Archive of Our Own ^beta

The trip from Bethlehem Point to Kyoto Station takes three hours. Not human hours though, of course; if Upper Time flowed at the same rate as Mortal, there wouldn't be much scope for a sizeable chunk of miracles. (Sizeable; not as in big, but as in very very big.) If you want to understand, think time travel, or teleporting. There wouldn't be many special effects if you didn't find another facet of Time to move on, would there? No slow motion, no speed blur. No sound barrier or supersonic bats. Remember, speed relies on distance, but also time. Time travel wouldn't work. And teleporting would take just as long as walking from one end of the earth to the other, on foot.

Anyway, back to the trip from Bethlehem Point to Kyoto Station. The Earthbound travel maps are all in human names. It makes it easier to navigate and align with the inhabitants. Newly trained angels gear up for their trips at the duty-free, and step into the monorail. The view is nothing too exciting, unless you're into psychedelic patterns and random smudged colors. Dimensions are a mess, visually, non-visually, whatever -- but traveling from one to another, perhaps through a few all at once, takes the mess up and gets it multiplied to an exponential level. Jongin isn't newly trained, isn't enthusiastic about the trips, and prefers neat to mess. She'd rather sit tight and stare at her feet (she likes going barefoot until she touches down on terra firma), the fellow passengers, or read a book. This she does.

A little girl peeks into her carriage, all six eyes wide. Two on her face, two on each shoulder. A Lillium angel. "Excuse me," she says, "When will we stop at Alamborough?"

Jongin practises her smile. It’s not rusty or slow in coming, but she still feels odd. "The stop's moved since the nuclear experiments by the locals. It's renamed Frlizbadt now, and shifted a few miles east."

The girl blinks nervously, face-eyes first, shoulder-eyes next. One at a time, so it looks like a wave of eyelashes. "Well, then," she replies, and totters off. Really, her kind are always so very small.

Jongin looks down at her own bare shoulders. Just a Terra Humanoid angel. A resurrected from death angel. Claimed by God early angel. Everyone convinces you your best friend is happy and transformed and beautiful now that she is dead angel. Jongin frowns. Something off with that last one. Perhaps they say it the other way around? Never mind. She takes out her book and begins to read.

She's just started on the third chapter, the protagonist kidnapped and about to be investigated, when the insides of her carriage shift. The blinds clack up by themselves, doors sealing shut. Wheels emerge from the floor before revolving a one-eighty and hissing to a firm fit on the other side. Jongin closes her eyes, sets her book down on the empty seat next to her. The smooth silence changes to a faint clack-clack-clack as the carriage begins to bump up and down the slightest bit on the track. She reaches out to part the blinds a little, hazard a glance at the outside. The track winds through a dank grey nothingness that stretches on, seemingly forever.

Almost there, she thinks to herself, leaning back in her seat. This is her final test, before she is officially marked as an angel and leaves the rookie ranks. It's a nice prospect, but once you leave the rookies you can't be excused out anything anymore, and everyone slams down hard on you with their elbows first. Jongin doesn't like to think about that much. That, or the fact that she'll be in the business for the rest of eternity.

Level up, level up, DJ Spock.

It's a phrase that's stuck with her since she was trained in at the job. Level I would be Armorial. Specialising in guarding the soul on its return to Neutralys, The Tranquility Zone. Level II is Retrieval. Focus on getting the soul awake after passing, convincing it to transform to give service. Level III is Hospice: befriend the dying. It's optional, and can be skipped, is often skipped. Apparently the Overseer doesn't see much need for help that humans will do themselves, even if they do it worse, or not at all. Jongin forgets the other specifications right now, but she figures it's not a tremendous deal if she isn't even Level I yet.

Level up, level up, DJ Spock.

She tucks her legs under the seat and waits. She wonders why it's stuck with her. Why she thought of it -- no, recalled it. Like a memory. She does not know the answer, and does not pursue it much. Her thoughts turn back to more practical matters -- the test.

Nobody knows what their test is. They have to find everything out by themselves. The target, the mission, the specialisation of duty. There is no outside contact to provide suggestions or help. She's on her own.

The carriage shudders to a stop. The blinds fly open to a scene of blinding white sky that hangs low on her head, and green grass that shines bright as if to compete. The carriage melts from around her until she's sitting on only a seat in the middle of it all; she stands up and joins the huge, winding line of angels waiting for their turn to the portal. The queue moves forward fast, spilling the contents of its head at the mouth of the gate as fast as new angels step into its tail.

There's a tall, gangly boy in front, dark hair crimped and shoulders slouched. He turns around occasionally, as if looking for someone. At any rate, nobody comes to meet him, and the queue inches forward.

It's finally coming to her, then. This makes her or breaks her. Most of the rookies who don't pass their first test tend to stay rookies forever. Performance drops after a failure, and the stress-- she won't think about that.

Jongin takes another step, and another. It's all very fast, just like the motion of rest of the queue. She's in line with the keeper now. She turns to look at him, and although in that moment she sees him properly, up close, just like all the other times she sees him, sheim, and he hasn't gone to see anybody by the time it’s his turn. With a nod to the gatekeeper, he steps through the archway and vanishes. Jongin stands still, patiently, the heat from the sky lulling her into a daze. The gatekeeper motions her forward, and she blinks, mouth opening a bit. "Me?" she knows she won't be able to remember a single feature of his afterwards. She's tried before.

"You sure?" she says, a bit desperate. "There's absolutely nothing--" that you can offer? No hint? No help?

The gatekeeper smiles. It isn’t slow or rusty, fitting his face well. He looks reassuring. She is wildly glad for one inexplicable moment. Then he replies, simply, "We are only meant for saving souls." He puts a hand on her shoulder and pulls her towards the archway, the portal. She steps through and falls.

The first thing an angel does on Earth is to get somewhere without people. Even before the industrial age, the atmosphere had been poison for the first few time units after landing. Now, centuries on, it could only get worse. She feels her skin curling in on itself, the air biting at her and elements whirling around her, trying to destroy. Her mind scans the area, perception zooming through streets and over buildings until she finds a place.

Jongin stumbles into an empty warehouse on the outskirts of the city, seconds after she had materialized on Shangqing Bridge. Her skin is burning now, and minutes pass into second-year-hours as she stumbles and coughs out acrid steam, perspiration dripping from her forehead in droplets of fizzing mercury. The air is icy and harsh, gripping and pulling her apart. She huddles, dazed, in a corner, waiting for it all to go away. There's a period of gray and black, then, swaying walls and vertigo. Then cold calm. She takes an inhale, an exhale. And again. When she looks up, the light that had been streaming in from the windows has faded from bright yellow to dim purple. For the first time, she notices the stench of the place, and rises, unsteadily, to leave.

She appears back on the bridge within seconds. It's good that it's getting dark and there's barely any traffic passing by. With the evening settling in, she lets her clothes morph on her-- whites and blues turning to dull greys and sharp blacks. Her high heels clip on the road as she makes herself at accustomed to the night breeze. Then she notices, miles away from the warehouse, something strange about the smell in the city. Something familiar. She closes her eyes as she steps onto the pavement, raises her arms slightly. She hears snippets of conversation as she goes. passing cut-outs of songs sung. it's all words on paper, patches glued together into a collage, and she weaves over and under the phrases and lingering sounds.

Through it all, the smell remains. Something not quite flowery, not quite clean. A bit too sweet, perhaps. And dank. And old. Then she recalls. "We are only meant for saving souls."

Her outstretched hand touches a street pole and grips onto it. She swings around once, eyes opening slowly. The city rises before her, like a triumphant beast, a seething, living labyrinth. Two boys on a motorcycle whoop as they drive by, the motorcycle balancing on the front wheel alone. She allows a smile to flit across her face.

As the streetlamps flicker on, some in succession, others in unison, she lets go of the pole and walks on. She is in silgi siheom. Practical examination.

The second thing an angel does, of course, is start on the mission. It's straightforward, really, and always has been. But the test deters her from it this time. She has no idea where to start. This isn't a detective game, with clues and helpers left around in a friendly trail for her to follow and solve. Heaven doesn't play games. Not with its servants.

Jongin sits on a bench, sunlight pouring over the park. She may as well start everywhere. She could close her eyes, wait for a human call in the map of her mind. The only information she knew was that the human would be in Beijing. Taking into account its packed population of over nineteen million, covering more than six thousand square miles of land, that wasn't much help. Numbers had a way of unnerving her. Funny, that she should be supposedly invincible and emotionless. That was probably the only advantage of going up the levels as an angel: the higher up you got, the more... angelic you became. You lived up to every single expectation. Whoever came up with the expression 'perfect as an angel' clearly only had experience with the top-notch ones who'd been working for millennia. Jongin shudders as she thinks of that, fades out slowly and reappears by a fountain, three miles south. Nobody expresses surprise at her there.

The smell is stronger. Jongin wrinkles her nose and turns her head away. Just then, she hears a scream. Her body reacts before her mind does: she's floating in mid-air in front of a building as a child hurtles down from the roof. She barely has time to look up and realize this before--

Jongin doesn't sleep, doesn't pause, doesn't close her eyes for a second. No matter what she does, there's no branding on her forearm, no mark of an angel, no signs of success. Three weeks running, and seventeen lives saved, all told. Including the first child, and she'd forgotten to slow down time to make it easier for herself. But she feels nothing. No sign from above.

It's when she's looking at the map of the city and reading the name out loud, Beijing, in hopes of finding her mission, when the scent almost catches up to her. Brings snapshots of memory with it.

white hot pavement but the pavement is black and bare feet i have bare feet it hurts but it's almost cold here we have ice cream and here and here and here and "funny!" a girl giggles. everybody laughs. they all have braids. i don't have braids. my hair are short. they're laughing at-- please don't be laughing beach i'm running beach oh i'm running look, the sun i'm going to catch the sun i am holding hands with the girl who was laughing at me it's okay we are friends she's helping me with my math we are best friends this is what best friends do tomorrow i will help her with her handstands we will both get full marks

Jongin freezes, and the picture-sentences stop. The flimsy map falls from her hands and floats slowly to her feet. She tries to block the memories. There's something wrong about them. Something running through all of them that's just plain wrong.

As if helping her shy away, she begins to hear their voices again. All the angels in Beijing at the forefront of the noise, and all the angels everywhere else if she was searching out a conversation to tune in on, on purpose. The privacy policies widespread on the human internet these days weren't all popular (or, let's face it, weren't even created) back when the first angel battalion was being programmed. She starts at that with a frown on her face. Battalion. When had that been about saving souls?

A voice crackles over and her senses zoom in without her control.

I was just thinking, the voice is saying. It's accented. Maybe I'll go check on her in the infirmary. You think it would be too sudden of me?

Another voice replies, heavier, with perfect pronunciation. Might be, but it won't hurt anybody, I guess.

Jongin pulls herself together, drags her mind out of the dialogue. It isn't hers to listen to.

But the first voice... it had sounded like that girl. That girl with the braids who had started the others laughing with her quiet, "Funny!"

For some reason, she finds herself cropping up closer and closer to Yalong Bay with every life she saves. People digging into her mind at all times of day, all times of night. A six year old crying out for her kitten stuck on a tree, a woman fallen on the street, the baker's daughter in labour. Calls, calls, calls, everyone screaming into her stream of consciousness. It's a good thing she'd been in the top ten during training-- they'd tested her to the higher levels of black noise, made her go hours at a time during skirmish practise. If it hadn't been for that, she'd be half-mad by now. And then she realizes, skirmish practise. Again with the violence.

A far-off plea, clouded in by water. Jongin can almost feel the waves pounding against her. Help, please. Help. A small voice, tired. A boy's voice. Jongin blinks, and she's ten feet underwater, sinking fast towards a thrashing figure. Help, please. Help.

"Hold on, kid," Jongin breathes, bubbles bursting around her. "We'll get up." With a strong kick of her legs, she makes it to his depth and grabs his wrist.

He's gasping and retching when they surface, clinging to her. If she'd been a human, she'd have sunk right back like a stone. "Hey," she says, "Hey." And he spews up at least a liter of water before hacking his lungs out coughing. She pedals her feet so her head comes up between his arms. He gets the message and holds tight, legs tired but still managing to squeeze her sides. "Just hang in there," Jongin says, voice level. "You're going to be okay."

He just shudders and exhales more water into her hair. She swims for the shore, clothes morphing into orange and red and polyester.

He collapses on all fours once they reach the sand, the two anxious figures that had been waving frantically when she'd been in the water now running towards them. His parents, the man mumbles, looking wretched as his wife thumps the boy on the back, with high, wild sounds coming from her throat. "He'll be okay," Jongin says, kneeling next to her. "He's a tough one. Most of the water's gone by now."

They call the ambulance and have him sent to the hospital at once. In the van, lurching from side to side, the parents thank her over and over. She stands awkwardly in the corner, smiling and assuring them that it's her job and she's glad to have been of help, her eyes not on either of them but on the boy's rising, falling little chest. He hacks through another half litre, and the father pounds his back. "Get it all out," Jongin calls, then stumbles as the van bounces over a ditch. "There's a good little guy." The wheeled bed stays put with the volunteer girl holding it in place, pale and nervous. She isn't even trained, Jongin thinks to herself. They need to train them to get them to be useful. Volunteering at the beach to pick up trash is one thing. Saving lives, though...



At the hospital, once he's checked up and they all wait outside for the results, the parents come to and thank her profusely and, in the mother's case, tearfully. Jongin nods through it all. Saving the boy is great-- that he'd been drowning and about to die and that now he was standing in front of her and holding onto her little finger-- saving the boy is wonderful, but...

She's a little distracted and tunes out most of what they're saying, but then they ask for her name, and she has to reply to that. Her mind goes on pause for a second before she hears herself saying, "Jinghua. Kāng Jinghua."

Her voice sounds blurred to her, as if she's listening from a distance. They continue in their praises and gratitude, and she waits through the words, through the sounds, but she knows there's nothing here for her right now. This child's life is precious, and she's vaguely happy to have saved him, but he was not her mission. This was too easy. Saving lives from the brink of death is too easy. No, she feels she has an idea what level her test would be. Something long, painstaking. The parents are looking down at their feet, now, silent, as if waiting for her to speak. What had they been saying? Something about her address, or if they could come back again to see her.

Jongin forces her mouth into some semblance of a smile, and when the boy tugs her hand, whispering, "You're pretty," she figures she's probably doing it right.

They stay, they talk some more, they leave.



She stays on at the lifeguard post for a time. Nobody notices that she doesn't fit in perfectly with the crowd, that her tactics are instinctual but untrained, and that she is way, way too fast to be a... well, to be a human. At any rate, she morphs on her own life vest and uniform instead of taking one from the storage, so they can't bother her about anything if they're not one short of a vest and one too many of the crew. Advantages, she muses, of being an angel.

The memories keep coming, bullying their way out of the abyss of things locked away, things she doesn't remember locking away, things the angel who helped her choose service over Heaven probably locked away.

The sea was in nearly every scene. The shore, the shoreline at high tide and low tide, the seashells, the gaggle of friends that grew and dwindled and shifted and faded. Her first time on a surfboard. It almost makes her want to see how her parents are doing-- she knows she must have them, but she has no remembrance of them. Not even their names.

It's strange, how everything works, Jongin finds herself thinking. Her feet sink in the sand; she is at a beach again, now. In a different country, but the waves are roaring and the sound matches the one in her picture-sentences. The ones that play on, unbidden. Another memory to add to those. People thinking angels as beings of power, and yet all they've ever done is obey orders or fall. What power is in them that hasn't been bestowed on them to fulfill a certain purpose? What purpose have they served other than serving their given purpose? Have they ever broken a boundary and lived? Ever started a cause and followed through? A mind for ourselves, that's what we don't have. That's why we are the perfect soldiers and slaves.

Her foot scrapes on a broken glass bottle, and her skin parts to bleed nothing at all. Soft flesh glistens at her, then seals itself up within seconds. Jongin feels a little nauseous.

Level up, level up, DJ Spock.

The scent at low tide.

It gets stronger then, and she has a feeling about this, but she has to find out. It's been driving her nearly insane, the consistent now-I've-got-it-now-I-don't, the familiarity of it and how she just can't name it. It could even be related to her ever-elusive mission.

She hangs behind the others after her shift's over, vest slimming down to a T-shirt. Nobody pays attention as she drops back and zigzags her way to the sand, hands in her pockets and face turned to the sky. She hums a little, the first song she heard after reaching the Infirmary, where she gained consciousness after dying. It was pretty simple, a bit like a nursery rhyme. The Hills Are Alive, she thinks it's called, and picks her way through the broken glass bottles and abandoned seashells.

For lack of a better way to put it-- she follows her nose.

She hadn't been expecting a cave. Sure, a person, maybe, or some dank creature from the depths. But a cave?

She stood at the mouth of it, the scent that is more a stench now wafting out like bad breath. And inside there, she felt a presence. A someone, long gone. And if she was right, if that person was long gone, then there was nothing mission-related here. Dead people weren't part of her job. Their souls were.

It's odd, holding the small of her spine like this, having the back of her rotting thighs soft against her arm. The drenched hair drip on the road as she walks, and the people part ways silently, stricken, as she moves through. She could simply teleport, she knows. She could be at the nearest police station in a breath, instead of spending time so slow and with so much unfounded ache, like this. Jongin doesn't know why she's doing this. It's so odd. There's no blood and she doesn't know if she should be thankful for that. No blood and this girl, so heavy in her arms, reminds her of cigarettes and a night sky with stars so bright and so many, that it's unreal.

"This is probably the most beautiful night of my life." "Me, too. But tomorrow--" shy, nervous. Don't give yourself away, girl! "--tomorrow night might be more beautiful, though." A laugh. "The fireworks and the stars, both?" "Yeah. Exactly. It'll be a knockout, right?"

She doesn't know what part of anything she meant to describe as 'unreal'. Was the present reality unreal? The past, perhaps? Maybe some imaginary past? Residual memories that are filtering through the girl's skin onto Jongin's? Jongin doesn't know. She is not meant to have a mind of her own, and she doesn't really, not anymore, so she keeps walking. The people keep moving away, parting like the sea in the old Moses story.

The head officer on duty takes over immediately, making sure the dead girl's taken care of in their temporary morgue, and questioning her incessantly about it all. He refers to it constantly as 'the body' and it makes her want to scream, makes her want to shake him and remind him that this is a human being, this is a human being, this is a girl this was a girl this is a girl, but the impulse is only there for a second before it disappears, and she is calm and collected.

"What were you doing you found the body?" His eyes are dirty oil brown, and wild. His hands shake as he laces his fingers together, elbows on the tabletop, a facade of calm complacence. He's wired up. It doesn't get to her.

"Just hiking," she says. Her voice comes out just as cold as his is not.

A tight smile on his part. "Elaborate, Miss... Miss?" Only then does he realize that he hasn't gotten his pad out and he hasn't taken her details yet. A small tussle with his own pockets and coat before he turns his attention back to her.

A tight smile in return. "Lee Jungah," she improvises, then realizes her mistake a little late.

"Foreigner," he notes, tone part contemptuous, part suspicious.

"Foreigner."

The questioning goes on. "Age, occupation? Again, elaborate what you were doing. Did you note the time? Why did you..."

Why this, why that. The second she'd given her name, she knew he'd try to frame her somehow. Never mind that she walked all the way, sopping wet, by herself. To him she was a human; where was the compensation, the consolation of her effort, the trauma a human her age would have gone through? Never mind that nobody in their senses would turn themselves in, never mind anything. A dim intellect would remain a dim intellect. Fear the strangers, the outsiders, and keep them at bay. Show only hostility.

She leaves when he's exhausted all avenues. "I'll be checking in," she stands up. "I want to see her ID'd."

His nostrils flare, and his face pales in anger. The ones who pale in anger, instead of redden, are the ones to watch out for. They calculate, even in their fury. "Yes," he inclines his head, nothing else for him to say. "Of course."

She keeps at her original mission, partly because she has the need to locate her target. Partly because her body reacts on its own when she hears a human call. Sometimes it's a child within hearing distance, really screaming. Other times it's silent, a thought-call to her mind. If an angel gets there first, her body usually stops midway. Once that had happened and she'd ended up momentarily lost, cars honking around her. Causing a traffic jam... not the most desirable situation.



She's probably bypassing all safety rules as she runs through the flames, but at least the fire is one earth spirit that's her friend, burning pure and angry and free. The wind, now, that was something evil. It's laughing at her, plaguing her with soot as she jumps over the burning bannister and makes for the stairs. Inside, the old man lies still, the only words from him the ones that his soul cries out. SAVE ME SAVE ME HELP SAVE ME THEY'VE C0ME THEY'VE C0ME THEY'LL BE HERE SAVE ME,HE WAS RIGHT XIAOMING WAS RIGHT I'M HERE NOW I'M GOING THERE SAVE ME THEY'LL KILL THEY'LL KILL THEY'RE HERE TO--. It's incessant and painful, incoherent.

He's going mad, Jongin thinks, frowning and coughing through the ashes and black smoke. She stoops to pick him up. His body is heavy against hers, and she gets a flashback for a second to when she had lifted the girl from her little chamber. Then he lifts his head and screams at her, his hair on fire and his eyes wide, spittle flying out his mouth as he screams, really screams in her face. Perhaps he was crazy already, she amends. She takes a slight stumble, loses her footing as the floorboards burn away beneath her, before she makes for the window. One of the firefighters is climbing up, and he seems surprised to see her. His mouth opens to squawk, but still his body moves clockwork, hand over hand as he nears her.

Between the two of them, they manage to shift hands on the man, and he goes back down. He tells her to stay, she presses a finger to his wrist and disappears.

He doesn't remember her when he goes back down.

Mid-travel and she hears another voice.

Someone, someone out there, help.

A strong tug at her gut. The strongest she's ever experienced: her body bends and twists, and through the darkened world of her teleport, she sees her hands shred to light and glimmer, like the fire she'd just left. But it's a softer fire, and all she can do is wonder for the few nanoseconds she's got before she re-materializes.

She is standing, breathless but calm, two steps from an officer's quarters. She knows this building, its shedding paint and chipped tiles. Had been in it a week earlier.

The door is closed, but from the inside there's a sobbing sound.

She raises her hand to the door knob, takes a hold and turns.

Her name is Lu Han. The alive girl's. The alive girl's name, who Jongin has never seen before, not in the memories of her past life, and not in this life. Her hair are a soft brown, face hidden behind the curtain of hair, hair tapering off around her shoulder, shoulder shaking and frail in an ugly, oversized sweater. Jongin blinks, uncertain, then surges forward, as if to make up for the pause. She places an arm, a little awkwardly, around the shoulders, and asks her name, asks what's wrong, asks what's happened.

Her name is Lu Han. What's wrong is that Lu Han knew Minseok had been dead for days and months and years, had known this for a very long time. Had missed her and still hoped, somehow, in spite of everything, that she'd come back one day anyway. She'd thought maybe five years, ten years, twenty years down the road, she'd still make it. She'd still come back and Lu Han would meet her. But Minseok was dead, here, see, they'd called her, the police had called her, and now she's here and she's crying and Minseok is dead. She's actually dead.

"She's actually dead!" Lu Han laughs a little, through her tears, and then speaks loudly and then more loudly. "She's dead! Fucking idiot! Broke up with me and went and died and never came back! I had to find out through the police." Louder and shriller, with every word, trembling in Jongin's arms, until the door opens and the officer enters. Lu Han falls silent. The officer is the same one from before; same name tag, same attitude. Same shaking hands and dark, hollow brown eyes.

The police is what happened, Minseok the dead girl is what happened, Jongin finding the dead girl's body is what happened, this girl alone and crying happened. Minseok, the girl who--

"You know the million dollar question?" the girl next to you giggles, pressing her forehead out the window. Your knees knock together. "When will you get the guts to ask her out?" You clear your throat awkwardly. "Come on," you try. "Give me a break. She's so pretty and so..." "So out of your league," she finishes your sentence. Your shoulders slump at that, but it doesn't really sting. Joonmyun unnie doesn't mean it badly. "Yeah. Minseok's just so..." Sighing is all you can do when it comes to describing her. "Tomorrow's the fireworks. Ask her out then, maybe?"

Minseok. The girl who--

"Ah, Lee," the officer smiles, but he looks tired, now. All the fight seems to have left him since the time they last met. A bit more sober, perhaps.

"Lee?" Jongin mumbles, then remembers the alias she'd given him. "I mean, yes. Lee Jungah."

Lu Han's stilling now, dragging her mind into this new situation, realizing fully that Jongin is a stranger, that perhaps she shouldn't be wetting the shoulder of and leaning so heavily on someone she doesn't know. But she's exhausted, Jongin can tell. Lu Han moves briefly before giving up and closing her eyes. She drops her head back against Jongin's, hair brushing Jongin's cheek.

"Identified the body," he says, shrugging. "Would have called you, but you didn't leave much contact information behind. Do you mind taking your friend home?"

Jongin starts.

Lu Han.

Lu Han, a friend?

Lu Han sleeps.

Jongin knows she could teleport with her, but with the state Lu Han's in, it might be a defining blow to her mind, traumatised and unconscious as it is already. Jongin takes a taxi cab, holds Lu Han's hand to search for her address through the blistering maze in the girl's mind: an apartment complex at some street down in Tōng Zhōu. The driver nods amiably, shifts gear as they clear the first signal.

It starts raining on the way, a slow pat pat pat against the car turning into an incessant rat-tat-rat-tat and finally blurring together into a soft, long shhhhhh. The windscreen wipers squeak as they move from side to side. Slowly, Lu Han comes to, curling closer to Jongin when she sees where she is. "Where we going?" she mutters, groggily, and her voice grates. Jongin makes a mental note to get her water when they reach her place.

"Home," Jongin says, and the word feels strange in her mouth. Then she says, "Your home," and that sounds more natural. Though the windows are closed, there's tendrils of cold air forcing their way through to rack a shudder inside her. Lu Han raises her head and looks at her, eyes dull. "You're the girl from the station." A statement, not a question.

"Yes."

"You wanted to know about Minseok?"

Minseok. The girl who-- Jongin looks away, out at the rain-smudged picture of traffic outside. "I don't know." The girl who what? She still isn't sure.

"Kim Minseok," Lu Han says, tone flat. "Same age as me. Twenty three years old. Five foot six. 0pen University of China graduate, class of two thousand and thirteen. Dean's lister, double degree in primary education and English. Softball team. Both of us. We were going to get jobs together in the same school before starting up our own. Maybe Seoul? She wanted Seoul. I wanted whatever she wanted. Favorite color red, favorite animal hamster, favorite number seven. Then she decided to switch up and get a degree in music after we'd graduated. I said, okay, that's great, but she said no, it wasn't, and she kept... dropping out of conversations and staring into space. Kept distancing. And then she left." She pauses, and there's emotion slowly finding its way back into her voice. "Just like that. How can you do that? How can you get up one day, and decide that the person you've been sharing the past five years of your life with suddenly isn't just not worth it anymore, but doesn't even deserve a reason for why she's being left alone?"

Jongin's still looking out, but her hand finds Lu Han's and squeezes it tight. I shouldn't be only sympathising with her, she supposes. I'm supposed to be feeling pain of my own, and anger of my own, and jealousy. But I'm not. It kicks in then that she's got some angelic qualities after all. It's a bit funny, and she's about to laugh at the situation, before she realizes Lu Han's right there, deep breaths shaky as she tries not to cry again.

Jongin holds her hand throughout the rest of the ride, keeps her close as they climb out the car and walk the length of the block to reach her building.

"You don't have to." Lu Han isn't looking at her, is staring at the floor, with her the look on her face begging, don't go, not you, too.

Jongin shifts her weight from foot to foot. "Nothing else to do," she says. It isn't the most comforting thing she could have said, but it'll work. Lu Han shuffles closer to her in the elevator, head down, eyes closed.

When they reach her apartment (fourth floor, the door right next to the stairs), Lu Han invites her in. Jongin just makes sure she drinks water and has gotten ready to sleep before leaving.

"You'll--" Lu Han looks at her, eyes wide, the circles beneath them baggy and dark, "You'll come again?"

Jongin shrugs. "Might."

Would it be proper to say that Jongin seeks her out on a whim? No, not really. It's more because of a tug on her gut instinct.

Jongin leans against a wall in Xicheng. A cat brushes past, behind her legs, pressing itself into the wall. Ears flat and tail high, it pauses to look back before hissing and running ahead. It's like a tug in her mind, and she decides to seek out the voice she'd heard first. She finds it with no problem.

Sehuna said it'd be alright.

Jongin frowns, beginning to focus.

Sehun? He's here? The second voice from before.

Somewhere... somewhere... not too far from here.

Sure, got promoted. Patrol duty here and Shanghai. We met at the portal by the big park with the four fountains. You know the one. A note of amusement in her voice.

Yeah, yeah. So... he's around. We could meet up?

Jongin's eyes snap open, and a little boy across the street wails when he sees the girl standing right there, against the wall, suddenly disappear.

You are so transparent.

A girl with a bob cut stands right in front-- so close that Jongin's nose almost bumps into the back of her head.

"Hello," Jongin mumbles into her hair, and the girl shrieks.

The girl whirls around after recovering from her initial shock, and looks at Jongin funnily. Looks a lot like the frozen girl Jongin had found. When Jongin asks her name, she tells her it's Minseok. Minseok.

"Kim Minseok," Jongin says. "Twenty three?"

The girl shrugs. "Probably."

"Twenty three," Jongin repeats. "The same age as Lu Han. She sound familiar?"

A shake of the head. No.

Jongin presses on. "Open University of China graduate. You were on the dean's list, with a double degree." A girl tugs on her mother's hand, hanging behind to listen before her mother pulls ahead. Kim Minseok smiles blandly. If she recognized anything, remembered these details, she didn't let on.

"Softball."

"Really?"

"You and Lu Han were both on the team. Jobs together, school together, sport together. You don't remember?" Jongin felt like Lu Han was speaking through her, almost. She really didn't have anything to do here anymore, but she was still sticking around. She didn't know what for.

A quick quirk up of the small lips. "Not a thing."

"Music degree. You liked red and the number seven. Do you remember leaving her for good without any explanation?"

"What does any of this have to do with me?"

Jongin's speechless. She can't believe she doesn't understand-- before she catches sight of the etched markings around her wrist, and realizes. Minseok's farther up the ranks than her, obviously, so her detachment makes sense. Still...

Minseok tilts her head, and drawls. "That all?"

Jongin remembers Lu Han's stricken, ashen face, the tear tracks down her cheeks. Her red, tired eyes. Jongin feels something raising its ugly head inside her, before it collapses and writhes and dies out. She feels all of it happening and sees all of it in her mind's eyes, crystal clear, in a millisecond. She swallows. For a second there, she'd been going to hate this angel in front of her. An angel hating? An angel hating another angel? Jongin needs to work on herself. "Yes," Jongin forces her thoughts down her throat, "That's--" but Minseok winks out before she can finish her sentence, and Jongin is left stunned, again. How can she be so indifferent? How can she? How? How can she be so cold? How can she? How? How can she? How? And then, Jongin had been going to hate her, for the sake of what? Who? A human?

It's like someone stood at the edge of her mouth and threw a rock down her throat, something very heavy and very sharp, that landed in her stomach and is making her scrunch up and squat in the middle of the square. That's what it all came down to, didn't it? The Creation pyramid, humans and other mortals, then djinns and spirits, then demons, then angels, then, and then and then, and at the top, the Overseer. How could she think of turning against her own kind for the sake of a creature below her in the hierarchy? How could she think anything? Wasn't Minseok the one at fault here? How could a higher angel be at fault? How could she, still a rookie, think--



For the first time in weeks, Jongin lets herself rest. Too much time on her home planet, Terra Humanoid that she was, made her body that bit more human. In Heaven, she hadn't needed sleep... ever. And she'd been there for a couple of years. Maybe five. But her body's reacting, now. Too many emotions shut down, too many elements chipping away at her. She closes her eyes to the square and all the people around her, opens her eyes to the empty warehouse again.

She makes herself as comfortable as possible in a corner, and tries to sleep. Still, the thoughts run on.

How could she, how can she, how? How could she, how can she, how?

She wakes up tumbling head first into a door, nose smashing against it before she slides uncomfortably down to the floor. Someone on the other side starts walking towards her, probably from all the commotion, their footsteps shuffling. Jongin sits up quickly, getting to her feet just as the door opens. A girl peers up between the gap in the door and the doorframe. Her eyes are wide, forehead creased. "You again," she whispers, then opens the door wider and steps back.

Lu Han's in the kitchen getting coffee, by the looks of it. Perched on the sofa, legs tucked awkwardly underneath her, Jongin doesn't have much of an idea what she's supposed to do here. Her job is to get in, save something, then get out. She knows her test is probably going to be more complex than that-- soul business always is. And here she's sitting, in prolonged emotional contact with someone who doesn't actually need an angel to help with anything. Lu Han isn't dying anytime soon, she doesn't need her soul guarded to Neutralys, doesn't need it convinced into service, doesn't need a hospice. Jongin shifts uneasily, rolling her shoulders a little to relax.

Small noises come from the kitchen, sounds of puttering about and cabinets opening, closing. A kettle hissing quietly. "Coming!" Lu Han calls, as if she senses impatience. She comes in a minute later, with a tray of cookies and coffee. She's a bit slow, dragging her feet, and when she sits down next to Jongin with a smile and a tired sigh, her eyes are red-rimmed again. Jongin really shouldn't have come. She's not doing anybody good, staying over here. But then Lu Han is holding up a cookie for her and telling her to eat it, and asking her how her day's been, and she's trying so hard to smile like nothing's wrong, that Jongin gives in. She'll play along with the facade. She opens her mouth, bites down with a face that makes Lu Han laugh, startled, before clapping. She drops the cookie and crumbles at once in her skirt, and they both curse and make a fuss over cleaning it up. When they sit back on the sofa, Jongin feels better. Lu Han's vision shifts slightly as she stares for a second, mouth open, at the wall behind Jongin-- Lu Han doesn't feel better, at all. And she won't, Jongin feels instinctively, not for a long, long time.

Jongin doesn't need to quit lifeguard duty. She just doesn't turn up for her shift the next day, and she doesn't need to be there to know that nobody notices. This is the way of the immortal: they aren't noticed if they don't want to be.

Down the street from Lu Han's complex is a restaurant. Jongin slips in the employee entrance there, shorts melting to form the uniform black skirt, her white shirt tucked in. A tall redheaded guy in waiter garb pauses on his way outside, does a double take when he sees her. "You're... new here?" He doesn't seem to be hitting on her, just confused. She shrugs. "Kinda." He doesn't push it, just shrugs back and goes on his way. He has a keychain pinned to the back of his pants, a little shiny panda bouncing with his every step. Interesting taste, she thinks to herself, before setting her shoulders back and walking towards the line of cooks, decked in aprons and plastic gloves. "Hey, you there!" one of the men calls out. "Manchurian, table six! Don't drop the chopsticks like last time." He's got her mixed up for someone else. All the better for her.

The hours pass as she goes to and fro between tables, taking orders, setting down trays, and the kitchen. She's got plenty of time to think what her next move should be, regarding her test, but all she can think of is the way Lu Han had laughed when Jongin had tried to crack a joke and failed, and how she'd stared into the sun when they went to the roof to watch it set. She needs to be taken care of, for a little while, Jongin's sure. She'd temporarily lost her direction with the news Jongin had brought about, and Jongin had to make up for that. No matter what Minseok said now, as an angel, she's sure Minseok the mortal girl would've wanted her to. She might have left, but all those years had to have meant something to her. If Jongin remembered anything about Minseok from her own human life, she wasn't as heartless then as she had apparently turned later on.

When four o clock chimes and another girl steps up, saying she can leave, Jongin bows out. She waits a few minutes outside the place, making sure it's deserted before she teleports.

She's in front of Lu Han's door when she opens her eyes again. Taking a deep breath, she raises a hand to knock.

When Jongin looks back on those months later, it comes back in snapshots, like the rest of her human memories. If she closes her eyes, they play out like old tape from shaky cameras.



Splayed fingers and the sun rising, the sun setting, the moon glowing and fading. The stars. Everything shining and bright and then dimming out in quick succession. Lu Han's eyes, sometimes sad, sometimes bright. Lu Han at her desk in the evenings, writing. Jongin on the bed, reading. Usually a record playing in the distance, something by Spinger more often than not. Visits to the vinyl shop that made new vinyl records of any CD you gave them. Lu Han wanting to try out guitar lessons; they sign up together after a few weeks. They agree never to learn Wonderwall. Lu Han learns a few bars and chords and decides she's fit to compose. Jongin prefers whirling in circles under the living room chandelier at dawn, when there's rainbows of color everywhere and they pass through her like she's water. Lu Han's laughter, rare but almost always explosive. Jongin cracking bad jokes.

"You're making everything old new again," Lu Han says, and it's night time in September and they're huddled together in the corner of the kitchen where stuff echoes. Her words ricochet and sound loud.

Steam from their mugs wafts up, chocolate rich in the air. Jongin sniffs at it. "What's that supposed to mean?"

A laugh, rare but quiet. "Like, I'm going through high school summer breaks a second time, but it's all better because I'm not supposed to be thinking of college or the cute Filipina girl who lives across the street. And it's not actually summer, it's fall. Back then I would be in school killing my mind over calculus, but I'm not doing that now." Lu Han turns to smile at her. "Clearly." A pause. "Everything's much better." Her smile fades quickly, though, and she stares at her hot chocolate.

A little better, Jongin amends, but she doesn't say it out loud.

"If it snows this year," Lu Han promises, after catching Jongin looking wistfully at her stash of journals, "I'll let you see."

It doesn't snow in November, or December, but Lu Han leaves an old, weathered notebook by her bedside anyway. "I know it's terrible," she twists her hands together. "But, you know." There was a lot of 'you know' with Lu Han, even though most of the time Jongin didn't have a clue. But it was friendly and accepting. A bit like Jongin belonged.

And it wasn't terrible, really. The first half of the notebook was all poems. They were hysterical in their fervor, their madness, to the point that Jongin had to take breaks and only read a few at a time. The second half was partly fiction, partly diary entries. Lu Han's world at the time was made of explosions and rusting metal, a purple sky and no one on the earth that it ruled over. A vast emptiness, a cliff, the roaring sea. Stars few and far between, pulsing and huge and blinding. Flight and freedom, but fear. By the time Jongin's done reading, she has a pounding migraine and a vast amount of new respect for her.

"Well," Jongin says, when they sit down to dinner (stir-fried vegetables and microwaved cup ramen).

Lu Han smiles nervously. "Hmm?"

"That was pretty mindblowing."

The smile she gets at that is pretty mindblowing, too.



There are nightmares, sometimes. Odd nights with the moon either faded away up high, or heavy and about to fall on them all, Lu Han wakes up shivering and shaking and covered in sweat. She doesn't scream. Jongin thinks that's the most frightening thing of all. Lu Han never makes a sound. Her mouth is open and there are tears coursing down her cheeks, but she is completely silent. Jongin consoles her the only way she knows how; she clambers onto the bed beside Lu Han, arms tight around her. By the time the sun comes up she's calmed down and fast asleep again, Jongin spooning protectively around her curled up form.

The other notebooks pile up, one at a time, and Lu Han writes of, thinks about, is a different world in each.

Sometimes when they lean against the railing in Lu Han's balcony, they lean against each other as the palette of the sky changes over the minutes and hours.

Jongin will remember themselves in those moments as the only ones out there that she was sure of, that she knew were real; on a shelf of cement, looking over the world as kaleidoscopes of life flashed by, every thought like a dream. The excitement was in the not-knowing, in the mystery and the guessing at what was going on in everyone's minds, in the brimming of everything around them. In Lu Han's increasingly often glances of trust, or wonder, or something else-- Jongin couldn't tell, unless she applied her mind to Lu Han's and read it. And she couldn't do that to her. Or wouldn't. She isn't sure which, now that she thinks about it.

Every other Wednesday afternoon would see Lu Han come ambling home from teaching at kindergarten, head down, arms full of supplies. Scissors and construction paper and glue, putting everything together from nothing, like magic. "I'll let you write their names next time," Lu Han would say, but Jongin knew her handwriting was atrocious and she wouldn't ever be allowed to. Watching Lu Han at work was a bit like watching the other angels build palaces and towers, back up. Fascinating. She'd never have thought.

In March, though, those months come to an end.

It's like the call Lu Han had given her back at the police station, only impossibly strong. Jongin doesn't remember falling ill since joining service, but she figures this is the closest she's ever come to it. Her tongue goes dry as she falls to her hands and knees, eyes burning, spots blossoming in her vision. When she's recovered a bit, she's no longer in Lu Han's house-- her body had automatically gone to the warehouse. Still reeling, she thinks angrily, Who said angels have it easy? Who said angels have anything at all of their own? The thought grits itself out, then gets shut off.

As she straightens up, the call reaches out to her mind again, and the pain she feels is indescribable. Her body literally disintegrates before her eyes-- she barely has time to lift her hands and see them turning to dust before she sees black, then white, then fiery red, then black again. It's like she's traveling through all the dimensions at their hottest temperatures, until they're at their melting point, one by one, at the harshest speeds possible.

When her feet touch solid ground and her eyes can see again, she stands at the top of a hill. Trees surround a villa a few feet away, and the gate creaks open in the sudden wind. Jongin sways a little with it, strength still not all back yet.

The woman doesn't seem to be surprised by anything. Not at Jongin, standing inside her room, when she wasn't there a second ago, not at the fact that her house was locked and she still managed to get inside, not at how Jongin seems out of breath and red in the face, arms and forehead shining with sweat. "Ah," the woman says, and smiles.

Jongin chokes on the smell of her soul, murky and old and without hope. This, she realizes, is the mission. She'd foolishly been leading herself to believe that Lu Han had been it, even though she had initially thought otherwise. She picks up an ancient feather duster by her feet, slowing down as she stands straight. Had she really focused on her mission at all once she'd become friends with Lu Han? The urge had died down after a few spikes early on, before she'd hidden it between the underneath piles of shoes Lu Han had heaped in her cupboard. Just like that. "Hey, Han," she'd said, "What's with the shoes?" And Lu Han had laughed, replied with, "Never mind them. I bury all my closet skeletons in those." And Jongin had shrugged her mission off her into the thing, too.

The woman snores, and Jongin grips the duster, begins to work on the room.

The room turns into the house turns into the lawn. Twilight is deepening into night by the time she’s done. Lu Han will be wondering where she’s been. Jongin looks up, fades, is up. The woman mumbles and awakens, a frown on her face as soon as her eyes meet Jongin's. "So," she grunts. "You a helper?"

"Level III," Jongin corrects, automatically, "Rookie, actually but this is a test. Hospice."

She doesn't get what Jongin's saying, except for the last word, and that has her turning white. "Doctors forced this on me, huh? Think they can make believe me into dying, huh? Think they can steal all my money and sell my liver and eat my guts, huh?" Fired up now, she starts shrieking curses and waving her arms around, spit flying out her mouth.

Jongin shouldn't have said that, but she's realizing this a bit late. She closes her eyes and sets her mind to this woman's, and finds her name amidst the waves of expletives that rush up to her. She is Liu Wei Ling, sixty eight, and dying fast. She has up to seven months, maximum, to live, and one kidney to live on. There don't seem to be any tumors, but apparently she'd gone through radiotherapy much earlier. Why is she dying, then? Jongin frowns, steps closer to her, completely impervious to her screaming. Wei Ling quiets down when she realizes this, frowns back at her. "What you looking at, darkie? Huh? What's the big deal, frowning at me?"

There is nothing wrong with her body, biologically. But over her body, on top of it, there's a dark cloud that hovers. There's no explanation for it, except the Will. There doesn't need to be a reason, sometimes. At least, if there is, then Jongin the rookie doesn't know of it. It's probably one of the reasons why there's so many humans out there, pointing at quantum mechanics and saying this is it, this is the undoing, there is no order, only chaos. Jongin shakes herself. This is the Will. No other reason. Liu Wei Ling is meant to die.

"Sorry," Jongin plasters a smile on her face, but the woman only frowns back. A little boy telling Jongin she looked pretty would be a little esteem-boosting about now, but Jongin keeps at it without him, anyway. She doesn't even remember his name. Had she even asked for it? "I was just thinking," Jongin explains. "About what I'll have to be cooking for you for dinner."

It seems to soften her. What a funny woman. "No need," Wei Ling shakes her head, mouth pulled back in a grimace, showing brown teeth and a gold cap. "Fridge."

Lu Han's in bed when Jongin comes home, reeking of must and week-old fried okra. "Hey," Jongin says, under her breath, hand on Lu Han's forehead. Lu Han smiles in her sleep at the tough, and Jongin smiles back, body weary for the first time in weeks.

"Sorry I got home late, yesterday," Jongin starts, and Lu Han raises a brow.

"You think?" She stabs at her cornflakes with her spoon. "I got home from school and waited, what, three hours before I gave in and had lunch? And then I had to have dinner by myself, too. Then I wake up and you're practically draped across my stomach. In what world is this normal behavior?"

Jongin blinks, taken aback. "I--"

"And you always refuse to have a phone! I ask you why and every. Damned. Time. You come up with that ridiculous bull about the wavelengths interfering with your grand--" Lu Han brings her hands up from her bowl abruptly, spraying Jongin with milk, to make air quotes "--'vibes'. Do you know how worried I was? I only slept around eleven because the kids had gone out of hand in art yesterday so I was yelling half the time and then I came home and I was so damned tired! And you weren't there! Didn't even leave a note! Do you know what happened last time someone did this?" Lu Han pauses for breath. "They went missing for years and, oh, that's right! They only turned up once they were fucking dead!"

Jongin stares mutely at the table.

"Alright," Lu Han says, taking a deep breath, but she doesn't look appeased in the least. "Alright. 'Kay. I'm overreacting, I know. You're allowed to have a life of your own and--"

"No," Jongin interrupts, feeling miserable. "I should have, I don't know, done something. I don't know. I'm sorry. For this entire mess. And for upsetting you."

"Hey," Lu Han pokes her with her spoon. "Don't turn puppy on me. I have to stay kind of mad and make an impression, so you don't, you know, do this again."

Jongin manages to get it through to her, a version of the truth a little garbled. (Do angels lie, too? Jongin used to think. Well, if she hadn't gotten the idea with however many alias she'd calmly handed out to people, like so many brochures, now she's definitely gotten her answer.) "Volunteering," she supplies, over a late lunch. Lu Han doesn't seem to mind this, so she adds, in a burst. "Every day. For a few months."

Lu Han's chopsticks slow on their way to her mouth, but they reach there, and she swallows, eventually. "I see," is all she says. But she doesn't, not in the slightest, and Jongin grits her way through the rest of the meal.

Jongin's staring up at the bookshelves in Wei Ling's house when she thinks of the phrase again. Level up, level up, DJ Spock. Something to do with Minseok, she recalls, vaguely. Star Wars or Star Trek? An inside joke, some radio host with a crewcut that Minseok had had a crush on. Jongin stands there and closes her eyes, head tilted up so she doesn't cry. There's something so odd about feeling all these things. Isn't she supposed to be invincible?

What's funny is, she doesn't know what she's crying for. Or who.

"You found the book yet? It's right in the middle shelf on the left, you slimy rat!" Wei Ling yells from across the corridor.

Jongin sniffs hurriedly and opens her eyes, vision blurring over. Never mind, never mind.

It goes like the doctors had said it would: seven months. The rest of March is the hassle of accustomizing, for Wei Ling and Lu Han both. Jongin walks the line between, careful. April brings the idiomatic showers, and Lu Han's kids all wear green hats and brown gloves as they work on their garden patches. Jongin takes breakfast time to ask Lu Han about things she hadn't asked about before.

"What's your favorite color?"

"Seriously?" A laugh, not rare anymore, but just as precious. "Red!"

They celebrate Lu Han's birthday at midnight, party hats and candles and ice cream topping on the cake. "Make a wish," Jongin says, surprising herself. Those words came out by themselves. Lu Han makes an amused face at her, then clasps their hands together before blowing out the candles. "There," she grins, "All wish-wooshed. You sap."

Dinnertime is time for Lu Han's woes and the kids' progress. May brings a late cold for Wei Ling and Lu Han plans her students' assessments, working on her books at night.

Jongin ends up reading more than she'd thought she would have, given the circumstances. Wei Ling gets her to read everything from the English translation of Anna Karenina to Frankenstein to I Robot, and Zong Pu's Red Beans, Acheng's The Chess Master and Tong's Blush. There's countless stories translated from German and French, and Jongin has to read them all. She doesn't get parched throats, as a rule, but she's pretty sure if Lu Han were in her place, she'd have dried up into petrified stone.

June is sunny sun sun, and Lu Han and Jongin discover The 1975. At night they lie back on the floor, spread eagled as the vinyl records play a remix of James Vincent's Cavalier and the song Chocolate. They link hands sometimes, looking in opposite directions, their hair tangling in each other's, socked feet tapping to the beat. July, Wei Ling gets worse, and Jongin tumbles into the apartment regularly past two in the morning, making sure Wei Ling takes her medicines on time. Lu Han waits up for her, falls asleep waiting. Jongin carries her to bed. Moonlight drips heavy on the windowpanes by the time Jongin curls up next to her, and the sun rises barely three hours later.

August and September pass in a haze of rain and news alerts of monsoons in Guizhou and Hainan. Lu Han turns the TV off to avoid the pictures, Jongin pacifying Wei Ling by wheeling her out around the hill on the days it doesn't rain, and keeping her under the canopy of her porch on the days it does. Sometimes, she takes her out anyway, with an umbrella over the both of them. Wei Ling puts up as much of a fuss as she can, but ends up in the chair anyway. "You'll breathe fresh air," Jongin insists, "And you'll feel salt on your face."

"I'll drown in the weather," Wei Ling mutters back. It's an exchange that grows to be a bit of a ritual over the months.

When it comes, Wei Ling's end doesn't make Jongin cry, doesn't scare her. Wei Ling had been so tired, all along, and it's rubbed off substantially on Jongin by the time she goes.

Wei Ling's a dark bundle of human and blanket in her bed, the afternoon light filtering in through the window murky and grey. The sky's dark with clouds and the breeze ruffles the curtains, the smell of wet earth and salt welcoming Jongin when she comes in. "Good day out," she calls, as cheerfully as she can. "Might get you out and about under an umbrella today."

"I won't," the woman says, dully.

"Of course you will," Jongin shakes her head, untucking the blanket from around her determinedly.

"I don't mean it like I mean it every day," Wei Ling replies, irritably. "I really won't, this time."

The conviction in her voice has Jongin pausing and looking at her face. "What d'you mean, Ma?"

"Only call me that when you think Liu's going nuts, don't you?Liu can't tell her own daughter apart from a ruckety young girl who don't know how to do nothing, huh?"

She was only partly right. Sometimes Jongin just wanted someone to call her mother. Self-sustenance got tiring. "No, Ma."

A grunt. "Not going anywhere," Wei Ling insists. "Nowhere at all. You sit by the window and read the Bible to me. I want some guidance."

Jongin gives her a wry smile. "Fine, then. Guidance coming right up."

She's barely finished a passage when her skin starts tingling. She glances up sharply. Wei Ling's eyelids are fluttering, hands shaking. "Wei Ling," Jongin says, quietly, standing up.

"N-No going."

"Wei Ling."

"No going out t-today. I said."

Wei Ling's skin looks doused in a shimmer of blue and purple that's spreading out. It glows over her neck and her arms the most, glittering and running over every inch of her, like so many white, shining bugs. "Said," Wei Ling breathes, and her body jerks completely, pausing in the motion grotesquely, before the colors and light fade. She sinks back into her mattress, and Jongin steps closer, holds her warm hand. Wei Ling's eyes stares at her, but Jongin knows they aren't seeing anything anymore. From Wei Ling's open mouth, a slim oblong disc slips out, shining violet. As Jongin looks at it, it shrinks, bends, then falls in her lap. Jongin's other hand closes around it.

She teleports.

The trip from Kyoto Station to Neutralys is two hours.

She sits in the train, packed between other angels. They talk amongst each other, pausing in their conversation once in a while to glance at her. Cliques, Jongin thinks, miserably, and takes out her book. She reads aimlessly, eyes focusing, defocusing every few words.

She's probably on the same page for ten minutes when someone comes to stand in front of her. "I'm Kyungsoo," one of them says, extending a fiercely inked hand. The tattoos mingle with her angel markings and etch all the way up to her shoulder; it's a scene of lava meeting ocean, a winged girl in the midst. Jongin shakes her hand absently, staring at her arm. Kyungsoo grins. "Neat, right? Probably the only good decision I made when I was a mortal."

"I'm sure you made a few other ones, at least," Jongin says, politely, but right then they reach Kyungsoo's stop, and their would-be conversation comes to a halt. She bows her head in respect as the other leaves with a wave. After that, the air is less tense. "Kyungsoo's a good judge on rookies," a short boy speaks up. "If she said hi, you're probably not going to fall from us too soon." The others nod, some narrowing their eyes at her, others going back to ignoring her.

Jongin figures she should feel encouraged, but she's not too sure.

The rest of the trip is relatively peaceful. The soul in her vial whispers to her mind once in a while, just phrases and fragments of thought.

How long has it been since then...

"Not long," Jongin whispers back. "Not long, and we'll get there soon enough."

...I had promised I was going to... he had promised too...

"And you're keeping your promises. Both of you are."

Any gap, any chink in the walls, she has to use to her advantage. For Level II, she has to try her best to convince the human into service. She tries to gain Wei Ling's trust, affirming everything positively, reassuring her through her dubiousness. Finally, she feels the soul quiet down with satisfaction. The vial turns heavy, and Jongin opens herself up to her, pouring her consciousness through her fingers and into the glass. She feels the spirit move through her mind, opening and closing drawers, starting up a projector and watching her memories, rifling through her papers and factoids.

"You are not too happy now," the spirit says.

Jongin can't refute that. Whatever she says, the thing's in her brain. It knows her, probably even more than herself, right now. "Not too happy," she admits. "But not the most unhappy person, either."

A sharp probe. "Not a person. Angel."

"True."

"And I? What am I?" the voice is Wei Ling's voice, the concentration of urgency almost painful.

"You are a spirit, Wei Ling. That is... that is all you are. For now. But you can be more."

An indignant hiss. "You're trying to hurry me along this, aren't you?"

"Wei Ling," Jongin says, patiently. "I'm only saying this because we don't have much time. Listen to me..."

Finally. Finally, she's proving herself. Silgi sihoem, completed.

The gatekeeper to the entrance offers her a nod and a key. She walks by, her legs shaking.

The Hall is like a huge storage room, only furnished with a lot more grandeur. The shelves are made of marble and wrought in with white gold, the doors to each locker made of silver. The names and specifics of each angel are hammered into the door, each character and diacritic glittering with jade. Her key pulls her towards the assigned locker. She unlocks it and slides her vial inside. The second it reaches the center, it disappears to a place where the higher angels will judge her work.

It's up to them, now.

When she gets back, no time has passed. Liu Wei Ling's eyes are open but not yet glassy, the hand in hers just turning cold. Jongin sits there heavily, for a while, staring out the window. It starts to rain. Up and down her arms, she feels a thousand needles prickling under skin, a dragging sensation from her shoulders to her elbows. Her marks have arrived.

No longer a rookie; she is Kim Jongin, 1st Level, Armorial Guard.

Level up, level up, DJ Spock.

Lu Han's asleep when Jongin comes back. Jongin leans against the doorframe, arms folded, considering. Lu Han stirs a bit, then stills. Inside her head, Jongin hears the powers calling her back. Incessant, incessant, incessant. Loud and angry. She should've gone right back on the Navitrain after calling the hospital and making sure Wei Ling had reached safely. She leaves after sticking a quickly scrawled post-it on the mirror of Lu Han's dressing table, throwing one last glance over her shoulder.

She gets briefed in on her mission via an vibration, extremely uncomfortable, resonating throughout her body while she moves towards Asthar's Temple. The information trickles in through her senses like liquid fire.

"Could always use a heads-up." Jongin rubs the back of her head, where it feels slightly singed. An Eigard angel passes her by, nodding his two of his three heads in understanding. "Really gets to you sometimes, doesn't it?"

Jongin drops in a coin at the Temple and places her hand on the glass block. It glows red for a second, before allowing her passage to the train.

She'd known she wouldn't be alone on this mission, but it's still strange to her, to look at all these angels in the box and have her mind receive direct, intended signals from theirs, to assign them all positions and assess her own place among them. Teamwork. A human in her place would think if she would be able to 'handle' it. Jongin can handle it, of course she can. She has to. Her body will go against her if she tries not to. The problem will be if she likes it or not.

"Aqua shit-tards at it again," someone mumbles, at the far end of the carriage. "I get home from a three year job, testing in for the damned machine the RDs are building. That machine, right? I go to every year from the eighteenth century onwards, and every damned twelve-month they make a ruckus. Fudgin' hurricanes everywhere! Tornadoes! If they're so jealous of us landers, why don't they grow a pair of legs?"

Jongin winces at the mention of fudgin'. No doubt he'd been trying to say fucking and his tongue had gotten a mind of its own. Things are annoying that way, with service.

"Now, Vlad," a woman appraises. "Don't get all hyped up. The higher ups will run us to the ground 'til they see fit. As for the Aqua 'noids, they were built that way. Nothing anyone can do about it."

"You know someone can," the first guy, Vlad, replies. He sounds a bit ominous, and the situation is kind of hilarious. Like tap dancing in front of the Overseer for attention and yelling, Hey! I heard you didn’t like tap dances! I wanted a favor from you but you weren’t doing anything so here I am now! Tap dancing in your face! Ha! Everyone in the carriage, previously mumbling within themselves, turns awkward and silent.

"Well," a taller-than-usual Lillium speaks up, all eyes blinking nervously and out of sync, "It's nice to meet you all, anyway."

"Yeah, yeah, kid," Vlad scowls, and snorts as he turns away to watch out the window. Apart from the rookie markings on his neck, Jongin can't make out any others on him. Probably one of the rookies who stayed rookies. No wonder he seemed perpetually angry. She remembers running into him earlier, on another job, and he'd been sitting furiously in a jacuzzi, evaporating the pool water, his skin on fire. "Just let me at 'em!" he'd shouted, straining to get at the human who owned the mansion. But his body wouldn't let him hurt a human-- that wasn't part of the job description. Jongin had been sent to replace him and get the soul discretely.

Vlad seems to notice her gaze and turns around, frown deepening. It's that skunk, she catches, distinctly, before he faces the window again.

Jongin takes out her book. It's short, not exactly one of her favorites, but still a good read. The Westing Game. She has never properly understood Turtle, but Jongin finds her fascinating nonetheless. She reminds Jongin a bit of Wei Ling.

They're deep under the ocean, waiting for the guards to let them in to the palace of the Queen.

The Aqua Humanoids angels work differently from the Terra ones. They have their own hierarchy, their own rulers and their own world. They don't serve the humans overland and they don't serve the merpeople under water. If anything, the merpeople work for the Aqua Humanoid angels. And once a year, these fish-tailed cousins of the humans spin up water and weave it with the wind to form one half of a hurricane. The Hawks of Strato, their allies, drive the dry winds towards the damp ones to create hurricanes.

It's a well-rehearsed play since the beginning of the planet, and nobody had minded until the humans came. Then the humans minded-- a lot. Still, unable to do anything against the stormy monsters, they don't end up doing much except running for cover and hiding. If they discover the merpeople, though, it might bring about man-made Armageddon. Jongin still isn't sure if the Armageddon isn't just something that some storyteller guy in Syria made up. Either way, it fuels a lot of good dystopian fiction, so she doesn't mind.

"All variations of Humanoids," the taller-than-usual Lillium groans, every eye closed in resignation except for the two in her face, "Are tiresome. No offense," she adds, to Jongin.

"Hey," Jongin raises her hands, "None taken. All Lilliums are short. It's okay."

The Lillium grins. "Hey," she echoes, nudging Jongin in the elbow. "Just because I'm soft and let you get away with things doesn't mean I'm not tough."

Jongin nods, pretending to be serious. "You keep talking, ma'am. I'm all ears."

As expected, nothing actually comes of the meeting. The Queen rejects their audience, the guards throw them back up on geysers, and they end up floating around like abandoned buoys in the middle of the Pacific. "This is a problem, or my name isn't Arya," the Lillium says.

Jongin starts, sinking a few inches before rising. "Your name is Arya?"

Arya narrows her eyes. "This is not what we should be focusing on. You should be more upset and teleport us out of here."

"Ah, yes," Jongin sighs, laying back on the water. "The tiresome Humanoid must teleport the nonteleportic Lillium."

"I don't understand!" Arya frets, waving her arms about and getting water in all her eyes. "You're never this snarky with anybody else! It's always me you have to pick on and relax with!"

Jongin packs Arya off (she suspects this new name is a hoax, though) with one of the ruby-encrusted shells they'd meant as homage to the Queen and stays in the water for a few minutes. The sun overhead is a sweltering disc of angry white, and Jongin soaks the heat in for a while before she turns her head east, raises her hand and disappears. The water ripples in her wake.

The apartment door is the same as it was before, just a bit more worn. There's a smudge of yellow paint on it, and on the lock, too. Evidence of a hard day of handpainting in class, probably. Jongin knocks.

The first thing that happens after the door opens is a scream, obviously. Then a hug, and then a vigorous shaking of Jongin's shoulders. "You are terrible at keeping in touch," Lu Han hisses, wringing Jongin's hand. "You just took off! I can't believe your guts! Two whole months."

"I left a note," Jongin says, protesting, though she knows she should have left something more than just that. "Didn't you see it?"

"Useless! I want letters!"

Jongin bites back a smile. "Alright, princess. You'll get letters."

"Regularly," Lu Han adds, eyeing her suspiciously, as if she'll disappear again within the second. As if Jongin would. As if Jongin could.

"Regularly."

Jongin doesn't know if she can pinpoint anything specific that makes her want to stay, that makes her want-- that makes her want, full stop. Lu Han just is, and Jongin must know her, must go back to her, must see her as long as Lu Han will let her. There was a time, Jongin remembers, when she'd only looked after Lu Han on Minseok's behalf, because she believed Lu Han deserved at least that much, but that time is long gone. Jongin's grown more selfish, now, and that's probably against every rule in the book but it's happened, and she doesn't regret a thing.

"So," Lu Han says, grinning as she sets down the bowl cheesy nachos, "What's up, buttercup?"

The TV's on some art channel and the show hosts are discussing an exhibition in a museum. There's a piece on pegasi, and Jongin will never not be fascinated about how humans always get those wrong. They've got two sets of wings, and their necks are longer than the usual horse's. "I can't believe," Jongin says, absently, "That they paint pegasi wrong all the time."

Lu Han laughs, crunching on a nacho loudly. "What d'you think pegasi are like, then, Salvador Dali?"

Right. Lu Han doesn't know about her. Jongin's always been on the verge of forgetting that. "Well," Jongin wriggles closer, throwing an arm around Lu Han. "I dunno, I've always imagined them to be... larger? Not just huge wings pasted onto exact horse carbon copies. Wouldn't that be kind of boring?"

Lu Han tilts her head, stuffs her mouth with five huge nachos at once. It's kind of impressive, if Jongin ignores the grossness of the situation. "I guess," Lu Han says. "Yeah, it is, actually. Tell me more."

"Alright," Jongin replies, agreeably. "She wishes, I command..."

"Had a dream about the pegasi you told me about," Lu Han croaks, first thing in the morning.

Jongin tries to yank her eyes open but it doesn't work. They're stuck shut so hard, she'll need forceps to get them apart. "Mmm," she ends up saying, into her pillow.

"It was amazing. They even breathed fire, like you told me they would." Lu Han rolls around, elbowing Jongin in the back. "You should try writing stories, you know. That stuff you come up with once in a while is deep."

"Once in a while," Jongin repeats. "That stuff. Should I be flattered?"

"Very," Lu Han sighs, stretching and dragging herself out of bed. "Come on, let's have breakfast before I hole myself up with my laptop and ignore you."

"You realize this isn't a choice way of dealing with your best friend?" Jongin tumbles out in a mess of blankets and three pillows. She frowns at the sunlight. Lu Han pauses on her way out, turns back to grin at her. "Best friend, huh?"

Jongin chews her lip, nervous.

"Damn right we're best friends," Lu Han wiggles her eyebrows. "We scratch each other's backs, right?"

"I gave you a bath when you got so drunk that you threw up all over yourself and called yourself Madonna," Jongin points out. "And I got called a 'ruddy peasant' for my efforts."

"Well," Lu Han amends, "You scratch my back and I love you for it."

"Good to hear," Jongin groans, faceplanting into the floor. The powers are calling her back, and her head aches with the echoes and re-echoes, the consistent lava their words pour into her mind. "I love you, too."

When she looks up, Lu Han's still standing there, a quivering smile on her face.

"Hey," Jongin says, realizing what they've just said. "Hey. Don't cry on me."

Lu Han laughs. "Who said I'm going to cry?" But her laugh tapers off shakily and she wipes her eyes in a hurry.

"Aegi," Jongin mumbles, and Lu Han smiles again, brighter and fiercer.

"Whatever, man. Come quick, or I'll finish all the cereal."

Goodbyes are always the hardest. Jongin can face off a thousand gargoyles without breaking a sweat, but that doesn't mean she isn't a coward. She leaves again when Lu Han's asleep, this time writing a carefully thought out letter (handwriting no better than it had been the year before), and promising to send more. She'll find a way to write from Heaven somehow.

"You know," Arya says, as a way of greeting when Jongin gets back. "I've only ever had to use the term 'lady love' with Terra Humanoids who weren't ladies, and believe me, I wasn't too pleased to say it. Half of them didn't even deserve the gold they got. But my important question! Does this make you my, ah, what do your mortal kind call it these days? My 'token' friend?"

Jongin gives a weak laugh. "Yeah, I'm your token gay friend. I guess."

Arya shakes her head. "An angel. And the mortal humanoids think it is sin? Aren't you the highest of beings in their esteem?"

"Kind of," Jongin shrugs, wryly. "After God, of course. And I'm not so sure about what the Aqua 'noids think of sexuality."

Arya's eyes flicker and narrow, then look away. "I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about the ones who kicked us out on hot water."

Jongin pats her on the arm, making sure she isn't batting an eye. "No pressure," she says, and they head towards the Training Grounds together. There's always something new for Armorials to learn-- new tactics, strategies, defense plans, armor, weaponry pouring in from every corner of the Universe every day.

Jongin does find a way to send her letters to Tōng Zhōu, Beijing, China. Kyungsoo goes down daily, furthering the underground works and supervising the lava castle constructions. Perhaps in a few Mortal centuries, Terra 'noids will have their own holding in their own planet. Teleportation will be more convenient, for one thing. No more air pollution if there wasn't any air. Kyungsoo's okay with a feather-light parcel to deliver through any of her rookies in training. She can't pick up replies from Lu Han, of course, partly because Lu Han won't know Kyungsoo personally, and partly because Jongin doesn't want to ask. That would be pushing it, and prolonged contact with a non-mission human is technically illegal.

Jongin's pretending they don't know about it, but she's sure they do-- Arya is proof-- and they're testing her. Or perhaps they know and they're ignoring her. She's not sure; they're a bit short on Terra 'noid angels these days with the constant wars off in Andromeda. Anyway, when it all boils down, she's scared. Whatever she has right now, she doesn't want it in danger-- doesn't want Lu Han in danger.

The powers were for good, but that didn't mean good never hurt.

Jongin's next trip to Earth is a year later. She's sent a total thirty eight letters to her, thrice a month and then one on Lu Han's birthday, to ask her how it was going, and one on her own, to tell her how it went.

When Jongin goes back, Lu Han doesn't scream, but she pulls her in lightning-fast and gives her the tightest hug Jongin's had in her life. She's pretty sure even a basilisk doesn't squeeze that hard, and by this time, she's weathered through quite a few. Those monsters are terrible. "You," Lu Han hits her on the shoulder, eyes wet, "Are an asshole. I love you. You asshole."

"Nice," Jongin nods. "I like that. You are a... mouth hole. The polar opposite of me. Nice hole."

Lu Han glares at her, but there's no seriousness in it. "Why are we talking about holes?"

"Maybe we're discussing the state your house," Jongin suggests, and Lu Han throws her head back, laughing.

"Hey though," Lu Han tweaks Jongin's nose. Jongin goes cross-eyed in response.

"Yes," Jongin says, a little pained. Lu Han's pinching a bit too hard, and she's trying to read Richard Siken on Lu Han's iPad without getting a nosebleed.

"Want to take a look at my current journal? I've been looking for ideas and I just want to get your feedback on some notes."

"Spill," Jongin spreads her arms, and Lu Han drop-rolls off the sofa towards the bedroom.

It's been a few months since her last mission, and she's here on break. Because yes, the higher ups are apparently capable of mercy towards the servants in the Creation pyramid.



These days the records play mostly instrumentals, and Jongin recognizes a Yiruma piece that the boy with crimped hair played to himself almost every night, back at the dorms. These days, Lu Han is much freer than she used to be, like she's finally stepping into herself. She holds onto Jongin more, shows her all the new places she's been to since Jongin had come last, shows her the post-it notes she keeps in her notebooks and the list of movies she's toted up for them to see, the letters she'd written back but couldn't send.

When Lu Han comes back, five minutes later, she slides on her socks and bumps into the sofa, bowling over. "Here we are then," she starts, adjusting her glasses.

"Fire," Jongin sits up straight, and Lu Han begins to read.

In the middle, though, Lu Han goes off to drink some water, and Jongin finds herself asking if she's seeing anyone. Lu Han looks up with a slight frown that smoothes over into a little smile as she blinks at Jongin. "No," she shrugs. "I don't think I need to. Not since--" She breaks off suddenly and blushes, staring down at her glass, but Jongin feels a little leap.

Not since you.

Lu Han clears her throat and walks back to her notes. "Anyway," she continues. "Let's get back on track here."

Lu Han starts sending letters back, instead of storing them for Jongin to read later when she’s over. Kyungsoo hides a smile behind her hand as she hands over the envelope. The first letter Jongin reads, opens with,

Well, now I've got an idea! If you're reading this in a place that isn't my apartment, it's succeeded. I've sent you a letter!!!!! Guess who's a genius! Me!!!!

Jongin grins, reads on. Lu Han tells her about her day, how the kids she'd been teaching back when Jongin had first stayed over are in fifth grade now, and a few of them didn't remember her when she met them last week. Can you believe it, Lu Han's impeccable penmanship deteriorates to an angry scribble, They DIDN'T REMEMBER me. You don't just FORGET the person who taught you how to count on your fingers and write your alphabet and teach you MORALS. I taught them MORALS. Really GOOD ones too. Jongin laughs out loud. Lu Han, and good morals? Lu Han steals her last bites of lunch if Jongin isn't looking. She makes a mental note to write that down in her reply.

Oh, but I have decided to write something for you. I've written two books already, and one is being edited, and the other I am polishing up the second draft for. But I want to write something and have you in the acknowledgements, and you to thank. Best friend!!!!! You must tell me what you want me to write for you. Dystopian? Regency Era in Chinese, for a whitewashed girl like you? Horror? Mystery? I know you love mystery! Your wish is my command this time.

Jongin sits up and smiles. It's a great sentiment, but honestly, seeing up close the torture that Lu Han puts herself through with writing-- staying up til five in the morning on her laptop, scrapping chapters and chapters while being near tears of frustration, sometimes hanging up her board and spending up to five months collecting pictures and printing them out to pin on the corkwood, for inspiration... Jongin can't really bring herself to put Lu Han through that. She'll say no to that, and tell her why, in case Lu Han made a fuss and accused of her not being a real friend or something similar that she usually resorts to.

Lu Han starts a new paragraph, shares a recipe and tells her to take a picture of her cooking it and to send it over as soon as humanly possible (Jongin bites back a snort at that). Then she signs off with, Love, The prettiest!!! You know it!!!

P.S. yours, of course



Jongin shakes her head in disbelief. To think that these words and the ones that she actually writes in her books come from the same person... she'll never understand. She feels a smug warmth at the postscript, though, and folds the letter, pushing it under her pillow.

The next day, she sits down to write a reply, but she gets a signal for another job to work on, and has to leave.

The hardest souls to convince are the babies, believe it or not. They actually don't go to heaven at once-- considering they haven't done anything bad but also not anything good, they've got to choose: Heaven or service? And people would think, with all the cherubs around, that babies are pretty easy to persuade. But Jongin, and every other angel with experience, knows; babies are the downright devil. For one thing, deciphering the babble is near impossible. Isaphim had been the quickest angel to converse with understanding with a baby, and he'd taken three days. Jongin secretly thinks they know everything that happens and just don't let on, but hypotheses don't matter in the face of unstoppable wailing. Jongin sweats it out for a week, and by the time she's done, she feels like throwing up everything she'd eaten in her past life.

Still, she makes it to Lu Han's in commendable time (a full minute, given her condition), but ends up knocking the door with her forehead instead of her knuckles.

Lu Han takes this occurrence commendably, too. She doesn't pale or pass out herself or shriek and call the police. She drags Jongin to the toilet, sets her up on the seat, and douses her in ice cubes and water. The ice cubes wake Jongin up. Lu Han looks at her very intensely before bursting into tears.

"Alright," Lu Han huffs. "You won't let me write you something. You'll have to do something for me instead."

"Very well," Jongin replies, staring out the window. It's wonderful weather outside, March bounding in with the light step and giddiness of spring.

"You're going to tell me really long stories at bedtime," Lu Han makes a face. "It's the worst I can come up with, sorry."

"The worst, really?" Jongin chuckles and glances at her. "You're losing your touch."

"Contrariwise," Lu Han says, tartly. "I'm getting too fond of you, is all. Be grateful."

"I am," Jongin says, seriously. "I am very grateful."

Being grateful doesn't cut it, though. She has to leave in the middle, as usual, all the time. The stories she tells Lu Han are of dragons-- real dragons, the ones that prowl the solar systems (they prefer binary ones for mating, though)-- and demons, werewolves and pegasi, the Knights of Teranyth, the Elves of Ikhlam. Sometimes raised humans, prophets and the Scrolls of Storr, but never angels. Jongin wants to leave that until later. Until she tells Lu Han the truth.

Some days, when Jongin can still afford to stay in the city until the day after, Lu Han looks at her wonderingly and tells her her dreams.

"Tell me where you're going," Lu Han says. "Just this time."

Jongin stares at her feet and shakes her head. "We've been at this, what. Six years now?"

"Don't mention the time!" Lu Han squeals. "I don't want to know how close I am to turning thirty!"

"Alright, alright." Jongin leans back to ruffle her hair. "You still don't look a day over, uh, five."

"Gross. You're gross. Where're you going!"

"I'm sorry, Hannie," Jongin sighs, getting up. "I just can't tell you."

"You're so mysterious," Lu Han hugs a pillow to her, and she laughs but it's not entirely happy laughter. Jongin turns to look at her, brimming with the words she wants to say, the full story. She owes her-- but her throat's so full that her tongue only loosens itself enough to say, "Isn't that something you like?" It falls weak to Jongin's own ears, but Lu Han whoops likes it's the funniest thing she's heard all week.

"Jongin, Jongin," she gasps, at the end. "What do I do with you."

What do you do without me? Jongin wants to ask, but she just smiles and walks out the door.

They're half-asleep, drifting back to unconsciousness. It's half past two in the morning, and Lu Han draws little circles on Jongin's shoulder, eyes shut. They shift at the same time, laugh at that, legs tangling. "Make me feel things," Lu Han whispers in a semi-croak, poking Jongin, accusatory. Jongin wills herself not to freeze up. (If she does, she knows Lu Han won't say anything else.)

Lu Han stretches her arms. "You know my favorite books, right?"

"Know some of them."

"Mmm," Lu Han sighs, moving over to lie on top of Jongin almost completely. "Well, one of my favorites is that..." she lifts her head to squint at Jongin's chin, then flumps her head down. "That watchamathing. You know."

"You were about to let me know," Jongin laughs, hand coming up to comb through Lu Han's hair. They're longer now, reaching her elbows.

"Yeah. Mmmmf. I like your boobs, know that?"

"Yeah? I like yours."

"Tit for tit."

"For tit," Jongin agrees, yawning.

"So the book," Lu Han resurfaces. "Alden Bell is the guy. Girl? Human. Who wrote it."

"Tree."

"I said human. I mean human."

"Alright, alright. Human. Wrote a book."

Lu Han trails a finger lazily up Jongin's arm; tries to tickle her, but it doesn't really work because her eyes are half closed and she's tapping at the bedsheet instead. Jongin doesn't know what's going on. Lu Han clears her throat in an effort to make things serious. "The Angels are the Reapers, it's called."

This time Jongin does stiffen, but Lu Han doesn't notice. "Angels?"

"Correcto. Comprendo," Lu Han wiggles to get comfortable. "And the first part is, well. Kind of hard to read, I think, but it gets better with each sentence. And it's about this girl in a world of zombies. There's barely any real humans left and she isolated herself on this island. Believed God had cursed her. She kind of let her younger foster brother die, but that comes later."

"Sounds like a fairytale," Jongin drowses, eyelids getting heavier with each passing second. Really, the things Lu Han did to her body. She hadn't let herself sleep for seven months straight, and here the girl is, knocking her out in a matter of hours.

Lu Han punches her in retaliation.

Jongin winces. Knocking her out, literally.

"Yeah, so. She's barely fifteen and she's standing at the shore and she sees this thing she calls the Miracle of the Moon. I think. It's because the moon is so shiny and low in the sky? And there's bright lit up jellyfish flying around her feet in the water."

"Swimming."

"Huh? Wait, yeah. Swimming in the water. Around her feet. And she feels so... so clean about it." Lu Han sighs, flips over, off Jongin.

"Why," Jongin mumbles. "You were warm."

"She feels clean about it," Lu Han ignores her. "Like she believes God has cursed her and all and that she's a dirty sinner, but she feels clean now, with this empty island and the water and the jellyfish and the moon. And she feels pure and good and it was... I just. Reading that, the passage, over and over again, it was so unbelievable. Each time it seemed new and her cleanness made me feel clean. Like I just had some rain fall on my face. Well, not too vividly, of course." A nervous laugh. "But, you know?"

Jongin's hand finds hers and curls around it. "I know."

"You make me feel clean," Lu Han says, quietly. "Like you're a miracle of the moon."

Jongin rolls over to lie on top of her, and their foreheads press. "You make me feel everything."

Lu Han manages a tiny smile. "No miracle?"

"Very miracle."

Lu Han's out on one of her walks, again. "The search for inspiration," she'd said before leaving, slapping on her floppy hat with a pout.

Jongin walks around the apartment, fingers trailing over the surfaces. The cream walls, the mantelpiece over the fake fireplace Lu Han had installed a year ago ("It looked pretty! And it's going to be all warm and authentic in winter." "You can't defend yourself, Hannie, this is a total waste of space." "My apartment, my rules!"), the writing desk, the bed, the many shelves filled with books, the windowsills and curtains. She pauses at the bedroom window, smiling as she sees Lu Han walk across the street after looking both ways with her hand on her hat.

Tonight Jongin will start on her Neutralys journey, boot up as part of a galactic diplomat guard. Once she succeeds, she'll get to Level IV, Lieutenancy. Why they have military terms and way of life is no longer a question; Jongin has seen the solar wars first hand now. With the higher up angels on her side, though, it had been more massacre than battle. Those are things she won't be telling Lu Han anytime soon.

But there is one story that she will tell her. With promotion comes shedding, shedding of the human elements in her. If she turns overnight into a Minseok somehow, cold and detached and uncaring, she wants to come clean to Lu Han on the truth about herself first.

Jongin still hesitates at the thought of telling her-- a truth as big as this could be the end of everything, even if she returns to Earth the next week with all her feelings intact. If anything, though, it might help Lu Han write. She'd been in a block for years, now, just little short stories here and there breaking the dry spell. She's been publishing the extra novels she'd come up with before.

Distractedly, Jongin reaches up on tip toes to pull out Peter Pan from the top shelf, then settles down to read.

Lu Han doesn't take very well to being tucked in (and is probably the only mortal to feel this way), but Jongin coaxes her into it. When they're lying down, side by side, Lu Han turns to her and yawns hugely, chin disappearing into her neck. Jongin laughs at her and tells her to stop, so Lu Han just holds her mouth there, wide open enough to fit a burrito in it sideways. "Wha ah," Lu Han gargles. "Ya, ya."

"What's up? Yo yo?" Jongin guesses, and Lu Han nods expressively before closing her mouth.

"God, that was tiring. My jaw hurts now."

Jongin laughs again, a finger coming up to tap Lu Han's chin, which starts wagging at once. "You've got something to say. Tell me at once."

"What if I don't want to?" Jongin teases, but she knows she'll have to say it, one way or another.

"Then I'll turn around and won't let you spoon me."

"Is that really your idea of a threat?"

"Sounds pretty threatening to me," Lu Han admits. Jongin curls up closer around her, and they stay in silence for a while; Jongin playing with Lu Han's hair, Lu Han drumming her fingers on Jongin's waist.

"Jongin," Lu Han starts, eyebrows going up in earnestness, then drawing together mulishly. "Nothing."

It's the writing that's been bothering her. "Was reading Peter Pan before you came in," Jongin says, nonchalant. She feels Lu Han relax under her. "You know that famous quote from it?"

Lu Han snorts. "Clap your hands if you believe?"

Jongin bats her shoulder. "No. The other one. Death is just the next big adventure."

"That's not the exact quote," Lu Han argues, propping herself up on an arm. "You're paraphrasing."

"Yeah, yeah. That. I was just thinking..." Jongin trails off. She wants to talk about what she's thinking, of death at different levels, at different stages, in different ways. You go to bed and some memories will die off, you wake up and the you that was the night before won't be exactly the same. Death and differences and lives kept forever. And she's thinking this because she's leaving before the sun rises, again, and she's thinking this because she doesn't want to leave, and somewhere, interconnected somehow and under all those words, she doesn't want to tell Lu Han, and at the same time she does. "I was just thinking about your writing," she says, finally, and lets the words hang in the air.

Lu Han sighs. "You know I've pretty much given up, Jongin. It's not something I can help. I sit down, nothing comes. If something does, it sucks. That's it."

"One more time?"

"Jongin!"

“Not even for me?” Jongin tries to wheedle a smile out of her. It works, but only just. Lu Han grins for a second, her hand coming to touch Jongin’s.

“Maybe. For you.”

"Alright, then," Jongin pulls away and lies back down, wriggling a little to get comfortable. "Because I've got a lot to tell you."

"Is it about your work?" Lu Han pounces, eyes bright. "Is this the great revelation? The second coming of the Messiah?"

Jongin shrugs. "Something like that. Maybe."

"Maybe?" Lu Han grins. "Just maybe? No boom? No pow wow and sticks turning into serpents and man-eating whales?"

"Blasphemous," Jongin laughs. "You're going to get struck by lightning and turn into barbeque."

Lu Han wrinkles her nose. "That's Zeus. I never did dig him."

But they quiet down and get serious, and Jongin closes her eyes and begins.



Telling it now, speaking all these words that speak the story of her life, it seems surreal. She has the urge to laugh at some points, hysterical under the weight of all the memories now coming flooding back-- but with Lu Han’s eyes on her, when her voice wavers she stops. Takes deep breaths and calms herself down. She must be the worst angel at the moment, honestly. Nobody lasts so long with this these human weakness, bodily or emotional.

It's not that long or stunning-- the human part, at least. Growing up, growing away from home, moving to the next town for a proper high school. But then Minseok enters the story, and Lu Han stiffens, blinks, frowns. But she doesn't say anything, not until Jongin reaches the part where she dies on the beach, swimming after Minseok. She'd been going to ask Minseok out to the fireworks that night, she's sure. It's a pretty pathetic joke, honestly.

And then, for the first time since Jongin started, Lu Han speaks up.

"Prove it," she says. Her voice has gone hoarse.

Jongin looks at her for a moment, startled and undecided. She could stop, at this point. She could just reach out to her wrist and erase her memory. Jongin blinks, ends up in the kitchen. When she blinks again, she's at the doorway to the bedroom.

The color drains from Lu Han's face. "Okay," she says, quietly. "Okay. Go on."



When Jongin reaches the part when she first met Lu Han, she takes a deep breath and ploughs on. She'd had a bad feeling about telling all this from the start, but this is getting worse every second.

She tells the truth about everything, about the volunteering, the nights she had to go, the times she'd only meet Lu Han for a few hours, the stories she used to tell when they went to bed, how she sent the letters. It takes hours and hours, and Jongin loses all track of all Time for once, Mortal and Upper both. When she finishes, the clock shines a green 4.36 AM. at her, and the stars and planets stuck on Lu Han's ceiling are glowing in the dark before sunrise.

Lu Han is silent.

Jongin says, "I'm sorry."

But Lu Han isn't saying anything-- and that itself is an answer.

Heart heavy, threatening to rip at the seams, Jongin fades. Right there, in front of her.

Years pass. Pass in angel time, in human time, in all time. Dimensions and unit warps don't matter anymore.

A book, As Told By, is published, in China. Jongin buys it at the duty free, because she sees the author's name. The acknowledgements say, 'from j', which is odd, because acknowledgements aren't from, they're for.

Jongin has never been promoted after telling Lu Han. She's not sure if it's because her movements have always been tracked; she doesn't care that much, either. Sometimes the only thing she knows is that she hasn't lost an ounce of her feelings since. Lu Han resides in her skin, under her fingers, in her hair and the close way her clothes hug to her when they morph on her, every time her feet touch Earth. She does not think about the acknowledgements section. She spares the reviews a glance, New York Times, Saturday Post, Whitebread, lets herself smile a moment. Her muscles don't feel too fake in their movements. For the first time, she skims through a novel instead of reading it fully. She puts it back when she's done. She does not allow herself to think about the book.

Touching down in Beijing again after all these years is tumultuous, to say the least. Every corner she turns, she sees flashes of humans she'd crossed paths with, half-imagines she smells the remains of Minseok's body, and misses the name of that girl. That girl and her hair and the way she wrote and the way she slept on her shoulder and-- Jongin shakes herself every time her thoughts turn that way.

She's tracking a soul about to rest so she can begin Armory, when she hears Lu Han, clear and strong. Like an angel talking to her, but not like an angel. Jongin blinks. She knows Sehun patrols the Bay for demons and confused, in-training Aqua Humanoid angels. She hesitates for a second, then calls out to Sehun, relays the mission, tells him to hold the soul for her, and disappears.

Within the second, she's at Lu Han's door. She raises her hand to the ring the bell, ends up knocking instead. She waits a few minutes before knocking again, hears the familiar shuffle.

The door opens wide.

"Missed you," Lu Han says, her voice weary and cracked. Her nose is red and her eyes are red and she has tissues clutched in her hand. Jongin says nothing, just stands and stares, drinking the sight of her in. "Oh, Jongin," Lu Han laughs, sounding parts sad and parts amused. She sneezes, then, and Jongin gathers herself together, pushes her in and closes the door behind her.

"You called," Jongin says, awkwardly, and Lu Han's shoulders slump.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "I'm so sorry I sent you away."

Jongin lifts a hand to hold Lu Han's, pauses, lets it fall back. "Nothing," she shakes her head. "It was nothing, really. I had to go, after what I'd done." She's about to say more, but Lu Han raises her head and looks at her, just looks at her, and Jongin will be damned, yes, she will fall, she will fall for this human, from grace and level and heaven, she will doom herself for this, for Lu Han, to hold her and to touch-- Jongin raises her arms, and Lu Han pulls her in, close, trembling until Jongin's arms rest on her shoulders. "Haven't slept in so long," Lu Han mumbles. "Couldn't sleep without you anymore. Two whole weeks. I'm almost afraid I'm imagining you."

Jongin holds her tighter. "Right here," she says. "Lu Han, I'm right here."

They talk. They talk for hours. They would talk, perhaps, for days. But then Lu Han interrupts herself and--

"Stay," she pleads, hand coming up to cup Jongin's cheek, and Jongin manages a laugh.

"I'm not going anywhere for long, you know. Just... just standard procedure, when the job's finished. I'll probably be back soon, and I'm not going anywhere right now."

"No," Lu Han says, "You're flickering."

Jongin looks down at herself, startled. Her body is fading before wavering back to opacity. Lu Han must have caught onto her surprise, because her hand slips down to Jongin's lap and presses down hard, on her thighs.

"Jongin? Jongin?" Her voice rises with panic.

Jongin pulls her close, wraps her arms around Lu Han. Jongin's chin tucks comfortably over Lu Han's shoulder, and Jongin rocks her back and forth. Lu Han's shaking, slightly. "I don't want to lose you," she whispers into Jongin's sweater. "I don't want you to go."

"Shhh."

Jongin thinks of promises made and never kept, broken carelessly and strewn carelessly like bottles across the shore. She thinks of painful hours of waiting and expectations dashed, and she knows she can't do that to Lu Han. She wants to swear to this girl in her arms that she'll never leave, that she doesn't want to leave, that nothing would ever keep Jongin from her. But that would all break, eventually. Every word would turn over and over in her mind as days passed into weeks and years, until it was all meaningless. Until Lu Han resolved her for a liar and shred any memories of them that she had left.

Lu Han now, the present Lu Han, in her arms and trusting and desperate, breathes deeply. She's finally asleep. Jongin sighs and pulls away, lays Lu Han down on the bed; brushes her thumb over a pretty ear, Lu Han's sharp jaw.

"I'll try," Jongin says, finally. "For you. Always."

Level up, level up, DJ Spock.

The trip from Kyoto Station to the nearest binary system is wild and three hours long. Not human hours, of course. She’ll do her best to get in and get out with guard job, but by the time Jongin returns to Earth, at least a year and a half will have passed on the planet. She’ll write to Lu Han, though, and Lu Han will be there, waiting at the door maybe, when Jongin comes back.