I wrapped my arms around my knees in the cold night air of the city. Hundreds of feet below me, cars buzzed around the streets like insects. I was too high up to hear any of the voices of the people far below, specks on the sidewalk from my height. I sighed and leaned into my boyfriend’s shoulder.

“It’s really pretty, isn’t it,” his honey warm voice mumbled into my wind-strewn hair.

“Yeah,” I replied, watching as my words condensed into white clouds. He wrapped his arm tighter around my shoulders, the dying end of his cigarette flickering like a firefly in the wind.

“Happy anniversary,” Jongin said simply as the cathedral bells a few blocks down gonged twelve times.

He gently turned my head in his hands so our foreheads touched. “It’s been a year since we started dating,” he said, eyes unreadable. His thick brown hair flew in the wind, and I dangled a leg off the edge.

His mouth suddenly thinned into a cold line and he gripped my shoulders hard, pushing me towards the left, off the ledge of the rooftop. Instinctively, I gripped onto his shoulders and hooked a leg around the low wall that we were sitting on. I gasped when I realized just how high we were, and just how precariously I was hanging onto Jongin’s shoulders.

“What—What are you doing,” I screamed, “I’m going to fall!”

“Angel,” he leaned in, thick lips curling at my terrified eyes, “that’s the point. We’ve been dating for a year. You’ve told me everything I need to know about your father. You’ve outlived your usefulness. I never loved you.”

Before I could say another word, Jongin wrenched my hands off his shoulders and threw me off the edge. I couldn’t even scream. I fell for what felt like an eternity, wind rushing through my hair, before everything was darkness.

——

I groaned. Every muscle in my body ached. Opening my eyes to the blinding fluorescent lights, I was greeted with the sight of the filthy tiles of what was obviously a gas station bathroom. I nearly gagged at the gritty feeling on my cheek. I gathered my strength and pushed myself up to a sit, bones screaming at the movement.

“Look who’s finally awake,” came a high, annoying voice. I turned my head to the source of the sound, to see a gangly teenager perched over the toilet with the seat down. His hair was dyed a flaming grapefruit pink, and thick hipster glasses were perched on the bridge of his long nose. His small mouth was set in a half-amused lilt.

He leaned forward to inspect me and my winter coat, resting his arms on his thin skinny jean-encased legs, bony shoulders poking through the ripped arm holes of his band t-shirt, various bracelets jingling around his bony wrists. His ears held enough piercings to stud the leather jacket hanging off one of the faucets on the grimy sink.

“Who are you?” I asked blandly, unimpressed. “Where am I?”

“Yah,” he snorted, thin eyebrows furrowing. “Show some respect for your guardian angel.”

I grimaced at his words. Conceited much? “Look, kid,” I said flatly, “tell me where I am and I’ll buy you beer or cigarettes or whatever it is you want from me.”

“No,” he sighed, exasperated. “I’m literally your guardian angel. It’s not smart to date mysterious men, you know, especially when your dad’s a mafia boss. You’re dead right now.”

Dead? I rubbed my aching shoulders, and it suddenly all rushed back to me. The night I spent with Jongin on the roof. His last words to me before he…

“Oh God,” I groaned, slapping a hand over my mouth as I felt bile rise up at the memory. The pink-haired teenager immediately jumped up from his perch and flipped the toilet seat up. Gripping my arm, he guided me to the toilet where I emptied the contents of my stomach into the bowl.

“Hey, you okay?”  he asked, rubbing circles around my back.

“No,” I whimpered.

“Here,” he handed me a glass of water that he had seemingly conjured out of nowhere. I swished and spat the first two mouthfuls, and gulped down the rest to cool my burning throat. “It’s okay,” he murmured soothingly. My grip on the edge of the toilet tightened as rage flashed in front of my eyes.

“No,” I yelled in a sudden surge of anger. My voice bounced off the white tiled walls. “No, I’m not ing okay. My boyfriend just told me that he never loved me, and then killed me by pushing me off a building. On our ing anniversary.”My throat was raw and painful. “I’m supposed to be dead, god ing damnit, and instead of heaven or hell or whatever, I’m in this dirty bathroom with an annoying teenager. No, I’m not okay.” A sob tore out, and I collapsed, pulling my knees to my chest on the floor. The boy stayed silent.

“If it helps,” he said slowly, “I’m Oh Sehun. I’m your guardian angel.”

I whipped my head up to face him and he flinched at my glare. “Where the were you when Jongin shoved me off a roof? When he told me he loved me even though it was all empty lies? Where were you when my mom was assassinated in front of me, or when my father’s rivals shot my brother? If you’re a guardian angel, then you’re a ty one.”

He scratched the back of head sheepishly and had the nerve to look sorry. “Yeah,” he said, mouth pulling taut. “About that…I actually haven’t been taking care of you like I should have. Sorry about that.”

My jaw dropped in disbelief. “Sorry about that? SORRY ABOUT THAT?” I picked up the now-empty glass that he had given me, and threw it at his head with all my might. “YOU !”

He threw up his hands and barely deflected the projectile. “Holy—oh, , don’t get mad, please, I swear, I’ll make it up to you!”

“And how will you do that,” I demanded, glaring at him.

“Um, God was actually kind of mad about the ty job that I did. So yeah, I got demoted from guardian angel to just a plain guide. God, however, likes you. You’re promoted to angel.”

I gaped at him in shock. What did he say?

He sniffed at me. “Hey, close your mouth before a bug flies in.”

I decided to ignore that comment. “Angel? I’m promoted to angel?” He shrugged, leaning on the sink and crossing his thin arms.

“Yeah. Since you’re pretty much freshly dead, and I just got demoted, you’re on the same level as me. In fact, you’re going to be my partner.”

He suddenly took a deep breath and said very quickly, “let’s get some basic information out of the way: your boss is God and he’s an elected official, heaven runs on a democracy and our congress has a 7% approval rating among other heavenly beings, your job is to collect souls with me and bring them to Heaven. Satan is our business partner and exports billions of tons of hellfire and brimstone for us to heat our houses and burn as a fossil fuel every year. You’re new, so that means you’re assigned to a partner, and that partner would be me, your former guardian angel, Oh Sehun. Before you ask, no, you’re not allowed to see your family. Causes too many gloomy feelings, which wrecks weather patterns.”

I sat back and absorbed all the information. “Wow,” I mumbled. 

“Yeah” Sehun said, idly jiggling a sneakered foot. “Pretty cool, huh.”

——

“S-Sehun,” I coughed, trying to get my words out. “Are you sure this is supposed to be happening?”

Sehun flashed me a bright grin and a thumbs ups, probably the first facial expression I had seen on him that wasn’t a scowl or a blank stoic gaze into the distance. Which meant that this was not supposed to be happening.

We were making our way through a cottage with a small kitchen fire. Except it stopped being a small kitchen fire when Sehun accidentally flipped a pan, and the burning grease spread to the curtains, which quickly lit the wallpaper.

We heard a new voice from the entrance to the kitchen, coughing and swearing. “What the hell—who the hell are you guys?” It was a short angry man with ruffled hair, dressed in Pororo pajamas.

Sehun coughed, not from the smoke, but from embarrassment. “Um,” he checked his clipboard, “Do Kyungsoo?”

The man snarled, wide eyes narrowing in anger. “How do you know my name, why are you in my house, and what the did you do to my kitchen?”

Sehun shot me a desperate look, and I shrugged, raising my eyebrows at him expectantly.

He went on, brushing his pink hair out of his eyes. “Um, you’re supposed to die of a house fire at 2:41 AM, December 17 because you forgot your soondae gook on the stove—“ he glanced at the oven clock nervously, “—oh , it’s 1:12. Um…I guess it can’t hurt to take you early, I guess.”

Do Kyungsoo glared at the both of us incredulously. “What the , guys, just put out the fire, and—“

“Sorry-it-was-arranged-by-God-can’t-change-your-fate,” Sehun said in one fast breath, and grabbed Kyungsoo’s arm and ran out into the cold air. Shoving the angry man, now spewing all sorts of profanities, into his beat up Honda Civic, he hopped in and gestured for you to do the same.

Slamming the door shut, you offered Kyungsoo a halfhearted smile. “Sorry, this is my first day, and I’m not really sure what I’m doing.”

Sehun pursed his lips into an impressive frown and started up the sputtering engine. “We’re bringing you to the afterlife, Do Kyungsoo. Next stop, Swiss Alps.”

——

“Byun Baekhyun and Park Chanyeol, honeymooning couple, they die when an avalanche buries their tent mid-,” Sehun explained as he read off his clipboard. We were both standing in the freezing cold outside a rocking tent with moans and the sound of slapping skin filling the frozen Swiss air.

“Yeah,” I wrinkled my nose when a particularly loud moan permeated the chill. “I kind of deduced that. Can’t we just take them and go?”

“Nope,” Sehun said simply, squinting at the clipboard in the moonlight. “Gotta follow standard procedure and wait for them to die. I kind of messed up at Kyungsoo’s house, but I’m going to do this one right.”

“Oh,” I nodded uncomfortably as the rocking intensified. “Can’t we take them earlier just this once?”

Sehun gave me a look. “Why would we do that?”

“Baby, me harder,” the shorter one moaned suddenly. “I’m so close—oh —-Chanyeol!”

“Right,” Sehun said suddenly, striding up to the tent and ripping open the door. “Up to heaven you go, guys.”

——

Kim Junmyeon was a university student who had drowned when he fell asleep over his sink. Sehun had let me take this one myself.

“Yah, Junmyeon,” I said, prodding his body with a foot. “That’s kind of pathetic, isn’t it?”

His soul groaned and rose up as a ghostly form. “Oh , I need to finish that international relations paper.”

I shrugged as I hoisted his soul up on my shoulder and helped him stagger towards the car. He was unexpectedly light. “Tough luck, man. You’re kind of dead now.”

His eyes brightened instantly. “Wait, if I’m dead, that means I don’t have to turn it in! Oh praise the Lord, I’m saved!”

——

The next deaths were also drownings, but considerably cooler ones.

Wu Yifan and Kim Jongdae had drowned in, believe it or not, a pool filled with Champaign.

“Rich kids,” I wrinkled my nose at their glitter-covered (and still totally wasted) souls, swaying on either side of Sehun.

“I think they’re okay,” Sehun said, eyeing the hyper-realistic doll, or was that a e, that was stuck in a tree. “They know how to throw parties, at least.”

——

Kim Minseok and Luhan were by far the most ridiculous ones on the list. They had died after playing Starcraft for too long.

“Youth these days,” Sehun grumbled, “couldn’t even stop to sleep or eat.” I resisted the urge to swat him on the head since he was just a teenager himself, before remembering that he had probably died a long time ago.

“At least we died happy,” Minseok protested as Sehun shoved them in the crowded Civic.

——

I felt a rush of guilt when I came to collect Zhang Yixing. He was an aspiring dancer with dreams to go into the entertainment industry. He was so close, too, having already been scouted by YG Entertainment and SM Entertainment.

It was such a shame that he turned to prescription painkillers to numb the stress and pain. It was such a shame that the overdose came just hours before the phone call from SM Entertainment, calling him in for an audition.

——-

“So, how did you die?”

Sehun and I were sitting on the chairs that lined the hallways of the cancer ward, unseen by the doctors and nurses that bustled past us. In the room across from where we were sitting, a teenage boy would take his last breath, surrounded by his family.

Sehun didn’t answer, and I suddenly realized how insensitive I was. “Sorry,” I said quickly, “I wasn’t thinking. You don’t have to answer.”

“No,” Sehun said slowly. “I think you should know.” He gave me a fleeting glance and focused his eyes on the multiple rings on his hands. “I, um,” his small mouth twisted into a frown. “I was murdered.”

I gasped at his words. He had been so cheerful, so childishly happy over the course of our companionship. I had never anticipated that he could be hiding something so terrible.

“Yeah, basically,” he said, trying to make his voice sound casual. But it was still too strained. I gazed at him while he took deep, trembling breaths. “Um, it was my dad. I was 18.”

“Oh,” I said in a small voice. I reached out to grab his hand. He stiffened at the contact, then relaxed, hand melding perfectly with mine. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s nothing,” he sighed. “What I went through is nothing compared to some of the I’ve seen.”

A sudden wail pierced through the closed door across from us. He stood up, pulling me up alongside him with our intertwined hand. “Come. Zitao just left.”

——

The last person of the day was the one person I never wanted to see, for two reasons. The first being that he had betrayed and killed me. The second was that seeing him meant that he was dead.

Kim Jongin fought so hard to cling onto the last vestiges of life, but on Christmas Eve, he was left to bleed out in a dark Seoul alleyway, bones broken, body marked with multiple stab wounds.

Sehun stood back as I approached him.

He was wheezing, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. With pain-hazed eyes, he looked up when he heard my clothes rustling above him. His rusty lips twitched upward and he choked out a laugh. The action caused him to grimace in pain.

“Jongin,” I murmured, brushing his bloody hair off his forehead.

“I guess you turned out to be my angel after all,” he mused, voice hoarse. He coughed, and a spurt of blood dribbled from his lips. His smirk was replaced with an expression of pure desperation. “I’m—I’m dying, aren’t I? That’s why I can see you, isn’t it?”

I nodded, caressing his bruised cheek. “Jongin, Jongin,” I whispered into the air, trying to give him comfort as he screwed his eyes shut in pain.

He took his last, shuddering breath as the old cathedral down the block gonged twelve times. It was Christmas when he died.

“I’m sorry,” his soul murmured when I helped him up and guided him to the Honda Civic. “I’m so sorry—-for everything. I thought it would help me stay alive.” He laughed bitterly at the irony, and stopped just outside the door of the vehicle.

“Why are you bringing me to heaven?”

“Because,” I said, opening the door for him. “You’ve made mistakes, but you’re a good person.”

He looked at me, eyes filled with something akin to gratitude. I sent him off into the car with one last kiss to the forehead, and closed the door.

I stood there in the street as snowflakes fell around me. I heard the crunch of snow underneath sneakers as Sehun approached me from behind.

“You okay?” he murmured, hugging me from behind and resting his chin over my head.

“Yeah,” I said. I turned around and looked into his earnest eyes. “Yeah. Everything’s ok.”

Reaching up to tangle my fingers in his pink hair, I pulled his face down to mine and kissed him.

Sehun smiled against my lips and gently brought his hands up to my jaw. We pulled apart, and he leaned his forehead against mine. For the first time, he looked like an angel with his pale face aglow in the streetlamps and thick white snow cascading around the two of us. “I’m glad,” he said simply.