No One is Born French

…The Mourning Council?

I wrinkled my small, fair nose. That name didn’t sound very auspicious.

“Mourning,” as the name implies, is about reporting sad, negative things. Like the middle-aged man before me. His daughter fell to her death, which was already a tragedy. But then the Mourning Council sent a letter telling him that not only was his daughter dead, but she didn’t even have a chance to be reincarnated. She had become an earthbound spirit, forever bound by resentment and loneliness in this long-abandoned dormitory building. If he went there, he could see her one last time. Although it allowed the man to see his daughter one last time, it was hardly a joyous occasion.

To be honest, the moment I heard the name “Mourning Council,” an image immediately popped into my head. A group of strange people in dark robes and pointed-beak crow masks were gathered around a huge, round wooden table, chirping and arguing:

[Hey! We’ve accumulated so many tragic events that haven’t been reported. Shouldn’t we improve our efficiency?!]

[Yeah, look at that guy named John Doe. His old man was visiting a prostitute in another city, got caught in a honey trap, and had a heart attack and died on the spot from the shock. Such a tragic thing hasn’t been reported to John by letter yet. This is a disgrace to the name of our Mourning Council!]

[Councilor Sharp Beak, everything has its order. We’re currently writing a letter to report an even more tragic event. We really can’t spare the time for this John you’re talking about.]

[Oh? An even more tragic event? Tell me about it, Councilor Dark Feather.]

[It’s a guy named Tom Smith. Not only was his old man caught in a honey trap while visiting a prostitute in another city and died of a heart attack, but we also found out that the one who set the honey trap for his old man was his own mother, who was also working as a migrant worker in another city. His parents’ eyesight wasn’t very good, so they didn’t recognize each other at the time. When his mother found out that the man she had just honey-trapped was her own husband and that it had caused him to have a fatal heart attack, she, who also had a weak heart, had an attack as well and died in another city, right after her husband. We’re in a hurry to write a letter to Tom now.]

[Alright, I have to admit, Tom’s situation is more tragic right now.]

Oh my god! I can see it now… I covered my face with my hands, unable to believe that there could be parents with such poor eyesight in this world.

The police were very efficient. Not long after we saw the police cars stop at the entrance of the building with their sirens wailing, the sound of someone climbing the ladder came from the entrance to the rooftop. Just like in Detective Conan, after everything was over, the police arrived as scheduled to clean up the mess.

The first to climb up to the rooftop from the square skylight was a female police officer. She was dressed in a sharp police uniform, with neat short hair that reached her earlobes. Her wheat-colored skin showed the hardship of wind and sun and a healthy physique honed by exercise. Her sharp chin was both beautiful and handsome.

Right now, besides the police, there was one corpse and six living people on the rooftop. The corpse was the influencer-faced girl who had often bullied others in the visions. The six living people included the four of us brothers (sisters?), and the remaining two were the middle-aged man who was looking for his daughter and the coerced homeless man.

The handsome female police officer immediately drew her gun and took a defensive stance after climbing onto the rooftop. Her sharp eyes swept over the four of us. Probably based on the description from the viewer who had called the police, she quickly confirmed our innocence and then pointed the dark muzzle of her gun at the gloomy-faced man and the cowering, trembling homeless man.

She shouted in a low, sharp, and commanding voice, “Hands on your head! Squat down and don’t move!”

Before the targets of her shout, the middle-aged man and the homeless man, could even react, Saber, who was dressed like an English butler from the last century, as if she had practiced it a thousand times, reflexively put her hands on her head and squatted down in a perfectly standard criminal posture.

Everyone present was stunned.

The homeless man, who had been slowly reacting and was about to put his hands on his head, froze. He looked at Saber foolishly, his eyes seeming to say: Did I misunderstand? The police officer wasn’t talking to me, but telling this pretty girl to squat down? But this foreign girl didn’t do anything? But if she didn’t do anything, why was she so scared that she squatted down immediately?

The female police officer who had shouted was also dumbfounded. The steady muzzle of her gun wavered uncertainly towards Saber, then back to the homeless man and the middle-aged man, but then she felt it was safer to point it at Saber. In her not-so-short police career, anyone who could react so quickly and squat down with their hands on their head without hesitation was definitely a repeat offender who had been arrested more than once. Only by being arrested many times could one develop such a skilled surrender posture.

No one is born ’French.’

The male police officer who climbed up from the skylight behind the female officer was also bewildered. He clearly didn’t understand why his reliable colleague was ignoring the two men who looked much more like criminals and instead was making this very pretty, androgynous-looking foreign youth squat down with their hands on their head.

Finally, Yukino, who was standing next to Saber, couldn’t take it anymore.

With an expression that said “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life,” she rubbed her fair forehead, forcefully pulled the obediently squatting Saber up, and whispered to her, “She wasn’t telling you to do that.” Then she pulled the relieved-looking Saber over to me and Exusiai. The four of us moved out of the police officers’ way and huddled in a corner of the rooftop.

I heard Yukino questioning Saber, “Why are you so skilled at putting your hands on your head and squatting down? Just how many times have you been arrested?!”

I thought Saber would say the classic line, “Do you remember how many slices of bread you’ve eaten in your life?”, but instead, she lowered her fair eyelids, her long, golden eyelashes trembling slightly, and shook her head, whispering, “I’ve never been arrested. It was just… an involuntary reaction.”

“What kind of involuntary reaction is that?!” Yukino clearly didn’t understand Saber’s logic.

Saber straightened her thin back, gently pushed up her monocle, and explained like a learned old gentleman, “They say if you have a clear conscience, you’re not afraid of ghosts knocking on your door. Although I haven’t done anything wrong, I have thought about a lot of bad things, you know what kind, in my heart. Sometimes I even dream about them. So a lot of the time I get confused, I can’t remember if I did those things in my dreams or in reality. So when I see the police…”

She looked up at the night sky, half-sighing, half-smiling. “…I always feel a natural sense of panic.”

“How can you say such things that people don’t even know how to react to in such a serious and pretentious tone?!” I retorted in disbelief.