Mirai couldn’t figure out why, but he just had to attend the Uryu heirs’ funeral. He had never spoken to them or their parents; Mr. and Mrs. Uryu were on the opposite side of the world from Mirai’s aunt and uncle. But he remembered a little white-haired boy who went to the same elementary school as him, before Mirai’s parents were killed and his world turned to hell…

It was the day after summer break. Seven-year-old Mirai and Saki crawled in the grass looking for more four-leaf clovers and golden ladybugs to share with Mirai’s brother and their classmates. One boy in particular looked like he needed some happiness.

There was a white-haired boy who always played alone. When Mirai and Saki tried to approach him, he would glare at them from pale purple eyes that looked like flower petals and return to his project. He always had a project. Once, he built a miniature catapult and lobbed erasers into his classmates’ eyes. Another time, he dipped crickets into freezing liquid and snapped off their heads. Sometimes, he shared what he built. Mirai thought the boy didn’t like people because no one had ever tried to give him anything. But maybe he would appreciate a golden ladybug. It would match the gold ring he wore as a pendant around his neck. Apparently, the boy wore it because it was his family ring.

Mirai had forgotten the name, but he remembered now: Uryu, meaning “flow of life.” Now that Kanade was dead, Mirai remembered more.

The girls in their class found a stray kitten, so Saki joined them to help take care of it. That was the excuse this time. Not knowing how to be with Mirai after his family had died from a freak accident, she ignored him. Mirai missed his friend.

But he could try to make another friend. He found a four-leaf clover with a golden ladybug and cried out in delight, running toward lonely Kanade to share his treasure. Kanade was so pale and delicate that he bruised easily, even though he didn’t play rough on the jungle gym like the other kids. He scowled at Mirai. “What do you want?”

Mirai held out the good-luck charms. “I brought you something. A gift.”

Kanade plucked the gift and shook it. The extra leaf fell off the three-leaf clover, and the yellow M&M dropped right after. Some of the other kids looked at them. Kanade sneered, “You’re a liar.”

Mirai sniffled, unable to hold back his tears. “I just wanted to help you feel better.”

“You just want to make yourself feel better.”

“I thought you wanted a friend.”

“Why would I be friends with a lying, crying, stinky pig?”

The other kids laughed and joined in.

“He’s stinky ‘cause he has no mom to tell him to take a bath!”

“His nose looks like a pig’s when he cries!”

“His skin is turning all pink too!”

Mirai turned around, helpless. He tried to find one kind soul in the crowd. Would Saki finally remember how to be his friend and stand up for him?

Saki held her nose and giggled with the rest of the girls. No one stood up for Mirai.

After elementary school, Kanade went to a more elite middle school. The bullying only grew worse. Mirai considered cutting himself—but ironically, the taunts stopped him. He refused to butcher himself like the pig they made him to be. He considered another form of suicide, one where he wouldn’t look like a pig, like maybe drowning, but then he graduated middle school and found out that Saki actually had drowned herself.

Mirai enjoyed the solitude in high school. He couldn’t invite his classmates over, and the scar on his back made him shy to join a sports club where he’d have to change in front of others. So he joined the chess club, but chess was an individual sport, so he didn’t really make friends. He made it all the way to the tournament finals in his junior year before his opponent put him in checkmate. Mirai already forgot which mistakes had cost him the game.

He had forgotten a lot of things, but he remembered Kanade. So what the hell was he doing at the funeral of a girl he didn’t know and her brother who ruined the last four years of his childhood?

The funeral hadn’t started yet, but Mirai spun on his heel and walked away. Crap, he thought when he saw the lineup of foreign soldiers, many of them not much older than him but somehow far more massive. Then he noticed their ceremonial wear and remembered that he was more powerful than all of them combined. Almost all of them, that is, he corrected himself, trying not to look at the two fearsome angels, one at the front of the procession and the other at the back.

No one bothered to look twice in Tokyo; no one bothered to look twice at a teenager who was probably one of Kanade’s classmates. So Mirai unfurled his wings and returned only a few minutes later as Morning.

He marched into the funeral home, his bright orange boots clomping on the marble. In front of the coffin, he came face to face with a soldier in his late teens or early 20s. The fear disappeared from the soldier’s dark eyes too quickly, replaced by the faintest hint of a smirk before he hollered, “All privates fire!”

One young soldier did not hesitate. He whipped out the most frightening firearm Mirai had seen and began shooting. Civilians screamed and ducked and ran for cover, but the private had precise aim; no bullet hit a civilian.

Morning and the General unfurled their wings to dodge the bullets, which seemed to move in slow motion the closer they got. A platinum ring glinted on the General’s hand. The General kept his boots on the marble floor or walls, but Morning showed off aerial maneuvers that would put this army’s fighter pilots to shame. He got reckless, and one of the Soldier’s bullets clipped the ends of his wings, and then the General pinned Morning to the ground so hard that both coffins rattled. Mirai half expected a lilac-eyed shinigami to emerge from Kanade’s coffin and kill all of them right there.

The General punched his face so hard that Mirai heard the voice distorter break. It was that wretched platinum ring. Mirai would bet that it was the same damned ring that Kanade had worn.

The General grinned and hissed, “Do you recognize your friend’s ring, Morning? My soldier gave it to me after he killed your ‘new savior.’”

Mirai retorted, “I always hated Kira.”

“What a coincidence, so did I.”

“And you can keep that cursed ring.”

“I was going to.”

Morning smiled until his eyes crinkled. “It really is cursed. Everyone who wears it will be overtaken by a shinigami who will make them kill themselves.”

The General’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a liar.” Mirai could almost hear Kanade’s voice from ten years ago, but spoken with Neo Kira’s distorted voice, and then his brother’s voice, and then his own voice. But the General had loosened his grip enough for Morning to break free.

The Soldier had run out of bullets, which littered the floor and almost made Mirai stumble when one rolled under his boot. He righted himself just in time to quickly step to one side, then another. A fraction of a second later, he heard three gunshots from the General; bullets moved faster than sound, but wings could make him faster than bullets.

Just before Morning flew away, he heard an older soldier bark out, “Sergeant Scott, Private Hassan, a word.”

Mirai had the names of the General and the Soldier, but he didn’t know what to do with them. Ichor dripped from the ends of his wings, making the grass wilt.

…

ONE MONTH LATER

Mirai walked in a daze as Morning, surveying various urban cities of Japan. Tourists made a big deal about hot springs and nature parks, but Mirai had always preferred the city sprawl. Street lights replaced stars, and no place prepared greater holiday spectacles. Red and white canes lit the sidewalks for men wearing padded red coats and curly white beards. Families took pictures in front of sleighs and wire reindeer, posing with their arms around buckets of fried chicken and oversized stuffed animals. Blue and violet fireworks spread like squid tentacles; a daring firecracker formed Kira’s silver cross. But Kira had disappeared long ago, and Neo Kira seemed to have followed him into the shinigami realm. This disillusioned world looked for a new savior.

Half the world worshipped the General, who brought victories to the West and terror to the Middle East. South Korea and most of the E.U. worshipped Venus, who dazzled the world with photoshoots and self-produced music. And Morning picked up a following in Japan, who recognized him as one of their own.

It was Mirai’s own fault. He wanted to keep up with his studies, even knowing he wouldn’t live to take any entrance exams or graduate high school, and he continued to stay near home during winter break. Every day, he stopped by a different post office, trying to reach out to Tyson Scott or Abbas Hassan. He never heard back from either of them.

“They might be super busy,” Nasse pointed out. “After all, they’re active soldiers.” She tapped her heart-shaped chin. “If there are active soldiers, does that mean there are passive soldiers?”

“Don’t give me that bullcrap,” Morning told her, gazing down at the holiday-lit city from an office rooftop. “You know exactly what they’re doing, and the fact that you aren’t telling me means they’re still alive.”

Nasse giggled. “They’re active god candidates.”

“The military must be intercepting my messages.”

“Or maybe they’re intercepted by the silly humans they call enemies.”

“Do you mean terrorists?”

“I mean that you’re all silly, getting worked up over petty conflicts that don’t mean a thing.”

“Nasse, they’re terrorists. The U.S. soldiers are doing the world a service, no matter how obnoxious they are about it.”

Nasse’s scarlet eyes glazed over. “Watching humans fight global wars is like watching ant colonies trample each other for bread crumbs, or for nothing at all. Some angels, like Tyson’s, find it amusing. The rest of us think it’s a jolly bad waste of time.”

Mirai stared at her for several seconds. Nasse made a V with her fingers and winked. “Nasse,” Mirai began slowly, “will I end up like you when this is all over?”

Nasse swatted his arm repeatedly. “Don’t be silly, Mirai. You’ll be a god, remember?”

“What are gods like?”

“Dunno. Each one is different, like angels.”

“You call all humans silly. What would you call gods?”

“Gods, of course.”

“Yeah, but if you had to describe them—say, the current one.”

Nasse shrugged. “I’ve never seen the current god. No angel has. We just know he’s retiring and it’s time to pick a new one.”

“But he was a candidate once.”

“Yes, I guess he was human, though you would’ve called him a caveman.”

“Like a Neanderthal?”

“One of the other ones, I think.” Nasse threw her arms into the air. “It’s been so long, I don’t remember. The one thing I remember about him is that he gave you language.”

“What was the first language?”

“Dunno. As soon as one appeared, a bunch of others started springing up right after. And God liked that. He didn’t do anything after that.”

“What about all the stories of floods and stuff?”

“God, Mirai, you’re asking a lot of questions today. Usually you don’t like talking to me.” Nasse pretended to pout, her lip quivering.

Mirai’s phone buzzed with an incoming call. He had his ringtone set to a foreign metal song that began with gongs, creating a funereal atmosphere. It kept him on his toes. “Here’s someone who usually doesn’t like talking to me.” He took the call. “Good to finally hear from you, Venus. The world thought we broke up.”

“The world,” Venus retorted, “has no goddamn idea how relationships work, which is why they hardly ever work.”

“Do you want to make it work?”

Nasse giggled. “Smooth, Mirai, smooth.”

Venus ignored him. “Have you heard from the Doctor?”

“Not since last month when I asked him to fix my voice distorter. Why?”

“Elias Hartmann passed away in his sleep last week. You just missed his funeral.”

Mirai’s world flipped upside-down. Nasse giggled as his shawl billowed around his shoulders and the only thing keeping him grounded on the roof was his obnoxious orange boots. How could he have attended Kanade’s funeral but not Elias’s?

“Did you go?”

“Nope.”

“Then why the—”

“But a pretty young woman named Lee Mi-sun went.”

Mirai sputtered, his world returning to normal. His shawl rested above his torso, the silver dots glinting with the holiday display. Nasse flew in circles around him. “Wait, so you knew he was already dead, and you started with, ‘Have you heard from him?’ Dammit, Mi-sun, what’s wrong with you?”

Venus hung up. Mirai stared at his phone in disbelief. He threw it down from the top of the office building.

An instant later, he unfurled his wings and swooped down after it, catching it right before it shattered on the sidewalk and joined the holiday display. A new notification appeared.

Mirai was about to cuss out Mi-sun again, but Venus had never just gone by “V.” And the text message was in Japanese.

Kakehashi Mirai is invited to King’s Cross Station exactly one week from now. He may bring the Angel of Purity but not Morning. More detailed instruction will arrive on that evening. —V

Now Mirai really did drop his phone. Nasse caught it for him and held it up like an offering, staring at the text message with ruby eyes full of wonder. “One week from now, it will all be over. I wonder what V is planning.” She looked up at him, blinking long ivory lashes. “Will you go?”

Mirai took his phone from her. “Like you said, it’ll all be over. I might as well enjoy a New Year’s Eve vacation in London before I leave this world.”

…

NEW YEAR’S EVE, 8:01 PM

Some phones buzzed; others beeped. Mirai’s phone gonged like a funeral bell. He winced. In less than five hours, he might actually hear funeral bells. What was it like to become a shinigami? Few people could tell him that, though Kanade Uryu could at least show appreciation that Mirai had attended his funeral. And what was it like to become God?

Even fewer people could answer that.

Mirai wore jeans and a comfy hoodie, following V’s request that he show up as himself, not Morning. Some might have dressed up knowing they’d die, but Mirai just wanted to be comfortable. Too late, Mirai realized this is what he had worn when he stepped off a skyscraper in Akihabara and met Nasse.

The Angel of Purity noticed too, and she giggled. For the occasion, she had put on a sparkly red bow, which she claimed symbolized joy but mostly just made her look like a pin-up girl in the season.

Mirai arrived at London early. If he only had a few hours left to live, he might as well enjoy himself.

…

8:48 PM

“We might as well enjoy ourselves,” Abbas insisted, “since, you know, we only have a few hours left to live.”

A passerby noticed the glaring American flag on Tyson’s shirt and scowled at him. Tyson hooked his thumbs into his pockets and loomed over the ugly British man, giving him his most frightening glare. The British punk scurried away.

“Ty?” Abbas prompted. In accordance with V’s wishes, he wore an elegant gray sweater under a wool coat from the thrift shop, paired with maroon skinny jeans tucked into sleek Doc Martens. He looked like he was trying too hard to blend in with everyone else.

Meanwhile, Tyson had shown up unapologetically as the General: army jacket—not the real one; he wasn’t that dumb—with a hood, his All-American T-shirt, and frayed blue jeans tucked into combat boots. While Abbas could pass as a sweet boy who would bring his date home on time, even if he would’ve gotten stopped at airports and border checks without his wings, Tyson held up his middle fingers to the world, a soldier who stomped on sweet boys like Abbas.

Abbas gestured with his chin toward the food stalls bogged down from slush and impatient tourists. “Want to grab dinner before we catch the train? I searched up good fish and chips places online before flying.” He gave a little flap of his wings.

“I refuse for my last meal on Earth to be so obnoxiously British. When I’m God, I’ll finish what America started and bring the British down for good. Also, it’s fish and fries, not chips. At least be a little patriotic when we’re abroad, Hassan.”

“So are you coming?”

“No. Balta can keep you company.” Tyson scowled up at Abbas’s angel, who winked.

Abbas called after him, “I’ll bet someone in your family was British! And you might not even be God. One in five, Ty, one in five.”

A few people looked at them oddly, but besides shouting obscenities and throwing crumbs at their feet, they kept walking like New Yorkers. This was London, and they’d heard weirder things.

…

9:17 PM

Mi-sun skipped along the cobblestones in her platform stilettos. A few months ago, she could barely walk in these kinds of shoes on South Korea’s even pavement and spotless floors—she snapped her fingers, realizing that’s why she got kicked out of the idol agency, while Revel shook his head next to her—but after living in Europe and working as an apprentice in Paris, these cobblestone streets felt more like home than Seoul. She could even identify the region in Europe by the stones. For a god candidate, a few months could feel like a few years. A few years would have stretched into an eternity until the god candidate felt like they’d already become a god. Yes, it was best that they only got from the last week of September to the end of this night. No matter what Revel said against Him, the old god had been wise. Maybe Mi-sun should have joined one of those church groups in her neighborhood after all.

Too late to dwell on it now. Mi-sun’s short pink skirt flared over her turquoise-and-orange stockings, her whole outfit designed to give anyone a headache. She hadn’t let Madame Latenue see her go out like this, though. She giggled at the thought of going behind her mentor’s back. Mi-sun loved being a rebel.

She knew who didn’t, though, so she clunked down King’s Cross Station and found Mirai waiting diligently for a train that wouldn’t come for another hour.

“Why aren’t Tyson and Abbas here yet?” Mirai wondered. “The train is scheduled to arrive in two minutes.”

“Which means it’ll be here at 10:30.” Mi-sun rolled her eyes. “Tokyo spoiled you, Mirai. Let’s go out like we did in Paris. We can go there again and be back on time.”

Mirai hesitated but let Mi-sun pull him away. He always let people guide him and do the work for him. In these 99 days, as far as she knew, he hadn’t killed a single soul. Maybe one, to know exactly what the Arrows did. Why was he like this? What did he want? And why did Mi-sun like him anyway?

…

9:55 PM

Mirai found himself slipping into a familiar pattern when it came to Mi-sun. His strides became shorter but brisker to keep up with her as they debated on whether a genderbent Dabi or a genderbent Toga would make for a creepier villain with the most messed-up backstory. Mirai’s thumb brushed their interlaced fingers so she wouldn’t get bored and either squeeze his knuckles to the point of breaking bone or just ditch him all together. Mirai didn’t know why he wanted to impress this crazy person. All he knew was that he wanted to keep them together for as long as possible.

Maybe that’s what family does in the end.

…

10:21 PM

Tyson had planned to end his time here sober, as distant from his fucked up father as he could get while still staying in an English-speaking area. But the longer he waited for fate, the more bored he got. Usually, when someone with his powers got bored, they went on a killing spree.

For once, Tyson didn’t want to kill someone. He just wanted to slip into familiar patterns.

Abbas gently took away the last empty bottle, letting it join the others lined against the dirty wall. Including the ones the waitress had already cleared, there was enough to form an entire squadron. A squadron of empty beer bottles.

“I thought you didn’t drink,” Abbas whispered.

Tyson stared back at him, inhaling the younger man’s alcohol breath and trying not to think of his father. Abbas had darker eyes—so dark and glazed over, Tyson wondered how Abbas was still conscious. “Same for you.”

“I gave that up months ago.”

“Sobriety?”

“The wrong religion.”

“How do you know it was wrong? How do you know your new one is right?” Tyson cackled until they got kicked out and began staggering back to the train station. Their appointed train would arrive soon, or so the locals claimed. “How can we know this religion is right?”

“It is not a religion.”

“Why not? We have a god. We have gods. We have angels who look like magazine models,” he gestured toward Balta, “and angels who look like they crawled out of a corpse heap from the Middle Ages.” He flicked his hand at Muni, missing him entirely because of his messed-up depth perception. Maybe he’d fall off onto the tracks and end himself before properly meeting his would-be usurpers. Ha!

He keeled over and vomited onto the train tracks. Abbas caught him before he collapsed.

“How vile,” a high-pitched voice chirped. Besides Tyson and Abbas, only two other people waited for the train, both of them Asian teenagers with worse fashion sense than Abbas.

The boy spoke carefully, picking his words among the British clutter, though his accent wasn’t as strong. “Tyson Scott and Abbas Hassan, the reckless General and his foolish Soldier. A pleasure.” He curled his lip back, making it obvious that this encounter was as pleasant as a family reunion with cousins who beat you and relatives who looked down on you.

This brat wasn’t the only one who had done his research. “Good morning, Morning.” Tyson spat and grinned. “It’s morning where you’re from; isn’t that right, Mirai?”

…

10:29 PM

Mi-sun had made sure they’d be alone this evening. She had used her Red Arrows until the skin on her arm bubbled and burned. Her sleeve chafed against it, and when she rubbed it, blood dripped onto the sepia-toned tiles. She couldn’t even explain why she wanted them to be alone. Maybe deep down, she knew that she’d leave behind something ugly tonight. No beautiful god existed.

Venus was a lie.

“Good morning, Morning.” The White man drawled out his vowels like the Southerners that Mi-sun despised; too much ugliness infested bigoted, stubborn folks. And Tyson Scott represented the worst of them, because he was drunk.

When he turned toward her, she tried to keep her composure. The only thing worse than these people was the reactions they elicited. No need to waste time with people who wouldn’t change.

Whose thoughts are these? Mi-sun had never felt this way before. Sure, she ranked some people more highly than others, but not using such skewed values. The General was a beautiful man. And she pitied him. And despised him, though she’d be damned to explain why.

The train arrived. Morning hopped on first, followed by Tyson, who flopped onto a row of seats. Above them, the four angels dispersed down the tunnels. Abbas smiled at her and gestured for her to board first. His shadowed eyes looked done with the world. Good. Finally, someone she could feel a kinship with.

…

11:09 PM

Abbas dreamed of home.

Not his homeland, which he had no memory of beyond the wars and terrors he had helped inflict on both criminals and innocents.

Not his hometown, which his family had moved from and for good reason. He associated that wretched ghetto with his father insulting him and beating his mother and sisters.

In the end, he didn’t even find solace in the church his mother had joined. The people there treated him and his family kindly, but he noticed how they looked at his scabbed knuckles and her disheveled headscarf. And he caught the angry glint in a man’s eyes when his mother politely declined the offered food because she couldn’t quit halal cold turkey.

Abbas’s only home would ever be the army bunk across the hall from where he had tried to kill himself.

Abbas dreamed that he, Tyson, Balta, and Muni hung out like college roommates talking about frivolous things: bad cafeteria food, worse Netflix shows, even bleaker futures. He knew this was a dream because Tyson never wanted to hang out with him, Muni never wanted to talk, and Balta never wanted to talk normally. Still, he let himself live in the dream a little longer.

But the white-haired angel of death took even that away. Despite the crumpled lavender eyes that should have been incapable of sight, the wrinkled silvery skin that drooped from his crooked fingers, and the wispy white hair that resembled parasitic worms, Abbas recognized him.

“Have you come to collect me at last, Kanade?”

With a silent smile that sliced through his papery skin and revealed blood-stained fangs, Kanade held up a thin leather notebook. Abbas recognized his Arabic name but couldn’t understand the Japanese characters that followed. But he saw the timestamps and could guess.

At 8:59 p.m., he had nibbled at his last meal before tossing the rest to the pigeons.

At 9:44 p.m., he had broken a moral rule he grew up with and drank alcohol—not even anything worthwhile, but watery English sludge.

And at 10:31 p.m., he had ensured that he and Ty had gotten on the train safely.

There was only one thing left to do before midnight.

Since Abbas couldn’t read Japanese, he skimmed the two pages Kanade showed him, trying to find other names. He recognized Korean among the Japanese and guessed that must be Mi-sun; he had seen it in her eyes when they boarded the train. He couldn’t find Ty, but Kanade could have written his best friend’s fate on another page.

Not fearing death or damnation, Abbas snatched the notebook from the shinigami and flipped through. The 17-year-old had kept himself busy these past six weeks. He had written a whole essay for a man named Victor Whitlocke, and Abbas got the sinking realization that Kanade had set up Tomas Rodriguez, whose bad hacking gave him away to the military. And now he knew who V was.

Before he could find Ty’s name, the shinigami realm faded.

…

11:33 PM

Mirai had wandered around this train for an hour, never reaching an end. He counted 98 empty cars before returning to the one where Tyson and Abbas were sleeping. Mi-sun walked with him at first, only to get bored a few cars in and wander away. A few cars later, she would stroll in from the opposite direction.

Mirai guessed that the train formed a circle that should have comprised 100 empty train cars—one for each day a god candidate theoretically had, plus one for them to start at—but one car got reduced for each kill caused directly by a White Arrow or indirectly by a Red Arrow. Mi-sun had kept herself busy these past few months. When Abbas woke up, he thought the train car was locked, trapping them in a cage for angels and shinigami to mock.

On his third round of exploring the train, Mirai found Mi-sun hanging from the ceiling, having tied her jewelry and clothes into a noose.

…

11:54 PM

Exhausted from his hike, Mirai settled back in the train car with the foreigners. Abbas had been singing an Arabic lullaby while Tyson continued to sleep. Without warning, Abbas’s voice cracked, and the Soldier threw himself out the train window.

The shattered glass woke the General, who stared at the broken window in a daze. Over the wind from the tunnel, Mirai could hear a male angel laugh. But another angel was crying.

Nasse’s cheery voice said, “Stop pretending to cry for her, Revel. You’ve been at it for over twenty minutes. Be more like Balta and your old self and have fun! We won’t have anything like this for eons, and then it’ll be so vastly different. Humans would still be their silly human selves, though.”

Revel sniffed. “I… I had such… high hopes for Lee Mi-sun. I thought that shinigami couldn’t meddle with god candidates.”

A fourth angel’s low voice chilled Mirai. “You had that assumption because of the old god’s strategy. He didn’t try to fight with the other candidates or kill them. Despite not having any language between them, he tried to help them. When they inevitably died from natural causes, they showed him mercy and left him alone. The true strategy is not destruction but cooperation. To make the next candidacy easier, the old god created language. But he did not want to interfere, as the shinigami had not interfered with him, so when that root language sprang into many dialects and then such unique languages no one would believe they shared a root, and then those languages created ideologies and identities that birthed wars, he cried for that world and never touched it again.”

Nasse remarked, “He cried because He had been human once. But I’ve never seen an angel cry. It’s as unheard of as us stagnant angels getting promoted… Revel, you’re glowing.”

A soft light bathed the train.

…

11:59 PM

The angels had finally fallen into silence. Tyson and Mirai sat across from each other, waiting for the end. Mirai kept looking at his phone.

Tyson got tired of waiting, unfurled his wings, and lunged at Mirai, who flew away at the last second. Mirai flew through the rest of the train, but Tyson found himself stuck in this damned train car with the broken window. A split second before midnight, Mirai re-emerged from the other end of the train car and flew at Tyson, who stood his ground.