It started like any other day.

Jongin was sent to collect the souls of the victims of a house fire near Dobong. No big deal, he's dealt with these kinds of cases many a time before.

That doesn't necessarily mean he likes them, though. In fact, if he was being completely honest, collecting souls from fires is probably his least favorite place to collect from. The souls are always so lost and confused without a body as visible proff that they are dead, and if there's anything left of the body, it's always in less than ideal condition, and Jongin may not be human but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel anything, doesn't somewhat pity those souls, having to look onto their remains in such awful condition.

It's almost funny, that he has this job. A cruel humour that he should have to deal with some of the very same souls that remind him of himself when he had first died.

A house fire.

In the late 1800s, the Kim family had been of fairly high status. They were well off, they had money and power, apparently so much that many people resented his family for it, and one night they arrived silently, torches in hand, and set his home on fire while they were asleep.

Or at least, while the rest of his family had been asleep. Jongin, howerever, had stayed up, immersed in a book. He was 20 at the time, a college student, and was reading by candlelight when the first flames began to up his walls. He didn't notice them right away; it was only when he began to smell smoke that he looked up from his book and immediately shot up in a panic, pulling down his thick bed curtains and trying desperately to beat out the fire, but to no avail. He noticed too late, and the flames spread to quickly. His mom and sisters died sleeping. Jongin died screaming.

He remembers watching the confused souls of his mother and sisters floating morbidly around the ashes and rubble of what was once their beloved family home. He remembers the hooded figure clothed in a solid black robe that appeared out of seemingly nowhere (or maybe he had just been in too much of a daze to notice its arrival). Without saying a word, the stranger directed him and his sisters to stand in a line while he pulled a small notebook from the sleeve of his robe and scribbled something into it. He remembers a feeling similar to being pushed and in the time it took him to blink, his family had apperaed in what looked to be a court room.

The room was divided into two: one half was made up of people clothed in white, and... some had wings. Angels, Jongin had realized with a start, and on the other side, the people seated were dressed in black. Some looked to have a normal human appearance, while others... Jongin figured if he still had a physical body, it would have gotten chills.

The trials had been short. Both sides took turns arguing over each of his sisters (they looked terrified, and Jongin wished he knew how to comfort them), his mother, and himself for a surprisingly brief amount of time until they came to an agreement over who should go where. It was over much quicker than Jongin had expected. His sisters had been won by the angels' side, and he was still in a bit of a daze, having zoned out when the arguing began, when some of the angels stood up and walked over to him and his sisters, ushering them towards the a door on the angels' side, while a man dressed in black came for his mother.

Looking back, Jongin still can't believe he did what he did, but once he realized what was happening, he didn't even think. He desperately offered himself to take his mother's place, much to the shock and amusement of the people and creatures in the room. There had been a lot of crying and screaming and the physical restraint of his mother and sisters. It was like a scene from that movie the humans like recently called the hunger games, he thinks bitterly.

His mother and sisters had protested but the higher-ups had agreed to let Jongin take his mother's place "for entertainment purposes." Jongin watched as the angels escorted his mother and sisters through their door as he was led through his own, and then the door was closed, and that was the last time he would see them.

The first few months were horrible, but Jongin managed to befriend a boy who had been in the jury for his trial. Sehun had come up to Jongin the first chance he had gotten and gushed about how amazing Jongin was for taking his mother's place, and how the underworld could really use more people like him. Jongin had only been there for a short time, really, but with Sehun's help and his own determination, he quickly worked his way up the ranks, earning a highly coveted job as a reaper. He's old enough to have seen quite a bit, but still young enough to recall some of his human memories.

So he might take a little bit longer to get to the burning house than he probably should, walking the roads and wandering around the neighborhood, following the trail of thick black smoke in the sky instead of simply telelporting to the scene, like he easily could since his promotion to reaper included benefits such as those powers. But Jongin has been getting bored of reaping lately, and finds himself stalling for more and more time before he has to go to work. By the time he gets close, the fire is mostly out, the smoke in the sky is no longer black but a light grey. He turns a corner and finds the charred frame of the small home dripping with water, firefighters no longer shooting into the rubble. Tugging the black hood of his jacket over his head (Jongin had insisted on no robes when he acquired his position), he heads towards the remains of the building, walking around the spectators who were oblivious to his presence, searching for the soul he had come to retrieve.

"What did they say his name was again?" he mumbles to himself, fishing through his pockets for the slip of paper with the name of the soul he was collecting on it before eventually giving up, accepting that he didn't have it. He climbs into the rubble through a window frame, carefully stepping around the mess of charred wood and furniture. "Lee Jaemin? Yee Sunghim? Ah..."

He ducks under a collapsed doorframe into what appeared to be what was left of a bedroom and stops dead in his tracks.

There is a boy who looks to be in his early twenties wearing grey sweatpants and a simple white t-shirt standing in the midst of the ashes, looking lost, forlorn, and beautiful. White hair frames the soft features of his face and Jongin swears if he still had a heart it would have stopped right then and there in both fear and awe because he really thought he was looking at an angel. He starts to take another step forward but the boy seems to notice him then, head snapping away from the bed where his remains unmistakenly lay to face Jongin, fear evident in his brown eyes as he backs away instinctively. Jongin can't stand this. He really, really can't stand this, and he doesn't know why. So he does something he's never done, not in the near hundred years he's been a reaper: he breaks the rules. First, he removes his hood, slowly, as to not frighten the boy further. The boy seems to relax a bit after this, but is still wary. So Jongin breaks another rule and speaks to him.

"Don't worry," he says. "I'm here to help you."