Mirai kept his hood up. It was hard walking around followed by an angel invisible to everyone else. “Come on, Mirai, talk to me. I’m bored and lonely.” She flitted aside to avoid going through someone on the train. “Are you worried that people will look at you strangely if they see you talking to thin air? You know, silly, you can talk to me in your mind. It’s like you forget every time.”

Mirai glanced at her before returning to his phone. It wasn’t that he forgot, but that he wanted to practice resisting her words. He remembered how easily he had listened to her and used the Red and White Arrows. He had used each arrow only once and never again; it was a testament to his willpower. But he also couldn’t ignore her despondent expression. Do you regret saving me?

“I could never!” Nasse clasped Mirai’s hand, causing his phone to heat up from the energy. “I have never regretted anything, Mirai. Saving you was a very good decision. I believe that with all my heart.”

Do angels have hearts? Mirai joked, pulling away from her before she could fry his phone. Actually, he was relieved to know that Nasse cared about his well-being. Angels couldn’t lie, even if they didn’t always reveal the full truth unless directly prompted.

“Rude,” Nasse huffed, white sparkles shooting from her tiny wings. A couple train passengers scratched their scalps where the sparkles landed. “Although we don’t have blood pumps like silly little humankind, we’re capable of emotion too. After all,” she added, the familiar note of superiority in her high-pitched voice, “we angels are the superior beings. And Ophanim are the most superior of all.”

Inferior only to God, Mirai recalled as he scrolled through his feed. And perhaps god candidates. Angels might have given them their powers, but they themselves couldn’t use these Arrows, and Neo Kira was making headlines. The heart attacks returned with astonishing vengeance. People generally agreed that this Kira was different; along with the time gap from when the heart attack epidemic had haunted the world, this Kira didn’t specifically target criminals. After a few weeks, avid bloggers had deduced that all of Neo Kira’s victims had one thing in common: they opposed scientific progress. Sakura TV had a field day with that information.

But Neo Kira’s latest victim was different.

Mirai put on his earbuds and clicked on the sensational news story. His eyes widened. Nasse, he ordered, leave and wait for me at home.

Nasse didn’t question him. One moment, she fluttered around the passengers like an invisible, ivory and gold butterfly; the next, she was gone. The train made a sharp curve, causing the passengers to sway in unison. Mirai pocketed his phone and adjusted his hood to ensure his face stayed concealed.

…

Neo Kira used a voice synthesizer when speaking to Sakura TV. He had gotten bored of eliciting heart attacks in his unchosen people, he said with an interpreter translating to Japanese, so he turned to a good ol’ stabbing for some variety.

Bullshit, Mirai thought.

The truth was, this was entirely possible; clearly, Kira and subsequently Neo Kira were a little off in the head. But the timing was just too convenient, the target too specific. Felipe Amor had taken the free wills of the celebrities who had sex with him, and now the women’s careers lay in ruins even as they screamed and insisted he had tricked them somehow.

A witness had photographed the murder. Through the blurry image, Mirai could make out the Irish flag and a slim young man covered head to toe in the edgiest outfit imaginable. Behind the naked corpse, certain parts pixelated, a muscular angel lay on a stack of crates. No one commented on the angel; only other god candidates could see these celestial beings.

Neo Kira had no interest in something as superfluous as variety. The White Arrow didn’t work on other god candidates, so he’d had to turn to another killing method.

It could’ve been a coincidence. Maybe Neo Kira hated Felipe Amor. He didn’t seem Irish—his English had no discernable accent, making it hard to track where he was from—but maybe he thought Amor was disgusting. Mirai didn’t like how the D-list celebrity had used the Red Arrow, but he didn’t think the guy deserved to die. But that was why people called this new serial killer “Neo Kira”; he took the role of arbiter and decided who should die. He thinks he’s already God.

But Mirai knew this was no coincidence. The Sakura TV interpreter spoke with more enthusiasm, his belly jiggling as he continued, “Neo Kira challenges all his enemies at once! He invites his would-be usurpers to gather on Halloween at ‘the place where men go to God.’”

“Close enough,” Mirai muttered. He studied English at school and knew that a better translation would’ve been “the bridge between Man and God.”

“Could it be a church?” the interpreter babbled. “Sakura TV fans, you have heard our words and the Word of God—that is, Neo Kira—Himself! Let us flock to the churches and seek our savior’s successor!”

“A church would be a reasonable guess,” Mirai said to Nasse when he returned home, his angel loyally waiting for him. “But Neo Kira is speaking to us, his so-called usurpers. It’s a message only another god candidate would understand.”

Nasse giggled. “And do you get it, Mirai?”

Mirai went to his desktop and typed something into Google. Nasse flew in vertical circles like a happy-go-lucky hamster, and Mirai turned the monitor so she could see. “Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge.” Nasse winced at his terrible pronunciation. “It’s the location of the most suicides. Since god candidates are chosen among people who attempted suicide, it’s the ‘bridge between Man and God.’ It’s even a literal bridge.” Mirai checked his calendar. “And luckily, Halloween is on a weekend this year.”

“Would you still go if you had to miss school?”

“Nope.”

Nasse poked him. “You’re so boring.”

Mirai frowned. “Do you think the other candidates actually got the message? It’s harder to figure it out since Sakura TV butchered the translation. Other tabloids around the world probably messed it up too. Only people who know English might actually understand it.”

“Fortunately,” Nasse declared in her high-pitched voice, “most people in your society know at least some English. That’s how the shinigami share their powers too. It made for a very interesting series of events.”

“How did god candidates communicate in the past?”

“They didn’t.” Nasse giggled. “This is the first time.”

Dread gripped Mirai. They were traversing uncharted territory.

…

ONE WEEK LATER: HALLOWEEN

While worshippers headed to churches all over the world in droves of ivory cloaks with pointy hoods and Gothic metal crosses in honor of Kira and subsequently Neo Kira, Mirai kept his head down as he trudged along the littered gray riverside, rain pelting down on his dark hoodie. With his wings, he could’ve flown and arrived in seconds, but he and Nasse had agreed that it was best to avoid revealing his candidate status, especially since Neo Kira apparently considered them would-be usurpers and would kill them all the old-fashioned way. So Mirai had booked a flight ticket—at least Neo Kira had chosen Halloween instead of Christmas, so he could avoid peak travel season—and almost got run over by a speeding car as soon as he left the airport.

Street vendors shouted in sharp tones he couldn’t understand. A few younger people spoke the same formal English as Neo Kira, prompting him to wonder if the mysterious serial killer was Chinese. They noticed his expression and scowled at him before leaving him lost in Nanjing. And the older people glared at him as though his grandparents had directly attacked their families. Mirai wished Nasse was at his side to lighten the mood. He put up his hood and shuffled away, following the signs and then the landmarks until he arrived at Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge. The river swelled from the heavy rainfall.

Six angels surrounded the area. Mirai used his phone mirror to look at them without actually looking up. He recognized Nasse, the tiniest but among the highest-ranking. Most of them had short, cropped hair like Nasse, though one loomed larger than the others, her long hair flowing past her waist in thick, silver-white waves. Her eyes appeared gouged out, the sockets bleeding. Mirai would bet his wings that this edgy angel had chosen the equally edgy candidate who became Neo Kira. He put his phone away before the rain damaged it.

To his shock, many people had shown up at the bridge despite most tabloids hyping up the Kira churches. At least one of the four other candidates who’d figured out Neo Kira’s cryptic message—Mirai had kept quiet and if Neo Kira was going to tell people, he would’ve been more straightforward from the beginning—must have leaked the information. Most of the civilians spoke various Chinese dialects, but Mirai also picked up English, Korean, and Japanese. He tried to find the Japanese speakers, but the crowd surged around him, kicking up refuse into the already polluted river.

“Where’s Neo Kira?” someone hollered. The crowd repeated the demand in various languages until an eerie chant for Neo Kira seemed to make the bridge tremble. With their uniform ponchos, they looked like a cult.

A slim figure in black leather and feathers descended onto the bridge. The mask’s eyes bugged out in opposite directions, distracting from potential telltale details; Mirai tried to note the young man’s face shape and the bit of pale skin peeking from between his studded collars, but the mask’s wrinkly blue-gray skin and those horrific jaundiced eyes kept pulling his attention away. “I know at least five of you have come to deliver yourselves to me. You will be rewarded in the afterlife for your submission to the new god.”

“You know very well,” a mechanical female voice boomed, “what waits for failures in the afterlife.”

What looked to be the Yellow Power Ranger flew above the bridge. Civilians cried out in delight as they took pictures and tried to find the strings suspending her. They got even more excited when a Blue Power Ranger joined her. In a lower, more robotic voice, she said, “I am Lan-shi, and my ally is Jin-shi.”

Master Blue and Master Silver? Mirai shook his head. “Jin” meant “gold” in Mandarin. That matched the Yellow Power Ranger a lot more.

Mirai could almost imagine Neo Kira raising one eyebrow. “Your ally?”

Jin-shi planted her fists on her hips. “We refuse to accept how you’re targeting people like us. And killing indiscriminately is also atrocious.” Though that obviously wasn’t her priority, since she hadn’t made herself known until Neo Kira directly challenged her and the other god candidates.

Neo Kira unfurled his magnificent white wings, a stark contrast to his dark outfit. “You dare defy your god?”

Lan-shi said as if out of habit, “Gods don’t exist.” She hesitated. “You are not yet a god.” Nothing slapped the atheism out of someone more than the possibility of being God themself.

“And if we work together and succeed,” Jin-shi added, deliberately glancing at the angels and the crowd, “you’ll never become God.”

Neo Kira soared upward and lunged at them. The two power rangers dove in opposite directions, forcing Neo Kira to choose one and expose his back to the other.

Neo Kira had no such weakness. He spun into two consecutive kicks that struck both women’s jaws. With the same circular motion, he grabbed Jin-shi by the chin and yanked her toward him, ready to throw her down to the bridge below.

Lan-shi pressed her fingers together like a blade and drove it into Neo Kira’s spine. He roared and whirled around to face her. As they sparred and flew in tight circles around each other, Jin-shi swooped down to the riverside to scour through the debris. A few seconds later, she returned to her partner’s side carrying two long metal rods that might have held up curtains once. She tossed one to Lan-shi, who twirled it experimentally. The steel must have been heavier than what wushu artists would practice with, but even with the slower movements, the threat of a heavy-momentum bludgeon made Neo Kira back away.

As the two women got used to their new weapons, they spun them faster and faster, reminding Mirai of the Red and White Arrows. Neo Kira tried to block them, but his enemies overpowered him. Mirai winced, remembering the bruises and injuries his uncle had inflicted on him. Neo Kira bellowed in rage. His motions shifted. Where once he had flown gracefully, his limbs and body forming precise circular motions, he now struck out with sheer brute force.

He’s using karate instead of kung fu now, Mirai realized. Lan-shi exchanged a glance with her partner. They’d noticed too.

Neo Kira slashed along Lan-shi’s rod with a metal-laced glove—a heavy ring grinded on the grimy steel—and then he ripped off his right glove, raised his arm, and drove the blade of his hand through the rod.

Civilians cheered in delight, content to treat this fight as a martial arts demonstration. Metal splinters clattered onto the bridge or fell into the viscous river with heavy splashes. Neo Kira grabbed the two broken ends of the rod from Lan-shi and drove one into her left bicep. In the same motion, he spun to attack Jin-shi, who blocked the jagged metal with her own rod. She flinched at the splash of blood, and both rods dropped from the sky. Her rod shattered like glass when it landed on the bridge.

Neo Kira spun back to Lan-shi, grabbed the metal impaling her arm, and ripped it out. The poor Blue Power Ranger screamed in agony as her left arm hung limply from her shoulder. Her and Neo Kira’s blood spilled onto the wet bridge, where the rainwater washed it off almost immediately. Jin-shi cried out for her friend and tackled Neo Kira, wrapping her arms around the slender young man and threatening to crush him.

“Stop fighting!” a small girl cried out. Mirai found her easily. Her dark brown skin glistened in the rain; her wings burst through her poncho. She couldn’t have been older than 10.

A short angel swooped toward her. “Maria, please!”

“They’re hurting each other, Jami.” She spoke with a lilting accent that made her seem even younger. Maria flew toward the older god candidates. “We’re all the same, right? We should be getting along like a real family! Why are you fighting like this?”

“Child—” Jin-shi protested. Neo Kira elbowed her to escape her grip.

He kicked her toward Lan-shi and then put on the glove he’d taken off earlier to strike through the steel. A ring shone on his right middle finger over the glove. “Real families,” he told the child, approaching her with open arms; she reached out as though for a hug, “fight in far worse ways.”

They embraced, and then he snapped her neck. As her winged body plummeted and bounced off against the bridge to sink into the river, the people rioted. Kira would never kill a child, or so they claimed. It had all happened too fast for Mirai to react. He stumbled away from the crowd and bent over, but nothing came out. On top of the hill, away from the rest of the spectators, he glanced back at the god candidates.

Jin-shi carried Lan-shi away. Jami spoke with Neo Kira, who glanced at the retreating power rangers before making an obscene gesture at Maria’s angel.

Mirai walked away, hiding his shaking hands in his hoodie pocket. He had failed. He should have saved Maria. She was right; they should be a family. He missed Akira so, so much. He could hear his brother’s voice chiding him for letting another child be murdered. Or maybe it was his own voice.

A pretty girl with sparkling auburn hair darted in front of him and spoke in bubbly English. “I can’t fly away, but you can’t shoot me anyway. Who am I?”

“You’re—” Mirai covered his mouth with a hand.

The girl beamed. “Gotcha.”

Radiant light washed over the gloomy surroundings, ending the rain.

…

Neo Kira watched the child fall from his arms. Her wings couldn’t save her now. Sickness twisted his stomach. She reminded him of another young child…

“Her name was Maria Campbell,” her angel told Neo Kira, speaking in Japanese. Jami held out his arms as though to cradle the child, but not even her soul remained. According to Meyza, all fallen god candidates became shinigami, trapped in a rotten world between Heaven and Hell. A young child shouldn’t have had such a horrible fate.

“You damned her.”

Jami gazed up at Neo Kira with sorrowful golden eyes. “I only wanted to save her. Her foster family abused her and convinced her she was better off dead.” Jami kept his arms outstretched. “I caught her as she fell from the Golden Gate Bridge.”

“You didn’t catch her this time.” Neo Kira hated the sneer in his own voice. “And what did you hope to accomplish? You couldn’t have expected a little kid to become a god with twelve other candidates.”

“It wouldn’t have been the first time, Uryu Kanade.”

The young man flinched when Jami used his real name. He glanced at Jin-shi and Lan-shi, but the two women were too far away. Their angels had already departed. With Jami speaking with him, the other three angels hovered in a triangle formation, emotionless to Maria’s death.

“No human can hear us,” Jami assured him. “And angels are sworn to neutrality.”

“Fuck off.”

Jami tilted his head back, then continued to lean further back until it looked like his neck was broken. Meyza bellowed, “Turn away from him!”

Kanade remained paralyzed. He couldn’t look away from the Cherubim. Oh, he was fortunate that Jami wasn’t an Ophanim like Meyza; the sight would have broken his mind. But even the Cherubim looked monstrous in his true form. Whoever thought these angels had chubby cheeks and rosy skin like a fantasized baby had been delusional. Jami morphed into a chimera, his throat becoming a lion’s face, his limbs growing and then contorting into beefy muscles that tapered into crooked talons. The monster roared, revealing a wrinkled red face between his jaws.

Kanade screamed in terror.

When he opened his eyes, he was alone on the bridge. The spectators and the other angels had vanished; only Meyza remained. And police drones buzzed around him. He scowled behind his mask and flew away.

…

When the light passed, Mirai turned toward the bridge. Jami had disappeared, though Neo Kira and the angels remained utterly motionless. It was like staring at a fantastical tableau.

The sparkly-haired girl snapped her fingers to get Mirai’s attention. “You gave yourself away. Give me more. Which one’s your angel—the tall one or the short one? Which powers do you have? And what’s your name, boy?”

Mirai stammered as he tried to keep up. Unlike Neo Kira, who spoke almost exactly like what Mirai studied in school, this girl spoke fast and fluently. When Mirai answered, he became self-conscious of his accent. “Want to go out with me?”

The girl cringed—and then nodded. “Discreet. I like that.” She took hold of his arm, her long, pastel-colored nails standing out against his dark sleeve. “There’s a wondrous tea shop an hour and a half away by train. We can have our date there.”

Mirai looked at the bridge one more time. Neo Kira still hadn’t moved, but Mirai thought the young man was watching them from the corner of his eye. That mask really bugged him.

…

“I’ll have the Imperial,” the girl ordered.

Mirai stared at the menu prices, incredulous that good tea could be this cheap. Then he converted the prices to yen and almost spewed at how tea could be this expensive. “I… I’ll have…”

“He’ll also have the Imperial.” In a conspiratorial whisper, she told him, “I’ll pay your bill.”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Why? Because I’m a lady? I’m probably older than you, kiddo.”

Mirai wasn’t small, but his hoodie and unkempt hair must have made him seem younger. “I’m seventeen.”

“And I’m eighteen. That makes me—what did those anime characters call it—your senpai, right?”

Mirai slouched in his seat. He couldn’t believe he was actually having this conversation. English class didn’t prepare him for this.

“But I’d laugh if you actually called me that, so you can just go with Mi-sun.” She held out her hand for him to shake. “Lee Mi-sun.”

Mirai shook her hand, surprised by how warm it felt. “Kakehashi Mirai. You can call me Mirai.”

“Mirai,” two girls said at the same time. Mirai startled until he saw Nasse, who waved behind Mi-sun. The petite angel switched spots with a slight figure who was probably Mi-sun’s angel. They had cropped hair and a slight build, making it hard to tell their gender.

The angel scowled at Mirai. “I am Revel, Angel of Trickery. In this form, my pronouns are he/him. Don’t get it wrong.”

Nasse giggled. “What does it matter? You’re a Cherubim, Revel—inferior to every other angel, but still leagues above silly men.”

Mirai remembered what Mi-sun had said to him to make him reveal his own god candidate status. “You only have a Red Arrow.”

“What do you mean ‘only’?” Mi-sun demanded. “Sure, I can’t fly, but wings didn’t save Maria. And Arrows are useless against other god candidates anyway.”

“True,” Mirai conceded, “but once you’ve flown across the world… you realize just how precious life is.”

“Then show me.” Mi-sun stared into Mirai’s eyes. She wore colored contacts, and her eyes appeared a startling jade green.

Before the tea could arrive, Mirai carried Mi-sun into the night. She gasped in wonder at the festive lights in some parts of the world. But when they returned to the tea shop, she merely smiled politely. The server arrived with their tea, and she smiled knowingly at their pink cheeks and tousled hair and clothes.

“What did you think?” Mirai asked after they finished and were leaving the tea shop.

Mi-sun tipped her head to one side, sparkles dripping from her auburn hair. “That tea was delicious.” Before Mirai could say anything more, she leaned on him. “Bring me home, Mirai.”

…

As it turned out, “home” meant Mirai’s apartment. He sat cross-legged on the rug, shy that such a pretty girl now curled up on his bed. At least Nasse’s presence made him keep the place clean.

“Ever since I got rejected from the idol group I was training for,” Mi-sun explained, “I’ve been struggling to find a place to rent. The production company provided a room for an extra week while I looked for a new job and apartment.”

“But instead of doing either,” Mirai deduced, “you used the Red Arrows to… to make ends meet. And before that,” he realized, his cheeks flushing, “you… you…” He knew how to say it in English. But he didn’t want to embarrass her.

Mi-sun shrugged. “When they rejected me, I thought it was because I was hideous. It’s not worth living if you aren’t beautiful. It’s unpleasant for everyone who has to look at me, and it’d be unpleasant every time I look in the mirror. I felt ashamed that I didn’t realize it myself.”

How could she say this? Mirai wanted to tell her how pretty she looked, but if she didn’t believe it, then what would be the point? Then he realized she’d said, I thought it was because I was hideous. He closed his eyes, recalling the last grammar lesson in school. Nasse might ridicule him for his diligence, but keeping up with classes, including English class, was the only reason he could communicate with Mi-sun and understand Neo Kira’s message in the first place. “Now you know.”

Mi-sun nodded. “Revel unplugged the coal burner and assured me that I’m beautiful, that it’s just sheer bad luck I didn’t make the cut. And he told me that if I became god, I would be the most beautiful creature among a world of beauty, beauty shaped by my own hands.”

Mirai wished he could speak like her. He doubted he could be this poetic even in Japanese. Maybe he could ask Mi-sun to share what she’d learned as an idol trainee. They didn’t have long together, but it could be time well spent. After all, they still had two months before one or both of them became a shinigami. “Mi-sun—”

Mi-sun screamed. Mirai followed her gaze to his window and then clapped a hand over his mouth. “Shinigami.”