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Celeste has always thought herself inured to beauty. She traffics in illusions, after all—velvet dresses, painted lips, the shimmer of a dice balanced just so. She has worn silks designed to ensnare kings, smiles that lure mortals into ruins. She knows the craft down to the last stitch and shadow. Pretty masks are her trade.
And then Junko spreads her wings, six of them glimmering like glass dipped in starlight. White-gold regalia draped in folds too flawless to be fabric, a halo fractured into perfect orbit, hair sparkling like silk threads spun from light. Her face is pretty—sweet, sculpted, every line and angle too symmetrical, too luminous—and alive with a childlike mischief that no statue could hold. The very air bends towards her, like gravity itself recognises Junko as the favoured child of Heaven. It’s so laughably cliché, so obvious. An angel made for Christmas cards and naïve humans.
It’s also impossibly wrong. Celeste sees the cracks, the faint distortions that make her skin crawl. Junko’s pale eyes glitter, not cruel, not kind, but so dazzlingly empty. But it does not matter. Her throat tightens anyway, as if Junko’s beauty has reached inside her lungs. The angel looks like a lie wrapped in silk. A performance so perfect it almost convinced her too. She could not deny it: Enoshima Junko is beautiful in every sense of the word, dazzling as a diamond knife.
And that realisation infuriates her.
Celeste smiles, the gesture sharp and sly, the only defence she has left. “You look like a stained glass window come to life,” she says softly. “Beautiful, hollow, and insufferably self-important.”
Junko tilts her head, halo shards spinning lazily. “Aww, babe. You think I’m pretty?”
Her wings shift, and Celeste’s heart clenches before she forces it still again.
“No,” Celeste replies, too quickly. “I think you are dangerous.”
Junko’s smile only spreads wider. “Dangerous, huh? Don’tcha mean ‘drop dead gorgeous’?”
“Do not flatter yourself. I have stared down emperors who thought their crowns were divine mandate. You are no different.”
The lie stings her tongue. Junko is different. There is something about the way she gleams, the ways her feathers seem like blades of brilliance, sharp enough to slice apart reason.
“Pfft. You’re soooo totally dazzled right now,” Junko singsongs, folding her hands in mock prayer. The gesture should be pious—an angel in solemn worship—instead it looks like blasphemy. “If the traitor of Heaven can still make a devil’s heart skip, maybe they should rethink their casting, yeah?”
Celeste’s tail curls lazily in the air, the pointed tip swaying with the rhythm of her thoughts.
“How curious. An angel who toys with words instead of wielding holy fire. One might mistake you for a devil, should they not know better.”
Junko turns her head to look at Celeste, wings haloed in false radiance, her sword gleaming at her hip but untouched. She feigns a pout as the devil’s tail nearly brushes her ankle. “What, you’d rather I swing this thing around? Burn you to ash with just a look? That sounds so boring.”
Celeste’s eyes narrow, though not in displeasure. “How very blasphemous of you, Enoshima-san. To reject the role Heaven gave you, only to borrow Hell’s little tricks. Do you so envy us, angel?”
“Nah, I just think your way is way more fun,” Junko grins. She leans in, close enough to feel Celeste’s breath. “Besides, isn’t imitation the sincerest form of flattery?”
“I think not, cher ange.” Celeste scoffs. “You are no devil. You are an angel pretending at temptation, clumsily so.”
The angel’s grin widens. “Clumsy? Babe, please. If I were clumsy, you wouldn’t look so mesmerised every time.”
“No, no, you see... I sneaked into the Garden—without anyone knowing, clever, right?—and then I gave Maizono-chan the ap—”
Junko has barely finished telling her story before Celeste’s tail coils around her ankle. A quick, playful tug, and down the angel goes, sprawling inelegantly across the floor.
Celeste brings her hand to her lips, hiding the little smirk. “How graciously Heaven has fallen. Tell me, sweet cherub, is the floor as divine as you are?”
Junko props her hand on the ground, completely unbothered, twin-tails fanned out around her head like a parody of wings. “You wish you could knock me down like that for real.” The angel gives her a shit-eating grin. “But hey, if it makes you feel better, I’ll let ya keep the point.”
“How magnanimous,” the corners of Celeste’s lips quirk. “Truly, the most generous fraud ever spewed from Heaven’s gates.”
“Fraud?” Junko breaks out a laugh, rolling onto her back with the grace of someone who simply refuses to be embarrassed. “You sound jealous.”
Celeste steps closer, tail still curled tight around Junko’s leg. “Jealousy is beneath me, darling. But mocking an idiot seraph who can’t keep her balance? That, I will indulge.”
Junko grins up at her, halo slipping crooked like a tilted crown. “Then indulge away, baby.”
“Blasphemous traitor,” Celeste replies evenly, but the smile on her lips makes the name less a curse than a secret endearment.
The change comes not with trumpets, but with silence.
Junko breathes in, and her broken halo splits further apart into fractals. Wings multiply until the dimensions fold like paper. Every plume bears an eye, bright and unblinking.
Celeste’s body screams. Her blood recoils, her lungs feel too tight. The radiance pouring off Junko isn’t warmth but the chill of divinity, cold enough to sear. She tries to fix her gaze, to force her nerves to hold steady, but each time her eyes land on Junko they slide sideways, refusing to comprehend.
But she still sees her. She sees the infinite wings, the voices stacked in unnatural harmony, the shifting geometry that insisted it is holy. Her skin burns like it was pressed against scripture, as if every nerve remembers what divinity means and begs her to kneel.
Celeste bites down on the inside of her cheek. Copper floods her tongue. No, I will not kneel. If Junko wanted to destroy her, she already would have. This unveiling is a gift.
Junko’s many eyes blink in perfect, terrible unison. “Do I scare you, Celeste?” Her layered voices spill into the air, girlish tone laced with thunder.
Celeste’s lips curl into a smile too sharp for her trembling, a flimsy bravado. “Of course you do,” she hisses. “That is what you were made for, is it not?”
“Sweetheart,” Junko giggles, a chorus of bells and storms, “that’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all century.”