Chapter 15
Book Chapter 8
“Sleep well.” Ian stroked the head of the angel, who was breathing shallowly in sleep. Seeing the quietly sleeping figure, a smile rose to his lips on its own. When people in the human world say someone is like an angel, they must be talking about Yuri. Clear and clean.
Brushing aside the softly tousled black hair, he bent down. He kissed the white cheek, and kissed the lips, swollen red and plump, with a touch so light it tickled.
“Have good dreams, Yuri.”
Watching the lips mumbling in sleep with affection, Ian soon rose from beside the bed. He covered the quietly lying body with the blanket and left the angel’s house, silencing his footsteps.
Is this the last time here too? Looking at the dimly brightening sky and the small white house, Ian suddenly let out a faint laugh. No, it’s not the last. I have to come back to watch the fireworks.
The angel’s face, fluttering with uncontainable excitement, came vividly before his eyes again. How many days ago was that? Time, which had crawled when they couldn’t meet, was so fast when they were together.
Tomorrow the confinement period ends. The angel, coming to him until the very last day, had drawn his lips in with a deep movement. Still clumsy, but that yearning heart was so nakedly felt that he had to put strength into his fingertips, which were turning sinister without his knowing. He had only touched the deep parts of the white wings, calming the heat that rose subtly.
Ian glanced down at his own hand, then walked again.
The path, soft yet firm, was familiar now. The white clothes, worn more often lately than the black ones, were familiar too. The other angels passing by now and then went on their way without much reaction upon seeing him. Since everyone lived far apart, they probably didn’t know well who lived where. Thinking that fortunate, Ian walked calmly across Heaven’s clouds.
“Oh no.”
Just his luck. Ian stopped walking and let out a light sigh, sweeping his hair up.
At the end of the cloud path nearest the angel’s house, by the gate down to the human world, an angel stood gazing into the empty air, long hair fluttering. The hem of the white dress, reaching to her feet, also fluttered in the wind. It was certainly a striking sight, but Ian only nodded awkwardly, troubled.
To go down to the human world’s gate, he had to spread his black wings. Revealing outright that he was a demon was a bit awkward. A demon coming up to Heaven wasn’t forbidden in itself, but just as in the Underworld, it wasn’t welcomed.
Well, nothing for it. Let’s take a detour.
Ian hid his presence and quietly turned his body.
“Is Yuri sleeping well?”
His body froze. Ian slowly turned his head. A voice, tinged with laughter, coming from afar, stopped him in his tracks.
What is this woman?
Into Ian’s eyes, frozen expressionless, a woman wearing a gentle smile drew closer. The strange angel, who had come all the way before him, smiled with soft eyes. Her dignified gaze met his on equal footing.
“Could we talk for a moment?”
This woman is an archangel. The density of the energy rippling near the strange angel was clearly different from other angels. It was like a pressure squeezing his body. Ian clenched his tingling hand tight, then opened it again.
Ian swept his sharp gaze over the angel. No negative or aggressive energy could be felt from her gentle face. And yet, it was starkly clear that the conversation to follow would not be a pleasant one.
It’s probably a story about my angel.
Ian drew in a cool breath and met the angel’s eyes. He said nothing in particular. But as if accepting even that silence as tacit permission, the strange angel smiled gently and nodded.
***
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen a demon come up to Heaven personally.” The archangel, having served tea on a white table, sat across from Ian and tilted her teacup. Ian, glancing down at the teacup he hadn’t touched, let out a low breath and sat up straight. A long while of quiet passed. The archangel, who had been watching him with gentle eyes, opened her mouth in a smooth voice.
“Yuri hasn’t been coming to visit lately, so I wondered if it was because of you?”
“Isn’t he lovely? Yuri.”
What does she want me to say? Watching her tuck her long hair lightly behind her ear, Ian quietly closed and opened his eyes, betraying no emotion. He couldn’t even guess how long the angel before him had lived. What she thought in arranging this meeting, why she brought up his angel’s story, what she wanted: none of it was visible.
Everything is hazy. That was also why he himself had little interest in the angel race, and if anything, was closer to disliking them. The angels of this zone, especially the long-lived ones, were terribly cold.
Demons wouldn’t be any different, but the angels’ depth was different. As those who governed bright energy, it was as if they wouldn’t allow even the smallest speck of dust.
There’s no need for me to bring up Yuri’s story first. Thinking quietly, Ian looked at the archangel with an impassive face, then sighed and smiled.
“If you have something to say, I’d like you to say it without beating around the bush.” A cold feeling seeped into his languid voice. But the archangel only smiled peacefully and quietly set down her teacup.
“Angels and demons meeting is something that’s been happening since time immemorial. It’s like an open secret. Actually, even if they meet, there’s nothing wrong with it, but as you know, most of them don’t end well.”
“…”
“Yuri is an angel who has only just become an adult. Having grown up knowing nothing, there must be many things that are novel and curious to him.”
“…”
“I think you are one of those novel things.” Ian lowered his sharp eyes and sneered. Leaning deep into his chair, he tilted his head as if to say, go on. Despite Ian’s cold expression and arrogant posture, the archangel showed no displeasure at all as she continued.
“Yuri came to find me a little while ago, after being confined. I could have resolved it, but I didn’t. He’s a bit slow in places, so he’s often scolded, but this was the first time he received a confinement punishment. Seeing that, it’s clear Yuri hasn’t been living well lately.”
“The reason is probably you.”
The archangel’s gaze was calm as a lake without a ripple, and it also held a certain pity. Even that irritated Ian.
“Since you’ve lived longer than Yuri, you must understand what I’m saying.” His mind grew colder and sharper.
“Does Heaven try to control even whom an angel meets and takes interest in?”
“…”
“If that’s the case, I don’t understand why you let them roam so freely.” Ian looked at the archangel with an incredulous sneer.
Really, it made no sense. If, just because one angel who had only just become able to travel alone met a demon, an archangel would step forward like this, then why let them wander the human world so freely? Why leave Midnight, where angels and demons meet as they please and spend dissolute time, untouched, pretending not to know? How do they control all those angels, to say such things so nonchalantly?
The archangel was silent for a long while, as if thinking something. She only gazed far away with a quietly sinking expression. Ian, watching that profile expressionlessly, soon rose from his seat. And to the archangel, who slowly turned to look, he said in a flat, dry tone, “I’m grateful that you said that to me first rather than to Yuri, but as you said a moment ago, if angels and demons meeting is an open secret and there’s nothing particularly wrong with it, I’d like you to stop concerning yourself with it further.”
“…”
“One doesn’t meet weighing whether the end will be good or bad.” Actually, he didn’t know what a good end or a bad end was. What is a good end, and what is a bad end? An angel and a demon met. Had he ever heard what happened after that?
The stories of demons who had met angels, as far as he’d heard, ended in one night. Or two days, three at most. Even that wasn’t common, and even when they met, most began with the body and ended with the body. Was this archangel talking about only that kind of end? An end of a one-night dalliance, mixing bodies? Yuri and I are not like that.
The archangel’s eyes were still calm. Meeting those unknowable eyes and emotionless gaze, he turned his head. There was nothing more to say. Stop on your own, since the end might not be good? Did she think he’d agree to just that? To Ian, the angel was not such a light thing. It may have been light as a feather at first, but clearly it was not now.
Ian walked across a terrace far wider and higher than the white house where his angel lived. Perhaps because it was a zone close to the center, a gate to the human world shimmered right below the terrace.
“Shall we talk differently?”
Ian, who had been letting his black wings droop, glanced back. Her voice was heavy. The archangel, still seated at the table, met his gaze slowly, and in her eyes there was none of the gentleness from before. Only something excessively thick, heavy, and deep. Ian stood still with his wings drooping.
“First, I was mistaken earlier. I thought you considered Yuri, who knows nothing, as an easy plaything.”
A plaything. Chewing over the absurd word, he furrowed his brow. Looking at the increasingly sharp Ian, the archangel let out a heavy sigh as if calm.
“Since you seem to genuinely cherish Yuri, let me talk differently.”
“…”
“Yuri will become an archangel, and he was born to be one.” The archangel’s words, without the slightest trace of a smile, poured into his mind, whitened and blank, in a sharp shape. Ian bit his lip. A faint confusion mixed into his sharpened eyes. Without even giving him time to sort out his suddenly crumbling mind, the archangel calmly continued.
“One does not become an archangel through effort. From birth, one is born clearly different from other angels. If there are no major problems, one naturally becomes an archangel upon receiving the blessing of the higher generation.”
“You know well that Yuri is far gentler and purer than other angels. And that not all angels are as pure as Yuri.”
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