...in which angels fall because of love

Woohyun/Sunggyu

2716 words

dedicated to HiNataLi

I did not like heaven. I realised that the first time I descended and I couldn't say I had returned there since that day. I often looked up, though.

The sun was halfway through its path on the skies the time another part of my job was done. A seventy-seven year old lady passed away as her body could no longer bear the terror of cancer. I was there when she took her last breath. She couldn't see me, though. No one could.

Then he came and led her away. If I were alive, I'd say that black suit really brought out his features, eyes especially, and shaped his thin frame quite nicely, but it truly sounded ridiculous in my mind. The lady looked relieved that she no longer felt any pain as she was walking away. He was not leaving with her, not yet. Instead, he looked to me expressionless and offered his hand.

I touched the pendant hanging around my neck. I knew the feeling of it dissolving into white smoke under my touch very well; the smoke wafted to his hand, swirled around his fingers and disappeared. Then, with a nod, he was gone and I was left in a suddenly empty room.

The chain was making a clinking sound, barely hearable one for that matter, as I let my fingers play with it. The pendant was gone and I was left with time which I didn't know how to spend. I remember that sometimes it took years to be assigned a new person to look after, sometimes just mere seconds.

I sighed without letting out a breath and I walked aimlessly, my feet never touching the ground. My shadow was not there, nor was my heart. At times like those, when I was walking around with nowhere to go, I liked to watch those who were alive, running late for school or work, meeting up with their friends or lovers; I quite liked to watch them live. But I had never felt any desire to be alive.

Rule one: You do not feel.

I did not count minutes like people did when they were waiting, I did not feel boredom and I merely waited. And then one day, a new pendant was hanging on my chain. New clock, new grains of sand to fall through.

Nam Woohyun was born on the eighth of February in the year 1991 to a man, owner of a popular restaurant run in their family for generations, and his wife. I was there on that day. The parents were proud and their first son, Woohyun's older brother, was happy to have a younger sibling to take care of.

If I were alive, I suppose I would smile. Out of sentiment, perhaps.

I did count the grains.

It was my duty to follow Woohyun, or any other assigned person for that matter, until the last grain of pearly sand in my hourglass pendant fell through, they died and my colleague from 'the other side', as the humans would funnily put it, led them away. Sometimes, not one grain slipped to the other side in a week, sometimes there were fifty in one minute. Soon after I'd begun serving heaven, I figured the grains fell faster when the person was going through a stressful period of time, was ill or injured.

I was there when Woohyun got hit by a motorcycle when he was eleven. The sand was falling fast and I could not catch up with counting each grain. But I knew he would not die there so I calmly watched the passers-by helping the boy and calling an ambulance.

Rule two: You do not interfere.

It was not my duty to protect him from all the bad in the world, not in the slightest. Even if it were my duty, it would be absolutely impossible. My duty was to watch over him, eventually protect him from any life-threatening accidents that could take his life before it was time.

I have never considered my duties to be anyhow wonderful, as humans did. I often saw mothers cooing their children saying that there was a 'guardian angel' watching over them. There was, indeed, but to my own opinion, me and the ones of my kind were kind of overrated. We were only doing what we were told to do and I thought that if I were alive like I once was, helping people would fill me with satisfaction from the inside.

But I was not alive and I felt no satisfaction.

Woohyun ended up with two broken ribs and a slight concussion. Nonetheless, with bright smiles and quickly healing scratches on his face, he was soon all right. I was there when his friends came to visit him in the hospital. I watched them play and laugh together and I later realised that I found myself smiling at the sight.

His parents had been proud after Woohyun had brought home his first ever girlfriend. He was sixteen then and so was she. From all I could see, she was an honest girl, someone whom Woohyun deserved. I could sense how happy and proud of himself he was as I watched him trying not to break out into toothy grins. When they shared their first kiss, I did not look.

I was a human myself once. However from all I could remember, I knew just my name and that I died before my time, which, I figured, was the reason to put me in the position of looking over others. I remember seeing white and everything was too bright for me to see properly. Eventually, I adapted.

My temporary stay in heaven lasted for eleven years. Since then I'd been walking on the Earth for centuries without the slightest feature on my face changing. The others of my kind were mostly old-looking, since they likely died a natural death. Maybe it was one of the reasosns why I didn't like to reside in the clouds.

I had never tried to create any kind of bond with any of them, even though there were many who called themselves 'friends' of others. To say for myself, I found that ridiculous. They could not share any bond, that would mean they felt.

I figured that all the divinity in those of my kind had been slowly dissolving and the angels were trying to be more human than humans could ever be. When being down on Earth, it was kind of liberating to me, that I did not have to watch all those pretentious pricks who rarely left the safety of our home, where I rarely entered any more.

I was glad there was no rule for staying in heaven. Nonetheless, with me staying down, there was an alarming probability of me breaking any of the other rules, maybe all of them. Personally, I did not think that it was that serious, because unlike the others, I did not see anything to be envious of, at least when it