Afterword

Time.

Such a strange concept.

Not the principal of time moving forwards, backwards or standing still.

No - it’s strange how human beings treat time.

From birth, a human has a fixed amount of time they can be alive.

This can then be cut short or ‘extended’ through various factors, yet they all treat it so differently.

Some treat it as a currency.

Others act as if it is infinite.

All sell it to others in exchange for compensation.

It’s a waste of time.

I could save time by doing this.

Stop wasting my time.

All of that time and effort, and what do you get out of it?

How do we kill time?

It intrigues me, truthfully, how humans perceive time, and how fundamentally different it is to us.

We don’t see time because we don’t have lives.

If there is no end, then time cannot be seen.

It's why human beings created the concepts of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and years.

Without them, humanity wouldn’t know how much time they have to spend in their lives.

Without them, time could not exist to them.

Instead, all that would remain is an existence that just stops.

However, even that process humans found a more eloquent way of putting it.

Ceased to be.

The indifference on my face turned into a slight smile.

Human beings often reflect back on their lives as they grow older, and they do it more and more the closer they are to their time limit.

Why’d I do that?

Why didn’t I do this?

Just thinking about the amount of time I wasted depresses me.

If I had a chance to go back in time, I’d do this.

If I got to do my life over, or tell my younger self to do something, I’d do this.

Occasionally, the Angel reaches out to a troubled few.

No more than every few hundred years, I believe humans call it.

She only pities those she deems tragic, something I can’t understand.

Fundamentally speaking, tragedy cannot exist without happiness and vice versa.

Aren’t we, the Angel and the Devil, the perfect encapsulation of that?

Without me, your actions cannot be deemed noble.

Without you, I cannot be deemed vile.

Much in that sense, time can only be precious once you understand its existence and value.

That is why it has never held any to me.

We exist - we do not cease.

What value could time possibly hold for us?

There has only ever been one soul that grabbed my attention in the world of humans for more than a passing moment.

Akane Yuki.

She had been chosen to get a redo in life.

She had been granted the highest blessing from the Angel.

Yet - she wasted it.

It was a life just as bad, if not worse, than her first.

How?

Surely, I thought, if you knew how valuable this chance was to reclaim and redo that lost time, surely you would never waste it.

Yet.

“I gave you another chance. Few others in this world are ever granted that privilege and you wasted it.”

When I saw the look on Akane’s face, I felt something I’d never felt before.

Shivers.

Anticipation.

Excitement.

Joy!

There was, in this world, one human being who knew the true value of time more than anyone else!

She knew how precious it was, how easy it was to lose or waste it, yet she still failed in her second life.

Imagine - what sort of life would she live if she had another go?

What if, this time, she had a noose tightening around her neck with every passing day?

What if she had a shorter time limit than the rest of her peers?

Would she be able to treasure it as it deserved to be?

I had to know.

So, I made her a deal.

She accepted without skipping a beat.

It was the sweetest, cruellest temptation I had offered her, and, for once, I would pay attention to how this human spent her scarce, precious time.

In the beginning, she struggled.

The chains from her past lives bound her, confined her, dragged her into the depths of despair at the drop of a hat.

And yet.

She smiled.

In the arms of the women, she loved.

After bidding her adopted children a good night.

After many tearful goodbyes to her friends.

After knowing that, no matter how many years pass, her friends and family will forever mourn her and wish that she had been with them.

I don’t remember how long ago that was, but.

I smiled.

I do know when it ended, and that no one lived a happier, and longer, life than you, Akane Yuki.