”Life and death are in love with each other since the beginning of time”

When Chaeyeon heard that low mumble from a girl not too far from her, she immediately perked up like a dog listening to a bed. Something echoed inside her chest. Who was that girl? She wore a simple floral sundress and wasn’t sitting on the tables around them. She had a small book in her hands and she stopped in the middle of the library aisle just to read that sentence out loud. Chaeyeon improved hearing wouldn’t miss even the slightest sound

“What’s wrong, Chaeyeon?” asked her partner who quickly lifted her gaze from the book in her hands. She was sitting at the other side of the library table and the rest of the seats were already taken by other people

The library was the only place where people seemed to ignore them. Chaeyeon’s partner loved to read all kind of books and work on all kinds of drawings so she quickly suggested this literary paradise to spend their time. Chaeyeon wasn’t that fond for reading but she had no other choice, it might be a good idea to start reading something now that she had other life and now that her time was cut short. Looking at the humans (well, she was one of them now) so deep into paper sheets: laughing, crying, talking with each other about the fictional lives of the characters in their stories

The girl that caught Chaeyeon’s attention had dark, long hair with the tips colored in blonde. She looked around 20 or 23 years old. Chaeyeon frowned when the girl caressed the lines on the book with the tip of her fingers

“Who is she?” Chaeyeon pointed at the girl, not caring about the looks she attracted

“She’s only a student” replied her partner, not caring about this mysterious person

“Why does she know that poem?”

“She’s only reading, Chaeyeon. It just caught your attention?”

Seulgi, her partner, only sighed and went back to her reading turning page carefully and following the lines with her finger like some kind of elementary school kid

“I’m going to ask her” Chaeyeon talked again. Some people turned their heads at her, trying to get her to shut up in a place that demanded quietness

“Chaeyeon that’s useless, it’ll be weird”

“Why?”

“Because she can see you but she can’t see me. You surely look crazy right now”

Chaeyeon might be human right now but Seulgi was still an angel

Chaeyeon sometimes forgot about her new ‘condition’. It was hard to adapt, every inch of her skin felt different the way it was now. She had no memories of her life as an angel and no memories of how she got here. Seulgi was the only reason why she knew of her past and thanks to her she could forget about wanting to open her wings or staying awake for days

Seulgi was her ‘boss’. She was secretly taking care of Chaeyeon since heaven couldn’t know about this agreement that Seulgi did on her own, wanting to take care of the famous fallen angel who was brave enough to challenge god itself. Seulgi looked just a few years older than Chaeyeon even when her age was around three to four centuries. All day long they just spent their time walking around town not caring about the human way of life

Seulgi closed her books and placed her hands on top of the cover. Chaeyeon finally saw the name on it: a horror tale book written by none other than Edgar Allan Poe

“Why don’t we take a stroll around the park?” Seulgi asked gently. Chaeyeon nodded because she know this was more an order than a simple way of asking. Besides…where would she go? She had nowhere to live and nowhere to go back, the only thing she barely remember was her name

They were on their way to the park just a few minutes after. Chaeyeon finally forgot about the girl at the library thanks to Seulgi constant talking as they slowly walked towards the park.

Seulgi was a mystery; one that Chaeyeon never got to solve. She was always talking yet she never said anything. So far the most Chaeyeon knows about her partner is that she loves cats, art and that she also has a protegee waiting for her at home but Seulgi always said that ‘her girl’ could easily take care of her any time. So they spent the rest of the afternoon at the park until it was dark enough for everyone to leave and Seulgi said she had to go back to her home.

Chaeyeon chose to stay, enjoying the calmness and quietness of the park when no one was around surrounded by falling leaves and the prettiest flowers. Being a human gave her a sense of…being lost. Like she didn’t know where she was going, she didn’t know what she should do or where to go. No home to go back, no family to take care of, no people to love, only her and her alone

Bound to loneliness

She buried her hands on the pockets of her leather jacket and walked towards nowhere. The night breeze was cold enough to made her shake and she was glad this jacket was good enough to protect her from the cold. It was maybe close to midnight, not really sure about the hour, people was mostly absent and the lights were getting dim

Suddenly on her way, she clashed with a girl

The same girl from the library but now Chaeyeon could see her face to face: baby-like face, deep brown eyes and much shorter than her. She dropped a thin book, the same from hours ago, and immediately bent down to pick it up

“I’m sorry” she whispered without looking at Chaeyeon

“It was my fault” Chaeyeon replies “Sorry”

The girl felt awkward with the curious eyes of Chaeyeon looking at her and eventually made eye contact. Brown meeting brown with a very particular twinkling in them that made them impossible to forget for Chaeyeon. The girl kept walking, two strangers being friends for a minute before never meeting again

Chaeyeon looked at her back until she got lost at the end of the street. A sharp pang of pain on the left side of her chest made the angel-turned-human groan and she placed a warm hand above the raging scar shaped like a cross. It seemed to burn more and more each day but she rather keep this to herself, Seulgi would never leave her alone if she knew about this

When Chaeyeon looked up, she found out she was standing just outside the library from the morning

---

Chaeyeon woke up the next morning after sleeping in the alleyway right next to the library. She always waited for Seulgi, every morning, at the park they visited yester but this time she was getting bored of the same people walking by and the same talk about such mundane things. Now that it was another day, she only wanted to know more about the brown eyed girl she met yesterday. Chaeyeon wanted to know why she knew that poem

She might not remember anything from her previous life but that poem always, always came back to her

Smiling, Chaeyeon walked through the library front door and looked at the girl standing close to a bookshelf with a basket full of books hanging from her left arm, she slowly sorted them along the wood shelves being careful of not dropping anything

Chaeyeon wanted to catch her attention but not so suddenly, after all she didn’t knew her name. This time dressed in a college hoodie and jeans with sneakers, the girl was so focused on her job that it was intriguing. Chaeyeon was mesmerized by the scene, so much that she never thought the girl would actually ‘fight’ back

She left the basket on the ground and stomped towards Chaeyeon, pushing her

“Hey, you creep! What are you looking at?”

“Eh?” Chaeyeon blinked slowly as she looked down at the angry woman almost puching her

“You been looking at me since a long time ago, since yesterday and you even slept outside! What the hell do you want? Leave me alone!”

“I-I’m sorry” Chaeyeon stuttered, not sure what to say. This girl didn’t care about angels or humans, she was just standing her ground and confusing Chaeyeon with any ‘normal’ person

“Are you a protegee?” Chaeyeon asked, unsure

“A what?” the girl tilted her head

“So you aren’t”

“You’re crazy right? You must be one of those weird stalkers that have their rooms full of their victims pictures”

“Stalker?” Chaeyeon said in a high pitched voice, earning a few shushes from the people studying “I swear I’m not”

The girl turned around and walked away towards her dropped books, olympically ignoring Chaeyeon who was just as confused as before, waiting to give an explanation that never left

Running after the girl, Chaeyeon walked beside her while she sorted the books. That girl might look like the cutest little puppy in the world but as soon as she opened she gained a few inches in height, like the devil chose to leave his realm and work as a librarian

“Hey, let me speak. I’m not stalking you I just want to know something”

“Go away, creep”

Instead of placing the book on the shelf, the girl throwed it at Chaeyeon who fumbled with it before placing it anywhere

“No, wait!”

“What the hell do you want?!” the girl stopped, arms draped across her chest

Chaeyeon sighed, sorting her thoughts and finally getting them out without waiting any second

“I saw you reading a book here yesterday, something like a poem and it’s too familiar for me”

“What are you talking about, creep?”

“Life and death are in love with each other since the beginning of time”

As soon as Chaeyeon said those lines that she could never forget, the girl tensed and her angry face turned into one full of shock. She went along with the poem by sheer instinct with an insecure mumble

“Life sends thousands of gifts to death and death keeps them forever”

Silence reigned between them while they kept looking, only waiting for another explanation

“Why do you know that poem?” said the girl

“I don’t remember, it’s just in my mind since forever…I only remembered those lines though, nothing else”

“I see…”

“My name is Chaeyeon by the way” Chaeyeon smiled, reaching her hand towards her

The girl felt a deep empty feeling on the pit of her stomach. That poem always left a little nostalgia inside of her but now Chaeyeon smile seemed to take that feeling away, she felt at complete peace

Without thinking, she grabbed the stranger hand

“My name is Eunbi”

“I’m sorry if I was being awkward, I only wanted to know that”

“I get it now”

“Who are you talking with, Eunbi?”

A foreign woman voice called her name, she came from behind the bookshelves with more books in her hands. The woman was carrying a small name tag and Chaeyeon could read the name ‘Doyeon’

“I’m sorry, Doyeon-ssi. It’s just a friend of mine”

The older woman looked at Chaeyeon from head to toe before throwing the books on Eunbi’s basket and walking towards the desk at the front door

“Stop fooling around, you have a job to do”

Just when Eunbi was about to kick Chaeyeon out of the library, another woman came close to Chaeyeon dressed all in black with a serious look on her face. Eunbi blinked a few times…where did this woman came from? She never saw her entering the library

“I told you to wait on the park” she said, voice deep and angry

“I’m tired of waiting for you and besides…I did nothing wrong, I’m only talking”

“You have to wait there every time. Right now you could’ve made things worse and-“

The woman interrupted herself when she saw Eunbi looking at them

“Let’s go, Chaeyeon”

“Hey! I still want to know more about her”

“Let’s. Go”

Seulgi pulled Chaeyeon by her wrist not letting her say goodbye to Eunbi and just pushing her to the side. Outside the library, Seulgi pushed Chaeyeon and the young woman frowned. Everybody was set on pushing her today

“What were you doing with her?”

“I didn’t know that was forbidden, I thought I could do anything I wanted…is she an angel? Or a protegee?”

“She’s a protegee…I know it because she goes to the same school as Seungwan. I’ve never seen her guardian angel but I know she’s special because she can see me…if her guardian knows about this, do you know the kind of problem we will be in? They could call heaven and just sell us out”

Chaeyeon sighed and pushed Seulgi back. She was getting tired of being treated like a kid when she was far from that. Maybe she lost a bunch of her angel abilities but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t tell the difference between ‘trouble’ and ‘danger’

“How the hell was I supposed to know about that?! I just wanted to know more about him!”

“You can’t break the rules like that!” Seulgi screamed back

“How can you talk about rules when you sleep with your protegee every single night?”

Chaeyeon turned around and walked away from her partner. Seulgi followed her close for a few blocks but eventually lost her among a crowd, letting her walk away. Chaeyeon was constantly looking for memories of her angel life trying to go back to what it used to be…

Seulgi wasn’t sure if that would lead her to the truth

Or to her second death

---

Chaeyeon was sitting outside one abandoned building at the outskirts of the city, the night was too quiet and even the wind seemed to be resting. She was away from Seulgi for the whole day, looking to breathe her own air and not care about rules or protection. This place was eerie and terrific but somehow, Chaeyeon found peace in it. Away from all the things she couldn’t do or know

Since some time ago, when she saw Eunbi for the first time at the library, Chaeyeon was pushing to remember her angel life. Even the slightest: where she lived, who was her protegee, did she had a last name, did she loved anyone…anything would be okay

Seulgi said the memories would go back from time to time but she never said how or when. Chaeyeon wondered if every angel-turned-human had the same cross shaped scar on their chest like the one she had, did the protegees also had the same scar as her? Nothing she could ask to Seulgi even on this hurtful times

Chaeyeon looked at her scar with curiosity, just above her heart and burning like a fireplace. Nothing comes to her mind as she sees it

She ended up walking away from the building. One of the town clocks marked four in the morning, some people walked towards their jobs, the street lights getting dimmer and dimmer, taxis driving around. Maybe she acted like a brat back then…she needed to talk with Seulgi and ask for help about the missing pieces of her puzzle

While she walked down the avenue, a big school caught her attention. It was as big as the whole block and the janitor was already turning on the lights. Its design reminded her of one of those anime high schools she saw in her favorite series

Then it happened

A scene clouded her vision

“Can other people see you here?” A girl 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 supermodel. An arm around the girl 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”

The girl nodded and then sighed, taking a deep breath

“I’m gonna throw up”

Chaeyeon laughed

“You’ll be fine! 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?”

Then everything went back to normal. That flashback…it definitely belonged to her angel life

This time the former angel looked at the school like it was cursed, she had to find Seulgi or she’ll end up going crazy.

Chaeyeon ran down the avenue looking for answers that she definitely never had here

---

“So you are a former angel”

“Yep, that is”

“Wow…that’s amazing! Well miss former angel, let me introduce myself: I’m Batman, nice to meet you! Would you like a coffee at home with Alfred? Or maybe you would like it on my batmobile?”

That wasn’t the conversation that Chaeyeon expected when she went back to the library looking for Eunbi

With no more words, Eunbi started walking away from the library like the conversation never happened

“Hey, wait!” Chaeyeon ran after her “You don’t believe me?”

“Believe you?” Eunbi scoffed before letting out a long laugh, holding her sides “Oh god…I might be a librarian but I know how to deal with idiots. Like you for example…who the hell is going to believe that?”

“I am!”

“Well show me”

“What?”

“Yeah, you know…do your angel stuff. Wings, a shiny aura, arrows that make people fall in love”

“Uhm, Eunbi…Cupid wasn’t an angel, he was a cherub”

“Anyways! We aren’t talking about him! Show me you were an angel!”

Chaeyeon thought about it, with a thought process as fast as a racing car. Seulgi talked with her about this, over and over, so much that maybe it was like a broken record. At the impatient eyes of Eunbi, Chaeyeon sighed and shook her head from side to side

“I can’t…I’m sorry”

“Oh right, that’s it…what are you gonna tell me now? That the angels have an association and you all gather every Christmas to enjoy god’s tasty turkey recipe? Yes, you creep, of course”

Eunbi kept walking on a straight line, too confident. Chaeyeon reached for him a second time, grabbing her wrist and stopping her walk

“Why do you have to leave like that?”

“I’m not interested in your bull, creep. Now let me go, I have to eat something”

Chaeyeon gave up and let Eunbi go only looking at her back, again

---

Eunbi walked towards her favorite café not so far from the library, a few blocks away actually. Since they were so close, Eunbi saved on the bus fare or any taxi and she could buy some new clothes or even more books until she could build her own personal library

The road there was oddly quiet, cars barely zooming by her. Such a calm feeling made her feel good but also worried her…and just as said worry set on the top of her head a firetruck roared down the streets towards an apartment building not so far from the café

It wasn’t her apartment building, she could just walk by and ignore it but something deep inside her told her she should go there and do something, anything

Eunbi ran towards the building, screaming at the desperate neighbors and asking how she could help, if she could actually do something to calm the raging fire covering most of the apartments and slowly corroding the structure: some debris from the top of the building was falling from time to time and the water hose from the firetruck didn’t seem to be enough

She joined the firefighters and more volunteers to get into the blazing hell, they covered each other with a blanket damped in water and she started dodging the furniture turned into ashes to look for survivors

“There’s a gas tank at the very top of the building!” one of the firefighters screamed while he carried an old man in his arms “Be careful!”

Every volunteer nodded and they kept searching. Eunbi wasn’t even two meters deep into the building when she heard a few tiny barks coming from a closed room and someone constantly coughing. She opened the door, holding the knob with the wet blanket and found a puppy not older than a few months in the arms of a worried kid, confused and wondering what was going on

Eunbi immediately walked towards him and placed the blanket on top of him, placing the puppy in his arms

“Hey, are you hurt?”

“No…it’s my puppy okay?!”

“Yeah, yeah he is but we need to go now, okay? Hold tight to him and let’s get out of here”

The kid wrapped the puppy with the blanket and Eunbi helped him get out. The way outside was surprisingly fast and the kid’s mother was too happy to see him, screaming his name at the top of her lungs. She said she only went to buy some food and never expected something like this to happen…

A loud bang left everyone frozen. A firefighter screamed, scared

“Watch out!”

That was enough for Eunbi to lift her gaze towards the side of the building that was blown over by the gas explosion and the falling debris that would end up killing her. With her whole body, she pushed the kid and the puppy out of the way…she never though she would end up dying like this but at least a mother would be happy thanks to her actions

The fatal blow never came

In its place, Eunbi opened her eyes and wondered why she wasn’t dead

A pair of bright, white wings covered her completely. Isolating her from any danger and the falling debris landing everywhere but near her

“Are you gonna believe me now?”

Eunbi finally looked at the owner of such a beautiful set of wings. Eunbi blinked slowly, opening to say something that came as a broken whisper

“Chaeyeon…”