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Chapter Text

Blood dripped from beneath the frayed sleeves of the boy’s dark blue hoodie. The hood and his messy black hair hid the bruises on his face from the casual observer. And no one in Tokyo thinks to look twice.

When he entered the building, the city’s bustle came to an abrupt halt. Machines whirred and spat out papers; an office worker cursed when the fax transmission came out wrong. More office workers clicked away on their keyboards or spoke into their headsets to direct customers. A woman in a crisp suit approached the boy. “Welcome to Futures Incorporated. How may I be of assistance?”

The boy croaked out, “Roof.”

“You wish to go to the rooftop? Of course. Take the elevator down the hall and to your right, and please enjoy the view—but be careful, the mesh fence has been taken down for repair. I advise you to stay away from the edge.”

The boy was already dragging his feet down the hall, his broken sneakers squeaking against the marble floor. The elevator seemed to take forever, the tinny music buffering every few seconds. Finally, he arrived at the fortieth floor and climbed up to the roof.

The wind blew his hood back. His black hair flew wildly around his bruised face. A single tear streaked down his blue-and-white skin, cast orange from the setting sun. Akihabara looked beautiful in the sunset, as buildings and skyscrapers became meaningless silhouettes and a vivid orange sky glared at the people like an angel passing judgment.

The boy stepped to the edge, closed his eyes, and let himself fall. Let an angel pass judgment on him now.

The angel chose mercy—don’t angels always? The boy thought he had died, as he hovered at the halfway point between the top of the high-rise and the unforgiving asphalt below. He stared into the wide red eyes of a petite white-haired fairy-like girl clad in ivory and gold.

“Kakehashi Mirai,” the fairy reported in a high-pitched voice, “age seventeen, high school student, third year. Lived with his abusive uncle and aunt for almost ten years. Attempted suicide on September 23. Triggering event—a particularly nasty fight with his uncle over inheritance. Did I get that right?”

Before Mirai could reply, the fairy giggled and said, “Of course I got it right. I’m Nasse, Angel of Purity, and angels can only speak the truth.”

Angels can only… “If you’re an angel,” Mirai murmured, his dark eyes flickering around them, “does that mean I’m dead?”

Nasse giggled. “Of course not, silly. Look below you; there’s no messy body causing passersby to scream or take pictures—how strange it is, to want to memorialize something as commonplace as death. No, Mirai, you’re flying. You have wings like me now.”

As though to prove her point, Nasse fluttered her feathery white wings, which looked too small to actually support a person’s weight. By instinct, Mirai willed himself to follow, though he didn’t think he had wings. To his astonishment, he lifted several feet into the sky, and large white feathers drifted around him.

He turned to see his reflection in a window of the high-rise. In stark contrast to his dark clothes and hair, a pair of colossal white wings spread on either side, each wing spanning more than two arm’s lengths. Mirai clapped a hand over his mouth in shock.

Nasse glanced up at him with concern. “Do you have a fear of heights? Or do you not like flying in general? Because as a god candidate, that would be very unfortunate.”

Mirai tore his gaze away from his eerie reflection to stare down at Nasse. “What did you say?”

“It would be very unfortunate,” Nasse repeated, “if you became the next God but couldn’t even look down upon the world in your power.”

…

That day, over 2,000 people attempted suicide. And thirteen were saved by angels.

Angels are not nearly as noble as Mirai thought. They stood by and watched from Heaven as millions suffered, and they only intervened in their own interest.

The old god was dying, and he promised unfathomable glory to the angel who selected his successor. Thirteen angels of various ranks had the privilege of each selecting one candidate. And Nasse had chosen Mirai.

“Why?” Mirai asked, the tips of his wings fluttering in the wind as he soared above the world. Cities blurred below, then mountainous landscapes, and soon, he was flying over the ocean. He could glimpse sea monsters churning and floundering in a too-shallow ocean, creatures with jaws that gaped wide open in a soundless scream and tentacles that splayed on the water to create cyclones before strangling the beasts themselves. “Why me?”

Nasse smiled at him, matching his flight despite her smaller size. “Because I like you. And I liked your family. And you deserve to be happy.”

“Countless other people are more deserving than me.” He gestured to the continent below, rife with riots and refugees and people just struggling to go by.

“Well, I think you deserve happiness. And if it assures you, some of those people are god candidates too. I can sense their angels—Seraphim and even Ophanim like me.”

“Seraphim are the angel warriors,” Mirai recalled. “What are Ophanim?”

Nasse’s wide scarlet eyes glimmered in the growing sunlight; evening in Japan meant morning here. “A race far greater and more monstrous than anything silly little humankind can comprehend.” She flicked his hair playfully. “My true appearance would destroy your tiny mind, so I’ve taken on the form of a cute girl. Do you like it?”

Mirai didn’t answer her. As they flew over the Middle East and its ravaged lands and poverty-stricken people, he asked, “What about them? They need more help.”

Nasse giggled. “We don’t choose candidates based on something as basic as need. No, Mirai, to be a god, one must have known true despair.”

“So there are probably a few others like me in those places too.” Satisfied, Mirai landed back on the high-rise where he had tried to take his own life. “Let’s say one of us becomes the next God. What happens to the rest of us, Nasse?”

“The rest of silly little humankind goes about their lives as though nothing happened—unless the new God makes something happen, or lets us angels play. Fires, plagues, wars that form a riveting narrative—those are always fun. But as for the rest of the god candidates?” Nasse tipped her head to one side. “In ninety-nine days, they will perish and cannot enter Heaven or Hell, becoming gods of death if not of the universe.”

Mirai swallowed. “And the angels?”

“Angels are stagnant beings. We are eternal and unchanging. I’ve heard legends of angels rising in rank, but it hasn’t happened in over ten thousand years, so I think they’re only legends. Right? So we have nothing to lose, but you,” Nasse smiled as she suppressed a giggle, “you have everything.”

You have everything. Mirai thought of the world-spanning sunset, midnight, and sunrise he had flown through. He thought of the beautiful city he’d almost left behind. And he thought of small kindnesses even in the poorest places, of a woman in rags giving a piece of bread—the only food she had—to a child even skinnier than her. Why be a god and risk your soul when you could be a human and find happiness here? Mirai’s bruises and injuries were gone. Even if they returned when Mirai relinquished his wings, he had seen the world. He could never throw it away again.

“You can have the wings back. I don’t want to be God.”

Nasse flinched. “Do you mean that?”

“Yes. What’s wrong? You don’t have anything to lose, like you said, while I’d rather not die and become a shinigami.”

The angel wrung her hands in front of her. “I—I’m sorry. It’s too late. If you give up your candidate status and return everything I gave you, you’ll still end up with the same fate as if you died trying to be God.”

Mirai remembered with sudden clarity a magical girl anime that had taken a dark spin: the girls received their powers by unwittingly letting an alien monster rip out their souls. And there was no going back. He covered his face with one hand, grimacing. “What did you do to me?”

Nasse smiled. “I saved you. Aw, don’t look so glum, Mirai. You’ll feel better when you see what else I gave you. Come, let’s go home.”

“It’s not really home.” Mirai led Nasse to the house where he stayed. It was quieter than he was used to, his cousins having moved only a month ago to study abroad. An old-school TV buzzed with static as his uncle snored on the sofa, foreign football players larger than life brawling it out in front of him. Empty beer cans lay around the sofa. Mirai bent to pick up the sticky remote from among the garbage and turned off the TV.

In the abrupt silence, he could now clearly hear his aunt yelling at someone on the phone. Her high heels punctuated the rotting wood—they were probably the only Japanese family that kept their shoes on in the house—but she paused when she saw Mirai. She didn’t react to Nasse, who giggled and flitted above the beer cans. “No, you shut up, Kai. I’ll call you back later.” She hung up, cutting Kai off mid-sentence, and glared at Mirai. “You’re out past curfew, kid.”

Mirai opened his mouth to respond, but Nasse cut him off. “Hold out your right hand like you’re going to grab something from above. Straighten your fingers. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

A red diamond rotated, spinning faster and faster like a drill, the tip pointed at Mirai’s aunt. She couldn’t see the celestial object—the way sea monsters remained invisible to ordinary humans—but the incarnadine gem reflected in her dark eyes. “What are you doing, Mirai?”

“Shoot her.”

Before Mirai could resist, the red diamond zapped through the air, faster than a bullet. Mirai’s aunt’s face slackened.

Mirai winced. “What did I do to her?”

Nasse couldn’t stop giggling. Her voice sounded like a silver bell as she managed to squeak, “She’s all peaceful now. This is the Red Arrow’s power. Try saying something to her, Mirai.”

Mirai cleared his throat. “Hello? Auntie?”

Nasse’s laughter came out in small bursts. “Auntie—humans have such silly words.”

Mirai’s aunt smiled politely. “Yes, Mirai?”

Mirai blinked. He wasn’t used to such civility from his aunt. “How… how was your day?”

“It was uneventful. Kai’s being a bastard, as usual. How about you?”

Nasse yawned. “Ask her something interesting. Like your inheritance.”

“Auntie…” Mirai ignored Nasse’s giggling. “Can I have my inheritance?”

His aunt blinked. “Of course. It’s yours.” She went on her phone and then informed him, “I returned the will to how it should have been. When you turn eighteen in January, it’ll be transferred directly to your account.”

She sounded calmer, almost robotic. It soothed Mirai. “Thank you, Auntie.”

“You don’t need to thank her,” Nasse commented at the same time as his aunt said, “You don’t need to thank me, Mirai. My husband and I were horrible trustees. We squandered that stolen money.”

Nasse poked Mirai. “Ask her who the money was stolen from.”

Mirai looked at the angel. “She stole it from me, obviously.”

The woman shook her head. “That came later. We stole it from your parents first.”

“How?” Mirai demanded at the same time as Nasse said, “Ask her—oh, you just did.”

Mirai’s aunt hung her head in shame. “My husband and I, we were greedy. We had just enough money to send our kids to America, but not enough for my husband’s drinking addiction. He made me rig your parents’ car. We knew your parents were planning a family trip for months…”

Mirai closed his eyes. He remembered that day as vividly as if it had been yesterday.

…

TEN YEARS AGO

“Beach! Beach! Beach!” Mirai and his twin brother piped. While Mirai had black hair and dark eyes like midnight, Akira’s red-brown hair and russet eyes reflected the dawn.

Akira unwrapped a package of rice crackers and began to munch on them, crumbs falling onto the blanket over his lap. Their mother tucked a strand of blue-black hair behind an ear and smiled at their father. “It’ll be good to get away from the Kira nonsense for a while.”

Their father gently shushed her, casting a concerned glance at the kids. Mirai shrugged. “All the kids in our class talk about Kira. I don’t care about him; he doesn’t scare me!”

Akira mumbled, his mouth full of cracker, “I hate Kira.”

Mirai nudged him. “Only ‘cause our classmates make fun of you for having a name that sounds like his.”

Akira bristled. “It’s A-kira, not Kira! ‘Kira’ isn’t even his real name! It’s so unfair.”

Mirai ruffled his younger twin brother’s hair. “You think everything is unfair, Aki.”

Their parents chattered about the seaside restaurants to look forward to. As their mother leaned over the glove compartment to peck their father’s cheek, he fumbled with the car keys. “Sweetheart,” he protested affectionately.

Akira stuck out his tongue in mock disgust, then licked a few stray crumbs on his lips. Mirai’s family enjoyed eating out, but Mirai was mostly looking forward to swimming in the ocean.

“The life jackets!” he exclaimed. He and Akira weren’t strong swimmers, so his parents bought life jackets just in case, especially since tides could be unpredictable. “We almost forgot them.”

His mother handed him the house key. “Be quick, okay?”

Akira tugged on Mirai’s short sleeve. “Want me to come with you?”

Mirai glanced at the crumb-covered blanket over Akira’s lap and shook his head. “I’ll be right back.”

He twirled the house key around a chubby finger, but he had barely taken a few steps out of the family sedan before the car and his world exploded.

…

Back in the present, Mirai struggled to breathe. His back burned with the old injury. He had almost died with his family back then, and there had been many times when he wished he had. Then he wished he let Akira come with him so he wouldn’t be alone. And then he cursed himself for his selfishness; it was better that Akira didn’t have to suffer under their abusive relatives. But why do I have to suffer? he’d ask himself. There must be a reason I survived when no one else did. If God existed, then He must have had a great destiny planned for Mirai; if Kira was as powerful as he claimed, then Mirai would see justice. But no criminals were punished, and for years, Mirai believed it had been an unfortunate accident. Or maybe Kira was dead—after all, no other criminals were dying of heart attacks. And Mirai had stopped believing in gods.

Until now.

Mirai glared down at his aunt. “You should have died too.”

His aunt gazed up at him expectantly. “Should I kill myself?”

Disgust churned in Mirai’s stomach, even as Nasse giggled and tried to goad him into letting the killer atone. “That’s not atonement,” Mirai said. “That’s cowardice. You need to turn yourself in to the police and face justice.”

She nodded. “I will.” And then she walked out of the house, into the night, to turn herself in.

Mirai stared after her in amazement. “The Red Arrow brings people back to goodness, doesn’t it?”

Nasse giggled. “Want to try it with your uncle too?”

Mirai picked his way across the scattered beer cans and stretched out his hand. The Red Arrow began to spin.

Nasse placed a slim ivory hand over his own. “How about you try the other hand, Mirai? The White Arrow has fantastic powers worth exploring too.”

The White Arrow rotated in the opposite direction—counterclockwise instead of clockwise—and thrummed with an energy that fascinated Mirai. “What exactly does it do?”

“It’s more fun to find out for yourself, silly.”

Before Mirai could resist, he let the White Arrow fly. His uncle woke up an instant before the radiant diamond struck his heart. His eyes met Mirai’s for that split instant. It went by too fast for Mirai to register his expression, but he’d later imagine seeing fear, guilt—regret. Then the man gasped and foamed at the mouth, shuddering before stilling. His blank eyes stared into nothingness. His pot belly ceased to move with breaths. When Mirai checked for a pulse, he found nothing.

Mirai yelled in horror and staggered backward. “What happened to him? What did I do? What did you make me do?”

“I didn’t make you do anything, silly.”

Mirai glared up at Nasse. She looked a few years younger than him, but he couldn’t afford to forget that she was part of the Ophanim, the highest-ranking angels. “Tell me the truth, Nasse. What do the Red and White Arrows do?”

Nasse tapped his right hand, her skin neither warm nor cold. “The sparkly Red Arrow takes away a person’s free will. Seraphim grant both Red Arrows and wings to their chosen candidates, while Cherubim grant only one.” She tapped his left hand next, and he shivered, stifling the White Arrow. “Meanwhile, this shiny White Arrow takes away a person’s life. Only Ophanim can grant White Arrows to our favorite people, along with wings and Red Arrows—the whole package deal, yum!”

Mirai grimaced.

Nasse explained, “Both free will and life were given to humankind by a previous god, so it makes sense that they can be returned; the old god definitely thought ahead by including a gift receipt!”

“And you… angels play with humanity by shooting Arrows at us?”

“Oh, no. These are forbidden powers. Only god candidates can use them, but they don’t work on angels or other god candidates. Or the current God, of course. You keep the wings but lose the Arrows when you become God. Didn’t I tell you? The old god definitely thought ahead.” Nasse tipped her head to one side. “Previous god candidates who became shinigami came up with their own way of keeping the Red and White Arrows. But I think you already knew that. Right?”

I hate Kira, Mirai could hear Akira declaring. But instead of the innocent seven-year-old who had been annoyed that his name sounded similar to a world-renowned serial killer, Mirai heard the voice of a bitter 17-year-old, resigned at life’s awfulness and terrified of these forbidden powers. It was Akira’s voice, if his brother had lived. It was his own voice.

Mirai turned away from Nasse and the corpse to report his dead uncle. Heart attacks were uncommon in Japan—that was how Kira had gained notoriety, after all—but his uncle had been unhealthy enough that it wouldn’t seem suspicious. He glanced at the time on his phone. Midnight.

Nasse peeked over his shoulder and giggled. “In ninety-eight days, you’ll be a god either way.”

Mirai held up his hands. The Arrows were weightless but weighed on him. “I don’t want these powers.”

“Then you’ll want to be God.”

…

ONE MONTH LATER

A young, white-haired man strolled down the cobblestone streets of Ireland. Below the orange, white, and green-striped flags and among the colorfully clad people spilling out of various pubs, the black feathers of his dark leather jacket made him stand out. His heavy combat boots crunched over the uneven stones, and metal chains at his waist and sleeves clinked as he moved. And most of all, his mask boggled the people. He wore a full face mask that gave his skin a sickly, grayish appearance—studded collars and leather gloves concealed his neck and hands—and two round eyes bugged out in opposite directions. It looked both creepy and comical.

The passersby pointed at him and laughed, and then the laughter turned to panic as they recognized him. They couldn’t see the tall ivory-and-gold woman behind him, her face marred with blood that dripped from two empty eye sockets, but the person in front of them was frightening enough.

The eyeless angel asked in a low, mellifluous voice, “Can you understand them?”

He replied in Japanese, “Their English is lazier and less formal than what I studied at school, but I can understand them well enough.” He smirked behind his mask as one name kept being repeated. “And anyone can understand ‘Neo Kira’.”

A couple of brawny men tried to tackle him, but he dodged. White feathers drifted down, invisible as they mingled with the black feathers these humans could see. It was said that Neo Kira could move at ultrasonic speeds, could teleport, could fly. Now they could see for themselves it was all true.

“Don’t be afraid of me—not now, anyway,” Neo Kira said in perfect English as he flew over the drunkards. He felt like a prince among peasants; he would be a god among men. “I’m looking for someone specific. If you can direct me to him, I’ll spare your petty lives—for now, anyway.”

The men bowed to him and groveled for their lives. They would do anything. With the power in Neo Kira’s right hand, they would. But he didn’t need to bother. The glint of an engraved platinum ring caught his eye. Maybe he’d bother after all.

…

“Felipe Amor,” Neo Kira pronounced, appreciating the feel of the name. He stared down at the naked man in the alley, surrounded by women who draped themselves over him like shields of flesh. He didn’t care about any of them; if anything, Felipe and his mindless lovers repulsed him. “You’ve been drawing attention to yourself.” He spun the engraved platinum ring on the back of his gloved hand. “How is it that a D-list celebrity suddenly has A-list idols from all across Europe going on their hands and knees for him? All of this in the weeks after thirteen angels descended on Earth.” He slapped his ring down so it lay flat, sandwiched between his palm and his hand.

Felipe grinned. “So Neo Kira is like me.”

“I am nothing like you.”

“We both have them fancy Red Arrows, nay? I thought there must be others like me.”

“You thought.” The bugged-out eyes remained motionless, but behind the mask, Neo Kira’s own eyes darted around until he found Felipe’s angel, picking his non-existent nails while stifling a yawn. Neo Kira held up the platinum ring, admiring the engraving. On the outside, it read, Better to reign in Hell. And on the inside: Better still to reign from Heaven. “What do you think, Meyza?”

“I think it is a beautiful ring.”

“About Felipe, you daft creature.”

“I think he is a beautiful man.”

“I think he’s hideous.”

Felipe burst out in wet laughter. “It doesn’t matter what you think of me. You took your damn sweet time, and now I’ll make you submit to me like these women.” He licked his lips. “I usually don’t swing that way, but I can make an exception for the infamous Neo Kira, nay?” He raised his right hand, summoning the Red Arrow.

Neo Kira grabbed the diamond. It sliced his glove and burned through the leather, scalding his hand, but he didn’t flinch. “Didn’t your angel tell you, Amor? Arrows don’t work on other god candidates.”

Felipe looked at his angel with betrayal. “Luta!”

Luta rolled his eyes and his non-existent sleeves. “Let’s get this over with.”

Felipe turned his panicked gaze toward Neo Kira and pulled the women closer to him as though they calmed him. “How are you gonna kill me without them Arrows, monster?”

“There are simpler, more human ways to kill someone who’d claim to be a god.” He raised a knife.

Chapter Text

Mirai kept his hood up. It was hard walking around followed by an angel invisible to everyone else. “Come on, Mirai, talk to me. I’m bored and lonely.” She flitted aside to avoid going through someone on the train. “Are you worried that people will look at you strangely if they see you talking to thin air? You know, silly, you can talk to me in your mind. It’s like you forget every time.”

Mirai glanced at her before returning to his phone. It wasn’t that he forgot, but that he wanted to practice resisting her words. He remembered how easily he had listened to her and used the Red and White Arrows. He had used each arrow only once and never again; it was a testament to his willpower. But he also couldn’t ignore her despondent expression. Do you regret saving me?

“I could never!” Nasse clasped Mirai’s hand, causing his phone to heat up from the energy. “I have never regretted anything, Mirai. Saving you was a very good decision. I believe that with all my heart.”

Do angels have hearts? Mirai joked, pulling away from her before she could fry his phone. Actually, he was relieved to know that Nasse cared about his well-being. Angels couldn’t lie, even if they didn’t always reveal the full truth unless directly prompted.

“Rude,” Nasse huffed, white sparkles shooting from her tiny wings. A couple train passengers scratched their scalps where the sparkles landed. “Although we don’t have blood pumps like silly little humankind, we’re capable of emotion too. After all,” she added, the familiar note of superiority in her high-pitched voice, “we angels are the superior beings. And Ophanim are the most superior of all.”

Inferior only to God, Mirai recalled as he scrolled through his feed. And perhaps god candidates. Angels might have given them their powers, but they themselves couldn’t use these Arrows, and Neo Kira was making headlines. The heart attacks returned with astonishing vengeance. People generally agreed that this Kira was different; along with the time gap from when the heart attack epidemic had haunted the world, this Kira didn’t specifically target criminals. After a few weeks, avid bloggers had deduced that all of Neo Kira’s victims had one thing in common: they opposed scientific progress. Sakura TV had a field day with that information.

But Neo Kira’s latest victim was different.

Mirai put on his earbuds and clicked on the sensational news story. His eyes widened. Nasse, he ordered, leave and wait for me at home.

Nasse didn’t question him. One moment, she fluttered around the passengers like an invisible, ivory and gold butterfly; the next, she was gone. The train made a sharp curve, causing the passengers to sway in unison. Mirai pocketed his phone and adjusted his hood to ensure his face stayed concealed.

…

Neo Kira used a voice synthesizer when speaking to Sakura TV. He had gotten bored of eliciting heart attacks in his unchosen people, he said with an interpreter translating to Japanese, so he turned to a good ol’ stabbing for some variety.

Bullshit, Mirai thought.

The truth was, this was entirely possible; clearly, Kira and subsequently Neo Kira were a little off in the head. But the timing was just too convenient, the target too specific. Felipe Amor had taken the free wills of the celebrities who had sex with him, and now the women’s careers lay in ruins even as they screamed and insisted he had tricked them somehow.

A witness had photographed the murder. Through the blurry image, Mirai could make out the Irish flag and a slim young man covered head to toe in the edgiest outfit imaginable. Behind the naked corpse, certain parts pixelated, a muscular angel lay on a stack of crates. No one commented on the angel; only other god candidates could see these celestial beings.

Neo Kira had no interest in something as superfluous as variety. The White Arrow didn’t work on other god candidates, so he’d had to turn to another killing method.

It could’ve been a coincidence. Maybe Neo Kira hated Felipe Amor. He didn’t seem Irish—his English had no discernable accent, making it hard to track where he was from—but maybe he thought Amor was disgusting. Mirai didn’t like how the D-list celebrity had used the Red Arrow, but he didn’t think the guy deserved to die. But that was why people called this new serial killer “Neo Kira”; he took the role of arbiter and decided who should die. He thinks he’s already God.

But Mirai knew this was no coincidence. The Sakura TV interpreter spoke with more enthusiasm, his belly jiggling as he continued, “Neo Kira challenges all his enemies at once! He invites his would-be usurpers to gather on Halloween at ‘the place where men go to God.’”

“Close enough,” Mirai muttered. He studied English at school and knew that a better translation would’ve been “the bridge between Man and God.”

“Could it be a church?” the interpreter babbled. “Sakura TV fans, you have heard our words and the Word of God—that is, Neo Kira—Himself! Let us flock to the churches and seek our savior’s successor!”

“A church would be a reasonable guess,” Mirai said to Nasse when he returned home, his angel loyally waiting for him. “But Neo Kira is speaking to us, his so-called usurpers. It’s a message only another god candidate would understand.”

Nasse giggled. “And do you get it, Mirai?”

Mirai went to his desktop and typed something into Google. Nasse flew in vertical circles like a happy-go-lucky hamster, and Mirai turned the monitor so she could see. “Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge.” Nasse winced at his terrible pronunciation. “It’s the location of the most suicides. Since god candidates are chosen among people who attempted suicide, it’s the ‘bridge between Man and God.’ It’s even a literal bridge.” Mirai checked his calendar. “And luckily, Halloween is on a weekend this year.”

“Would you still go if you had to miss school?”

“Nope.”

Nasse poked him. “You’re so boring.”

Mirai frowned. “Do you think the other candidates actually got the message? It’s harder to figure it out since Sakura TV butchered the translation. Other tabloids around the world probably messed it up too. Only people who know English might actually understand it.”

“Fortunately,” Nasse declared in her high-pitched voice, “most people in your society know at least some English. That’s how the shinigami share their powers too. It made for a very interesting series of events.”

“How did god candidates communicate in the past?”

“They didn’t.” Nasse giggled. “This is the first time.”

Dread gripped Mirai. They were traversing uncharted territory.

…

ONE WEEK LATER: HALLOWEEN

While worshippers headed to churches all over the world in droves of ivory cloaks with pointy hoods and Gothic metal crosses in honor of Kira and subsequently Neo Kira, Mirai kept his head down as he trudged along the littered gray riverside, rain pelting down on his dark hoodie. With his wings, he could’ve flown and arrived in seconds, but he and Nasse had agreed that it was best to avoid revealing his candidate status, especially since Neo Kira apparently considered them would-be usurpers and would kill them all the old-fashioned way. So Mirai had booked a flight ticket—at least Neo Kira had chosen Halloween instead of Christmas, so he could avoid peak travel season—and almost got run over by a speeding car as soon as he left the airport.

Street vendors shouted in sharp tones he couldn’t understand. A few younger people spoke the same formal English as Neo Kira, prompting him to wonder if the mysterious serial killer was Chinese. They noticed his expression and scowled at him before leaving him lost in Nanjing. And the older people glared at him as though his grandparents had directly attacked their families. Mirai wished Nasse was at his side to lighten the mood. He put up his hood and shuffled away, following the signs and then the landmarks until he arrived at Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge. The river swelled from the heavy rainfall.

Six angels surrounded the area. Mirai used his phone mirror to look at them without actually looking up. He recognized Nasse, the tiniest but among the highest-ranking. Most of them had short, cropped hair like Nasse, though one loomed larger than the others, her long hair flowing past her waist in thick, silver-white waves. Her eyes appeared gouged out, the sockets bleeding. Mirai would bet his wings that this edgy angel had chosen the equally edgy candidate who became Neo Kira. He put his phone away before the rain damaged it.

To his shock, many people had shown up at the bridge despite most tabloids hyping up the Kira churches. At least one of the four other candidates who’d figured out Neo Kira’s cryptic message—Mirai had kept quiet and if Neo Kira was going to tell people, he would’ve been more straightforward from the beginning—must have leaked the information. Most of the civilians spoke various Chinese dialects, but Mirai also picked up English, Korean, and Japanese. He tried to find the Japanese speakers, but the crowd surged around him, kicking up refuse into the already polluted river.

“Where’s Neo Kira?” someone hollered. The crowd repeated the demand in various languages until an eerie chant for Neo Kira seemed to make the bridge tremble. With their uniform ponchos, they looked like a cult.

A slim figure in black leather and feathers descended onto the bridge. The mask’s eyes bugged out in opposite directions, distracting from potential telltale details; Mirai tried to note the young man’s face shape and the bit of pale skin peeking from between his studded collars, but the mask’s wrinkly blue-gray skin and those horrific jaundiced eyes kept pulling his attention away. “I know at least five of you have come to deliver yourselves to me. You will be rewarded in the afterlife for your submission to the new god.”

“You know very well,” a mechanical female voice boomed, “what waits for failures in the afterlife.”

What looked to be the Yellow Power Ranger flew above the bridge. Civilians cried out in delight as they took pictures and tried to find the strings suspending her. They got even more excited when a Blue Power Ranger joined her. In a lower, more robotic voice, she said, “I am Lan-shi, and my ally is Jin-shi.”

Master Blue and Master Silver? Mirai shook his head. “Jin” meant “gold” in Mandarin. That matched the Yellow Power Ranger a lot more.

Mirai could almost imagine Neo Kira raising one eyebrow. “Your ally?”

Jin-shi planted her fists on her hips. “We refuse to accept how you’re targeting people like us. And killing indiscriminately is also atrocious.” Though that obviously wasn’t her priority, since she hadn’t made herself known until Neo Kira directly challenged her and the other god candidates.

Neo Kira unfurled his magnificent white wings, a stark contrast to his dark outfit. “You dare defy your god?”

Lan-shi said as if out of habit, “Gods don’t exist.” She hesitated. “You are not yet a god.” Nothing slapped the atheism out of someone more than the possibility of being God themself.

“And if we work together and succeed,” Jin-shi added, deliberately glancing at the angels and the crowd, “you’ll never become God.”

Neo Kira soared upward and lunged at them. The two power rangers dove in opposite directions, forcing Neo Kira to choose one and expose his back to the other.

Neo Kira had no such weakness. He spun into two consecutive kicks that struck both women’s jaws. With the same circular motion, he grabbed Jin-shi by the chin and yanked her toward him, ready to throw her down to the bridge below.

Lan-shi pressed her fingers together like a blade and drove it into Neo Kira’s spine. He roared and whirled around to face her. As they sparred and flew in tight circles around each other, Jin-shi swooped down to the riverside to scour through the debris. A few seconds later, she returned to her partner’s side carrying two long metal rods that might have held up curtains once. She tossed one to Lan-shi, who twirled it experimentally. The steel must have been heavier than what wushu artists would practice with, but even with the slower movements, the threat of a heavy-momentum bludgeon made Neo Kira back away.

As the two women got used to their new weapons, they spun them faster and faster, reminding Mirai of the Red and White Arrows. Neo Kira tried to block them, but his enemies overpowered him. Mirai winced, remembering the bruises and injuries his uncle had inflicted on him. Neo Kira bellowed in rage. His motions shifted. Where once he had flown gracefully, his limbs and body forming precise circular motions, he now struck out with sheer brute force.

He’s using karate instead of kung fu now, Mirai realized. Lan-shi exchanged a glance with her partner. They’d noticed too.

Neo Kira slashed along Lan-shi’s rod with a metal-laced glove—a heavy ring grinded on the grimy steel—and then he ripped off his right glove, raised his arm, and drove the blade of his hand through the rod.

Civilians cheered in delight, content to treat this fight as a martial arts demonstration. Metal splinters clattered onto the bridge or fell into the viscous river with heavy splashes. Neo Kira grabbed the two broken ends of the rod from Lan-shi and drove one into her left bicep. In the same motion, he spun to attack Jin-shi, who blocked the jagged metal with her own rod. She flinched at the splash of blood, and both rods dropped from the sky. Her rod shattered like glass when it landed on the bridge.

Neo Kira spun back to Lan-shi, grabbed the metal impaling her arm, and ripped it out. The poor Blue Power Ranger screamed in agony as her left arm hung limply from her shoulder. Her and Neo Kira’s blood spilled onto the wet bridge, where the rainwater washed it off almost immediately. Jin-shi cried out for her friend and tackled Neo Kira, wrapping her arms around the slender young man and threatening to crush him.

“Stop fighting!” a small girl cried out. Mirai found her easily. Her dark brown skin glistened in the rain; her wings burst through her poncho. She couldn’t have been older than 10.

A short angel swooped toward her. “Maria, please!”

“They’re hurting each other, Jami.” She spoke with a lilting accent that made her seem even younger. Maria flew toward the older god candidates. “We’re all the same, right? We should be getting along like a real family! Why are you fighting like this?”

“Child—” Jin-shi protested. Neo Kira elbowed her to escape her grip.

He kicked her toward Lan-shi and then put on the glove he’d taken off earlier to strike through the steel. A ring shone on his right middle finger over the glove. “Real families,” he told the child, approaching her with open arms; she reached out as though for a hug, “fight in far worse ways.”

They embraced, and then he snapped her neck. As her winged body plummeted and bounced off against the bridge to sink into the river, the people rioted. Kira would never kill a child, or so they claimed. It had all happened too fast for Mirai to react. He stumbled away from the crowd and bent over, but nothing came out. On top of the hill, away from the rest of the spectators, he glanced back at the god candidates.

Jin-shi carried Lan-shi away. Jami spoke with Neo Kira, who glanced at the retreating power rangers before making an obscene gesture at Maria’s angel.

Mirai walked away, hiding his shaking hands in his hoodie pocket. He had failed. He should have saved Maria. She was right; they should be a family. He missed Akira so, so much. He could hear his brother’s voice chiding him for letting another child be murdered. Or maybe it was his own voice.

A pretty girl with sparkling auburn hair darted in front of him and spoke in bubbly English. “I can’t fly away, but you can’t shoot me anyway. Who am I?”

“You’re—” Mirai covered his mouth with a hand.

The girl beamed. “Gotcha.”

Radiant light washed over the gloomy surroundings, ending the rain.

…

Neo Kira watched the child fall from his arms. Her wings couldn’t save her now. Sickness twisted his stomach. She reminded him of another young child…

“Her name was Maria Campbell,” her angel told Neo Kira, speaking in Japanese. Jami held out his arms as though to cradle the child, but not even her soul remained. According to Meyza, all fallen god candidates became shinigami, trapped in a rotten world between Heaven and Hell. A young child shouldn’t have had such a horrible fate.

“You damned her.”

Jami gazed up at Neo Kira with sorrowful golden eyes. “I only wanted to save her. Her foster family abused her and convinced her she was better off dead.” Jami kept his arms outstretched. “I caught her as she fell from the Golden Gate Bridge.”

“You didn’t catch her this time.” Neo Kira hated the sneer in his own voice. “And what did you hope to accomplish? You couldn’t have expected a little kid to become a god with twelve other candidates.”

“It wouldn’t have been the first time, Uryu Kanade.”

The young man flinched when Jami used his real name. He glanced at Jin-shi and Lan-shi, but the two women were too far away. Their angels had already departed. With Jami speaking with him, the other three angels hovered in a triangle formation, emotionless to Maria’s death.

“No human can hear us,” Jami assured him. “And angels are sworn to neutrality.”

“Fuck off.”

Jami tilted his head back, then continued to lean further back until it looked like his neck was broken. Meyza bellowed, “Turn away from him!”

Kanade remained paralyzed. He couldn’t look away from the Cherubim. Oh, he was fortunate that Jami wasn’t an Ophanim like Meyza; the sight would have broken his mind. But even the Cherubim looked monstrous in his true form. Whoever thought these angels had chubby cheeks and rosy skin like a fantasized baby had been delusional. Jami morphed into a chimera, his throat becoming a lion’s face, his limbs growing and then contorting into beefy muscles that tapered into crooked talons. The monster roared, revealing a wrinkled red face between his jaws.

Kanade screamed in terror.

When he opened his eyes, he was alone on the bridge. The spectators and the other angels had vanished; only Meyza remained. And police drones buzzed around him. He scowled behind his mask and flew away.

…

When the light passed, Mirai turned toward the bridge. Jami had disappeared, though Neo Kira and the angels remained utterly motionless. It was like staring at a fantastical tableau.

The sparkly-haired girl snapped her fingers to get Mirai’s attention. “You gave yourself away. Give me more. Which one’s your angel—the tall one or the short one? Which powers do you have? And what’s your name, boy?”

Mirai stammered as he tried to keep up. Unlike Neo Kira, who spoke almost exactly like what Mirai studied in school, this girl spoke fast and fluently. When Mirai answered, he became self-conscious of his accent. “Want to go out with me?”

The girl cringed—and then nodded. “Discreet. I like that.” She took hold of his arm, her long, pastel-colored nails standing out against his dark sleeve. “There’s a wondrous tea shop an hour and a half away by train. We can have our date there.”

Mirai looked at the bridge one more time. Neo Kira still hadn’t moved, but Mirai thought the young man was watching them from the corner of his eye. That mask really bugged him.

…

“I’ll have the Imperial,” the girl ordered.

Mirai stared at the menu prices, incredulous that good tea could be this cheap. Then he converted the prices to yen and almost spewed at how tea could be this expensive. “I… I’ll have…”

“He’ll also have the Imperial.” In a conspiratorial whisper, she told him, “I’ll pay your bill.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Why? Because I’m a lady? I’m probably older than you, kiddo.”

Mirai wasn’t small, but his hoodie and unkempt hair must have made him seem younger. “I’m seventeen.”

“And I’m eighteen. That makes me—what did those anime characters call it—your senpai, right?”

Mirai slouched in his seat. He couldn’t believe he was actually having this conversation. English class didn’t prepare him for this.

“But I’d laugh if you actually called me that, so you can just go with Mi-sun.” She held out her hand for him to shake. “Lee Mi-sun.”

Mirai shook her hand, surprised by how warm it felt. “Kakehashi Mirai. You can call me Mirai.”

“Mirai,” two girls said at the same time. Mirai startled until he saw Nasse, who waved behind Mi-sun. The petite angel switched spots with a slight figure who was probably Mi-sun’s angel. They had cropped hair and a slight build, making it hard to tell their gender.

The angel scowled at Mirai. “I am Revel, Angel of Trickery. In this form, my pronouns are he/him. Don’t get it wrong.”

Nasse giggled. “What does it matter? You’re a Cherubim, Revel—inferior to every other angel, but still leagues above silly men.”

Mirai remembered what Mi-sun had said to him to make him reveal his own god candidate status. “You only have a Red Arrow.”

“What do you mean ‘only’?” Mi-sun demanded. “Sure, I can’t fly, but wings didn’t save Maria. And Arrows are useless against other god candidates anyway.”

“True,” Mirai conceded, “but once you’ve flown across the world… you realize just how precious life is.”

“Then show me.” Mi-sun stared into Mirai’s eyes. She wore colored contacts, and her eyes appeared a startling jade green.

Before the tea could arrive, Mirai carried Mi-sun into the night. She gasped in wonder at the festive lights in some parts of the world. But when they returned to the tea shop, she merely smiled politely. The server arrived with their tea, and she smiled knowingly at their pink cheeks and tousled hair and clothes.

“What did you think?” Mirai asked after they finished and were leaving the tea shop.

Mi-sun tipped her head to one side, sparkles dripping from her auburn hair. “That tea was delicious.” Before Mirai could say anything more, she leaned on him. “Bring me home, Mirai.”

…

As it turned out, “home” meant Mirai’s apartment. He sat cross-legged on the rug, shy that such a pretty girl now curled up on his bed. At least Nasse’s presence made him keep the place clean.

“Ever since I got rejected from the idol group I was training for,” Mi-sun explained, “I’ve been struggling to find a place to rent. The production company provided a room for an extra week while I looked for a new job and apartment.”

“But instead of doing either,” Mirai deduced, “you used the Red Arrows to… to make ends meet. And before that,” he realized, his cheeks flushing, “you… you…” He knew how to say it in English. But he didn’t want to embarrass her.

Mi-sun shrugged. “When they rejected me, I thought it was because I was hideous. It’s not worth living if you aren’t beautiful. It’s unpleasant for everyone who has to look at me, and it’d be unpleasant every time I look in the mirror. I felt ashamed that I didn’t realize it myself.”

How could she say this? Mirai wanted to tell her how pretty she looked, but if she didn’t believe it, then what would be the point? Then he realized she’d said, I thought it was because I was hideous. He closed his eyes, recalling the last grammar lesson in school. Nasse might ridicule him for his diligence, but keeping up with classes, including English class, was the only reason he could communicate with Mi-sun and understand Neo Kira’s message in the first place. “Now you know.”

Mi-sun nodded. “Revel unplugged the coal burner and assured me that I’m beautiful, that it’s just sheer bad luck I didn’t make the cut. And he told me that if I became god, I would be the most beautiful creature among a world of beauty, beauty shaped by my own hands.”

Mirai wished he could speak like her. He doubted he could be this poetic even in Japanese. Maybe he could ask Mi-sun to share what she’d learned as an idol trainee. They didn’t have long together, but it could be time well spent. After all, they still had two months before one or both of them became a shinigami. “Mi-sun—”

Mi-sun screamed. Mirai followed her gaze to his window and then clapped a hand over his mouth. “Shinigami.”

Chapter Text

God of death. Mi-sun knew enough Japanese to understand what Mirai had said. And it truly looked like a reaper had come to collect their souls before the 99-day time limit Revel had promised her.

A pale, gaunt man pressed his face against Mirai’s window. His pale blue eyes darted between the two teenagers; his mouth yawned open in a silent scream, revealing crooked, yellow teeth. Mi-sun realized he was trying to say something. She leaned toward the window, ignoring Mirai’s weak protest in broken English.

“I am… unarmed… fellow gods-to-be.”

“You’re another god candidate,” Mi-sun realized. There was no point hiding it. He could see Revel and Nasse.

Mirai looked up at the angels. “Can we trust him?”

Revel grinned. “Even better. We can use him.”

Nasse replied, “We can trust him, Mirai. He’s telling the truth; he came unarmed, and his intentions are to form an alliance.”

“How do you know?” Mi-sun demanded.

Nasse giggled; she was even more annoying than some of Mi-sun’s former fellow trainees. “Silly human, I am the Angel of Purity. I can detect purity in others too. And this silly man is, as you say, pure of heart.”

Mi-sun looked to Mirai, who nodded. She opened his window and let in the stranger.

…

In an agency somewhere in Japan, a mysterious agent flipped through hundreds of sheets of paper. They piled paperwork haphazardly all over and around their desk. They couldn’t even move two inches back in their office chair without knocking over some of the stacks. Instead of a plaque announcing their name, only a sticky note attached to one of the stacks of paper identified the masked agent.

[宛先：コード名ゔえりて] (trans. To: Code Name Verite)

Verite set down the papers and adjusted their mask. Specially crafted from obsidian and steel, it covered their entire face and part of their silver-streaked hair, which otherwise poked out like trimmed black grass. The agent could hear the fireworks start outside the skyscraper; every holiday, regardless of which culture it came from, got celebrated in this neighborhood. For that matter, the residents also celebrated favorable political movements, scandalous developments, and probably someone’s grandmother’s cat’s birthday. They could watch the fireworks from their one-sided window—they could see outside but no one could see inside—but why bother getting worked up over the everyday?

“You have the attitude,” L spoke in a distorted voice through the desktop monitor balanced precariously at the edge of Verite’s desk, “of someone living in the States. Are those fireworks? Are they gunshots? You can never tell; guessing is part of the fun.”

“Clearly,” Verite replied, showing up as V with the same distorted voice as L, “you’re unaware of what living in the States is actually like. If you’re in a neighborhood where you can expect gunshots, that neighborhood is probably too poor to afford fireworks.”

L paused. “Good point.”

Verite didn’t believe this was the same L who had confronted Kira all those years ago, nor the one who had succeeded him a few years later and made Kira disappear. He seemed too young, too immature; he had the same childish personality the first L had accused Kira of. But maybe that was part of the allure—that L was immortal and eternally young.

L asked in a chipper tone, “Did you go trick-or-treating?”

Verite smiled. “Oh, I did. No candy though. I found a much better treat—or trick.”

They pulled up a grainy video of Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge. Neo Kira stood unmoving on the bridge as the crowd jeered at him. Two teenage figures gazed up at the sky from the top of the hill. Verite zoomed up onto their faces and used a software to sharpen the image: a very pretty girl who looked like she could be a K-pop idol, and a dark-haired boy who seemed way out of his element. Verite pitied both of them.

The footage shifted as L shared his own intel. Verite recognized the Eiffel Tower in the background and smiled. They pulled a paper out of its stack and flipped it over to write on the back. Most of their paperwork was in English, though they also kept files in Japanese, German, Russian, and French.

Outside, the fireworks continued. One took the shape of a wide silver cross that looked more like a fancy plus sign—the symbol of Kira.

…

Mirai crouched into a fetal position, his head between his knees. He must have resembled the dying Westerner Mi-sun let into his room. She’d thought his nod meant she could open the window; he’d thought her terrified expression meant she wanted to call the police on the shinigami-like creature at the window. So much for communication.

“Toughen up, men,” Mi-sun ordered, standing with her fists on her hips. Mirai glanced up and looked away quickly, his cheeks flushing. Mi-sun poked him. “Are you embarrassed ‘cause you almost looked up my skirt? You’ll need a lot more mettle than that, Mirai. All three of us need to be stronger as allies. We’re going against a serial killer called Neo Kira, and if Mr. Hartmann found us, we have to assume other god candidates did too.”

“Please,” said Mr. Hartmann, “call me Elias.” He pronounced the first syllable like the vowel “i.” His English came out heavy, like the consonants were stuck to his tongue.

“We can’t do that,” Mi-sun exclaimed. “You’re a whole generation older than us.”

A corner of Mr. Hartmann’s mouth twitched upward. “It’s the cancer. I have a kid who’s even younger than that child on the bridge in China.”

“That child,” Mirai said, his voice hoarse, “her name was Maria Campbell. She had a tragic life.”

“Don’t we all?” Elias muttered. “Isn’t that why the angels chose us?”

Nasse giggled. Revel puffed up his cropped hair. And Elias’s angel stared down at them with wide green eyes full of judgment.

Mi-sun followed Mirai’s gaze. “I think your angel hates us, Elias.”

“Don’t mind Baret. She watches everyone and everything. I believe it’s a habit of being a Seraphim, part of the warrior ranks.”

Mi-sun tipped her head to one side, sparkles from her hair dripping onto Mirai’s bed. “You pronounced her name with a Parisian accent. Elias, did you live in Paris?”

“Most people in Europe can speak French. However, I have a colleague who does most of her work in Paris. She can design our costumes.”

Mirai and Mi-sun exchanged a curious look. “Costumes?”

Elias rummaged in his pockets. “If you want to make a stand against Neo Kira, it is best to ally with the Power Rangers.”

The teenagers winced. Mi-sun declared, “I am not cosplaying as a power ranger.”

Mirai admired her adherence to aesthetics. Elias assured them, “Our costumes will be more unique than that. If one of us will become the next God, we might as well give our future worshippers a way to depict us.”

Mirai imagined a painting of the Blue or Yellow Power Ranger with angel wings and a halo, and he snickered. His laughter ceased when he saw Elias pull out an old-school cigar and a lighter. “Put that away,” he ordered, all courtesy for his senior gone. “I went through a lot of trouble to get this apartment without using Red Arrows, and I… I’ll be pissed if your stupid habit burns it down.”

Elias’s hands shook as he put away the cigar and lighter. Mirai felt bad for yelling at him, and the guilt grew as Mi-sun scoffed, “What a filthy habit. No wonder your teeth are rotting and your breath stinks.”

Revel joined in the bullying. “Mirai will have to invest in a high-quality air freshener if you keep holding meetings here. Do you think you can get that without Red Arrows too?”

Nasse giggled. Mirai raised his hands as if to ward off evil spirits—would salt work on angels? “Okay, that’s enough. Sorry, Elias, but it’s a good idea to try to… how do you say—ah, quit cold turkey. Smoking will only make your condition worse on top of the cancer.”

Elias sighed. “It probably caused the cancer. My lungs are fucked, but I can’t stop.”

Mirai’s heart went out to this dying man. Mi-sun and Nasse bowed their heads in respectful silence. Revel, however, had no pity. “How in Heaven did Baret, Angel of Knowledge, choose you?”

Baret clasped her hands in front of her as though in prayer. “Smoking is a trivial vice in my opinion. Surely, the imbeciles Neo Kira eliminates are guiltier of far worse crimes.”

Revel raised an eyebrow at the taller angel. “You support Neo Kira.”

Baret didn’t reply. Elias sighed. Nasse smirked when she noticed Mirai looking at her. “Angels take a neutral stance as much as possible. If anything, most of us despise silly little humankind, so we don’t care whether or not Neo Kira gets his way.”

“Unless, of course,” Revel interrupted, “that way interferes with our chosen god candidate becoming God.”

“Of course,” Baret and Nasse agreed in unison. Even angels, thought Mirai incredulously, have their own politics.

Mi-sun finally asked it. “So are you a scientist, Elias?”

Elias gave her a close-lipped smile. “Oh no, Baret chose me for a different kind of intelligence.”

“Which is?”

Mirai realized just before Elias replied. It made so much sense now. Here they all were, gathering to form alliances after regretting failing to ally with Lan-shi and Jin-shi and save Maria Campbell. Against a serial killer with a more urgent, time-bound agenda than his predecessor, only one kind of intelligence would help them win. “Strategy.”

…

“Welcome to the City of Love,” Elias proclaimed. An accordion player strolled down the sunny cobblestones as an acoustic guitarist sang about l’amour. “Go ahead, kids, act like lovebirds. This city demands it; the people expect it.”

Mirai and Mi-sun smiled at each other. Despite Elias’s encouragement, Mirai still stammered when Mi-sun reached out and took his hand. “What? We have less than two months left anyway, may as well make the most of it. Have you ever gone on a date, Mirai?”

Mirai shook his head. “You probably have a lot more experience than me.”

“Not at all. I was a K-pop trainee, remember?” Mi-sun’s warm brown eyes flickered toward the Eiffel Tower in the distance; she’d switched out her colored contact lenses, and Mirai liked her natural eye color and wanted to take a picture of her soft smile. “But I remember, years ago, how I dreamed of traveling to Paris with the boy I liked.”

Mirai hoped he wasn’t too much of an inferior substitute. Elias dramatically exclaimed, “Nicht zu glaben! Incroyable! Un-be-liev-able. You two absolutely must go on a date.”

Mirai hesitantly placed an arm around Mi-sun’s shoulders, burying his fingers in the thick folds of her infinity scarf. Mi-sun poked him in return. “Absolutely,” she agreed. “But business first.”

Three angels watched from above, invisible floating pillars, as Elias brought the teenagers to a small shop decorated with fabrics and felts instead of flowers. Gentle, jazzy piano music played from the speakers. A slender, dark-skinned woman shimmied from behind the counter, red and white string between her fingers. A measuring tape dangling from her neck clacked in rhythm with her stiletto heels as she walked toward them. “Elias, darling!” In her heels, she was the same height as her friend, and they exchanged quick air kisses. “And who are these lovely folks?”

“This is Mi-sun, and Mirai.” Mi-sun curtsied, sparkles dripping from her charm bracelets, while Mirai gave the shop owner an awkward wave. “Mirai, Mi-sun, this is my wonderful, wonderfully talented friend, Madame Latenue.”

Latenue took their measurements, skipping the handshake. “Ah, your proportions are simply merveilleuses. You must eat properly.”

“I had to,” Mi-sun replied bitterly.

“I don’t think much about what I eat,” Mirai answered candidly, shamefully recalling the convenience store dinners he’d bought almost every other day last month.

Latenue made some notes on her clipboard. “Any specificities on what type of image you want to convey?”

Mi-sun replied first. “I want to be a goddess.”

Elias stifled a laugh. Mirai shrugged. “I don’t know what I want to be.” Just not a power ranger—or a sociopathic serial killer. Surely this talented designer could find a safe middle ground.

Afterward, Elias shooed them away. “Go. On. A. Date. And don’t come back until sunrise.”

Mirai blurted out, “That’s a little more than a date.”

Mi-sun laughed, pure joy like silver bells. She tugged on Mirai’s hands, skipping as she led him through the Parisian streets. Unlike Tokyo, few crosswalks indicated where they should walk; it seemed like the roads belonged to the people. Occasionally, the pedestrians cleared the way for a horse-drawn carriage. It looked romantic, so Mirai hailed one for him and Mi-sun. “To the Eiffel Tower, please.” A non-native English speaker speaking English to another non-native English speaker couldn’t have gone well, but the carriage drivers were used to tourists.

The carriage jostled and rattled Mirai’s bones. A taxi through Tokyo would’ve been more romantic. But Mi-sun swooned and rested her head on Mirai’s shoulder, leaving glitter on his dark hoodie. She pulled out her phone and began vlogging the experience, speaking a mix of rapid Korean and English. Mirai didn’t try to understand her. He just smiled when she flipped the camera into selfie mode. In the backdrop, Revel cast a sideways glance at them, and Nasse made a peace sign. Baret had her back turned. Another angel flew in lazy circles, sometimes bumping into the stone buildings like a bumblebee. With the accordion and guitarist still performing their duet on the streets, it all created a lovely, peaceful atmosphere, perfect for love.

The Eiffel Tower was nowhere near as romantic as the media promised. Hordes of tourists jostled each other for space on the field. A line of prospective visitors spilled from the entrance, stretching almost a mile long. Not even bubble tea got this much attention.

Mirai blinked. “I’m sorry, Mi-sun. I know this isn’t what you were hoping for.”

“Why apologize?” Mi-sun remarked. “We can fix this ourselves.” She held out her right hand, and the Red Arrow materialized. Mirai could already feel the Arrow’s warmth as it slowly began to spin. “I can only fire a few at a time before it gets too hot, but a few can force everyone else to leave. If that doesn’t work, we have all night. And,” she added, her Red Arrow reaching its maximum speed, “you have White Arrows.”

“Mi-sun,” Mirai gasped, “I won’t kill people over sightseeing.” He muttered under his breath, “I’d rather have boba.”

Mi-sun paused. Her Red Arrow faded away as her intention dissipated. “Of course. What am I thinking? I’m hungry, that’s what. This is Paris, so let’s get bagels and baguettes, load up on the carbs, and cause some trouble for sweet Madame Latenue when she has to make adjustments to our outfits after.”

Mirai smiled at her. This was the Mi-sun he had gotten to know over the past couple days. Hunger could turn even the best of people into monsters. “Of course. That sounds like a plan.”

…

Mirai yelped. When he and Mi-sun returned to Latenue’s shop in the morning, they must have traveled back in time. It was the only explanation. In the dark, the cobblestones looked slick with oil; in the shadows, drunkards curled up and moaned. And out of the now-eerie shop stepped a plague doctor with a menacing green glow in his opaque eyepieces.

Elias took off the oxidized copper-bronze bird mask. His mustache twitched as he grinned. “Did the Doctor frighten you?”

“That’s…” Mirai couldn’t find the word to describe it, so he just grinned back.

Mi-sun pushed past him and scurried toward Latenue. “Oh my gosh, did you pull an all-nighter while Mirai and I were on our date? You’re the best, Madame.”

The two women exchanged air kisses gracefully. Mirai suspected that if he tried that, he’d bash his nose against Latenue’s sharp chin. While Latenue brought Mi-sun to a dressing room in the back, Elias pulled the curtains down so Mirai could change. “I can’t see,” Mirai protested. “Can we turn on the lights?”

“Curtains down and lights off are the only way to ensure no visitors.”

Baret materialized in the middle of the room, holding a jar of fireflies. “There are other solutions to your very human problem. If the old God was going to make humans so weak-sighted, He should have compensated by making you use the logic you supposedly have. This is what happens when gods are chosen from humans.”

Mirai pulled off his hoodie and T-shirt, trying not to shiver. Latenue needed to invest in better heating. The light from the fireflies made his ribs appear more jutted. “If a god created humans, then he couldn’t have been human himself. How does that even work?”

“Humans have taken on different forms over the ages. The modern iteration—or incarnation, to make it sound more human—was prompted by the current god.”

“So the creation story is true.”

“In a way.” Baret curled her lip. “Each god keeps getting more beautiful, yet also more hideous.”

“Turn away.”

When Baret had her back to him, he beheld himself in the mirror. More beautiful, yet also more hideous. What alien monstrosity had the first god looked like?

Elias turned on the light.

A figure Mirai didn’t recognize stared back at him from the mirror. Gone was the hoodie, and the jeans, and the sneakers. Now, he wore a translucent dark blue shawl with sporadic silver dots, stretching past his waist almost like a dress, over a leather jumpsuit that shifted colors as he moved, so sometimes it appeared pitch black, other times royal blue. The shawl came with a gold-clasped belt that gave the outfit more shape and freed his arms more, making the ends resemble thin wide sleeves. Below his eyes, shaded by a bulky blue hood, a thick black mask covered the rest of his face. The dials to distort his voice resembled a crescent moon on his right cheek and a bright star on his left cheek. His joints, vitals, and fingers were protected by flexible black armor; silver and obsidian knives were tucked into a belt and various straps on his limbs. This was no mere cosplay. He had to fight for his life, even though he’d lose it in less than two months anyway. What was the difference between God and shinigami anyway? Weren’t they all gods in the end?

I don’t want these powers, Mirai had said almost six weeks ago, standing over the body of the only man he’d killed. It both disgusted and amazed him how Kira—how anyone—could look at that body and think, I want to do that again!

I don’t want these powers, Mirai repeated to himself.

He could hear Nasse’s words in his head, but in his brother’s voice, if his brother had lived. He heard it in his own voice. Then you’ll want to be God.

Elias commented, “You look like night incarnate.”

Mirai gestured to his footwear, the armor on his fingers clacking against each other. He wore bright orange combat boots that didn’t match the rest of the alluring outfit. Not only did they weigh enough to probably keep him grounded even with angel wings, but they also shone brighter than a highlighter. They’d attract the attention of every passerby and their blind grandfather.

Elias suggested, “It is the sun. You are the morning.”

“Mourning the dead?”

“Guten-Morgen morning, but I like that. You should take it on as your alias.”

“Which one?”

“Both. Either. They sound the same in English and the tabloids will misspell it no matter which one you choose.”

Mirai thought about it. He remembered an evening in Akihabara. As the sun set, the sky resembled a blue shroud sporadically dotted with silver, more from light pollution than actual stars. Now he imagined that same scene, but the sun was rising. “Guten Morgen, Elias.”

Elias coughed. “You speak German even worse than English. Please never butcher my language again.”

Mirai pulled his hood down lower. After several minutes of awkward silence, broken only by Baret’s comment that flashy footwear would distract people from paying attention to his unmasked eyes, Latenue walked out of the dressing room leading a goddess.

Mirai couldn’t believe the woman before him was Mi-sun. She looked… inhuman.

Makeup made her already-wide eyes pop even more so they looked like they took up half her face, with sclera leaking like tears. Amber contact lenses gave her eyes a more otherworldly appearance, freezing away the warmth. Her nose looked smaller, her lips fuller; even her chin appeared pointier, like a cartoon heart. Mirai hoped Mi-sun hadn’t spent money on plastic surgery when she could’ve just invested in makeup.

A golden circlet held a long orange wig in place. From the dip in her collarbone, a small flower bloomed. A bodice woven from tiny beaded pearls clung to her breasts, and Mirai looked away, embarrassed. Long gloves made of white feathers made up for her lack of wings. She didn’t care about flying anyway.

Most of all, her gown took Mirai’s breath away. Below the pearl bodice, a crystalline skirt flowed into a ruby gradient like crystallized blood. It looked like it had been tailored by melding the White and Red Arrows.

The flower in her collarbone turned out to be a voice amplifier and distorter. “Bow to your new god,” she commanded, raising her sharp chin. “Venus.”

Mirai raised a hand and made a snipping gesture with two of his fingers. The finger armor clacked. “Morning.”

Mi-sun smiled. “Good morning.”

Elias chuckled. “That’s your friend’s alias. We need to think of ourselves and each other using these codenames when we’re in disguise so we don’t accidentally use our real names.”

Mirai walked toward the curtains, where sunlight streamed through in weak rays. “Why would it be so bad,” he wondered, “if people know who we are?” He pulled back the curtain to reveal a stream of pedestrians: tourists asking for directions and popping into stores, musicians peddling for cash as they belted out a new love song, locals chattering in French while carrying their morning baguettes.

The Doctor adjusted his bird mask as though getting ready to see infected patients. “As we speak, detectives are hunting down Neo Kira. If he’s from a country that uses capital punishment, he’s a dead man. How would authorities react if they knew more people have similar powers? Both Japan and Korea still have the death penalty, so I’d be careful if I were you. And even though Germany abolished it decades ago, getting caught would be inconvenient. Not conducive to life and recovery.”

Mirai snorted.

“Besides,” Venus added, tossing a sweep of orange hair over a bare shoulder, “these humans aren’t meant to know us.” Her amber eyes flashed. “They should worship us.”

…

Newspaper sellers shouted as they tossed papers toward potential customers. The Doctor caught one before it hit Venus’s pearl bodice. Mirai was not so lucky. The stiff bundle whacked his face, making his armor clang.

Passersby pointed at the three cosplayers and took pictures. “Qui êtes vous?” they wanted to know.

Nasse giggled. “Look at you, famous.”

Baret rolled her eyes while Revel muttered at how they could use fame to their advantage.

“Je m’appelle le Docteur, et ici sont mes amis—Venus, Morning.” The Doctor gestured to Venus and then Mirai, who shifted his weight, self-conscious when his armor clicked. “Nous serons les dieux. Nous sommes comme Neo Kira.”

The newspaper seller shouted something. The Doctor held up the newspaper, his eyes widening. On the front page was a black-and-white photo split in three: Neo Kira in the middle, Lan-shi at his right, and Jin-shi at his left. Actually, it was more like Gray-shi and White-shi, but Mirai recognized them. Only two Power Rangers would be on the front page with Neo Kira. Mirai thought the paper was covering the battle above Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, but Baret translated, “Another god candidate has publicly challenged Lan-shi, Jin-shi, and Neo Kira. He calls himself the General, and he will hunt down god candidates across the globe.”

Mirai turned to Venus, but she was gone.

He will hunt down god candidates across the globe.

With sickening dread, he remembered when Mi-sun took a selfie of the two of them in the horse-drawn carriage. Three angels hovered above Paris like pillars. Nasse had posed. Revel had turned sideways, the camera getting his angular profile. Baret had simply kept her back to them. And beyond, a fourth angel had fluttered above the City of Love like an ivory-and-gold butterfly.

Another god candidate was in Paris with them.

…

“You know,” Venus said, admiring the milk foam shaped into a heart on her latte, “I was never actually an idol. I only posted two training videos, some foreigners conducted interviews at the agency I was under but only included my footage near the end, and I got kicked out before I could even debut.” She looked up, her long, glittery lashes fluttering. “Just how much of a fan are you?”

The stout girl’s dry lips curled into a tentative, awkward smile that crinkled her chin and contorted her asymmetrical face. The ends of her dark brown braids splayed out at her shoulders like a broom. As her smile grew, the splotchy freckles over her broad nose seemed to stretch, and Venus got the impression this girl had tried to scratch them out with sandpaper. Her crooked teeth resembled dirty laundry hung to dry before being washed.

God, Venus thought, this child is hideous. She doesn’t belong in my beautiful world.

“Are you busy today?”

“Not at all,” the girl replied cheerfully, a thick Russian accent slurring her words. “Are we gonna spend today together?”

“Yes.”

“Like date?”

“Is this your first date, Ulyana?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll give you the time of your life. I’ll take your breath away. I’ll be such a wonderful date, your heart will give out by the end of it.”

Ulyana clutched Venus’s soft gloved hands. Ulyana’s hands were rough and sunburned, the fingers fat and scarred, the nails brittle and bitten to the quick.

Venus smiled and gently pulled away. “Would you like an autograph first?”

Venus wrote what she had said to Ulyana. I’ll give you…

Ulyana’s pale gray eyes took in the elegant handwriting. In her periphery, Venus could see Revel staring at the words with luminous yellow eyes. Behind Ulyana, a bearded angel watched stoically. Venus would’ve thought the angel was a man, but her body curved like a woman’s. I’ll be… Venus paused writing and pointed with her pen. “What’s up with your angel, Ulya?”

Ulyana perked up at the nickname. “Ogaro is Angel of Darkness. She’s part of… part of…” Her English was worse than Mirai’s.

Ogaro finished the sentence for her silly candidate. “The Seraphim.”

Venus clicked her tongue. Ulyana had more powers than her. No matter. They couldn’t be used against other god candidates anyway.

…your heart will give out by the end of it, Ulyana Sidorova.

Venus imagined the corrupted versions of the god candidates’ powers. Writing the target’s name worked like the Arrows, right? Ogaro stared down at her with pitch black eyes.

Ulyana brightly said, “You need to sign autograph, lovely.”

Venus’s mouth stretched into a tight line. —Venus.

Ulyana kissed the notepad, smearing some of the writing. “Let’s have good date, Venus.”

Chapter Text

Dead silence weighed over the dark lab. Black feathers drifted onto the tiles. The young man’s bullet-loud footsteps paused as he removed his mask and placed it in a safe box.

Neo Kira’s face stared back up at him, the two jaundiced eyes staring in different directions. It disgusted him. Did he disgust his would-be worshippers? Kira both fascinated and repulsed him, so perhaps these people felt that way about Neo Kira too. Kanade sealed away the box and walked down the empty corridor.

His wavy white hair stood out against his dark clothing. Moonlight from a small window illuminated his smooth ivory face and reflected against his pale violet eyes, casting a silver sheen over them. He looked more sculpted than Venus; he looked like an angel in a devil’s clothes.

A machine scanned his face before letting him into a chilly room. Kanade took off the platinum ring from his middle finger and tucked it into his pocket so it wouldn’t stick to his leather glove from the cold. He rubbed his gloved hands together. His breath crystallized in front of him, creating a shroud that partially concealed him as he wandered across the atrium.

Stained glass over the domed roof depicted various scenes from Paradise Lost, modified in honor of Kira and Neo Kira. The bitten ruby apple always caught Kanade’s eye first. Half a dozen different interpretations of Satan danced in a circle: a red imp with horns, a green-eyed sea creature with tentacles pouring out of his mouth, a yellow blob of phlegm, a Celtic fairy with skin made of tree bark bleeding amber sap, the shinigami that inspired Neo Kira’s costume, a handsome ivory-silver-and-lavender elf that resembled Kanade himself.

A man who looked like the Renaissance’s version of Adam sat on a throne made of dark gray leather. He wore a rumpled suit ripped open to reveal perfect abs. A gold ring adorned his outstretched index finger. Unlike the original Adam, the man representing Kira reached out to touch a withered gray finger. Kanade doubted that the man behind Kira had actually been an adult in his prime. He imagined a slim 17-year-old boy like himself, handsome but human, popular yet alone. The faint sounds of an organ reminded him that this lab was near a church.

At the dome’s vertix, a giant silver cross seemed to hog all the moonlight to create a spotlight for the machine in the middle of the atrium.

Kanade took off one of his gloves and rested his bare hand on the frosted glass, melting some of the condensation on the outside; it wouldn’t affect the temperature inside. He removed his hand and stared at the little girl in the machine.

In a jolt of horror, he remembered Maria Campbell, the tiny dark-skinned child who had flown toward him, trusting him, seeking family. He could feel her warmth through his gloves. She had kept smiling, not understanding when he cupped her face in his hands. She thought it was what family did.

This is what family does. Kanade snapped her neck viciously and let her fall from the sky.

He forced himself to return to the present. Two weeks had passed since that night. Interpol wasted time and resources chasing false leads in Nanjing, Paris, and even, strangely, the rural zones of Afghanistan, Syria, and Iran—Kanade suspected that at least one of the other god candidates was an American with Kira’s sense of justice.

His sister slept on, unaware of the chaos in the world. Kanade envied her tranquility. But he could see the faint injury on her neck, which the cryotherapy had missed. This is what family does.

“Uryu Kanade,” Meyza said, her low voice resonating with the organ. “It is time.”

Kanade nodded. The church bells began to chime for midnight mass. The first gong rattled the chains on his jacket and belt.

…

TWO WEEKS AGO

“You’re the Yellow Power Ranger?” Neo Kira exclaimed incredulously. He stared at the overweight Chinese woman on the park bench. Her skinny jeans stretched as she spread out her legs. She blinked up at him from under her messy bowl cut.

And she snarled, “The name is Jin-shi—Master of Gold. ‘Yellow Power Ranger’ sounds stupid.”

“Then it suits you. But what do you really want me to call you?”

The woman’s snarl softened into a smile, unfazed by the hideous mask staring back at her—or, more accurately, staring anywhere but her. “Paula. Paula Wen. And what about you?”

Neo Kira glanced around them. A group of senior citizens practiced tai chi nearby, some of them glancing over at the monstrous figure talking with a college-aged woman. Schoolgirls in ugly blue uniforms giggled and took pictures. Neo Kira posed, basking in the fame.

Paula repeated, “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Trust goes both ways, Neo Kira. If you want a proper negotiation, you need to offer something too.”

“Not here.”

Paula smirked. “Shy little boy, aren’t you? No matter. I know you know a place we can talk freely. A place not too far from your home, actually.”

Neo Kira froze. Behind him, Meyza chuckled. “She’s referring to a love hotel, boy. Egura, shall we make arrangements for these humans?”

Paula’s angel stared up at Meyza with contempt in her golden eyes. Egura shook her head, the golden rings on the ends of her curly white hair clinking like glasses. “We are angels, Meyza, not butlers. I can’t speak for your pet, but mine is capable of making her own damned arrangements.”

Paula smiled and waved her fingers up at Neo Kira. “I’ll see you tonight, lover boy.”

…

The church bells continued to gong. Kanade leaned back, a look of bliss on his face as he closed his eyes, moonlight from the atrium roof washing over his flawless skin, his silver-white lashes fluttering over his sharp cheekbones. He’d die a virgin.

…

Kanade spun his platinum ring on the Internet café table. The screen reflected on his pale violet eyes, and he scoffed at what he saw.

Meyza commented, “Are you stalking your upcoming date?”

I’m gathering intel, Kanade replied in his mind. And Paula isn’t a date. She’s a loser, a bigger idiot than I thought, and a terrible ally.

“Oh? Do elaborate.”

Kanade glanced up at his angel, both amused and annoyed. She failed the entrance exam for three consecutive years. During that time, she’s been working part-time at a bookstore. After her third rejection, another young woman began working in the bookstore. As it turns out, her new coworker, Joan Chu, left her parents’ house after failing the entrance exam. She has a history of cutting herself and even attempted suicide several times in the past. She must have been a negative influence on Paula, who would’ve felt miserable already—even if the fourth time is the charm, she’d be entering university while her old high school classmates are graduating—because on September 23, Paula Wen and Joan Chu attempted a double suicide by hanging from a tree in the campus of Beijing University. The low-quality rope snapped, and they were saved.

Kanade stifled a laugh. “Saved by angels.” The other customers ignored him, engrossed in their video games. Little did they know, greater beings were playing a far grander game. His ring resonated as it twirled on the table like a spastic ballerina.

Kanade scooped it up and put it on. Without his Neo Kira disguise, it was his only armor. Better to reign in Hell, said the outside. And pressed against his skin: Better still to reign in Heaven.

…

The church bells continued to gong. Kanade took off his ring and held it up to the soft moonlight. He held it in front of his right eye like a scope.

A dark gray eye stared back at him from a winged soldier flying just below the stained glass.

…

“Since you disdain Paula,” Meyza commented, her low voice like honey, “is that Red Arrow for a better lover?”

“Don’t be so simple.”

“Humankind is simple. We give you a power that takes away a person’s free will, and most of you use it like Cupid’s arrows. It isn’t true love, of course—that requires free will—but for men like Felipe Amor and women like Paula Wen, sex is enough.”

Kanade grimaced, less out of disgust than a blossoming pain. Both the Red and White Arrows burned but differently.

Meyza noticed his discomfort and murmured, “You have grown accustomed to the ice of the White Arrow, so now you believe the fire of the Red Arrow is hotter, when it is actually the other way around.”

Yes, the White Arrow burned so hot it numbed like a piercing frost. Kanade had learned to relish it. But this Red Arrow was awful, just awful—

He shot a skinny young man wearing a skull hoodie and chains dripping to his knees.

The street thug turned toward Kanade, his contorted face mellowing into a more tranquil state as he stared at the white-haired teenager, anticipating an order. His eyes widened; his lips parted. He was probably a few years older than Kanade, but just then, he looked younger.

For a moment, Kanade understood the power the other god candidates felt when they wielded Red Arrows. In a way, the Red Arrow was more powerful—but he preferred the White Arrow’s efficiency. Besides, if he wanted to make out with someone, it wouldn’t be with a street thug whose mind had been stolen and whose breath smelled like crack.

“Brush your teeth,” Kanade muttered.

The thug began to turn around to go brush his teeth.

Kanade grabbed the thug’s elbow, wincing at the sticky sleeve. “Before that,” he said, his voice seductively low, “there are a few more things for you to do.”

Kanade described an elaborate plan: forging ID to steal explosives from his family’s company, selling those explosives on the black market, hacking the market site to ensure the goods ended up with a contact in Beijing, getting a burner phone to stalk Joan Chu, taking a flight to a nondescript town in China, riding the bullet train to Beijing, finding the contact, trading for the explosives, tracking down the one-armed Blue Power Ranger, and blowing up her, himself, and anyone in the vicinity.

“Yes, sir,” the thug said, as if Kanade had just asked him to pour a cup of coffee.

Meyza watched the mindless man walk away prepared to commit murder. “Not even God has this power,” she murmured as she followed Kanade down the neon-lit streets.

“What? How could He give this up?”

“Just as angels cannot comprehend humankind’s simplicity, a man cannot understand a god.”

“The shinigami managed to keep these powers.”

“Only a fraction.” Meyza sighed wistfully, and Kanade realized she had lusted after them. “They can’t make someone perform something so complicated, anything beyond what’s realistic for them. And certainly not murder. If only they could…”

“So the shinigami have a discount version of what I have.” Kanade sneered. “They’re weak. When I become a god, it won’t be a god of death. To accomplish what I want, I need to be a god of life. I need to be God.”

“And what is it that you wish to accomplish, Uryu Kanade?”

…

The church bells continued to gong. Kanade looked away from the god candidate. He couldn’t help it; he turned to the machine with his little sister frozen inside. Force of habit, he supposed. Months ago, a foreign soldier might have been after this technology. But now, one god candidate hunted down another.

Kanade unfurled his wings and rose to the top of the atrium. Whether this soldier was after him or his sister, Kanade would get rid of this obstacle. This is what family does.

He cupped the soldier’s head between his hands. The soldier stared back at him with his gunmetal-gray eyes. He looked only a couple years older than Kanade.

…

Kanade chatted with Meyza out loud on the way to the love hotel. Under these neon street lights in the safety of night, he didn’t care what these lowlifes thought of him. They were crazier than him anyway.

“Gods of death can only cause death, while God can only give life, is that correct?”

“That’s only part of it,” Meyza replied. “The intent matters too. In the past, God took life in the name of a greater good. However, shinigami can never kill with the purpose of preserving another person’s life.”

“What happens if they do?”

“It is the only way for a shinigami to die.” Meyza sighed, wistful again. “Sometimes, when a shinigami is sick of their rotten world, they find a human to love—and they use their powers to protect that human.”

“Is that what happened to Kira?”

“Kira was not a god,” Meyza reminded him, “and neither are you.”

“Ah, but unlike Kira, I will become God.”

A human voice remarked in English, “What sheer arrogance.”

Kanade curled his lip back when he saw Paula leaning against the wall next to the entrance to the love hotel, her vain angel flying in lazy circles so the gold rings at the ends of her hair chimed. “You understand Japanese?”

Paula winked at him. “I watch anime. Maybe that’s how we can spend our night, lover boy.”

Kanade rolled his eyes. After they checked in—they paid in cash, and the attendant barely glanced at his bag—and headed up to their room, Paula gushed, “I’m gonna be real here, pretty boy, I thought I’d get stood up. Lan-shi was supposed to show, but she’s not even replying to my texts or calls.”

Kanade locked the door behind them. “Oh? Were you planning a threesome?”

Meyza scoffed. Egura frowned, but Paula blushed. The room smelled like vanilla and roses and was decorated how Kanade imagined his little sister would want, minus all the stuffed animals. No, the attendants expected their guests to bring their own toys. Kanade placed his bag at the foot of the water bed.

Paula wandered toward the vanity. “It wasn’t going to be an ambush, I swear. Well, maybe Lan-shi would get huffy about the arm, but we’d work around that. The thing is, she’s my partner in everything. Work, god candidacy, sex. Even before all that—” Paula turned to smile at Kanade, not noticing that he was now wearing gloves—white to match his ivory peacoat. She continued, “Did I tell you how we met? We were taking the entrance exam together; it was her first time but my third time. She seemed really smart, and I was really desperate, so I cheated and got us both disqualified.” She made it sound like an achievement. “I referred her to my workplace as compensation, and we started getting closer.”

Kanade knew how this story ended. Paula’s so-called friend must have hated her, ultimately coercing her into a double suicide. “So you work together. But why work with me? You tried to kill me.”

“The game’s changed, pretty boy. Haven’t you heard? There are god candidates from America, and if you have even an ounce of patriotism, you’ll work with us to stop them.”

“Patriotism toward Japan? Or China? Have you forgotten where we are, Miss Wen?”

Paula grabbed Kanade’s hands. “Please. You’re a formidable fighter. We—” She paused. “Why are you still wearing gloves? And your coat?”

Kanade twisted out of her grip and reached into his bag. He held his Neo Kira mask in one hand and a syringe in the other, putting on the mask and stabbing Paula’s throat in the same gesture. “Send my regards to Miss Joan Chu.”

Paula collapsed. Her mouth began to foam. She began to croak out Joan’s name—but it wasn’t Joan’s name. She whispered, “General Scott.”

Egura bowed over Paula’s body, where no soul remained. Unlike Jami, the angel who had chosen young Maria Campbell, Egura did not loudly mourn her candidate, and Kanade didn’t berate her for damning someone. Why go through the same performance again? Instead, Egura said, “Emaka and I chose them not because we thought they were worthy to be God, but because we thought they were worthy of being shinigami.”

Kanade laughed. “They have no self-preservation. They’ll take one look at that world and just kill themselves.”

Meyza chuckled. “Most shinigami never find out how to die.”

Egura added, “They’ll rot for decades before their time runs out. And perhaps they will get bored and kill a human or two, further lengthening their lifespans.”

Kanade took off his mask and stared hard at Egura. “Angels are cruel.”

Egura smirked. “Are you just realizing that?” She vanished in a burst of light and the sound of gold rings raining on the rose-scented floor.

Later, Kanade began researching General Scott. He scoured Paula’s apartment, but if she had intel on the American god candidate, it must have been in Joan’s apartment, which he’d blown up. He thought he’d been thinking ahead, killing Joan before Paula could alert her, but now he had nothing. So much for thinking ahead.

And every time he thought he found a lead on the general, he left behind bread crumbs leading the general right to his own home.

…

Kanade stared into the young man’s dark gray eyes, trying not to be distracted by the gun pointed at him. All Americans carry guns, he reminded himself. This is their version of a handshake. “Are you General Scott?”

The foreigner smiled sweetly. “I’m his soldier.” He fired the gun.

Kanade unfurled his wings and dodged the bullets. He ran across the stained glass images of yaoi-model Adam and even the silver Kira cross—did this count as blasphemy?—while bullets zipped by him. One nicked his cheek, spraying blood. He glimpsed his reflection on the machine’s glass, fascinated by the dark red streaking his hair and wings. And he laughed. He’d never felt so alive! He had always worn that hideous mask while flying, but now he could enjoy the wind from both his flight and the bullets, and it was the most exhilarating thing he knew.

Kanade reached the soldier and kicked aside his gun. The soldier was ready. Kanade blocked his punch and tried to strike back, but the soldier twisted his arm and shoved him into Kira’s cross. Kanade grimaced. He heard the gun land on the marble floor, but he and the soldier grappled too closely for either of them to reach it. The soldier licked his lips and headbutted Kanade’s skull.

Along with the blood loss, Kanade’s dizziness threatened to overtake him. He roared. This American wanted to fight like an animal? Fine. Kanade could fight savagely too. This is what family does.

The soldier slipped out of Kanade’s grip. He stared at Kanade with sorrowful eyes. “I didn’t want to have to resort to this.”

Before Kanade could question him, the soldier swooped into a sharp descent. Kanade screamed as the machine shattered and spilled his lifeless little sister onto the floor. For an instant, he saw Maria Campbell on the bridge. The memory disappeared just as quickly as he rushed to cradle his sister’s decaying body. Without the freezing, the stench of death rose up and nearly suffocated him. Behind him, the soldier muttered prayers in Arabic.

Maybe Kanade missed it when he remembered another lifeless child, but he couldn’t find his sister’s soul. Had an angel already brought it up to Heaven? Or had the machine been holding an empty body, and all of Kanade’s efforts had been for nothing? Either way, death reminded him.

He couldn’t revive his sister anymore.

Kanade picked up a large piece of glass and pointed it toward his stomach. “Stop!” the soldier cried out.

Kanade turned toward him. The soldier had his gun again. Kanade burst out laughing. “Did your precious general order you to kill me yourself, so you can’t even let a damned man choose his own death? Too bad, foreigner.” He plunged the glass into his stomach, relishing the pain. It was far more glorious than his first suicide attempt, which Meyza had rudely interrupted. He stared up at the silver cross, where the noose had hung from.

He could hear the soldier speak in a gentle voice. “My name is Abbas Hassan.”

Fool. Don’t you know what we become when we fail?

“You can end me as soon as you become a—a shinigami. It would be my penance.”

Another man said, “He’ll take your time with you, that one.”

“How do you know that, Balta?”

Abbas had a flirtatious angel. “Call it intuition, sweetheart.”

It was the last thing Kanade heard before he passed out.

…

TWO AND A HALF WEEKS AGO

Venus tried to focus on the moon instead of Ulyana’s rambling. “Even though my parents thought I was so ugly they sold me to circus, my angel saved me. Ogaro calls herself Angel of Darkness, but she is made of light.”

Venus patiently replied, “All angels are made of light.” She wanted to throw herself into the river and drown, but that would waste Latenue’s hard work.

Ulyana laughed like she had phlegm stuck in her throat. Only Venus and the angels were around to hear that awful laugh. “That is good joke. But no, Venus, you are made of light. Our angels are strange creatures. It is hard to tell if they are man or woman.”

Venus sighed. She didn’t bother to explain to this silly girl that angels weren’t male or female; they were angels. They simply took on a humanoid form for humans to comprehend, and Revel had chosen alluring ambiguity while Ogaro looked even more of a circus freak than her candidate.

A lovely swarm of fireflies drifted by, casting Ogaro in an ominous light. Ulyana leaned on Venus’s shoulder, basking in the tranquil romance the City of Love offered.

Venus looked down at the vulnerable girl. “Ulyana Sidorova, love, how did you try to kill yourself?”

Ulyana looked sheepish. “I can’t swim, so I tried drowning myself.”

“Did you learn how to swim since then?”

“I should have.”

“Yes,” Venus agreed. “You should have.”

The clock tower began to chime midnight. Venus forced Ulyana into the river, not caring that her dress and the ends of her wig got soaked, not caring how freezing the water was, not caring that Ulyana scratched her arms and ripped white feathers off her gloves trying to free herself. After twelve resonant gongs, Ulyana stopped struggling.

Venus looked up. Ogaro did not mourn Ulyana, and Venus wondered why the powerful Angel of Darkness had chosen the little Sidorova girl and taken on a freakish form. She voiced these thoughts out loud.

Ogaro barked out a laugh. “I chose this form so Ulyana Sidorova would think she found one sympathetic creature in a merciless world. And I chose Ulyana Sidorova because she deserved to be a shinigami. That is how many angels choose their candidates, Lee Mi-sun. Some choose the clever and the chaotic. I chose someone who was already so hideous, she might as well be a shinigami.”

Mi-sun pitied Ulyana. After Ogaro vanished, taking the fireflies with her, Mi-sun waded down the river, letting her tears spill into the water.

“You killed her, so why are you crying for her?” Revel exclaimed.

“No one else will cry for her. And… and her angel was so cruel.”

“Was she?”

“Revel, why did you choose me? Am I actually ugly?”

“Quite the opposite. Ogaro is lazy and chose someone who already looked like a shinigami. Meanwhile, I chose someone so beautiful it would be a tragedy to see her become a shinigami.”

Mi-sun’s lip quivered, but she refused to cry for herself. “I will never become that. I will become God and make the world beautiful.”

Revel smiled. “I know. That’s why I chose you, love.”

Mi-sun wasn’t done. “There will be no more Ulyana Sidorovas, no more sad children sold to circuses, no more tears of pity. I will get rid of everything ugly,” she declared, smiling bitterly up at Revel, “starting with angels.”

...

End of Part One: Gods

Next—Part Two: Pawns

Chapter Text

“This is too easy, Penema,” the man said, sitting cross-legged and hunched over his laptop in the dark. He slurped up the remains of his melted frap and then set it down on the floor next to a bag of empty potato chips.

His angel picked up a metallic die with doodles scribbled over the dots. Penema adjusted the die until light bounced off the corner and onto the middle of the golden X over his face. “That’s no fun,” he drawled in a monotone. “Easy games are boring.”

“Winning isn’t boring. Playing isn’t boring.” The man grinned, revealing a crooked front tooth and a chipped molar. “Hacking into the database of the world’s most famous detective and translating his notes isn’t boring.”

Penema let the die fall back onto the floor. At the same time as the die clattered, a wooden beam gave in and smashed an already-broken box TV, the antenna skewering through the wood. Horse flies buzzed tauntingly around a cobweb in front of the basement window. At age 22, the hacker looked like a typical bum out of college and living in his parents’ house. But this hacker was no ordinary bum.

He was a god candidate, one of thirteen—minus the deceased.

In fact, the report began with a list of the deceased, which the printer wheezed and coughed out.

Penema glowered. “That is not from the database of the world’s most famous detective.”

“True, I got it from a correspondent who calls themself V,” the hacker admitted, then he waved the paper proudly and added, “but this came after V spoke with L, so it’s like hacking into L’s database. Besides, the whole alpha-lot of them are using tech from, like, 2003.”

Penema nudged a corner of the hacker’s textbook-thick laptop with his toe. “You are also using technology from 2003,” he noted.

“But I’m not the one who got hacked.” The hacker reached out for more snacks. He popped open a bag of stale Pocky and offered one up to Penema, who held it over the X on his face in wonderment. The hacker leaned back, pressing his beanbag chair against the moldy wall; stuffing popped out from between the seams.

Nov. 24

From the Notebook of Verite, revised after corresponding with the mysterious L

“If it wasn’t for the Kira investigation a while back,” the hacker commented, remembering that grade school gossip as the rich kids in his class shouted for Kira to kill the poor criminals, “I’d take one look at ‘the mysterious L’ and think this dude’s a lunatic.” He barked out a laugh. “Who am I kidding? They call themself Verity.”

Penema was breaking the snack into halves, over and over. The hacker wondered when the halves would turn into crumble. “It’s actually pronounced Verite.”

“What, are they French?”

“Japanese.”

The hacker grinned. “Interesting.” He continued reading.

List of the Diseased Deceased

1. Felipe Amor, Oct. 24, age 36. The first of 13 potential targets to die. Stabbed to death by Neo Kira. The first stabbing victim, as opposed to a heart attack victim, by Neo Kira. Presumably found due to his sudden popularity among female European celebrities. Other targets were alerted by his murder and Neo Kira’s subsequent challenge.

The hacker raised one dark eyebrow. How did Verite know there were 13 “potential targets”?

2. Maria Campbell, Oct. 31, age 10. A foster child adopted by an American family after the Haiti earthquake. Neo Kira snapped her neck and let her fall from several meters above the bridge. Her body was recovered from the river the next day. Witnesses are uncertain as to how she flew like the actors, whose fight also resulted in one of them losing her left arm.

They were no actors, and the hacker was certain that Verite knew that too. As he converted meters to yards for peace of mind, he felt flustered that he hadn’t been able to decode Neo Kira’s cryptic message shared on Twitter the week before Halloween. However, that might be why he was still alive now. God, on his death bed, would know that the hacker wasn’t cut out for a fight against three martial artists.

3. Ulyana Sidorova, Nov. 4, age 14. Sold by her parents to a traveling circus that stopped by Uglich, Russia. Her body was pulled out of a river in Paris, France a few days after her death. Witnesses reported seeing her that day with a young woman known as Venus, making Venus a suspect in young Sidorova’s death.

Curious, the hacker searched up Ulyana Sidorova. What must she have looked like to have been sold to a circus like some drama from a Dickens-era novel?

He winced at first glance, but as he stared at her longer, his shock faded. Large freckles were smattered across her nose and soft cheekbones like chocolate chips. Her thick, cracked lips were peeled back to reveal buck teeth with freckles of their own. He could understand how people like Venus and the other fancy Parisians might have been repulsed, but to him, she just looked like a little girl.

4. Joan Chu, Nov. 9, age 18. Failed the entrance exam due to disqualification. Worked at a small bookshop for a few months afterward. Attempted a double suicide with a colleague and fellow exam taker. There is a 75.8% probability that she was the woman known as Lan-shi who responded to Neo Kira’s challenge and lost her arm in the ensuing fight. Her apartment exploded, killing her and several of her neighbors. The explosion materials were traced back to Uryu Armories, which experienced a breach in security earlier.

Verite was a lazy note taker. The hacker had to do some extra research to find out specific numbers. He said a quick “Hail Mary” for Joan’s neighbors, and promptly cursed when he found out just how fast Joan’s killer had acted—only two days had passed between the security breach and Joan’s murder.

5. Paula Wen, Nov. 14, age 20. Failed the entrance exam for three consecutive years. Worked at the same bookshop as Miss Chu, with whom she attempted a double suicide. There is an 86.3% probability that she was the woman known as Jin-shi who responded to Neo Kira’s challenge and allied herself with Lan-shi. Two weeks after the incident on the bridge, her body was found at a love hotel. Cause of death is suspected drug overdose. She checked into the hotel with a minor who disappeared from the scene.

The hacker licked his lips. Finally, another juicy story. He knew he and Amor weren’t the only god candidates using Red Arrows to make people fall in love with them.

Penema remarked, “What makes you think Miss Wen used a Red Arrow?”

The hacker slapped the paper, crumbs falling from his snack and feeding the roaches. “Love. Hotel. With a minor who left as soon as she died. Duh.”

“You think she played with him.” Penema picked up a cockroach and flipped it onto its back, more out of amusement than trying to help his candidate keep a tidy house—that was a damned mission anyway. “What if he was playing with her?”

“Impossible. He’s a minor; she’s a god candidate. The only way is if he’s…”

6. Kanade Uryu, Nov. 21, age 17. Heir to Uryu Armories, which suffered a security breach two weeks prior. His body was found in the laboratory atrium, where his sister’s body was kept frozen for future resuscitation. Cause of death was determined to be suicide, likely after the machine preserving his sister’s body was broken and her body decayed, though there were trace elements of a bullet that grazed his cheek. However, no bullets were found in the area. There is a 99.5% probability that young Uryu was Neo Kira. Incidentally, one of his gloves has an indent around the middle finger, likely from a ring, though his family’s servants gossiped that young Uryu did not wear the Uryu family ring.

And Verite was back to boring-Dickens-era frivolity. The hacker would bet two packs of Pocky and a family-sized bag of Lays that Verite had a top hat and a cane and spoke with a posh British accent.

“Hopefully you didn’t place much stock on any of those six,” Penema said.

“Aren’t angels the ones betting on us?” the hacker shot back. “Besides, the only ones I knew were Felipe and the Neo Kira kid—not that I knew them personally—and I wouldn’t bet on either of them.”

“Oh? Not even Neo Kira?”

“Ha! Kira lasted a few years without wings, but this punk didn’t even last a few months. He was screwed as soon as those Kung Fu Power Rangers entered the fray. Instead of challenging everyone so publicly, he should have gathered intel from a dingy basement like me.”

The hacker flipped the paper over to read the rest of Verite’s creepy diary entry.

List of the Reminding Remaining

1. “Venus,” late teens, 164 cm. Long orange hair, excessive makeup that distorts her facial features, long white feathery gloves, a white dress with a pearl bodice and a red gradient down the skirt. First appearance in Paris, France. Since then, people with disfigurements have been committing suicide worldwide.

The hacker spat into a milk-crusted mug that hadn’t been washed in months, disturbing the cockroach family inside. So Venus was cacophobic. He hated her even more now.

2. “Morning,” mid-to-late teens, 171 cm. Black hair, hood, and mask, blue shawl with silver dots, neon orange boots. Eyes and accent suggest a Japanese background. First appearance in Paris, France as Venus’s partner, but he seems more distant as the suicide rate skyrocketed.
3. “The Doctor,” early-to-mid 30’s, 181 cm. Crow mask like from the Bubonic Plague. Walks with a slightly hunched back and seems to have difficulty breathing. Accent suggests a German background. First appearance in Paris, France as Venus and Morning’s companion, but he has disappeared from the public recently.

Was he dead? The hacker would bet three packs of Pocky and a family-sized bag of Ruffles that the old man had keeled over from old age—or cancer—and his body was rotting alone somewhere.

4. Abbas Hassan “the Soldier,” age 19, 179 cm. American citizenship. Attempted suicide by aiming an M11 into his mouth on the anniversary of his enrollment in the American army. Officially active in Afghanistan but also makes appearances as “the Soldier” in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran.
5. “The General,” age and height unknown. American citizenship. Not much is known about him except that he directs young Hassan’s actions as the Soldier. Add: Based on recent suicide attempts, recorded IQ, and access to confidential information, the list of possible identities has been narrowed down to Colonel Mike Curtis, age 53, 195 cm; Brigadier Sammy Holsen, age 59, 190 cm; Sergeant Tyson Scott, age 21, 183 cm; and Lieutenant Colonel Zack Royce, age 52, 186 cm.

The hacker gawked at the paper. Verite must have made a typo. But no, the age checked out if Scott was a sergeant. How the hell could this punk who was younger than him be the General who had wiped out dozens of terrorist hideouts?

Penema burst out laughing so hard the basement fan quivered weakly before resuming its usual stuttering.

6. ?

That confirmed it. If Verite wasn’t a god candidate, they’d have two more entries to mark the 13 “potential targets.” But since there was only one more entry—Verite wouldn’t need an entry for themself—it meant Verite was a god candidate too.

The hacker chuckled as he pulled out a Sharpie from his hoodie pocket, crossed out the question mark, and wrote, Tomas Rodriguez.

Then he tossed the paper into the shredder.

Chapter Text

“Where were you?” Mirai demanded.

It was past midnight, and Venus’s soaked gown seemed to drip rubies like blood. Mirai had to hand it to Latenue; the brilliant designer created the illusion of crystallized blood, distracting any passersby from looking too closely at Venus’s face. All while appearing fashionable.

Venus grabbed Mirai’s wrist and pulled him into an alley near Latenue’s shop. Nearby, the Doctor yelped in alarm and followed them. The glowing green eyes behind his plague mask darted back and forth as he scouted for potential witnesses.

Venus detached the gold circlet around her head and pulled off her dark orange wig, holding it at her waist so the ends almost reached the hem of her dress. She shook her glittery auburn hair out of its ponytail so the ends brushed her bare shoulders. Now she was Mi-sun—a girl, not a goddess.

“I killed her,” she said in a booming, ominous voice.

“Venus!” the Doctor exclaimed, eyeing a drunk squatter suspiciously.

Mi-sun turned off the voice distorter at her collarbone. “My bad.”

“Mi-sun,” Mirai whispered, “what happened?”

Tears ran down Mi-sun’s face, ruining her eyeshadow. Already designed to make her eyes appear bigger, now her eyes actually appeared to melt down her rosy cheeks, the sclera coagulating like egg whites. Orange eyeshadow, applied to match her contact lenses and wig, streaked through as thick bloody rivulets. With the flickering lamplight, she looked more like a ghost than a god.

Mirai shuddered and averted his gaze. And then Mi-sun told her story.

She spoke slower than usual to ensure that both Mirai and Elias understood every word. Mirai found himself enraptured by her unfolding tale: a bearded ivory woman leaning down to stare up at her as Elias translated the General’s threat; a disfigured girl flying down to carry Venus away, recognizing her as Mi-sun the trainee; a demand for an alliance, an autograph, and a date.

“And where is she now?” Elias inquired. “This Ulyana Sidorova you speak of.”

I killed her, Mirai remembered her inhumanly amplified, distorted voice. Except now, he heard it in his brother’s voice, if his brother had survived. He heard it in his own voice.

Mi-sun waved her hand dismissively. She has beautiful hands, Mirai noticed. Her fingers were long and slim—he could imagine her taking piano lessons—and her hands were soft and pink, having never experienced manual labor like the fishermen in the village where his parents grew up. And of course, her fingernails were painted red on her right hand and white on her left hand to match the Red and White Arrows.

“Ulya was hideous. Both she and her circus angel can rot for all I care. I don’t want her as an ally; my goal is to create a beautiful world, and I’ll get rid of anything ugly.”

Mirai’s heart sank. He thought of the bright, cunning girl who found him on Halloween night; the generous, bubbly young woman who treated him to tea; the romantic, hopeful dreamer riding a horse-drawn carriage in Paris with him. How could he have misjudged someone so awfully? He was disappointed in her and in himself. But what he said was, “If you were planning to kill her from the beginning, why did you spend the day with her?”

Mi-sun didn’t miss a beat. “I wanted to wait for the right time.”

“Huh?”

Nasse cut in. For once, her high-pitched voice took on a more somber tone. It chilled Mirai. “Your aunt did the same when she killed your parents and little brother.”

Mi-sun’s dark eyebrows shot up, but she said nothing. Elias removed his mask and bowed his head.

Baret placed a hand on Nasse’s skinny shoulder. Mirai never expected to see one angel comforting another angel. The Angel of Knowledge softly said, “You loved the Kakehashi family.”

“They were pure of heart—like Ulya.” Nasse glared at Mi-sun. “I liked Ulya too.”

Mi-sun cried without making a sound, the tears falling and marring her face in white-and-orange eyeshadow. “I wanted to wait until I could do it without attracting attention until I’m ready. But then she kept talking about herself, and I ended up listening. Like every ugly girl, she had a sad story. But unlike most sad stories, she padded hers with funny moments.” Mi-sun’s mouth twitched into a smile. Mirai wanted to wipe it away the way some boys wanted to wipe away a pretty girl’s tears. “She told me how once, the trapeze artist stole the ringmaster’s peanuts and stuffed them into his pockets. But he forgot to remove them before his act, and peanuts rained down all over the circus ring. The crowd thought it was part of the spectacle, so a brave volunteer stepped forward to feed the peanuts to the circus beasts and almost got her hand bitten off!”

Elias chuckled. Mirai didn’t smile. Too bad the mask didn’t also cover his eyes, because Mi-sun noticed his stern gaze. She scowled up at Nasse and snapped, “If you liked Ulya so much, why’d you choose Mirai?”

Nasse pretended to think it over. Angels couldn’t lie, but they could choose their words carefully. “I liked Ulyana but I hated her parents and older siblings. But I love Mirai, and I loved his parents and his younger brother.”

This answer didn’t satisfy Mi-sun. She went on, “Revel chose me because I have a goal for when I become God; Baret chose Elias because she respects his connections and strategizing. So why, Nasse, did you choose Kakehashi Mirai?”

Nasse giggled, her usual self returned. “Because he’s pure of heart, silly. He comforts others when they’re bullied, but when he’s the one everyone makes fun of, he doesn’t expect any comfort. And he didn’t get any. Ever since he lost his family, the naughty kids called him funny names and left him out of their silly games. My favorite was when they held their noses at him and called him a smelly pig, you know, ‘cause his uncle drank a lot and beat him up until he smelled like alcohol and looked all pink like a pig!”

Mirai pulled his hood down lower and muttered, “Just share my dark past, why don’t you?”

“Oh, I just did. Unless you wanted me to also talk about…”

Elias looked at Mirai with pity. Mi-sun interrupted Nasse in an obnoxious voice. “Are you sure you’re an angel?”

“Of course! I’m the Angel of Purity, silly, and one of the highest-ranking angels as part of the Ophanim.”

Revel shook his head. “I can’t believe she’s Ophanim while I’m Cherubim.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re the Angel of Trickery, and the current god prefers purity. I don’t know any other way angels can change rank, ‘cause it hasn’t been done in over ten thousand years!”

“Sometimes,” Baret interjected, “angels change too. We are not as stagnant as you may think.”

Mi-sun rolled her eyes. She poked Mirai. “Didn’t anyone stand up for you?”

“No.”

“I would have.”

“I doubt that.”

Mi-sun stuck out her tongue. “Yeah, I would’ve been one of those bullies too.”

Elias stared at her. “You look too nice to be a bully.”

“I killed an innocent girl less than an hour ago.”

Mirai stared at her. She looked so innocent and kind; how could someone like her be a bully, much less a murderer? But then, if he imagined peeling off all the makeup and gouging out the colored contact lenses, she very nearly resembled one of those bullies.

…

TEN YEARS AGO

Seven-year-old Mirai Kakehashi played with seven-year-old Saki Hanakago in a field of clovers. Before Mirai’s family was killed, before the world turned to hell and Mirai found himself in a world of shinigami and aspiring gods who would hunt each other down, he had been a child who could have fun with another child, and the deadliest threat was a bumblebee that bumped Mirai’s nose and made him sneeze.

Saki giggled. “That means someone is talking about you, Mirai.”

Mirai grinned at her. “Probably the bumblebee. ‘Where’s the flower with the yummy honey? Buzz-buzz—oops, that’s not a flower!’”

Saki laughed harder. Mirai liked seeing her happy, and he continued, “Or maybe it’s my little brother Aki talking about me to my parents over there. I think he’s angry ‘cause I ate the last rice cracker. ‘How could he? I saved it! But no, a thief took it—my own brother, no less! I have been bee-trayed!’”

Saki kept laughing until she keeled over and rolled on the grass, staining her white sundress. Mirai kneeled next to her. “Or maybe it’s your parents watching you and wondering what I’m saying to make you laugh so hard. ‘That boy is bad trouble! He’s gonna give our precious Saki breathing problems because she’s laughing too much!’”

“They look too happy to be thinking that. And you look too happy to be bad trouble.”

Mirai lay down on the grass and spread out his arms like he was making a snow angel among the clovers. Above him, the sky shone pale blue. “Of course I’m happy. I’m with you, and Aki, and our parents, and everyone is together and happy…” He almost dozed off, the clouds lulling him, and he grabbed a handful of clovers and let them fall onto his chest.

Saki began to pick them off, one by one, until she exclaimed, “You found a four-leaf clover!”

Mirai bolted up, the rest of the clovers falling off him. Saki held up the four-leaf clover, where a golden ladybug perched on the middle. He beamed. “And you found a lucky ladybug. That’s double happiness!”

Saki gently blew on the ladybug so it landed on Mirai’s nose. Her smile carried all the sweetness of a child’s naïveté. “We’ll be happy forever, right?”

Mirai stared cross-eyed at the ladybug on his nose and rambled, “We’ll be friends and family and we’ll have all the happiness forever and ever…”

A week later, his parents’ car blew up. He lost Akira, his parents—everyone, because as his classmates turned on him, Saki joined them. As his skin burned from the explosion, he wondered what lies Saki told her parents to prevent them from checking up on him. Or maybe they were as mean and cruel as their daughter. Mirai didn’t know what to believe anymore. He lost faith in her, in Kira, and in God.

When he graduated from middle school, he sighed in relief, hoping that high schoolers would be more mature—or at least too self-involved to bother bullying him. His middle school classmates ignored him by then. He let his gaze travel across them coolly, relishing that he might never see them again. Having abusive foster parents motivated him to spend more time in the library, where he studied harder for entrance exams to a high school farther away. He could leave at least this part of his past behind.

One student met his gaze. Saki Hanakago’s light brown eyes widened, raising her eyebrows as though in fear. Her cheeks were flushed. She opened her mouth to say something, but Mirai walked away. He didn’t think she would have bullied him again—everyone else was over it—so what did she have to say to him? An apology? He didn’t want to hear it. All the four-leaf clovers and golden ladybugs in the world wouldn’t restore their friendship and happiness.

He found out later that she drowned herself that day. The beaches were empty at night in March. Despite the chill left behind from winter, she’d stripped out of her uniform and undergarments and waded deeper, deeper… the water reached her waist, then her chest… and then the beach was truly empty. Angels watched from above but did not intervene. Mirai himself had seen her but chose not to listen. Once in a while, guilt pricked at him, but more than that, regret burned him. Over time, the memory of her bullying had mostly faded. When he thought of her at all, he remembered her wide eyes as she tried to call out to him, and he remembered their innocence, when they thought all it would take was a four-leaf clover and a golden ladybug to be happy together forever.

But she had killed herself.

And he was damned.

…

“Who’s Hanakago Saki?” Mi-sun asked.

Mirai hadn’t realized he said her name out loud. She’s you, he wanted to tell the god candidate before him. Except not really. For all her cruelty and callousness, Mi-sun had initiative. She had a goal. She took it upon herself to find other god candidates and build alliances until she no longer needed them. If Revel had been Ophanim, Mirai knew without a doubt that Mi-sun would use her White Arrows to achieve her dream sooner. Despite her crimes, Mirai couldn’t help but admire her.

But he was no fool. He loved her, and maybe she loved him back, but when it came time to choose, she would choose her ideal, beautiful world over his companionship. Mirai had to keep his distance.

He smiled. “No one important.”

…

The fame got to Mi-sun. She had never made her debut as an idol, but she imagined this is what it would be like.

Less than twelve hours after she confessed her murder to Mirai and Elias, the Parisians discovered Ulyana’s body in the river. The leeches and decay overtook her body fast. Mi-sun almost vomited. At that moment, she envied her allies, whose masks helped block the stench. As far as she knew, they weren’t even looking.

The truth was, a body didn’t decay this fast. Mi-sun knew because before her, another trainee had attempted suicide. But unlike her, this trainee had no pitying or mocking angel to intervene. Mi-sun and the other trainees had screamed when they saw Seo Yoon’s body draped over the toilet. The stench of vomit permeated the air, and an empty prescription bottle lay sideways next to Seo Yoon’s slim, pale hand. Mi-sun and the trainees had discussed what they should do, and they decided to do nothing. Reporting Seo Yoon’s death would bring in police and investigators, and they were far too busy to spend time giving testimonies as witnesses. The agents would also be annoyed if they had to update their mental health policy by actually implementing a mental health policy. No, it would be far too inconvenient. So they left Seo Yoon’s body there. At least someone had the decency to flush the toilet and bring in an air freshener.

For the next week or so, most of the girls avoided that restroom. Mi-sun, however, was entranced by death. She visited every day after practice to check on Seo Yoon’s corpse and watch the dreadful transformation. Sometimes she even spoke to the dead girl, sharing her deepest fears and giggling at the insanity of it all.

Then one day, Seo Yoon’s body disappeared. The agency finally figured out that no trainee would be truant this long, or maybe they gave Seo Yoon the boot and her family made inquiries. Either way, they kept it all very hush hush. No police officers came to investigate; no policies changed. A year later, Mi-sun tried to follow suit with a more dignified death—when her fellow trainees would find her, the restroom would smell like carbon instead of vomit.

Maybe it was too dignified a death for Mi-sun, because Revel interrupted. Yes, Mi-sun didn’t deserve a good death; she deserved something more wretched than Seo Yoon Han and Ulyana Sidorova and Maria Campbell. Yet here she was, a radiant god candidate with vivid dreams of beauty and a beautiful world. She giggled.

Revel raised an eyebrow inquisitively, his lips curling up in a faint smile. The Parisians were not as amused. They yelled at her in French. She didn’t understand them, but she got the gist of their accusations. With a toss of the wig’s long orange hair, she boldly announced that yes, she had killed this little girl. Because she was like Neo Kira, and this girl was like them, and everyone like them needed to be disposed of eventually, sooner rather than later if they were as ugly as pitiful Ulyana Sidorova.

Not even Kira had had such a dramatic debut.

For the next couple of weeks, Venus basked in the fame. Oh sure, police officers and detectives and well-intentioned citizens hounded on her, but she just shot some of them with Red Arrows to pacify them. She didn’t have wings to fly away like Morning and the Doctor, but shooting people with Arrows was more fun than running away. Besides, what future god runs away from her future worshippers?

Although Revel and Baret claimed that Venus had unlimited Red Arrows, the more that she used them, the more it hurt. When she took off her long gloves at night, she began noticing the dreadful transformation.

It started with a pimple—oh, the sheer horror! Then the pimple blossomed into a row of rashes like rosebuds. And then the rashes burst into painful scabs that affected her handwriting. Why did the Red Arrow have to come out of her right hand? Neo Kira used his White Arrows about as frequently, so she wondered if his hand burned too.

She didn’t notice how distant she’d become from her allies until Elias invited her to his family home in Oranienburg. “Are you inviting Mi-sun or Venus?”

“Do you think I am Elias Hartmann or the Doctor?”

Mi-sun left behind her wig, though she wore a pair of burgundy gloves to hide her hands. She showed up as Mi-sun Lee, the pretty young woman who had trained as a K-pop idol and now made a living… let’s say, working as Latenue’s apprentice. That’s the story she’d tell Elias’s family. She visited Latenue often and helped out at the designer’s shop sometimes, so it wouldn’t be too far off.

A plump, rosy-cheeked woman opened the door. She beamed when she saw Mi-sun. “You must be Mi-sun! I’m Edith Hartmann—Elias’s wife. Come in; it’s been a while since we’ve had guests.” Her English was very good, the W’s sounding like V’s the only indication it wasn’t her native language.

Mi-sun took off her high heel boots, the zippers jingling, and put on a pair of pastel guest slippers with pompoms over the toes. She remembered how Mirai wore sneakers in his own apartment, a habit from growing up with an alcoholic uncle who left trash everywhere in the house. But she still couldn’t help but think that the Hartmann family was more Japanese than Kakehashi.

The house smelled like roasted meat and a potato dish Mi-sun couldn’t identify. It gave the place a cozy, homy atmosphere—certainly more inviting than the training agency with heavy perfumes, sweat, and Seo Yoon’s decaying body in the restroom.

Mi-sun cleared her thoughts. She didn’t want to associate corpses with such a lovely family home. Flowers crowded the living room, and Mi-sun had to be careful not to knock them over. Edith explained over her shoulder, “Neighbors and extended family have been bringing them over ever since finding out about my husband’s diagnosis. Please don’t do the same. We’re already making plans to dispose of these wretched plants so Mina can have more room to play again.”

As if on cue, a little girl with the same rosy cheeks as Edith barreled down the stairs and almost knocked over a row of flowers. Mi-sun and Edith caught them before they tumbled down. Mina grinned up at Mi-sun. “Are you my daddy’s new friend? Daddy and Madame Lah-tuh-noo talk about you.”

Mi-sun crouched to smile up at Mina. The little girl had the same observant pale blue eyes as her father, though she was far more innocent. “That’s right. I’m Madame Latenue’s assistant. She and your daddy helped me out a lot.” She thought of Venus’s gown and gloves stashed safely away.

“Daddy says you’ll help him too.”

Mi-sun shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course Elias Hartmann didn’t help her for free. It made sense he wanted a favor too. Baret chose him for strategy, after all. Mi-sun wondered what she had that would benefit the Doctor. Fame? Beauty? Sheer cold-heartedness?

“Your tailoring skills and eye for aesthetic,” Elias said over dinner.

Edith flinched, but her hands didn’t shake as she served Mi-sun a generous heaping of potatoes. Mina shoved a forkful of meat and potato into her mouth and mumbled, “Wuff ur the guff for?”

“Mina,” Edith chided.

Mi-sun smiled sweetly. “Like your daddy said, I have an eye for aesthetic. These gloves match my hair and go well with my outfit.” The burgundy gloves complemented her pale blue silk top and sparkly cobalt leggings.

Elias continued, “I have various sketches of dresses for Mina as she grows up. Latenue has artistic license to adjust them as she sees fit, and of course, you will assist her.”

Mi-sun glanced at Edith. From the rosy-cheeked woman’s painful expression, Mi-sun understood the conversation that had taken place between the couple before: Elias wouldn’t live long enough to watch Mina grow up and give her the dresses himself. The cancer was only half of it.

Mi-sun looked back at Elias, whose piercing pale blue eyes communicated what he really wanted. Of course, he couldn’t give a damn about her assisting Latenue; just because she was pretty didn’t mean she had the dark-skinned designer’s talent. But out of all the remaining god candidates, Mi-sun was one of the likeliest to become the next God, as long as she evaded Neo Kira and the General. And as her ally, he had more insight into her motives than the others. He knew what kind of world she wanted.

Edith and Mina were pretty enough but not up to Mi-sun’s standards. Elias wanted to assure their well-being when Mi-sun became God. This was the price of her name and image—two individuals’ lives of mere decades for over ten thousand years as Venus.

It was a small price to pay.

Mi-sun nodded with a smile. “I’ll make sure Mina has the most beautiful dresses in the world. And I’ll help Latenue fix something up for Mrs. Hartmann too.”

Edith chuckled. “Please, call me Edith.”

Elias stared at Mi-sun a moment longer and then nodded. If you don’t keep your end of the deal, the beautiful people in your world will mar themselves and die hideous deaths. I’ll make sure of it as a shinigami. She could almost hear him say it. It’s what she would do, after all.

Mina blurted out, “What kind of beautiful dresses? Like for a wedding? That’s ages away!”

“It can take a long time to make a proper dress, Vögelchen.”

Edith flinched again, and this time she let out a small cry. Elias didn’t have long to live. And she knew only half of it.

Whether it was the cancer or the fate of a doomed god candidate, Elias Hartmann would be dead by the end of the year.

Chapter Text

In one ear, a commander’s voice barked orders; in the other ear, a quick, heavy beat overpowered a rap that flowed like a river with a heavy current. All of this was in sync with the soldier’s artillery shots, a cycle of gunshots that paused for a fraction of a second every dozen rounds or so—that’s how long it took him to stuff in the next cartridge. Tyson Scott couldn’t stand opera, but this was music to his ears.

The last cartridge went in and the last bullet fired, in time with the end of the rap and the commander’s orders. On the other side of the field, hundreds of dummies lay either supine or prostrate. Bullet holes riddled their heads, most of them perfect kill shots, along with some down their bodies and one right in the groin. Abbas fearlessly strolled onto the field and examined it with a smirk. Then he stomped on the dummy to press it deeper into the mud. Either bowing so low or staring into the sky with fearful expressions, the dummies looked like they were worshipping a god.

Soon, Tyson would become that god.

“Off the field, Hassan!” a lieutenant colonel hollered. “Scott still has two spare rounds!”

Abbas grinned at Tyson. “You saved some?”

An ivory-and-gold man—handsome enough to be a model but invisible to everyone but Abbas and Tyson—elbowed his god candidate good-naturedly. “He saved them just for you.”

“Aw, that’s sweet, Ty.”

Tyson rolled his eyes. Abbas and Balta could be a pain in the neck sometimes. At least his own angel remained demure, wings spread in six different directions like the universe’s largest, most horrifying flower; while Balta looked like he walked right out of a magazine, dark red buboes covered Tyson’s angel like rust or a plague. “Off the field, Hassan, or I really will shoot you.”

Abbas stuck out his tongue but obeyed. And since the lieutenant colonel was watching, Tyson flipped his artillery gun and whacked the side of Abbas’s head with the back end. “That’s for calling me Ty.”

Abbas rubbed the swelling area and scowled, but his dark gray eyes sparkled mischievously as he saluted and declared, “Sorry, Sergeant, it won’t happen again!”

It would definitely happen again.

Tyson switched the M240B for the more portable M11 and nodded at the old man organizing the drills. “We’re ready for the next round, Lieutenant Colonel.”

The dummies shivered and then righted themselves. Like zombies, they slid slowly across the mud while a new set emerged. There were only a couple dozen this time, but they all faced Abbas and Tyson, weapons ready—soldiers this time, not civilians. They still had duct tape patched over their old injuries, but if the soldiers were good with their shots, the bullets would tear through the tape cleanly.

Balta flew close circles around the rust-covered angel. “I love these drills. Don’t you love these drills, Muni? They work so well together.”

Muni’s voice bellowed to deaf ears; only Balta, Tyson, and Abbas could hear him. “Your play soldier is 20.2% slower than mine.”

“That’s ‘cause he’s thinking, Muni, dear.”

“What could a mere private be thinking about?”

“Only a little less than a sergeant.”

Abbas gave Tyson a pained smile. How awkward he looked when their angels gossiped about them and treated this all like a board game. Tyson didn’t feel awkward. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting Muni’s powerful voice fuel him.

He opened his eyes in time for the drill to begin.

He and Abbas cheated. They both unfurled their wings and flew to dodge the dummies’ plastic pellets. Their own metal bullets rang in their ears as they shot at the lieutenant colonel’s play soldiers, who spun and slid on the mud, the machines whirring to get a better angle. In one ear, the lieutenant colonel barked orders; in the other ear, foreign music provided a quick beat that matched the bullets. You’re as cautious as those pigeons in the park, huh? The value of “life” decided by somebody, somewhere—

Tyson thought of young men like Kira and Neo Kira. He didn’t agree with them, but he also understood them.

Abbas shot a dummy in the knee and ducked, letting Tyson leap over his back to finish it off.

For a moment, time froze. Tyson hovered almost sideways in the air, the M11 pointed at the dummy’s head. Another soldier had scribbled a terrorist’s name in red over the duct tape.

Tyson’s vision flashed red and blue with rage. The dummy soldier became a real soldier, shooting real bullets. Tyson killed him. He killed all of them. He and Abbas stood back-to-back as around them, Taliban war criminals lay on the ground either supine or prostate, like the dummy soldiers from the first round.

…

It was all over the news. Morning read the stories on his phone while taking the train. It was just like when Neo Kira first targeted god candidates, except this time, Mirai wore his costume, letting the other passengers take pictures and gossip. They only knew him as Venus’s maybe-boyfriend anyway.

He scrolled through killings in first and third-world countries alike as Venus and the General ravaged their would-be worshippers: Venus targeted so-called ugly people while the General killed dozens—maybe hundreds—of terrorists in the Middle East, carrying America’s war. Mirai had deduced that the General had been chosen by an Ophanim like Nasse, who flitted around the train car, cramping his style.

First, after some research, Mirai learned that shortly after the angels’ arrival, an America squadron stationed in Syria went berserk, resulting in not-so-friendly “friendly” fire but also a small victory for America. The General made the same mistake as Kira.

Ever since then, the American army had been functioning like an automaton, and Islamic terrorists kept dying by assassination or heart attack.

Nasse giggled. “Coincidence?”

Mirai glanced up at her, narrowing his eyes. I think not.

Then, he reached a news story that stood out: a suicide-murder in Uryu Armories’s main lab resulting in the deaths of both Uryu heirs, one who was already frozen in a vegetative state. The writer made it seem like the older child broke the machine preserving his little sister and then committed suicide. Mirai’s eyes widened. It looked like the work of a god candidate with Red Arrows—but who could have done it?

The General served America, making him Japan’s ally at least for now. Also, Uryu Armories provided the American army with almost a fourth of its weapons supply. It couldn’t be the General.

The Uryu family was exceptionally wealthy and good-looking. They exemplified the kind of world Venus wanted. It couldn’t be Venus.

Along with making weapons, Uryu Armories also invested in cryotherapy and pharmaceuticals in the hope of restoring the younger Uryu child. Neo Kira promoted science; at least, that’s what Mirai assumed, because Neo Kira gave heart attacks to people against science the way Kira had given heart attacks to criminals and Santa supposedly gave coal to bad children. No, it couldn’t be Neo Kira. Besides, the edgy god candidate with the equally edgy angel had been quiet lately. No recent heart attacks or other suspicious deaths could be attributed to him.

Maybe this is a coincidence, Mirai thought. After all, god candidates weren’t the only mentally deranged killers on the planet. Maybe this really was a suicide-murder like the tabloids claimed.

Even as he thought it, he leaned toward his gut feeling: this was the work of a god candidate. But who? And why?

The only reason he could think of was that the Uryu heir was Neo Kira.

And then it all made sense.

…

Alone in his barracks, Tyson leaned back on the old metal chair the army provided and spun his new ring on the steel desk. The sound of metal on metal echoed, amplified by the concrete walls. It grated his nerves, almost as much as Neo Kira had. At first, Tyson could tolerate the arrogant rich kid—Neo Kira could only be a rich brat; even with the mask, Tyson knew Neo Kira looked at people like he wanted to spit on them. Tyson thought the other god candidate wasted his White Arrows killing people who didn’t matter, but as long as he wasn’t an enemy of the state…

And then Neo Kira murdered Tyson’s father.

Old Pops Scott was obese, alcoholic, and all kinds of nasty, but still. He attended an anti-vaccine protest, drawing Neo Kira’s attention, but still. He chortled as he dumped Tylenol into the stew after Tyson lost his football scholarship three and a half years ago due to academic integrity issues, the ugly laughter wet with phlegm as he tried to “spare both their dignities” but only ended up sending both of them to the hospital and incurring a massive debt that Tyson’s military service had only just paid off a few months ago. But. Still.

Tyson couldn’t let Neo Kira get away with murdering his father, no matter how depraved the old man had been. Right after he sent Abbas to eliminate the other god candidate, he realized, Old Pops Scott could have died from a natural heart attack.

If Tyson had the same kind of justice as the new L, he would have gone after Abbas to stop him. But that was too much effort, and besides, they could all benefit from Neo Kira’s death. The General let his Soldier run amuck.

The next morning, the gray-eyed soldier returned with an odd gift.

“A trophy,” Tyson had remarked, “like those Indians who chopped off their enemies’ heads.”

“A gift,” Abbas corrected him. “And you got the wrong kind of Indian. And I’m Pakistani.”

Tyson ignored him, picking up the ring. “This is far prettier than Neo Kira’s ugly head.”

“He was actually quite handsome.”

“A ring is also more convenient than a head. Where would I keep a severed head?”

“On our shelf? Or you could donate it to the dining hall back home; the cadets would love it.”

“No, I’d keep it on my floor as a footstool. Or on your pillow to keep you company, Hassan. You could whisper pretty nothings to it like you and Balta already do with each other, and I’ll be damned when it whispers back.”

Abbas laughed softly, reaching out but pausing when Tyson glared at him. His smile didn’t waver as he said, “We’re both already damned. Besides, like you said, I have Balta; now you have your ring to talk to. Not like it talks back, though.”

But it does. Tyson read the engraving. Better to reign in Hell. And on the inside: Better still to reign in Heaven.

A week later, he continued to repeat it in his mind like a mantra as the ring spun on the steel desk. Better still to reign in Heaven. Better still to reign. Better still… It sounded even louder without Abbas’s god-awful cheery voice twittering over it. Abbas was out training, with Balta to act as cheerleader. Angels chose their god candidates well, from what Tyson knew. Of course a flirtatious angel would choose someone like Abbas Hassan. And Meyza, with her bloody eye sockets, would choose an edgelord teenager like Kanade Uryu, who called himself Neo Kira. And Muni, Angel of Destruction, had chosen him.

Tyson slapped his hand over the ring to silence it. Small knife marks nicked his right wrist, forming tallies that went all the way around and up his arm, usually covered by his army jacket. A thousand paper cuts. One for each day since he recovered from his father’s pathetic attempt at a suicide-murder and had to start paying off the hospital bill, which was a far worse robbery than anything he’d witnessed since joining the army. He also redid them as they faded. And on the thousandth day, September 23, with his debt paid off, Tyson took the knife and viciously slashed across his wrist and then his arm. He closed his eyes, remembering the cold blade and peeling skin from the tip of his middle finger to the crook of his elbow. The two deep slashes formed a bleeding cross over the smaller cuts. But before he could bleed out, an ivory-and-gold monster covered in buboes like scars appeared before him.

The two slashes didn’t even leave a scar, though the thousand smaller cuts remained.

Muni looked at him. Unlike Balta, he rarely spoke. It suited Tyson fine, because Tyson also didn’t like to talk. But now, with the Uryu heirs’ funeral announced—Uryu Armories supplied a good portion of the U.S. army’s weapons, and Tyson wouldn’t have sent Abbas if he had known; Abbas was either too obedient or too stupid, maybe both—he couldn’t stop wondering.

“Why would a rich kid in a rich country try to kill himself?”

Muni didn’t answer.

Tyson continued, “He’s rich, smart, and handsome. He had everything. And he lived in a country where even if he didn’t have everything, he’d still have a comfortable life.”

Muni still didn’t answer, but his mouth quirked up in a half smile, one of his buboes popping and scarring his sharp jaw.

Tyson rambled, feeling as dumb as Abbas. “And even though Old Pops Scott was buck poor and I had a fucking crippling debt, I’m not the worst off. And even the sad morons living in a war zone in the mercy of future gods who hate them aren’t the worst off.”

Muni finally spoke. “None of them are god candidates.”

“And—wait, what?” Muni gazed evenly at Tyson, not bothering to repeat himself. “But they’re more desperate.”

Muni raised a hairless eyebrow.

Tyson swallowed. “What about the absolute poor? People who actually have nothing? The sad folks who truly need the opportunity—”

“What makes you think we choose someone based on something so human like need? Angels don’t have compassion, soldier boy. The day an Ophanim feels emotion for a human is the day that Ophanim transcends to become God.”

“God has no pity,” Tyson spat.

“God is human too. He has as much empathy as one of your kind.”

“So none.”

Muni smirked. “But just now, you believed power should be given to those without power, hope to those without hope.”

Tyson gritted his teeth, trying not to show his embarrassment. He put on Kanade Uryu’s platinum ring, which soothed him. Calmer now, he asked, “So how does an angel choose the next God?”

Muni raised three long white fingers. “First, the candidate must be a human person. What constitutes a human person depends on the current god.”

“So if they’re racist…” Tyson remembered the little Black girl that Neo Kira killed in China on Halloween. “This one isn’t racist at least.”

“Race is a more recent construct. The old god is, as you say, colorblind. But humans have looked different in past eras, and you lot are far uglier now, despite the old god’s attempts at making you look decent.”

Tyson muttered, “I liked it better when you didn’t talk so much.”

“I’m not done. Second, the candidate must attempt suicide 99 human days before God retires.”

Tyson had counted a thousand days to pay off his debt. Being God must be his destiny. And Abbas was along for the ride because every general needs soldiers. Poor Private Jimmy Creek, who had committed suicide on September 22, had been unlucky.

Or maybe poor Private Creek had been very lucky, since he had escaped becoming a shinigami.

“And lastly,” Muni went on, “the candidate must have felt desperation—not need—being deprived when they have so much. Take Kanade Uryu, for example. Heir to a massive weapons company, grew up in Tokyo, consistently performs at the top of his class. Loved by his peers and his precious little sister, whose neck was snapped by their angry father when his stocks suffered.”

Tyson fidgeted with the ring. He regretted killing Kanade ever since finding out his father’s affiliation with the U.S. army. Now his dumb human heart wished he could have saved him.

Muni’s voice became more energetic. “‘It’s better this way,’ Mr. Uryu said, trying in vain to justify what he did. ‘Now she’ll never have to live in poverty,’ not that they were ever poor. ‘It’s only temporary. She’s not really dead. We’ll freeze her body so we can recover our wealth.’ From one hundred billion yen to the usual one hundred fourteen billion yen. Little did he know, her soul had already passed.”

Tyson gasped like a little kid enthralled by a story. “To Heaven?”

Muni just looked at him. Tyson no longer wanted to know. If an innocent little kid couldn’t get to Heaven, they were all screwed. Poor Private Creek was very, very unlucky.

Muni continued, “So the Uryu family stuck a child’s corpse into a high-powered freezer and gave Kanade false hope. ‘We have the money, we have the tech, we have everything. It’s better this way, really. She’s better off this way, Kanade. This is what family does. We look after each other.’”

“The old man killed his daughter.”

Muni smiled, bursting more buboes. Tyson’s stomach turned. Muni said, “So how can someone with everything decide he has nothing? You already know the answer to that, my soldier. Most god candidates are from Japan, China, or South Korea, followed by North America. Your soldier boy toy is a bit of an anomaly, but then again, Balta—”

“Don’t talk about Abbas that way.”

“So now you decide to care. If you had cared a long time ago, you both would have been saved.”

That day marked one year that Abbas Hassan had been in the army. He was used to being rejected by men and being discriminated because of his ethnicity, but he didn’t expect the army—people who should have been his new family—to intersect the two. The other soldiers hated that he looked like the enemy, and they despised that he could fall in love with them. They beat him. They mocked him. They were all kinds of nasty, but now, Tyson thinks, Isn’t this what family does?

Tyson thought it was wrong, but he didn’t want to speak up himself. He’d be slandered. So when poor Private Creek asked him for help in training, Tyson told him to be nice to his fellow soldiers, even the losers no one else liked, and that was how to do well in the army. Because if you’re nice to your fellow soldiers, even the losers, they’ll owe you favors. And you’ll do well in the army.

Then rumors began spreading that Creek was like Hassan. Apparently Abbas asked him out. Creek rejected him, but that wasn’t enough. He was too nice. He no longer did well in the army.

Unable to bear the stain to his reputation, Creek took a shotgun, put it into his mouth, angled it upward, and fired.

Brain matter splattered across the canteen walls. Blood mixed with the sloppy joes. An eye burst out of the socket and rolled across the grimy floor until it bumped into Tyson’s boot. The dark iris stared up at him, unseeing but accusing, and Tyson discreetly crushed it.

The night after, Tyson walked past Abbas alone in the gym. Abbas had a shotgun in his mouth like Creek. Tyson paused.

Abbas hadn’t seen him. Tyson continued walking away, pulling out his favorite knife to finish the thousandth cut in the restroom. Just before the door closed, he heard the gunshot.

Tyson roared and punched Muni’s torso, bursting more buboes that splattered rust like blood that burned like Arrows.

“Man, you good?” Abbas remarked. He had a towel slung across his bare shoulders, which glistened bronze. Shower droplets dripped from his spiky black hair.

Tyson shook his head. Abbas hung up the towel and put on a white muscle shirt, tucking it into his baggy cargo pants. “Take a walk with me, Ty. Just us, no angels.”

Muni scowled, but Balta smiled and gave the two men a friendly wave of his fingers. Tyson put on his army jacket to cover the cuts. Abbas glanced at Tyson’s arm but said nothing as he pulled on a pair of olive-green armbands lined with small knives and razors. As they strolled on the frozen ground, only 90 percent sure there were no land mines in the area, Abbas played with the razors, whipping them out and twirling them to catch the wintry sunlight. “You heard about the Uryu funeral, right?”

“I heard that they’re making it public and inviting as many people as they can to mourn the heirs. And that they’re hiring us to vamp up security.”

“They also want us to attend the funeral and pretend to mourn the kids. They’re paying us to do it.”

“That’s disgusting. I don’t need a bribe to feel sad that two kids died like that.”

Abbas glanced at him, his eyes as silver as his razors in the sun. “Do you actually mourn them, Tyson?”

“Muni told me their story. Angels are sworn to neutrality, but after the god candidate dies, they leak intel better than actual spies.” Tyson whirled around to stand in front of Abbas. “It was terrible, Abbas. I don’t want the Uryu family’s dirty money.”

Abbas glanced down. “Neither do I, but I can’t deny that it’d help out my mom a lot. She’s raising three more kids on her own after our dad went to jail for ‘honor killing.’ The church we joined helps out once in a while, but it’s not enough. Any bit of money would help.”

Tyson heard the unsaid request. If you don’t want it, I’ll take it. He pushed past Abbas to return to the bunk.

They needed to get ready for the funeral.

…

Tyson adjusted Abbas’s hat while Abbas helped fix his tie. Abbas murmured prayers to a god that Tyson struggled to believe in, even after knowing he himself would become that god by the end of the year. When they finished, neither took a step back. They were just an inch apart in height, and Abbas stared up at him from under long lashes that looked darkened from mascara.

Balta cooed. “The two of you look darling. Humans make the best funeral clothes.”

Abbas beamed. “You really think so?”

“Absolutely.”

Tyson rolled his eyes, feeling chattier after sending a Red-Arrow-struck soldier to dispatch a foolish god candidate called Tomas Rodriguez. “No other species in the universe has funerals.”

“Angels have lamenting choirs,” Balta argued.

“Only in media. Don’t pretend you actually mourn and sing.”

Balta clicked his tongue with a smile and made finger guns. “You got me there. Half of it anyway; believe it or not, angels actually do sing, just not what you might think of as music.”

“All right, enough chatter. It’s almost time, and poor Hassan looks like he might have a heart attack despite being immune to White Arrows.”

Abbas stared at Balta, who clicked his tongue again and placed a hollow ivory hand on his god candidate’s face. “Are you disappointed in the Heaven your family recently started believing in? Aw, but they still find solace in it, no?”

Muni scoffed. “As for you, you’re already screwed.”

Balta glanced at the Angel of Destruction in surprise. “Which one of us were you talking to?”

Muni ignored him and led the funeral procession, an invisible, sickly pillar. Balta took the rear. An interpreter spoke in hushed tones with the brigadier general and Mr. and Mrs. Uryu. Tyson noticed a Japanese teenager, probably one of Kanade’s classmates, leave the funeral before it even began. He wondered what Kanade’s classmates had thought of the wealthy heir whose parents made a business arming foreign states.

The church bells gonged, but heavy rock played in Tyson’s mind as he gazed up at the stained glass, trying to make out the images. He had grown up learning about these stories, but now he felt nothing until he reached the two coffins. The girl’s coffin stayed closed, heavy perfumes barely concealing the decay. Kanade’s coffin remained open, his eyelids lightly shadowed with lilac. Tyson tried not to glare at Kanade’s parents. As a shinigami, Kanade could have the vengeance he wanted. But Kanade Uryu must be waiting, because nothing big had happened in the few days since his death. Tyson at least expected a horrific death for Abbas Hassan—even more gruesome than Abbas’s attempted suicide—but nothing happened. Were god candidates immune to shinigami powers?

Tyson searched for Muni to see his expression; the Angel of Destruction’s face rarely gave anything away, but rather his buboes moved and popped when he wanted to express something.

Instead of the plague-covered angel or Abbas’s tall, happy-go-lucky angel, Tyson saw a petite ivory-and-gold girl he recognized from the bridge video. She glanced at him and giggled but averted her gaze before she gave him away.

Morning strode in, as confident as a grim reaper. He was younger and smaller than Tyson had thought from the rumors and videos. His silver-speckled blue cloak billowed around him like a shroud. And he stopped right in front of Tyson.

Chapter Text

Mirai couldn’t figure out why, but he just had to attend the Uryu heirs’ funeral. He had never spoken to them or their parents; Mr. and Mrs. Uryu were on the opposite side of the world from Mirai’s aunt and uncle. But he remembered a little white-haired boy who went to the same elementary school as him, before Mirai’s parents were killed and his world turned to hell…

It was the day after summer break. Seven-year-old Mirai and Saki crawled in the grass looking for more four-leaf clovers and golden ladybugs to share with Mirai’s brother and their classmates. One boy in particular looked like he needed some happiness.

There was a white-haired boy who always played alone. When Mirai and Saki tried to approach him, he would glare at them from pale purple eyes that looked like flower petals and return to his project. He always had a project. Once, he built a miniature catapult and lobbed erasers into his classmates’ eyes. Another time, he dipped crickets into freezing liquid and snapped off their heads. Sometimes, he shared what he built. Mirai thought the boy didn’t like people because no one had ever tried to give him anything. But maybe he would appreciate a golden ladybug. It would match the gold ring he wore as a pendant around his neck. Apparently, the boy wore it because it was his family ring.

Mirai had forgotten the name, but he remembered now: Uryu, meaning “flow of life.” Now that Kanade was dead, Mirai remembered more.

The girls in their class found a stray kitten, so Saki joined them to help take care of it. That was the excuse this time. Not knowing how to be with Mirai after his family had died from a freak accident, she ignored him. Mirai missed his friend.

But he could try to make another friend. He found a four-leaf clover with a golden ladybug and cried out in delight, running toward lonely Kanade to share his treasure. Kanade was so pale and delicate that he bruised easily, even though he didn’t play rough on the jungle gym like the other kids. He scowled at Mirai. “What do you want?”

Mirai held out the good-luck charms. “I brought you something. A gift.”

Kanade plucked the gift and shook it. The extra leaf fell off the three-leaf clover, and the yellow M&M dropped right after. Some of the other kids looked at them. Kanade sneered, “You’re a liar.”

Mirai sniffled, unable to hold back his tears. “I just wanted to help you feel better.”

“You just want to make yourself feel better.”

“I thought you wanted a friend.”

“Why would I be friends with a lying, crying, stinky pig?”

The other kids laughed and joined in.

“He’s stinky ‘cause he has no mom to tell him to take a bath!”

“His nose looks like a pig’s when he cries!”

“His skin is turning all pink too!”

Mirai turned around, helpless. He tried to find one kind soul in the crowd. Would Saki finally remember how to be his friend and stand up for him?

Saki held her nose and giggled with the rest of the girls. No one stood up for Mirai.

After elementary school, Kanade went to a more elite middle school. The bullying only grew worse. Mirai considered cutting himself—but ironically, the taunts stopped him. He refused to butcher himself like the pig they made him to be. He considered another form of suicide, one where he wouldn’t look like a pig, like maybe drowning, but then he graduated middle school and found out that Saki actually had drowned herself.

Mirai enjoyed the solitude in high school. He couldn’t invite his classmates over, and the scar on his back made him shy to join a sports club where he’d have to change in front of others. So he joined the chess club, but chess was an individual sport, so he didn’t really make friends. He made it all the way to the tournament finals in his junior year before his opponent put him in checkmate. Mirai already forgot which mistakes had cost him the game.

He had forgotten a lot of things, but he remembered Kanade. So what the hell was he doing at the funeral of a girl he didn’t know and her brother who ruined the last four years of his childhood?

The funeral hadn’t started yet, but Mirai spun on his heel and walked away. Crap, he thought when he saw the lineup of foreign soldiers, many of them not much older than him but somehow far more massive. Then he noticed their ceremonial wear and remembered that he was more powerful than all of them combined. Almost all of them, that is, he corrected himself, trying not to look at the two fearsome angels, one at the front of the procession and the other at the back.

No one bothered to look twice in Tokyo; no one bothered to look twice at a teenager who was probably one of Kanade’s classmates. So Mirai unfurled his wings and returned only a few minutes later as Morning.

He marched into the funeral home, his bright orange boots clomping on the marble. In front of the coffin, he came face to face with a soldier in his late teens or early 20s. The fear disappeared from the soldier’s dark eyes too quickly, replaced by the faintest hint of a smirk before he hollered, “All privates fire!”

One young soldier did not hesitate. He whipped out the most frightening firearm Mirai had seen and began shooting. Civilians screamed and ducked and ran for cover, but the private had precise aim; no bullet hit a civilian.

Morning and the General unfurled their wings to dodge the bullets, which seemed to move in slow motion the closer they got. A platinum ring glinted on the General’s hand. The General kept his boots on the marble floor or walls, but Morning showed off aerial maneuvers that would put this army’s fighter pilots to shame. He got reckless, and one of the Soldier’s bullets clipped the ends of his wings, and then the General pinned Morning to the ground so hard that both coffins rattled. Mirai half expected a lilac-eyed shinigami to emerge from Kanade’s coffin and kill all of them right there.

The General punched his face so hard that Mirai heard the voice distorter break. It was that wretched platinum ring. Mirai would bet that it was the same damned ring that Kanade had worn.

The General grinned and hissed, “Do you recognize your friend’s ring, Morning? My soldier gave it to me after he killed your ‘new savior.’”

Mirai retorted, “I always hated Kira.”

“What a coincidence, so did I.”

“And you can keep that cursed ring.”

“I was going to.”

Morning smiled until his eyes crinkled. “It really is cursed. Everyone who wears it will be overtaken by a shinigami who will make them kill themselves.”

The General’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a liar.” Mirai could almost hear Kanade’s voice from ten years ago, but spoken with Neo Kira’s distorted voice, and then his brother’s voice, and then his own voice. But the General had loosened his grip enough for Morning to break free.

The Soldier had run out of bullets, which littered the floor and almost made Mirai stumble when one rolled under his boot. He righted himself just in time to quickly step to one side, then another. A fraction of a second later, he heard three gunshots from the General; bullets moved faster than sound, but wings could make him faster than bullets.

Just before Morning flew away, he heard an older soldier bark out, “Sergeant Scott, Private Hassan, a word.”

Mirai had the names of the General and the Soldier, but he didn’t know what to do with them. Ichor dripped from the ends of his wings, making the grass wilt.

…

ONE MONTH LATER

Mirai walked in a daze as Morning, surveying various urban cities of Japan. Tourists made a big deal about hot springs and nature parks, but Mirai had always preferred the city sprawl. Street lights replaced stars, and no place prepared greater holiday spectacles. Red and white canes lit the sidewalks for men wearing padded red coats and curly white beards. Families took pictures in front of sleighs and wire reindeer, posing with their arms around buckets of fried chicken and oversized stuffed animals. Blue and violet fireworks spread like squid tentacles; a daring firecracker formed Kira’s silver cross. But Kira had disappeared long ago, and Neo Kira seemed to have followed him into the shinigami realm. This disillusioned world looked for a new savior.

Half the world worshipped the General, who brought victories to the West and terror to the Middle East. South Korea and most of the E.U. worshipped Venus, who dazzled the world with photoshoots and self-produced music. And Morning picked up a following in Japan, who recognized him as one of their own.

It was Mirai’s own fault. He wanted to keep up with his studies, even knowing he wouldn’t live to take any entrance exams or graduate high school, and he continued to stay near home during winter break. Every day, he stopped by a different post office, trying to reach out to Tyson Scott or Abbas Hassan. He never heard back from either of them.

“They might be super busy,” Nasse pointed out. “After all, they’re active soldiers.” She tapped her heart-shaped chin. “If there are active soldiers, does that mean there are passive soldiers?”

“Don’t give me that bullcrap,” Morning told her, gazing down at the holiday-lit city from an office rooftop. “You know exactly what they’re doing, and the fact that you aren’t telling me means they’re still alive.”

Nasse giggled. “They’re active god candidates.”

“The military must be intercepting my messages.”

“Or maybe they’re intercepted by the silly humans they call enemies.”

“Do you mean terrorists?”

“I mean that you’re all silly, getting worked up over petty conflicts that don’t mean a thing.”

“Nasse, they’re terrorists. The U.S. soldiers are doing the world a service, no matter how obnoxious they are about it.”

Nasse’s scarlet eyes glazed over. “Watching humans fight global wars is like watching ant colonies trample each other for bread crumbs, or for nothing at all. Some angels, like Tyson’s, find it amusing. The rest of us think it’s a jolly bad waste of time.”

Mirai stared at her for several seconds. Nasse made a V with her fingers and winked. “Nasse,” Mirai began slowly, “will I end up like you when this is all over?”

Nasse swatted his arm repeatedly. “Don’t be silly, Mirai. You’ll be a god, remember?”

“What are gods like?”

“Dunno. Each one is different, like angels.”

“You call all humans silly. What would you call gods?”

“Gods, of course.”

“Yeah, but if you had to describe them—say, the current one.”

Nasse shrugged. “I’ve never seen the current god. No angel has. We just know he’s retiring and it’s time to pick a new one.”

“But he was a candidate once.”

“Yes, I guess he was human, though you would’ve called him a caveman.”

“Like a Neanderthal?”

“One of the other ones, I think.” Nasse threw her arms into the air. “It’s been so long, I don’t remember. The one thing I remember about him is that he gave you language.”

“What was the first language?”

“Dunno. As soon as one appeared, a bunch of others started springing up right after. And God liked that. He didn’t do anything after that.”

“What about all the stories of floods and stuff?”

“God, Mirai, you’re asking a lot of questions today. Usually you don’t like talking to me.” Nasse pretended to pout, her lip quivering.

Mirai’s phone buzzed with an incoming call. He had his ringtone set to a foreign metal song that began with gongs, creating a funereal atmosphere. It kept him on his toes. “Here’s someone who usually doesn’t like talking to me.” He took the call. “Good to finally hear from you, Venus. The world thought we broke up.”

“The world,” Venus retorted, “has no goddamn idea how relationships work, which is why they hardly ever work.”

“Do you want to make it work?”

Nasse giggled. “Smooth, Mirai, smooth.”

Venus ignored him. “Have you heard from the Doctor?”

“Not since last month when I asked him to fix my voice distorter. Why?”

“Elias Hartmann passed away in his sleep last week. You just missed his funeral.”

Mirai’s world flipped upside-down. Nasse giggled as his shawl billowed around his shoulders and the only thing keeping him grounded on the roof was his obnoxious orange boots. How could he have attended Kanade’s funeral but not Elias’s?

“Did you go?”

“Nope.”

“Then why the—”

“But a pretty young woman named Lee Mi-sun went.”

Mirai sputtered, his world returning to normal. His shawl rested above his torso, the silver dots glinting with the holiday display. Nasse flew in circles around him. “Wait, so you knew he was already dead, and you started with, ‘Have you heard from him?’ Dammit, Mi-sun, what’s wrong with you?”

Venus hung up. Mirai stared at his phone in disbelief. He threw it down from the top of the office building.

An instant later, he unfurled his wings and swooped down after it, catching it right before it shattered on the sidewalk and joined the holiday display. A new notification appeared.

Mirai was about to cuss out Mi-sun again, but Venus had never just gone by “V.” And the text message was in Japanese.

Kakehashi Mirai is invited to King’s Cross Station exactly one week from now. He may bring the Angel of Purity but not Morning. More detailed instruction will arrive on that evening. —V

Now Mirai really did drop his phone. Nasse caught it for him and held it up like an offering, staring at the text message with ruby eyes full of wonder. “One week from now, it will all be over. I wonder what V is planning.” She looked up at him, blinking long ivory lashes. “Will you go?”

Mirai took his phone from her. “Like you said, it’ll all be over. I might as well enjoy a New Year’s Eve vacation in London before I leave this world.”

…

NEW YEAR’S EVE, 8:01 PM

Some phones buzzed; others beeped. Mirai’s phone gonged like a funeral bell. He winced. In less than five hours, he might actually hear funeral bells. What was it like to become a shinigami? Few people could tell him that, though Kanade Uryu could at least show appreciation that Mirai had attended his funeral. And what was it like to become God?

Even fewer people could answer that.

Mirai wore jeans and a comfy hoodie, following V’s request that he show up as himself, not Morning. Some might have dressed up knowing they’d die, but Mirai just wanted to be comfortable. Too late, Mirai realized this is what he had worn when he stepped off a skyscraper in Akihabara and met Nasse.

The Angel of Purity noticed too, and she giggled. For the occasion, she had put on a sparkly red bow, which she claimed symbolized joy but mostly just made her look like a pin-up girl in the season.

Mirai arrived at London early. If he only had a few hours left to live, he might as well enjoy himself.

…

8:48 PM

“We might as well enjoy ourselves,” Abbas insisted, “since, you know, we only have a few hours left to live.”

A passerby noticed the glaring American flag on Tyson’s shirt and scowled at him. Tyson hooked his thumbs into his pockets and loomed over the ugly British man, giving him his most frightening glare. The British punk scurried away.

“Ty?” Abbas prompted. In accordance with V’s wishes, he wore an elegant gray sweater under a wool coat from the thrift shop, paired with maroon skinny jeans tucked into sleek Doc Martens. He looked like he was trying too hard to blend in with everyone else.

Meanwhile, Tyson had shown up unapologetically as the General: army jacket—not the real one; he wasn’t that dumb—with a hood, his All-American T-shirt, and frayed blue jeans tucked into combat boots. While Abbas could pass as a sweet boy who would bring his date home on time, even if he would’ve gotten stopped at airports and border checks without his wings, Tyson held up his middle fingers to the world, a soldier who stomped on sweet boys like Abbas.

Abbas gestured with his chin toward the food stalls bogged down from slush and impatient tourists. “Want to grab dinner before we catch the train? I searched up good fish and chips places online before flying.” He gave a little flap of his wings.

“I refuse for my last meal on Earth to be so obnoxiously British. When I’m God, I’ll finish what America started and bring the British down for good. Also, it’s fish and fries, not chips. At least be a little patriotic when we’re abroad, Hassan.”

“So are you coming?”

“No. Balta can keep you company.” Tyson scowled up at Abbas’s angel, who winked.

Abbas called after him, “I’ll bet someone in your family was British! And you might not even be God. One in five, Ty, one in five.”

A few people looked at them oddly, but besides shouting obscenities and throwing crumbs at their feet, they kept walking like New Yorkers. This was London, and they’d heard weirder things.

…

9:17 PM

Mi-sun skipped along the cobblestones in her platform stilettos. A few months ago, she could barely walk in these kinds of shoes on South Korea’s even pavement and spotless floors—she snapped her fingers, realizing that’s why she got kicked out of the idol agency, while Revel shook his head next to her—but after living in Europe and working as an apprentice in Paris, these cobblestone streets felt more like home than Seoul. She could even identify the region in Europe by the stones. For a god candidate, a few months could feel like a few years. A few years would have stretched into an eternity until the god candidate felt like they’d already become a god. Yes, it was best that they only got from the last week of September to the end of this night. No matter what Revel said against Him, the old god had been wise. Maybe Mi-sun should have joined one of those church groups in her neighborhood after all.

Too late to dwell on it now. Mi-sun’s short pink skirt flared over her turquoise-and-orange stockings, her whole outfit designed to give anyone a headache. She hadn’t let Madame Latenue see her go out like this, though. She giggled at the thought of going behind her mentor’s back. Mi-sun loved being a rebel.

She knew who didn’t, though, so she clunked down King’s Cross Station and found Mirai waiting diligently for a train that wouldn’t come for another hour.

“Why aren’t Tyson and Abbas here yet?” Mirai wondered. “The train is scheduled to arrive in two minutes.”

“Which means it’ll be here at 10:30.” Mi-sun rolled her eyes. “Tokyo spoiled you, Mirai. Let’s go out like we did in Paris. We can go there again and be back on time.”

Mirai hesitated but let Mi-sun pull him away. He always let people guide him and do the work for him. In these 99 days, as far as she knew, he hadn’t killed a single soul. Maybe one, to know exactly what the Arrows did. Why was he like this? What did he want? And why did Mi-sun like him anyway?

…

9:55 PM

Mirai found himself slipping into a familiar pattern when it came to Mi-sun. His strides became shorter but brisker to keep up with her as they debated on whether a genderbent Dabi or a genderbent Toga would make for a creepier villain with the most messed-up backstory. Mirai’s thumb brushed their interlaced fingers so she wouldn’t get bored and either squeeze his knuckles to the point of breaking bone or just ditch him all together. Mirai didn’t know why he wanted to impress this crazy person. All he knew was that he wanted to keep them together for as long as possible.

Maybe that’s what family does in the end.

…

10:21 PM

Tyson had planned to end his time here sober, as distant from his fucked up father as he could get while still staying in an English-speaking area. But the longer he waited for fate, the more bored he got. Usually, when someone with his powers got bored, they went on a killing spree.

For once, Tyson didn’t want to kill someone. He just wanted to slip into familiar patterns.

Abbas gently took away the last empty bottle, letting it join the others lined against the dirty wall. Including the ones the waitress had already cleared, there was enough to form an entire squadron. A squadron of empty beer bottles.

“I thought you didn’t drink,” Abbas whispered.

Tyson stared back at him, inhaling the younger man’s alcohol breath and trying not to think of his father. Abbas had darker eyes—so dark and glazed over, Tyson wondered how Abbas was still conscious. “Same for you.”

“I gave that up months ago.”

“Sobriety?”

“The wrong religion.”

“How do you know it was wrong? How do you know your new one is right?” Tyson cackled until they got kicked out and began staggering back to the train station. Their appointed train would arrive soon, or so the locals claimed. “How can we know this religion is right?”

“It is not a religion.”

“Why not? We have a god. We have gods. We have angels who look like magazine models,” he gestured toward Balta, “and angels who look like they crawled out of a corpse heap from the Middle Ages.” He flicked his hand at Muni, missing him entirely because of his messed-up depth perception. Maybe he’d fall off onto the tracks and end himself before properly meeting his would-be usurpers. Ha!

He keeled over and vomited onto the train tracks. Abbas caught him before he collapsed.

“How vile,” a high-pitched voice chirped. Besides Tyson and Abbas, only two other people waited for the train, both of them Asian teenagers with worse fashion sense than Abbas.

The boy spoke carefully, picking his words among the British clutter, though his accent wasn’t as strong. “Tyson Scott and Abbas Hassan, the reckless General and his foolish Soldier. A pleasure.” He curled his lip back, making it obvious that this encounter was as pleasant as a family reunion with cousins who beat you and relatives who looked down on you.

This brat wasn’t the only one who had done his research. “Good morning, Morning.” Tyson spat and grinned. “It’s morning where you’re from; isn’t that right, Mirai?”

…

10:29 PM

Mi-sun had made sure they’d be alone this evening. She had used her Red Arrows until the skin on her arm bubbled and burned. Her sleeve chafed against it, and when she rubbed it, blood dripped onto the sepia-toned tiles. She couldn’t even explain why she wanted them to be alone. Maybe deep down, she knew that she’d leave behind something ugly tonight. No beautiful god existed.

Venus was a lie.

“Good morning, Morning.” The White man drawled out his vowels like the Southerners that Mi-sun despised; too much ugliness infested bigoted, stubborn folks. And Tyson Scott represented the worst of them, because he was drunk.

When he turned toward her, she tried to keep her composure. The only thing worse than these people was the reactions they elicited. No need to waste time with people who wouldn’t change.

Whose thoughts are these? Mi-sun had never felt this way before. Sure, she ranked some people more highly than others, but not using such skewed values. The General was a beautiful man. And she pitied him. And despised him, though she’d be damned to explain why.

The train arrived. Morning hopped on first, followed by Tyson, who flopped onto a row of seats. Above them, the four angels dispersed down the tunnels. Abbas smiled at her and gestured for her to board first. His shadowed eyes looked done with the world. Good. Finally, someone she could feel a kinship with.

…

11:09 PM

Abbas dreamed of home.

Not his homeland, which he had no memory of beyond the wars and terrors he had helped inflict on both criminals and innocents.

Not his hometown, which his family had moved from and for good reason. He associated that wretched ghetto with his father insulting him and beating his mother and sisters.

In the end, he didn’t even find solace in the church his mother had joined. The people there treated him and his family kindly, but he noticed how they looked at his scabbed knuckles and her disheveled headscarf. And he caught the angry glint in a man’s eyes when his mother politely declined the offered food because she couldn’t quit halal cold turkey.

Abbas’s only home would ever be the army bunk across the hall from where he had tried to kill himself.

Abbas dreamed that he, Tyson, Balta, and Muni hung out like college roommates talking about frivolous things: bad cafeteria food, worse Netflix shows, even bleaker futures. He knew this was a dream because Tyson never wanted to hang out with him, Muni never wanted to talk, and Balta never wanted to talk normally. Still, he let himself live in the dream a little longer.

But the white-haired angel of death took even that away. Despite the crumpled lavender eyes that should have been incapable of sight, the wrinkled silvery skin that drooped from his crooked fingers, and the wispy white hair that resembled parasitic worms, Abbas recognized him.

“Have you come to collect me at last, Kanade?”

With a silent smile that sliced through his papery skin and revealed blood-stained fangs, Kanade held up a thin leather notebook. Abbas recognized his Arabic name but couldn’t understand the Japanese characters that followed. But he saw the timestamps and could guess.

At 8:59 p.m., he had nibbled at his last meal before tossing the rest to the pigeons.

At 9:44 p.m., he had broken a moral rule he grew up with and drank alcohol—not even anything worthwhile, but watery English sludge.

And at 10:31 p.m., he had ensured that he and Ty had gotten on the train safely.

There was only one thing left to do before midnight.

Since Abbas couldn’t read Japanese, he skimmed the two pages Kanade showed him, trying to find other names. He recognized Korean among the Japanese and guessed that must be Mi-sun; he had seen it in her eyes when they boarded the train. He couldn’t find Ty, but Kanade could have written his best friend’s fate on another page.

Not fearing death or damnation, Abbas snatched the notebook from the shinigami and flipped through. The 17-year-old had kept himself busy these past six weeks. He had written a whole essay for a man named Victor Whitlocke, and Abbas got the sinking realization that Kanade had set up Tomas Rodriguez, whose bad hacking gave him away to the military. And now he knew who V was.

Before he could find Ty’s name, the shinigami realm faded.

…

11:33 PM

Mirai had wandered around this train for an hour, never reaching an end. He counted 98 empty cars before returning to the one where Tyson and Abbas were sleeping. Mi-sun walked with him at first, only to get bored a few cars in and wander away. A few cars later, she would stroll in from the opposite direction.

Mirai guessed that the train formed a circle that should have comprised 100 empty train cars—one for each day a god candidate theoretically had, plus one for them to start at—but one car got reduced for each kill caused directly by a White Arrow or indirectly by a Red Arrow. Mi-sun had kept herself busy these past few months. When Abbas woke up, he thought the train car was locked, trapping them in a cage for angels and shinigami to mock.

On his third round of exploring the train, Mirai found Mi-sun hanging from the ceiling, having tied her jewelry and clothes into a noose.

…

11:54 PM

Exhausted from his hike, Mirai settled back in the train car with the foreigners. Abbas had been singing an Arabic lullaby while Tyson continued to sleep. Without warning, Abbas’s voice cracked, and the Soldier threw himself out the train window.

The shattered glass woke the General, who stared at the broken window in a daze. Over the wind from the tunnel, Mirai could hear a male angel laugh. But another angel was crying.

Nasse’s cheery voice said, “Stop pretending to cry for her, Revel. You’ve been at it for over twenty minutes. Be more like Balta and your old self and have fun! We won’t have anything like this for eons, and then it’ll be so vastly different. Humans would still be their silly human selves, though.”

Revel sniffed. “I… I had such… high hopes for Lee Mi-sun. I thought that shinigami couldn’t meddle with god candidates.”

A fourth angel’s low voice chilled Mirai. “You had that assumption because of the old god’s strategy. He didn’t try to fight with the other candidates or kill them. Despite not having any language between them, he tried to help them. When they inevitably died from natural causes, they showed him mercy and left him alone. The true strategy is not destruction but cooperation. To make the next candidacy easier, the old god created language. But he did not want to interfere, as the shinigami had not interfered with him, so when that root language sprang into many dialects and then such unique languages no one would believe they shared a root, and then those languages created ideologies and identities that birthed wars, he cried for that world and never touched it again.”

Nasse remarked, “He cried because He had been human once. But I’ve never seen an angel cry. It’s as unheard of as us stagnant angels getting promoted… Revel, you’re glowing.”

A soft light bathed the train.

…

11:59 PM

The angels had finally fallen into silence. Tyson and Mirai sat across from each other, waiting for the end. Mirai kept looking at his phone.

Tyson got tired of waiting, unfurled his wings, and lunged at Mirai, who flew away at the last second. Mirai flew through the rest of the train, but Tyson found himself stuck in this damned train car with the broken window. A split second before midnight, Mirai re-emerged from the other end of the train car and flew at Tyson, who stood his ground.