Crystal clear skies surrounded the flying ferry girl, blue as the brightest sapphire and twice as pretty. Clouds, pure white and jet-puffed to be fluffier than any marshmallow stood in her path like trees along the road.

None of them were in Botan's way, which was odd, but well enough. Less navigating, less thought when there was nothing to hinder her.

Botan giggled to herself, wondering what Koenma-sama would say if he had heard that thought. Probably he would roll his eyes and ask what the difference was; she never thought anyway! It was his favorite insult towards her; "Stupid! Idiot! Dimwit!" She had heard it all over the course of her time at the Gate.

It actually was not that long, though. Not long enough for her to actually care.

She was young for a ferry girl. Goodness, she had not even been in service for ten years, she noted. She was still new to some idiosyncrasies of space-time and the workings of the Gods. It was actually a disgrace that Koenma-sama even knew her name; it was a mark of how much she stood out, with her cute, normally charming personality, and somewhat high voice. And her flakiness was probably also a factor, she thought. More than once, during inspections, she had made mistakes; dropping things and the like.

She was still new.

Too new.

She was on her way to check up on an unexpected death; some kid had jumped out in front of a car. DOA, apparently. Delinquent punk, if she remembered right.

She pulled her grade book out of her sleeve and flipped the pages, searching for the kid's name, one… ah, here it was. Yusuke Urameshi. Delinquent punk, just like she thought. Bad personality, worse grades, not very smart, either.

Bad home life, Botan read on. Teen mom. Houdini for a dad. Usually cases like that were suicides. Botan normally didn't take up suicides; she had trouble dealing with them. The rumor mill claimed that Ayame, Koenma-sama's not-so-secret crush, had taken one too many suicides up, and that was why she was so somber and depressive.

Other rumors said she had taken up souls from Mount Vesuvius, and still other claimed she had been there for the Holocaust.

While Botan didn't really believe the rumors, it was true she didn't want to turn into Ayame. Ayame was serious and devoted to her duties, yes, and she always got her work done, but she was so darn serious! It was "Yes, Koenma-sama," this and "No, Koenma-sama," that.

Botan couldn't stand to be some corporate big shot's son's "Yes-girl" and she showed it. As best as she could without getting fired. After all, if she got kicked out, what would happen to her? She was dead. Likely her folder would be brought back out and her life re-evaluated, and bye-bye Botan. She would be in heaven or hell, wherever it was she had originally been intended to go, when something had convinced the higher powers to offer her a job as ferry girl.

She was getting closer to the Haunt Site, she realized, as the human world became visible beneath her. Souls were immediately transferred to the place they were most likely to haunt as soon as they parted from their body. In most cases, it was the place where they had died, but others were taken to a location of heartbreak, or a fond memory they wanted to recapture… Luckily this Yusuke appeared to be on of the easy ones. Good thing; she was still a little unsure how to deal with this.

A person dying when they're not supposed to… Botan found the idea completely unbelievable at first. With gods in complete control of the Universe, how in the name of All That Is did this kid slip through the cracks? The first thing she had learned in Ferry Girl School was that "Everything Happens For A Reason."

Of course, as Ayame had hurriedly explained on the way to Koenma-sama's office, just because there's a reason doesn't mean the god in charge was paying attention to it. With Enma Daiou-sama's habit of rearranging fault lines and strategically deciding which volcanoes were best active, it wasn't surprising when phrased in those terms.

Botan had been the only staff member not doing anything at the time of Yusuke's stupidly heroic suicide. All the other girls were delivering paperwork, fetching scheduled souls, or taking an extra coffee break on the roof with their boyfriends.

Well, Bara was the only one who had the gall to really do that, but still…

So Botan had been saddled with the job of fetching the prodigal dead guy and explaining the rules of the Universe to him, and allowing him a second chance at life. He was amazingly fortunate. An oversight in the Book of the Dead and suddenly the guy doesn't have to be dead. Life (or death) just wasn't fair to the poor saps whose deaths had actually been noticed.

Botan sighed. It was no use being bitter over her death. It was not like she remembered anything about her life; when she entered the service, all memories of her mortal life had been erased. She could not even remember her name, or whether she had been human, demon or anything else. For all she knew, she could have been the soul of a particularly noble phoenix or tiger; she was nothing but pure energy. The form she took – a roughly fifteen-year-old girl with blue hair and pink eyes – was completely from her imagination. Her name had been given to her at her graduation from Ferry Girl School. Until then, she had just been Death Messenger Eighty-Three-Six-Oh-Two.

She sighed. Everything Happened For A Reason. There was a reason this kid got to enjoy a second chance and she was stuck playing gopher for a toddler. And there was a reason she was the gopher going for him.

A car crash was in sight now, plus an ambulance and a crowd. Botan frowned slightly; she never could understand what kind of morbid fascination could draw people to the sight and smell of death. It may have been her bias, though, she amended: she saw lots of ugly death scenes.

But a cheerier sight caught her cherry blossom eye.

The ghost of the delinquent Yusuke Urameshi was in sight, she found. He looked so serious, she noted gleefully, head bowed and brow creased in thought. She clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from giggling; it was so cute. She wondered if Koenma-sama thought anything like that when he saw her thinking.

Botan relaxed on her flying oar out of his range of sight. It seemed he was trying to figure out what on earth had happened to him. In her experience this could take hours or days. People just did not like to believe they could die. Humanity held the (incorrect) notion that it was immortal and invincible.

To her surprise, it took Yusuke about twenty-five minutes to appraise his day and come to the conclusion…

"So I'm a ghost."

She grinned, and swooped down, ready to inform the city's punk of just how right he was.

After all, he probably died for a reason.