TRIGGER WARNING:

Blood and violence

Taeri didn’t want to, and her body almost didn’t allow her, but her feet found a few drops of strength, and she stumbled a few streets away from where Kyungsoo died to look for a phone. Her legs wobbled, her vision was ridden with black circles moving from spot to spot, and pain was a professional surfer that found waves to ride in her blood. It wasn’t that, however, that made it hard to move, and she didn’t care that her wing was broken and struggling to mend, but she didn’t want to leave Kyungsoo behind on the wet ground, in the alley between ominous buildings, with a dead vampire in close proximity. She wanted to lay down beside him, catch the rebel diamonds with her eyes, and wait for more rain to wash her away in the gutter.

But the rain didn’t come, and the rebel diamonds were obscured by speeding aircrafts’ counterfeit bejeweled glows.

Still, somehow, somewhere, something made Taeri move. Made her pick up the rusty phone she found. Made her trembling fingers strong enough. Made her call for help.

Cho Yejin, Taeri’s garrison leader, wasn’t pleased to be receiving a phone call from Taeri regarding a search order and other emergency services at around 03:00. She had been in the middle of something about vodka and chasers, and her voice slurred when pronouncing vowels, but Taeri’s sobbing voice was enough to get her moving. But not without malicious compliance.

An ambulance shortly arrived, and its whine pierced through the murkiness of the night. Its cry shattered the remnants of the only refuge Taeri had left: silence. Emergency responders picked up Kyungsoo’s body like he was just someone dead. There were no bows of reverence, no “poor kid,” and definitely no “he wasn’t supposed to die.” Taeri understood why, but she didn’t want to. In her mind, Kyungsoo was the greatest demon to ever live, and he deserved a lot more respect than “unidentified male, time of death presumably 12:00 midnight.”

They saw cold lips; she saw lips that formed into heart shaped smiles and laughter. They saw pale skin; she saw a blanket that provided warmth for her that time she almost lost the will to live. They saw broken arms; she saw a hug that was always gifted in her times of need. The thing about seeing someone you love dead was that no one else noticed everything you noticed. Taeri saw past the word “deceased,” and instead she saw someone that could have been sleeping but wasn’t and wasn’t awake either. She saw him like she saw him as usual. Dark eyes brooding over something. Gentle frowns consuming a beautiful face. Small smiles conspiring in slight twitches.

When Taeri sat in the ambulance, she saw Blackness ahead of her with its shoulders hunched and pressed forward. She would sit beside this Blackness, and they’d wrap their arms around each other like old friends because the thing about seeing someone you love dead was that the pain that followed wasn’t visible; it was a concerto that went from f-major to f-minor. A step on a crack. A bitter smell permeating through the air. So, she hugged the Blackness, and they both hunched over, grasping for the nothing they wanted to feel. But it was black, black, black! It consumed, it engulfed, and it festered, but all everyone saw was Taeri sitting still, shoulders slumped and leaned against the back of the ambulance.

Once at the hospital that reeked of disinfectant and latex gloves, Yejin contacted Kyungsoo’s parents who had been looking for their missing son for the past few weeks. When they answered at the sound of Kyungsoo’s name, someone sobbed and cursed about how worried they had been. Taeri wanted to tell them the news herself, but they hated her, and she hated her, so she left the room just in time to hear the agony of the cry that burst forth from Mrs. Do. The phone wasn’t even on speaker, but Taeri heard that crackle of static cries exploding from the phone.

Supposedly—this was all reported to Taeri by Yejin’s heavy tongue—police came without their uniforms to inspect the damages in the already rotting buildings on the outskirts of Shinjuku. When a detective came by, he asked Taeri questions as she lamented in the hospital bed waiting for her injuries to recover.

How did you know Sehun was suspected of hundreds of killings? Are you aware that you spent an entire night with a fugitive that illegally entered Japan? Do you understand that you’ll lose your status as a protector for the next six months?

The nurses and doctors all came by too. Adorned in pristine white scrubs and coats that blindsided the eyes with false hope of mending, they checked her blood pressure, gave her fluids, and told her to get rest. Cho Yejin crossed her arms and sat by the bed, scoffed and scolded her that she shouldn’t go out alone. Then she gave a lecture of why she shouldn’t even have been working on New Year’s Eve. Then something was said about more vodka and chasers. Next, psychiatrists or psychologists came to evaluate her, but no one could get close enough. They were speaking to Taeri, and Taeri was hearing what they were saying, but she wasn’t listening. And then, Mr. and Mrs. Do arrived. They cried for a few minutes by themselves when they looked through the window and onto the table where their son lay. But they then came over to Taeri and cursed her with the will of the Creator.

“You were the one that killed my son,” his mother said. “Not his disease, but you. Starting from the day you first met him.”

Taeri tried to be okay, but when someone tells you that it was you who murdered the person you love by being yourself, how can anything be okay? And when the medical examiner found a damp letter addressed To Taeri in Kyungsoo’s pocket, was “being okay” even an existing phrase?

Yejin told her to open it, and read it for “closure.” The nurses agreed. The doctors agreed with the nurses. The psychiatrists explained that closure was important for a healthy state of mind. Someone’s grieving mother passed by and told Taeri that if her dead daughter had at least written a suicide note, she would read it too. Despite all that, she still couldn’t bring herself to open the letter. She wasn’t going to find closure; she was going to find his handwriting and parts of him that hadn’t left yet. Because of that, they gave strange looks to one another—a wordless sentence that screamed and told her that she was a fool.

A lot more was said and asked that night, but Taeri took all of those thoughtless words and blended and merged them together in her body. They came out in the form of a stare out the window, up into the sky, and onto the rebel diamonds.

“I’m your rebel diamond,” she whispered to herself.

Yejin heard and called for the doctor. Shuffling. Sighing. Something about PTSD. Something, something, something, but Taeri was no longer listening.

⟡ ⟡ ⟡

The funeral was held at around 17:30 in a small chapel near the center of Shinjuku. Four people came. Mr. and Mrs’ Do, a pastor, and Taeri.

“Today we gather for Do Kyungsoo…” The white-haired pastor didn’t even say his name right. An o was dropped, and Kyungsoo’s gorgeous name was grotesquely pronounced like Kyungso. So, like his death was so-so. So, like so what Kyungsoo died, so what his name wasn’t pronounced correctly. So, like so dear, said a nurse last night, it’ll be fine.

Something was said about Kyungsoo, nevertheless, but it happened too quickly. His achievements of honor roll student were too bland. What about his achievement of loving Lee Taeri when she was unlovable? Being gorgeously magnificent and beautiful enough to lay his life down for another? What about everything he lived through? But all that was said was something about “a good kid who excelled in academics all throughout his life.” Then it was over. Then Mrs. Do was crying again, a red film covering her sobbing face. Then Mr. Do wrapped his arms around his wife and suggested that they move to Venus for a while—sell everything and just go. Then Mrs. Do answered with a gurgle of a cry—or perhaps a nod; Taeri didn’t see, and then they left the chapel. Then the pastor left. And that funeral was a checklist of next, then, next, then, next, then, next…rather than the celebration of what a person lived for.

That was that, however. His body was going to be shipped somewhere in the Pluto belt where it would make yearly trips in an elliptical orbit around the sun. There was something consoling yet desolate about this, but Taeri wasn’t complaining. Someday she knew she’d join him along with the countless others of bodies being sent to the Pluto belt. Maybe some of their old friends were there too. Maybe one of the boxes was a little taller than the rest—Chanyeol. A box marked with obscene, ual drawings—Baekhyun. A simple box embellished with a few carvings—Junmyeon. Maybe one day, they’d all be next to each other in orbit with Kyungsoo’s black final resting place leading the way.

“Taeri?”

Kyungsoo? Taeri looked over at the casket a few pews away from her, and waited for Kyungsoo to rise, but nothing ever came.

“Taeri, is that you?”

Where was that coming from? Taeri looked from side to side and down over at Kyungsoo’s casket, but it remained unmoving along with its contents. She stood up to take a closer look—

“Taeri.” For a third time, the voice enunciated itself loudly, and it was then that Taeri followed its sound to behind her. She spun around, and her heart nearly stopped for the fifth time in the past two days.

He looked nearly identical to how he looked all those years ago. His hair wasn’t a bright shade of blood anymore, but it was a soft antique bubblegum color that mimicked the color of baby cheeks. While his height remained the same, he held himself in a different way that made him seem taller. His back was straighter, his shoulders less slumped, and his chin held up in the air instead of almost kissing his chest. He was still the same mix of pale skin, lanky legs, and hands tucked into pockets, but that mix of Park Chanyeol was no longer dressed in sweatpants, but rather a suit dancing with nebulous stripes.

“Chanyeol?” Taeri hadn’t said the name out loud in years, and it sounded as strange as it felt on her tongue. Chan. Tongue pressed against the roof of the mouth. Yeol. A slight o-shape the mouth formed into when the name had been said.

“Are you okay? Oh my, god.” Chanyeol took her by the arms and squeezed her against his unfamiliarly hard body. “I’m so sorry. I should have been there for you.”

“How—”

“I came as soon as I saw it on the billboards in Mars.” Chanyeol held her by shoulders and leaned forward awfully close in that same way he used five years ago. His eyes still got wide with excitement. “Demon Do Kyungsoo and Angel Protector Lee Taeri hunt and kill serial killer vampire Oh Sehun. I was in the Brazil section, of course, so I had to translate it, and at first I got something weird instead…” Chaneyol physically shook his head like a dog. “Never mind that. I found the story on almost every website and paper. Did you really fall from ten stories and up? My god, only Jongin would pull like that. Wow. That’s something else. And Kyungsoo. I was so confused. I didn’t know he was alive? , I should have known. He’s always been a tricky bas—”

“Taeri? Chanyeol?”

Taeri was glad to have an excuse to pull away from Chanyeol’s grip. He had a tendency to ramble on without much reason—and to disturb peace and quiet that was preserved for reverence. But perhaps she should have continued to listen to his rambles, because she stepped backwards almost fell down from the thunderbolt of a surprise when she saw the other person who had come into the chapel.

Ki