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The golden light of Heaven always felt a little too sterile, so Kou frequently slipped past the pearly gates to walk the mortal realm. That was how he found Mitsuba.
Mitsuba was sitting on a concrete curb, aggressively pampering a stray tortoiseshell cat. "You're so lucky," Mitsuba sighed, his voice carrying a soft, bitter edge. "No rent, no midterms, and people just give you food. I wish I had someone to look after me like that. Or, you know... just a lover. Is a boyfriend too much to ask for, universe?"
Amused, Kou hovered invisibly nearby. As an angel, it was easy to peek into a mortal’s timeline. Kou reached out, parting the threads of Mitsuba’s future to see who this pink-haired boy would end up with.
The vision hit him like ice water.
There was no lover. There was only an empty apartment, decades passing in silence, and Mitsuba dying completely alone.
A pang of fierce, sudden desperation struck Kou’s chest. It felt fundamentally wrong for someone so vibrant to have such a cold fate. I'll change it, Kou decided right then. I’ll find him someone.
Kou began to subtly alter reality from above:
He conjured a sudden gust of wind to blow a handsome classmate’s papers directly into Mitsuba’s path, He manipulated a coffee shop ordering glitch, forcing a kind stranger to share a table with Mitsuba, He planted subtle, intrusive thoughts of romance into the minds of potential suitors, pushing them toward the pink-haired boy.
From his celestial perch, Kou watched his invisible strings work. Mitsuba finally found a lover. Kou looked down, expecting to feel a sense of holy fulfillment.
Instead, a dark, suffocating knot twisted in his chest. Watching Mitsuba hold hands, laugh, and smile brightly at someone else made Kou's divine blood run hot with jealousy. I engineered that happiness, Kou realized with a wave of toxic possessiveness. I saved him. Why does someone else get to hold him?
Driven by a sudden, frantic desperation, Kou used his powers to strike from the shadows one last time.
From above, he severed the threads between Mitsuba and his partner, making the lover forget Mitsuba entirely. Then, Kou focused his divine light directly onto Mitsuba’s mind. He systematically rewrote the boy's history. Every date, every tender touch, and every memory of the mortal lover was erased and replaced with Kou’s own face and voice.
With the manipulation complete, Kou finally descended to Earth, stepping into a physical form to claim his prize.
He found Mitsuba sitting on his couch, crying from some strange, phantom heartbreak he couldn't explain. But the moment Kou walked through the door and took Mitsuba's cold hands, the rewritten memories snapped into place.
Mitsuba’s eyes cleared, and a breathless smile bloomed on his face. "Kou... there you are. I thought you left me." He threw his arms around Kou’s neck.
As Kou held him tight, a sharp, searing agony erupted in his back. For the sin of divine jealousy and breaking cosmic law, Kou’s pristine, snow-white wings began to wither. From the tips inward, the feathers turned heavy, dark, and corrupted as charcoal. He was falling from grace, but looking at the boy in his arms, Kou realized he didn't care about Heaven at all.