He saw the dark, unattainable clouds coming. He saw the devastating storm getting closer. He saw her pale face in the thick shadows painted by the bluish moonlight’s ink. He felt the familiar pain creeping into his heart again but he couldn’t help it.

He yearned for pain like a homeless man for a roof above his head; like a poor children for the newest toy in the display window and like a broken-hearted soul for the soothing feeling of remedy. He was chained to her memory and to all the precious pearl-like seconds that they had spent together. All of their memories were engraved into his mind, constantly squeezing his heart whenever a flashback popped up, be it a joyful or a heart-wrenching one. The pain was as excruciating as ever. His misery never lessened, it grew even stronger as days went by.

He felt the heavy raindrops on his paper-thin skin. He felt as a churn invaded in his stomach. He felt his clothes getting wet yet all he could really feel was the unbearable heat. The constantly bombarding kisses of the rain left searing spots on his black coat and his bare skin. It was as if it wasn’t even rain; it was like standing in the middle of a torch.

He didn’t have the chance to run away, it was already too late.

He was used to that same old feeling anyway. The one that he had first experienced when she died. Even though he couldn’t see her, he felt her being sent to the after-life. He knew that she got there. He knew it like the fact that there was no way that he could get to know about his past. About why he felt like he was connected to her.

An emptiness settled in his icy heart due to her loss, leaving hollow and bottomless darkness. He was always known to be a rather merciless and emotionless man and she was the only one who could get close to his scarred heart and all its tiny little broken pieces. For this reason, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that after her death, he immediately went back to the shell of a person he used to be before he met her.

Before meeting her, everything was greyish. Nothing was white, nor black. Nothing was difficult, nor easy. Nothing was complete, nor partly done. Nothing was noisy, nor quiet.

Everything was neutral in all aspects. The world was a crazy mess of tangled words and blurry faces, silent screams and soulless eyes. In the hazy maze of the unknown and unseen, she was the only compass that could lead him to a safe haven.

He still remembered how she wanted to know his name and call him by cute nicknames yet he never knew his real name. He was a Grim Reaper and grim reapers didn’t have memories of their previous lives.

Yet, he knew the name of every single person that he carried on to the afterlife. He remembered every single one of them, of how they died and why he couldn’t save them. He tried, he really did try to get rid of the guilt ‒ it was his job after all ‒ but he wasn’t allowed to save any of all those innocent lives because re-writing their book of fate was forbidden for him. Only the gods above them were able to change someone’s life.

He didn’t want to watch them die. He didn’t want to be there when they died but it was his duty. No matter how much he hated it, guiding the deceased to the afterlife was his job. He may have chosen the easier path but he chose to become that icy-hearted Grim Reaper by himself. It was easier to live when there were no strings attached. He learned how not to sympathise with anyone, he learned how to shrug off the terrifying last seconds of the humans’ lives like it was nothing and he learned how not to feel. Not even joy, gratitude or pain. He was really an emotionless shell of a person.

She was the one who changed everything and he knew from the very beginning that they had some kind of a special bond between the two of them because he could feel it. Although she wasn’t meant to be collected by him, she saw him. She was so close to death that she could already see him.

“I always knew such creatures existed,” was the first thing she said when she saw him, dressed in his usual onyx-black coat, charcoal jumper and dark jeans. He was black from top to bottom while she was all white. Not only because of her pale skin but because of her hospital gown as well.

She shouldn’t have seen him, he was only there to collect the old man on the opposite side of the ward when she caught sight of him.

Only a string of luck and the monitor by her side kept her alive. She had cancer and she was in the last phase of her illness, already on the verge of dying but still spending her days at the hospital between the unfriendly four walls.

She had no one to talk to. The nurses hurried in and out of the ward, especially after the old man had died because they needed to make sure that he was transferred safely. Her family wasn’t there because her family – her parents and an older brother − had already passed away after being involved in a car accident, one which she had survived. She was lucky though. A passer-by called the ambulance in time and used resuscitation on her because she was the only one who showed some signs of life.

The accident changed her life forever and not only because she lost her family but because she got another chance and she was sure that it was the wills of the gods above.

She used to be such a perfectionist; always staying up late to study for tests, doing every single extra tasks, signing up for extracurricular activities and spending all her spare time in libraries or in her room, her head pried into another book. She didn’t care about anything else; she wasn’t fond of sports, arts, books, movies, nor those famous bands from TV. She was obsessed with studying.

For that reason, she wasn’t even living. She forgot to live life beside school. She missed out on family occasions, birthday parties, movie night outs, Olympics festivals, cherry blossom viewings and all those experiences that were on her bucket list. If it had been for her old self, none of them would have been crossed out.

However, her new self was ready to take on the world. She was exploring new countries, extraordinary cities and indulged in wild and peculiar cultures. She tried to use as little money as possible, even though the heritage of her family was quite generous.

She was living for the first time in her life and never have she ever thought of books again. She was doing extreme sports, hiking in the mountains, tasting foods that she couldn’t even pronounce, speaking with strangers, signing up for out-of-school classes like yoga and sewing.