Legend says that god created everything in six days. Satisfied with the creation, the seventh day was made for resting. Valleys, mountains, lakes, rivers, the sun and moon, the sky and the land, animals of every kind, humans. Everything was made by the gracious hand of god and an undying love for humans

Humans betrayed god's love and they lost their holy status. They were sent to earth and made to suffer as a punishment for their stubbornness. But, according to this legend, god never left the humans on their own. Humans were loved, deeply loved. They were god's finest creation and even if they were mortals now, even if sicknesses and murder brought them to their knees god loved them too much to leave them alone

And so, the angels were sent to protect them

Angels were god guardians. Loyal warriors, winged creatures of beautiful proportions and facial features, almost perfect beings with too many virtues to count: good, justice, courage and love just to name a few. They were sent to teach these virtues to humans, guide them through the right path towards god and then, when they died, they would rest in peace on heaven in their happily ever after. Every angel was immortal, wise enough and powerful enough to forever protect their human and be the perfect leader in their life

Chaeyeon is happy as an angel

She heard her colleagues before, how they were meant to guide humans towards the good path but they ended up being murderers, rapists, corrupt people hurting others. She heard how hard it was to make people believe in their virtues and their own value. She heard how sad some angels were when their depressed human committed suicide, unable to live with a burden anymore. How sad it was when the human they were supposed to take care of, died just a few minutes after birth

But that's not the case for Chaeyeon, she's happy with her life as a guardian angel and even happier of the human she's protecting

Time was rather relative for everyone. Slow for some, fast for others. Chaeyeon never really cared about such trivial thing as time because that was such a ‘human’ thing to do. Humans cared about time like it was the best thing in the world: if they worked too much, the earned more money. If they spend too many days with their loved one, they felt loved. Humans also feared time and said fear of growing old and dying wasn’t something that Chaeyeon ever thought about. She could only die if god allowed it and for now, god wanted her alive

However, right in front of her eyes and faster than she ever thought of, Sakura was already an eighteen-year-old girl facing the world for the first time ever. She was making friends and being happy, going to high school and getting ready for college. She loved to sing and dance and spent hours practicing her favorite choreos with a bunch of friends that Chaeyeon loved just as much as her. Their names were Hitomi and Nako or something along that…she never really had a good memory and much less with other humans

“Wassup, Kkura?” Chaeyeon asked one day at night. As an angel, she had every power known to man so going through a closed window was a piece of cake for her. Sakura jumped on her spot as she saw her guardian angel and then sighed, placing a hand on her chest to calm her troubled heart

“Oh my god, Chaeyeon…don’t do that ever again”

Chaeyeon laughed and plopped down on the bed. Contrary to everyone’s beliefs, Chaeyeon never had her wings on full display, she only used them for flying and fighting and on normal days like this one, they were tucked inside her body. Waiting for the right moment to show them to the world

Sakura was sitting on her desk (and she was outgrowing it, after all Sakura had that desk since she was a child. No matter how much she acted like a kid, Sakura was big enough for a child desk) a bunch of textbooks opened on one side, papers on the other and a notebook among them. The clock on the wall read midnight and Chaeyeon wondered why Sakura was still awake. She was a proper girl in every sense of the word: going to bed early and waking up early, always doing her homework, helping mom and dad with the house chores. Chaeyeon was proud of her for that. It made her job as a guardian easier

Or maybe she had done her job so well and that’s why Sakura had this personality

“Don’t you think is a bit past bedtime?” Chaeyeon asked, propping her head on one hand as she looked at her protegee “What’s keeping you up?”

“I have a bunch of homework and stuff for tomorrow and on top of that my college entrance exam is tomorrow too!” Sakura whined and then banged her head on the desk after trying to rest. A loud pained noise was her reaction and Chaeyeon loudly laughed

“Come on, Kkura! I know you can do this”

”Sakura?” A soft voice outside of the room made Sakura quickly rise up and open her eyes wide. She looked at her guardian angel and made a shushing gesture

“Hide under the bed or something!” She whisper-screamed to Chaeyeon “Quickly!”

Chaeyeon only shrugged and smiled. Sakura’s mother opened the door with a cup of tea on her hands and slowly walked inside the room not even looking at Chaeyeon who was still resting on the bed, doing little snow angels as she was a kid. Sakura was on the brink of a mental breakdown

“I know you’re tired, baby” The mother said and placed a kiss on top of Sakura’s head “I made you a cup of tea and I hope you can finish your work just in time”

“Thank you, mom” Sakura genuinely smiled. Forgetting about the guardian angel on the bed “I make sure to finish this so I can go to bed”

“Good” The woman smiled “You make me proud every day and I hope you know that”

Sakura smiled and nodded and as the woman left the room she let out a long sigh

“You know, Kkura-ya? Every day I thank god for giving you loving parents that take care of you and give you everything. You’re lucky for that”

The protegee nodded again and she grabbed the cup of tea, looking at it. Then, she shook her head and pointed an angry finger at the smiling angel

“What is wrong with you?! You need to hide when my parents are around! What if mom saw you? You know she’ll be mad!”

Chaeyeon threw her head back, laughing

“You know only you and other protegees can see me so…why do you worry? Your mom can’t hear me or see me unless she’s a protegee like you”

Sakura pouts

“And how would I know that?”

“Not everyone is a protegee, Kkura. You know that!” Chaeyeon laughs again “Only people that need angels and no one else”

“Well, I really need you right now! Help me with all this homework and I’ll be the happiest girl on earth”

Chaeyeon nodded and jumped up. She grabbed a nearby chair and sat beside Sakura grabbing a few books and reading through them quickly

“I can help you with your homework but you gotta study for your entrance exam, okay?”

Sakura smiled happily and hugged Chaeyeon tight, her arms around her neck while her face rested on the top of her neck

“Thank you so much, Chaeyeon! I love you sooooo much!”

Chaeyeon laughed and patted Sakura head

“I love you too. Now sit down and study or you’ll be too tired for this tomorrow”

They spent long hours going through books and internet articles, all the info they could find was useful so Chaeyeon was quick to write them down and give it to Sakura as a studying guide, so it could be easier for her to memorize everything she needed for tomorrow. Eventually, when the clock read three in the morning, Sakura fell asleep against Chaeyeon side

The angel smiled, Sakura was really cute and she was growing to be a beautiful woman one day. Chaeyeon wondered when she would leave her…after all, when a human stops needing their guardian, the angel needs to leave and be assigned to another human who needs them just as much. For now, Sakura was still her best friend. Chaeyeon placed Sakura on the bed with easiness and covered her with a blanket before sitting down in front of the desk to finish the incomplete homework

“Maybe I can stand by her side on the exam…I doubt there’s a protegee among all those college students”

Her eyes fell on an open literature book. The book was talking about poems and how to write them and they showed an example of it

’Life and death are in love
Love sends countless gifts to death
And death keeps them. Forever’

Chaeyeon felt a chill running down her spine for some weird reason and said quote was engraved on her mind with fire. It felt as if she needed to know that more than anything else

She looked towards the window. Sun was barely rising, tinting the sky with beautiful shades of orange and purple and making it look hypnotizing.

Chaeyeon felt as she lost something

“Can other people see you here?” Sakura asked as she stood in front of the college where her exam was about to happen. Chaeyeon was beside her, towering over her with her height worth of a human supermodel. An arm around her protegee shoulders, Chaeyeon ruffles her hair and shakes her head

“It doesn’t matter. There’s a bunch of other angels here so I don’t think other protegees care about it”

Sakura nodded and then sighed, taking a deep breath

“I’m gonna throw up”

Chaeyeon laughed

“You’ll be fine, Kkura. Do you trust me?”

The younger girl nodded

“A lot”

“Good, then trust me on this one. You’ll be fine and I’ll be there for you every moment of your test, okay?”

Sakura wrapped both arms around Chaeyeon torso and hugged her tight, her face buried in her chest. They been sharing hugs and touches since Sakura was a kid and they loved each other as sisters and protected each other just as much. Chaeyeon showed a reassuring smile to her protegee and bopped Sakura’s nose with the tip of her index finger

“I’m proud of you, Kkura-yah so no matter what happens in that classroom I still love you and I’ll still be your guardian”

With a bright smile, Sakura waved goodbye and walked inside the college, getting lost among the crowd of the many other students trying to apply for a spot in this school

But just as the angel was about to walk out, she heard a loud commotion

Frowning, she walked among the crowd, ignoring everyone who could see her and everyone who couldn’t. She just pushed people aside because there was something in her chest telling her she needed to worry. The brief poem she read the night before replayed in her brain like the scene from a movie and she kept pushing among the crowd, her eyes anxiously looking for Sakura

“She must’ve fainted” someone muttered “This damn test, man…they want us dead, I swear”

“I’m sure she’s just tired” another voice said “Hey! Leave some room for her to breathe!”

Chaeyeon felt a lump in

Inside all the commotion, she found Sakura lying on the ground with a teacher and a paramedic by her side

“Sakura!” The angel screamed, worried. She got no response so she kneel beside her protegee with her hands supporting her head “Sakura…please wake up, girl. Say something”

And the dreadful feeling inside her chest was growing bigger and bigger

“She got no pulse” The paramedic said, his radio blared with white noise “HQ please respond I need an ambulance right now”

The paramedic voice got lost with the wind, Chaeyeon only looked at Sakura peaceful face over and over. This couldn’t be happening…

This had to be some sort of dream

But then she remembered she couldn’t sleep

“Make way!” The paramedic says as they put Sakura on a stretcher “Quickly, quickly she’s not breathing!”

The commotion slowly dies down, the worried words and curious look quickly disappear and Chaeyeon is left standing in the middle of the school yard with her jaw clenched and fists balled tight. Tears stream down her face because the dreadful feeling now fills all of her body and she knows what happened, she knows exactly what is going on…

The only thing she can ask is: why?

---

Heart attack

They said it was extremely improbable on a girl her age but it could happen at any time. Sakura was healthy, she was always doing some kind of exercise and always eating healthy, her parents said she was the best in taking care of her health so this was extremely weird. She had no heart diseases, no other condition that could lead to her awful death

Just when she was about to face the world as an adult and take life by the horns

Sakura would never work in her dream job, she would never fall in love, she would never marry and have kids, she would never grow old enough to be a grandma. Sakura was just a tragic memory in her parents lives.

After the funeral, which included most of Sakura’s friends and family, the house felt dead

Chaeyeon stands in the middle of Sakura room, looking at the empty bed and the messy desk that’s too small for a girl her age. She shakes her head from side to side: was small, was small for a girl her age

Everything was untouched, it remains just as Sakura left it the day she went to apply for college. Nothing has moved, nothing has changed. The sheets are the same, her plushies stay guarding the bed and her colorful notebooks pile up in the corner. Chaeyeon feels like crying one more time when she imagines the always bright girl smiling up at her and asking for help

The door to the room opens, Sakura’s parents walk in

“We can leave everything as it is” her mother says “We don’t need to sell anything”

“I think we should lock this room for a while” her father replies “Just for…” he never finishes, his voice breaks as he strolls down the room and takes a look at every memory of his daughter. Even her perfume remains lingering in the air

“Oh my beautiful girl” the woman weeps as she sits down on the bed and wraps her arms around a pillow, hugging it tight against her chest “My beautiful baby girl is now gone”

“Honey, don’t do this to yourself” The man walks to his wife and lays down beside her, wrapping his arms around her and hugging her tight “Please, honey we…we got to do something…”

They both cry on Sakura’s bed, Chaeyeon looks at them with pitiful eyes. She wants to tell them everything would be all right but she can’t make empty promises, especially when she doesn’t know what’s in the future for this two lovely people. Chaeyeon thought she knew about the future but, she barely knows about herself

The night falls on the city, Sakura’s parents have already left the room. It’s locked now and it might forever remain like that

Chaeyeon, for the first time in all of her years, hates to be an angel

But she knows there’s someone who can explain everything to her. There’s only one spot on the whole universe that can give her the answers she needs

Heaven wasn’t the place everyone imagined

It wasn’t a place full of white color with little cherubs floating around, playing beautiful melodies on their small golden harps. Heaven wasn’t ten different places as Dante Alighieri once said on his famous book many centuries ago

Heaven was a normal place like any other. It looked just like a rural town that slowly goes urban: there were cars, houses, trees, buildings, roads, people strolling around minding their business and greeting each other with big smiles on their faces. Who couldn’t be happy around here? They made it, this was the peak of everyone lives, everyone wanted to reach heaven after their death so there was no reason to be sad. People enjoyed their new life in here: void of pain, void of sadness, void of tragedy, just happiness and nothing else. Some reunited with their loved ones, some were patiently waiting for others

There was peace and calm in every corner of heaven and Chaeyeon thought that at least every religion got that right. However, none of the people in heaven (not even the angels) have met god in person, only the highest angels could talk to them and face them

But Chaeyeon could care less about that when her heart was hurting and her soul wanted to scream

Angels ran after her as she zoomed past them, running towards the side of heaven where this ‘god’ was. Chaeyeon heard their screams and pleas, asking for her to not go inside the boss office, begging for her to stop but the angel could only see Sakura peaceful face that day she lost her and the memory of her parents crying on her bed. It made her mad, she could destroy the whole heaven if that meant having Sakura back in her life. In her parents lives

The ‘boss’ was in an isolated part of heaven. A modern office was their resting place with wood walls and leather couches, famous art portraits hanging on the wall and the scent of cinnamon floating in the air thanks to some candles. Chaeyeon hated to be here, this was some kind of cruel and sick joke…heaven always promoted the poor life, always saying that money was a luxury meant to be hated but the boss itself was an hypocrite with all these expensive objects. Chaeyeon always knew that god was full of from the moment they let people die under awful circumstances

Like Sakura

As Chaeyeon banged on the door of their office, opening it wide, the rest of the angels running after her stopped and quickly left. There was a woman standing right beside the door and someone was sitting on a chair behind a desk, Chaeyeon couldn’t see them since the chair was blocking all sight

“What is your problem?” Another voice said, Chaeyeon stepped inside the place with a fierce look in her eyes “Don’t you know where you are, you useless rat?”

“Sooyoung, is okay” A velvety voice replied and Chaeyeon trembled all over just by the sound of it. She was gathering courage out of nowhere just to face this “Let her speak”

“Are you god?” said Chaeyeon, taking back her breath “Tell me!”

The chair turned around. A woman stood up and finally showed her face to Chaeyeon. She was breathtaking, beautiful, with features worth of someone as perfect as her. Long, dark hair flowed down her back, red lips and brown eyes, perfectly shaped body dressed in a red blazer over a red dress, high heels that matched perfectly with the rest of her outfit. Chaeyeon felt all the air leaving her lungs but she shook her head

Keep it together, Chaeyeon. Keep it together

“You could say I’m god but I rather be called Irene” said the woman behind the desk, her voice tone as soft as before “What do you need, Chaeyeon? You broke every rule as you stepped into this office and now the whole heaven is wondering what you did. You expect me to know everything in everyone’s lives?”

Chaeyeon frowns. That was a ed up joke

“YOU took Sakura away from me! She was my protegee!”

“Watch that tone” Sooyoung, the woman beside the door, pushes Chaeyeon towards the opened door behind her “You want to die right here?”

“I needed Sakura” said Irene, sitting back on the chair

“Her family needs her too!” Chaeyeon bites back “Her friends and everyone else she loved! There were so many things she needed to do and you took that away from her! Why?!”

“My plans are complicated. I think about them for years and plan every single life out there carefully. An angel like you, wouldn’t understand”

The angel steps forward, Sooyoung pushes her back and covers the way to Irene’s desk with her body

“She was just a girl!” Chaeyeon finally breaks down crying, the memories of a young Sakura playing with her bring tears to her eyes “And she never did anything wrong to anyone…she was so innocent and lovely and I…I…”

“My times are perfect, Lee Chaeyeon. And you can’t question that” Irene says and lifts her hand “I’m your leader, your authority, I created you and I can bring you back to ashes just with a snap of my fingers. Sakura’s family and friends will miss her but they learn to move on. Her life plans have been fulfilled and she needs to come back”

“I don’t get it” Chaeyeon whispers, she’s losing strength “They say you’re kind and gentle, loving but…this isn’t any of that!”

“Just shut up” Sooyoung swiftly punches Chaeyeon on the stomach and the angel goes down on her knees clutching it tight. Suddenly, her wings appear behind her back and feathers float all over the office. In the blink of an eye, Irene is standing in front of her. Faster than light, Chaeyeon barely blinked before she was there

“I could forgive you for questioning me but you broke too many rules, Chaeyeon and you know my rules are not meant to be broken”

Irene puts a hand on Chaeyeon’s chest. It immediately burns and the angel screams. There’s a cross that leaves a nasty mark on her body the same color of her skin and it smells like rotten flesh as it slowly takes form

“This will remind you of who created you and who you belong to” Irene whispers “If you love humans so much, might as well be one of them”

Chaeyeon’s wings disappear, she falls to the ground and the cross on her chest keeps burning. Her eyes close and then, the only thing she sees is black

She faintly hears Sooyoung voice

"You're cursed now"

And then, nothing else