[center][color=red].。.:*・°[/color][big][b]Walking, Talking, Living Dead[/b][/big][color=red]°・*:.。.[/color]
[small]ＷＡＮＴＥＤ　ＤＥＡＤ，　ＮＯＴ　ＲＥＡＮＩＭＡＴＥＤ，　ＢＹ　ＴＨＥ　ＪＡＰＡＮ　ＢＲＡＮＣＨ　ＯＦ　ＴＨＥ　ＧＬＯＢＡＬ　ＰＳＹＣＨＯＰＯＭＰ　ＡＧＥＮＣＹ[/small][/center][hr]Life's hard on you, when you don't know what to do with it. Young, uncertain, and directionless, it's all too easy to tell yourself, "It's okay, I'll just follow into university, declare a major when I'm ready, and just work on general education for a few semesters while I sort myself out." The days, weeks, months pass by. Suddenly, life's passed you by, and it's over. All over.

German-Japanese girl, with a stay-at-home father; got fired for approving a faulty gearshift, and a mother working legal that at least spared him legal liability after litigation began once the fault resulted in a single-vehicle collision with a garage door. She had an uneventful youth and a perfectly unremarkable educational history. Above average, yes, but nothing truly special. Pass entrance exams, yes. Nobel prize winner, no. Finally in university, the designated driver on the way back from a party, the only buckled of six in a five-seat subcompact. Despite surviving the accident initially, she died in hospital five days later from unrelated causes.

Still, even after death, Mukuro refused to pass on. Escaping from the agents of death and transmigration of the soul to the manifold afterlives, she managed to sneak into her body, the fierce will to live forcefully reanimated the dead, embalmed flesh. The heart did not beat. The lungs did not breathe. The cells did not duplicate, nor did the disinfectant-antimicrobial fill where her blood once was flow. Yet still, she lived, climbing out of the casket. Shunned from previous life for being... dead, her only contact with her previous life are occasional letters the girl sends to her parents. Sometimes they write back.

She makes a living as a florist, living upstairs and working downstairs and in the back lot. It's a living, and a comfortable one. Western flower arrangement and ikebana both are rather relaxing to her, and it pays her mortuary bills. Oh, yes. She has her own medical bills, visiting a mortician once every other week for regular checkups to prevent any decay, ensure she's properly hydrated so she doesn't start drying out, and repairing any cuts or nicks she might end up with. Dead flesh, even animated dead flesh, doesn't heal. Still, even at room temperature, she wants warmth, and even in her own waking death, she wants love.

[collapse=Sordid details]Yes, there was the accident; a speeding ten-ton dekotora monstrosity with the speed governor illegally disabled, T-boning into the barely-1000kg hatchback from the passenger side. Everyone but Mukuro died rather quickly, for whom the vehicle and passengers served as a large crumple zone. It was her and Rin, the pretentious artist and bleeding heart of the six, Masumi, the language major and hopeless romantic, Clarisse, the abroad student from one of those states in America and hilariously bad Japanese, Eri, a business major and a total himono-onna case, and Sachiko, an aspiring doctor with an abusive father she didn't talk a whole lot about.

The passenger side collapsed violently and was perforated by the protrusions in the truck, immediately killing Sachiko in front, Masumi in the back, and Rin, who was sitting on her lap. Eri, in the middle, was fatally wounded, but not immediately killed; she was impaled, rather than crushed. The truck swerving sent the car careening in a wide arc into a traffic divider, spinning. It hit corner-on and buckled into Clarisse's thigh and turned razor sharp as it tore and bared the sharp metal underneath. She was the last one to die, the bleeding slowed by the pressure enough to prolong her death but not enough to keep her alive for emergency services. She died trying to talk to Mukuro about how wide America's countryside is, miles of open land without a town in sight, charming islands of civilization where everyone knows everyone, and the stores that were owned by the people who built the town together, and...

Five deaths at once made for a lot of paperwork - if also much needed quota - for Makedon, agent of the Global Psychopomp Agency present at the time. By the time he got to Mukuro, having already authorized the metempsychosis of the five already dead, to its chagrin, emergency services pulled her bleeding, pinned, and slashed form from the wreck, and managed to stabilize her long enough for proper treatment at the hospital. One less. Shoot. The truck driver was immediately charged with five counts of and one attempt of vehicular homicide, negligence, endangerment, illegally operating a motor vehicle, and everything else the wailing and gnashing of the public could force the prosecutor to charge.

At the hospital, Mukuro gradually recovered, already walking short distances on her second day and near-ambulatory on her third day, other than the need to remain in bed more often than not to let her sutured lacerations and other wounds close up. Though she survived, though, Mukuro was forever, permanently removed from the everyday and average since she saw that inscrutable figure in a brown, worn suit and leather jacket walking her friends away from the scene of the accident one by one. The friends she heard gurgle and wail and plead for help, pray in vain, and slowly fade to black. On her sixth day she choked on a grape at and died in hospital at 02:13 AM. The call button was just out of reach as she, herself, prayed in vain and faded to black. Roll credits. So, so painfully close.

Or was it? Tychon, another agent, had this ward as 'territory.' The people who died there was for it and nobody else to send to places beyond - Heaven, Nirvana, Valhalla, Hades, Yomi, the Celestial Village of Deeply Embarrassed Atheists - whatever they wanted. But Makedon already had dibs on her soul. Bickering like children on a playground, the petulant shining cloud of inappropriately ebullient luminescence had a row with the hapless, decidedly [i]noir[/i] supernatural entity, still behind quota, Mukuro managed to escape from the two and hid. Three nights later, she stole back into her body, then embalmed and on the funeral altar. Tears and peals of sobbing turned into horrified shrieks as Mukuro's body stirred from its cadaverous slumber and stumbled away in its cute black dress. She survived. In a way.[/collapse]

[collapse=(Un)life goes on]The rigor mortis wore off soon enough, and she was walking instead of shambling again. There's worse things than being a reanimated corpse. For one, there's being dead-for-real. There's also being homeless, destitute, and lonely. Mukuro, thankfully, is none of these. (Okay, the last one a little.) Owner-employee of The Delicate Blossom, a one-woman floristry outfit with specialties in funerals and available for other general occasions, weddings at shinto shrines notwithstanding, even after rent, bills, and taxes, she makes a reasonable amount of disposable income, enough to provide her with cute dresses, bribes for officials to make life easier as a deceased citizen walking, and special services from mortuaries to keep her preserved. She would not be caught dead looking like some ragged zombie. Occasionally, even, she finds herself enlisting the help of someone arcane to try to deal with a new cut or scratch she picked up. Provided they can prove they're not some charlatan, of course.

[collapse=27FA ISO M/F/?, FWB/LTR, OPEN MINDS ONLY]It's embarrassing, but Mukuro doesn't feel all too comfortable trying to find strangers right away in person. It's part and parcel of being self conscious about one's postmortem state. So what do you do? Find stupid amounts of strangers instantly over the internet! First a chat, then a few pictures, and before you know it, a meeting; just friends or with an eye towards something more, the hapless girl just wants warmth.[/collapse]
[collapse=White rose for each attendee, a wreath on the casket, and...]Mukuro [i]does[/i] still run a business, and while most often she works via internet order or over the phone, usually only appearing in person to help set the flowers right at the venue when called for, the shop [i]does[/i] have a storefront too, where during business hours smaller bouquets, vases, and arrangements make their way to the hands of hopeful, happy, and sad passers-by. It's a nice job. Besides: just like her, the flowers are dead too.[/collapse]
[collapse=Kind of like a doctor's appointment. For dead people.]Well. More like a cross between a checkup and a spa visit, really. With whichever she's managed to not be [i]run away from[/i] long enough to explain that she is, in fact, dead, and could use their services on a periodic basis, Mukuro regularly has her body closely inspected, examined for any irregularities, and her fluids changed. Certainly, they'd just have to get to know each other a little from all that contact, right?[/collapse]

Now, if only she could still cum. Apparently some kind of nasty side effect of self-resurrection made that kinda stop working. Sex feels great, and there's certainly heat and passion. It just... plateaus and never reaches a peak, is all. A small price to pay, and one that really isn't all too important. A clearer mind appreciates the intimacy better, anyway.[/collapse]