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“What I don’t understand,” you begin with lightly, watching the way your shadow tightens and stretches as you pass under a streetlight, “is why out of all the billions of people in the world, you decide to pass time with me.”
The boy next to you – even though he weighs infinitely and negatively, and his massive, thick wings take up more space than his ethereal body does – casts no shadow at all as he retorts, “Well, I don’t know if you understand how this works, but I am your guardian angel, and you are you.”
You do get it, of course. Kind of. Not that you had believed any such divine nonsense to be real – and speaking candidly, you sometimes did feel that you were perhaps more mentally unwell than originally anticipated and Hoshi was only a figment of an ill mind playing desperate tricks on you – but you were you and he was him and this is how things were and that was that!
That was that.
You have never told Hoshi the real reasons for talking these walks.
Sometimes you leave at seven, and sometimes you leave at ten. Sometimes you forget your coat, and he gives you his – he always knows, somehow, when to bring one. The season or weather determines nothing except how cold or wet you’ll be when you get home. Sometimes you leave at one in the morning and don’t come back until the sun is up.
Sometimes you stick to the sidewalks, crosswalks, benches. Sometimes you stray on the road.
Sometimes you bring your ear buds. And sometimes you don’t.
The only qualification is that it is late, and you feel like you want to die. So you tempt fate.
If there is a god – and you’re still not sure about that one – and free will maybe isn’t as much as a thing as you’d like it to be, God knew that you would be taking these long walks, and that was why you got landed with the cute blonde from hell who smiled too much and whose eyes vanished the moment he felt a lick of happiness. Despite being surly in his bad moods, he was the never-failing optimist. But he had to be, didn’t he? He was an angel.
He promises you, however, that not all angels are so kind.
“There’s Jeonghan,” he educates you solemnly, one day, and you almost want to meet him just from the fact that Hoshi singled him out in particular. “Who probably shouldn’t even be one of us, come to think of it.”
“Hoshi, that’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said,” you inform him, and it’s meant to be teasing, but his face contorts into horror and he sputters into excuses and half-apologies to nobody in particular and you keep walking.
Tonight is like any other night, in most regards. It’s a little humid from the rainstorm earlier, but it cooled down in the evening. Hoshi almost looks normal– no, no, no, scratch that. Hoshi has been with you for so many years now that your concept of “normal” has warped.
The first time you saw him, when you were fourteen and crying as you tried to run away from home for the first (though not last) time, he appeared in a swirl of fire and light, wings distended and feathers sharp as blades as they surrounded his body like an ungodly ball of yarn to shelter the clockesque eyes that dappled his flesh. He had spoken in a pitched hiss that were only thoughts instead of sounds, and said, “Do not be afraid!”
You had fainted on the spot. Thankfully, he’d had the sense to catch you, and when you came to, he was down to only eight wings and covered his eyes completely.
But his smile still dazzled, apologetically. “Sorry about that!”
Nowadays, he really tried to tone it down – no billowing robes and extra eyeballs. His wings had all merged into the huge, stonelike structures out of old statues carved by the ancient masters, with thick feathers hard as wood and the color of clouds and their shadows. The sheer strength in them was incredible. Sometimes, if he turned his head too fast, you might catch a flicker of white fire in his movements, and something about him was just bright sometimes, bright in a way you felt rather than saw.
But when it came down to it, he was an angel in a black sweater and jeans, and your death wish never came to fruition.
“Hoshi,” you ask, out of curiousity, “really, why me?”
You ask this question a lot. He never gives you a straight answer.
“You’re you. Really,” he says briefly, whistling as he strolls with you past the empty park, swing rocking in the breeze.
“So did you choose me?” you venture instead. “Or were you assigned to me?”
“Both,” he answers, which doesn’t answer anything. Of course. You sigh, pocketing your hands and gazing down at the sidewalk. You can remember the last words your mother said to you, biting and unnecessary, and the bitterness keeps you talking even though you probably shouldn’t anymore. You can tell he gets uncomfortable when you press too much.
But who cared, anyway? You didn’t want to be here, and maybe if he left, that could happen. It’s a sour and awful thing to think.
“Can I ask God for a refund?”
Hoshi isn’t happy this time – you can hear it in his voice.
“No,” he says, a little tense. “You can’t.”
“Then what about a redo? What if I promise not to do anything bad?”
“Humans are born with sin. Can’t get out of that one. Anyway, the sin part doesn’t matter – it’s stuff you can’t control. I’m your grace, not your baptism.”
Sometimes the things he says make no sense at all. That’s not to be unexpected, though, so you just shrug and glance up at him, admiring how the moonlight illuminates his shock of hair like a halo – there was no halo, though, of course, because those weren’t real. The countless eyes and overgrown wings were.
“Hoshi,” you say, suddenly overcome with truth and a few other emotions you don’t like to acknowledge, “what happens if I die?”
You anticipate another sarcastic hedge, or an exhausted non-answer. You might even expect a snippy retort.
But Hoshi stops in his tracks. You almost stumble from the abruptness of it, tripping on your own feet, but rebalance and turn sharply to face him under the flickering light of the streetlamp.
His expression is fretful, half concerned and half frustrated. His wings quiver gently in the chilly wind, and you feel very small in that tiny moment before what you so often forget is a divine creature.
Or a vivid, cruel hallucination. You mustn’t forget that possibility.
“Why,” he asks, desperately, “why, why do you want to perish so badly? What drives this in you? I enjoy our walks, so much. I cherish every conversation, and there is so much goodness in you – you have so much virtue. I admire you. You’re a wonderful human; a precious lamb. Why cannot you love yourself, too? Why not as much as– …Why?”
The weight of his emotions filter through his agonized interrogation – the air does that humming, vibrating thing it does when he just feels too much, and your skin prickles under the power it exudes. You have to remind yourself to keep breathing; that it’s Hoshi, and Hoshi couldn’t and wouldn’t ever, ever hurt you.
But you don’t know what to say. Struggling, you try to verbalize what the hell depression is to an angel, of all things – “It’s… It’s not easy to explain, Hosh. Bad things happen and I’m just, just very tired, and it doesn’t seem worth it. There’s not value in feeling all these bad things and hardly getting a reprieve from it? Do you know what I mean?”
No, of course he doesn’t–
“Yes,” he cries back, “yes, I do, but you’re wrong. It is worth it. You have – you have such a life! You have a life. You have this entire life to yourself. It is yours and no one else’s. You should not be wasteful, you should not throw away such a precious and valuable thing! Wars are fought for you, heavens align for you, I am here for you. God breathes in and out for your existence. Ten thousand bad days vanish under the birth of a single good – imagine two, or three? Imagine thousands. Please understand me. Please.”
The angel is centimeters from you out of nowhere, his hands grasping your tightly and holding them between you. You’ve never felt this temperature before – white hot and burning cold and just right, just perfectly right. You can see Hoshi’s extra eyes manifesting, all looking mournful and anguished from his neck and cheekbones and forehead. And deep down – deep, deep down – you want to kiss him, so badly. If there was only one good thing in the world, it could maybe be that.
“Hey, relax, birdy,” you managed to get out, a little more choked up than you hoped to be from his passionate testament. “It’s okay. I promise. Don’t get your feathers all ruffled, okay?”
Your lighthearted response, an old nickname referencing his extra appendages, did nothing to assuage his fears, and his brow furrowed deeper, angrier. His old, sacred accent and syntax slip into his language the more emotional he grows. “I will do no such thing. You are the one who needs to grow your own – feathers, wings, I-I don’t know! I do not know how to make you understand my heart.”
Hoshi’s voice, a beautiful and surreal warble, gentled at the end with melancholy. He was like a summer storm, rushing between torrential rain and lightning and faint drizzles where the sun peeked through holes in the clouds. His hands left yours, and you felt a sudden, powerful emptiness inside of you that you had never known until they cupped your face instead, tracing your eyebrows and thumbing the apples of your cheeks.
“What are you saying?” you murmured, stunned.
Hoshi lamented, unsure of how to act or speak; angels weren’t equipped for such things. He could only do his best.
“I want – I want you to understand my heart,” he professes again, but to little more avail. “To know you are beautiful and good. I chose you, because you chose me. You crave death because it brings safety, but I crave you because that is what death brought me.”
“You… died…?” you blinked, lost and overwhelmed by what Hoshi was very suddenly implying to you. You had always thought or been led to believe that angels were just – they just were, they had always been. Not… not made. Turned… into?
Hoshi grimaced, but nodded firmly. “I did, yes. I lusted for an end that I thought would be better. I gave up my precious gift of life, and was given you. Atonement and salvation – I must stop you from making such a grievous mistake as I did.”
You can’t – won’t understand the gravity of what he’s saying. You refuse. It’s becoming all the more likely your mind is irrevocably broken, and you start to move away, but wings split from his back and Hoshi looks miserably cross and delusion or not, it’s breaking your heart to see so you stay put and obediently, selfishly press your face closer to his soft hold.
“That’s crazy,” your voice cracks, but he just shakes his head.
“It is not. Tis the truth of mine. You must understand my heart. You cannot escape such love. I… I want to be your grace, for now, and for-ever.” His voice hollows out. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“That’s…” You can’t find any words. Your vocabulary abandons you, along with your sanity and rationality. All you want is to throw yourself into his arms, hug him until the world falls away. You want to be held, and loved, and forget.
There is happiness with Hoshi. That is your truth, and you strive to fight it back, and not admit it.
“You have,” you breathe out, shakily, “the most beautiful heart in the universe. Did you know that, Hoshi?”
His expression is unreadable – if only angels could blush. But his eyes turn molten and his mouth melts into a watery smile.
“Because it loves you,” he professes, and your lips part in a silent oh.
“But,” you stammer, heart immediately thrown into a wild panic as his statement sinks in. This can’t be. He can’t, can he? He’s an angel. Things don’t work like that. Life doesn’t work like that. “B-but, you… You… P-platonic, yes? Godly love?”
“The most divine of all loves,” he elaborates genuinely, the utmost seriousness in his gaze. You think you can feel your knees giving out, but something about his presence alone keeps you upright. “Agape, eros, storge, philia. Each and every.”
At ‘eros’, you felt faint.
“Is that,” your voice gave out and you struggled to get it back, “allowed?”
Hoshi grins, and it is the incarnation of love and light itself. You understand very quickly, in that moment, why God decided on him.
“Who knows?” he says airily, as if you’re only discussing the weather. His hands stretch about your face, cupping it fully, and he leans in close to press his forehead to yours. Waves and waves of searing, delicate power surge through you like a storm system – static and potential energy all convalescing on tides of light. Hoshi shuts all of his eyes, and smiles softly.
“It’s alright to feel the things you do,” he promises, and the sentence rings through your head like bells, like the first time you met, “but I only ask that you not let them guide your heart. I would like to keep your heart. Safe, with mine. You need only ask, child.”
He only calls you ‘child’ in moments of particular fondness; it’s a term of the utmost endearment, you have even called him in your own moments of weakness. It makes you wonder how old he really is; how long he lingered before you came along.
But perhaps he will give you the opportunity to find out.
“If I kiss you,” you ask softly, “will it hurt?”
An eye peeks open, and his smile curls tauntingly. “T’shouldn’t.”
–
You wake up the next morning from strange, long dreams; twisting white and flames that had names, thousands of eyes that looked past you and into your future, and voices so penetrating you could not hear them. The sunlight in your room felt dull waking from those visions, and the sheer intensity of them almost felt like nightmares.
But they weren’t. They were just a lot. Regardless, you woke up oddly… refreshed. Like you had just made a promise.
You didn’t feel much like dying.
Your mother was kind that morning. Breakfast was already on the table, and she apologized for what she’d said the night before. You could hardly remember what it even was.
“By the way,” she adds offhandedly, “your friend came by, but I told him you were still sleeping.”
Something in you clicks, like a clothespin snapping in your heart. Instantly, you’re wide awake, fork pausing halfway to the pancake. “What?”
“The boy from across the road in that house that went up for sale,” she explains patiently, obviously thinking you’re still not quite all there in the head yet, and honestly, maybe you’re not. “Very blonde, almost white hair. Lives with his older brother who runs that youth group. Need coffee?”
Something in you swells and swells to the point of almost bursting. You really don’t want to cry at the dinner table, so you just push your plate away and wipe off your hands in a hurry, stumbling to the front door – “Sorry, I’ll be back in a minute, this is important!”
You’re still in your pajamas – flimsy shorts and a t-shirt, hair in a terrific excuse for a bun – when you sprint barefoot down your driveway and across the asphalt to the house just diagonal of yours. There are dense trees on either side, and a lake just behind it that you’ve paced a thousand times.
At the front door, you hesitate only a painful second before rapping on the screen quickly, lightly. Your heart has never raced so much and you feel like you’re going to explode if something doesn’t happen and then the door opens, a male with silky black hair and heavy-lidded eyes answering with a kind smile.
“Ah,” he hums, “it’s you.”
“Me?” you squeak.
You’ll learn later that his name is Seungcheol, but that doesn’t matter at the time; what matters is that he yells a strangled noise when he is rapidly shoved out of the way and a force of nature swings the doors open in one swift motion, nearly killing you.
But, much like the first time you met, he catches you safe and sound.
Hoshi – you’ll learn later it was really Soonyoung all along – kisses every inch of your face, over and over and over, long and short, soft and sweet, firm and sloppy and wet. He hugs you so tightly you can’t breathe.
He smells like citrus, and it’s heavenly.
“Hoshi!” you finally splutter out, eyelashes damp, “I-I thought–?”
“Thought what?” he sing-songs, nuzzling your cheek like a dog would more than an angel. “Thought wrong, I think. Oh, your heart feels good. I can feel it. You’re the perfect morsel.”
“I just…” Everything is spinning, but in a good way, and it’s all you can do to breathe in, and then out, and clutch desperately to his clothes which are very real and very normal and not hindered by eyes or wings. “I don’t understand, wh-what… Why?” you settle on weakly.
Hoshi pulls back just enough to stare you in the face, and he’s as bright as the biggest star in the sky even though it’s half past night and you are utterly, absolutely in love.
“Well…” he purrs, and even in this human body his voice still strums notes in your head and wakes up your heart. “Because I am yours, and you are you.”
That’s all the answer you’re going to get out of him, you suppose, and that’s fine. Many things happened between last night and now, and you had all the time in the world to figure out the rest.
But in the meantime.
“That’s good,” you whisper, grinning ear to ear and sniffling a little. “I think it makes sense now.”
“Really?” he perks up. Seeing him like this makes you severely question why you didn’t kiss him sooner.
“Really,” you gush, leaning up for your own quick peck that he practically melts under.
And it does make sense. It makes all the sense in the world.
You know his heart.