Chapter Text
- Prologue -
To begin with, he had just been another job. Another soul. Another mission and another death. But with each day that passed, it became harder and harder for him to tear his gaze away. Each day, he grew more and more attached to the human whom he was merely supposed to keep an eye on from a distance. A very far distance.
The infatuation could not even be explained by the human being unique or special. He was not a king. Not a president, not a captain of a military legion. He was no person of importance, not a person of influence, and he never would be. Seemingly, only his looks were a trait of his which made him stand out of the crowd. That massive crowd.
The human was stunning. With strong features and expressive brown eyes. He seemed perfectly assembled, all parts of his body coming together brilliantly, after a long, hard period of adolescence where nothing had seemed to fit. How he carried himself now, made it clear to everyone that he knew. He knew he was beautiful, knew how women, and men, threw long gazes after him.
But aside from being handsome, the human was also charming and talented. An aspiring actor on his way to the top, soaring at an immense speed at the young age of 27.
There was nothing Matsumoto Jun could not do.
With a brighter future than most, he seemed to have his whole life laid out for him, full of glory and wealth and women.
Only, he did not.
It was all coming to an end far too soon, too sudden. His soul ripped violently away and stolen from his body.
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“I want to reconcile the violence in your heart
I want to recognize your beauty’s not just a mask
I want to exorcise the demons from your past
I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart.”
As the stealer of life, the thief of souls, the harbinger of darkness, it was no easy job being Death.
The angel with black wings and empty eyes. The coming of the end. But Sakurai had been in the position long enough to understand the importance of the job. As gruesome as it might seem, it was a very crucial position: In his palm, he was holding the whole world in balance.
Deciding who lived. And who died.
It was not without reason that he was the one occupying this position. For hundreds of years, he had reaped lives without fail, without mistakes. And even his fellow angels had begun to fear his lack of emotions. But Death himself knew exactly what he was doing. If he ever were to question a death, if he were to hesitate, he would no longer be fit for the task. A single mistake would have terrible consequences. And Sakurai would not let such a thing happen. With powers like his, one had to either enjoy the sight of life leaving a human’s eyes, like watching their horrified expressions as death enveloped them, or one would have to be indifferent. Sakurai was the latter. He was a perfectionist, uptight and wise. And nothing could shake the ground he was walking.
Many years later, he would wonder what had gone wrong. Maybe he had, after all, been too old for the job, or too young. Maybe he had finally lost his touch and allowed too much warmth to seep into his stone cold heart. Too many deaths had finally managed to cause a crack. Maybe he had had scars way too deep after all. Scars that a human finally managed to poke and pick open.
Or maybe he had been too reckless to accept the position after all, - when he died at the age of 29 with a shining future ahead of himself, when he had thought he was going somewhere for real, when his family had had so much faith in him to bring honour back to the family. He had been the whole family’s future.
And he died. Just like that.
Instead of panicking and crying and hating and refusing the darkness, Sakurai Sho had embraced his fate, telling himself that maybe it would be better this way. And he had locked his emotions away. The previous Angel of Death had been quiet. And impressed. So Sakurai was then given the opportunity to make a name for himself after all as his first job came to be the lives of his own family, when they crumbled before his empty shell, with no hope left in their eyes. He had seen them one last time before their departure, and they had seen him. Only they had not recognized the creature. The creature with huge wings and blinding eyes, making them cover in fear before his threatening frame.
And Sakurai had realized once and for all that emotions did not matter. Because only one was truly real: Fear. And Death certainly did not need to possess something as useless as that.
So maybe he had been mistaken. By the end of it all, he would still wonder if he had been ignorant after all. If he had been walking aimlessly for all those years. On a path in which blindness had been necessary.