enrolled in the management department: Simply because it paid the most, while being far enough from the mystical.”

“I see the reason, young savior.” the crow also landed on a stake. “But what I want is the reason of the heart.”

“…”

Again, he sighed.
Finally resigning himself to the crow, he opened the gate of his memories.

“Long long ago when I was a kid, my family was in a really tough spot. As everything in the world turned worse by the day, we could see the signs of our ordinary life collapsing each year. My dad was fired from his job at the company and was forced to work multiple small gigs at once. My mother, who profited from his previous wealth, was resentful of him for turning the household into a pitiful place. The water leaked each week, electricity was cut because of delays in payments, my parents fought every two days, and I was just there. Enduring the pain.”

“How unfortunate.” the crow sympathized.

“It was. For everyone else just as well. But you know? My dad decided to make a trade off. To trade security for comfort. He signed up into the Public Safety Department, charged to intervene in any affairs related to the mystical, and in exchange, he got a pay three times higher than the salary he had in his old company. We were living much more comfortably, my mother and my dad reconciled, and everything went back to normal.”

“How fortunate.” the crow rejoiced.

“I’m not so sure. When I think about it, if the reason my dad died in the face of Mysticism was for our comfort, I would never have let him go. Because I preferred my own comfort over his safety, my father…”

Saburō stopped, and closed his eyes.
Trying his best to think of something else, he shook his head and looked above at the blue sky.

“Well, after that, I made the decision to live as comfortably as possible. Otherwise he would have died for nothing.”

“I see…”

As if satisfied by what he heard, the white crow took flight again and cawed a few times.

“As I thought you really are special, as are the saviors that preceded you. And as I peer into fate, your work of salvation will truly be thankless.”

The crow cawed again, very, very loudly.

“Then, under the authority of my master, I will reward this thankless savior.”

“A reward?”

“Yes. It’s high time I gave some explanations. But first, I have a question for you.”

Suddenly, the earth trembled. From the ground, right below the crow, a white stake of marble rose higher than the others and stopped in front of Saburō’s eyes.

“Tell me, young savior. Whose name did you read in the sticky note?”

“So it was a name I read?”

Confused, Saburō just gazed at the white stake.
For some reason, he felt nostalgic.
And as nostalgia grew, while it was faint, he could read something engraved into the stake.

It was a name: Ichirō Mitsugami.
The name of his deceased father.