Work Text:
The thing one has to understand about the Shinigami is that there is nothing more to understand.
There is no secret mystery, no withheld twist, non plus ultra.
The existence of a Shinigami is as thin as the notebook paper they half-heartedly scribble upon every once in a while. The life of a Shinigami is as straightforward as the wide-ruled lines.
Write, repeat.
They do not sleep, do not need to eat, and live forever.
There is no need for struggle. There is no strain, even when the dust of centuries heaps upon those huddled forms crouching in the dirt.
The Shinigami have never built anything that has outlasted them. Perhaps that is why they are content with nothing.
And just as there is no pain, it is similarly difficult to strive for pleasure. What little remains of the realm that is not Shinigami has long since decayed.
Even if one miraculously found an interesting thing, a single bite would reveal it hollow, tasteless, and crumbling.
You cannot win in the realm of the Shinigami. And so it must follow that you cannot lose.
Ah, but with one errant flick of the finger a notebook falls from the heavens and crashes to the earth.
It is almost certain that nothing will come of it, but the whole point is that the notebook will no longer be of ‘heaven’.
But instead it will be of base ‘earth’. Thus: fallible, frail, weak.
Thus: infinitely more interesting.
And so this time, when you finally take a bite, the fruit will be so much more delicious and filling.
Six years of effort is definitely worth it for a perfect masterpiece.
But when you lick the juices from your mouth, swallowing the final gobbets of flesh down your gullet, the meal will be gone. The taste, already a fading and distant memory.
And understand: there will never be anything like that ever again.
But there was nothing to be done. It was ripe. And even if it had been fixed to the branch, eventually it would have gone sour. Irrevocable loss.
Yes.
Objectively, it had been the best time to pluck and eat the apple. Victory, for the Shinigami.
But in eating the apple and finishing the meal, in knowing the fruit and playing the game of good and evil—
Winners are defined by losers. This Shinigami simply happened to be both.
And he had the rest of forever to realise that fact.