Redefine a God

All gods are pretty much the same.

Well, not completely; they rule over separate things, but when you boil it down, they all have the same abilities and capabilities. The only difference is their title.

I was fourteen years old when I got into a bad accident and ended up as what’s known as a ‘lost soul.’ Basically, my time to die wasn’t up yet and I was therefore stuck between life and death. I was still able to interact with the mortal world, but normal people didn’t notice me unless I purposely drew attention to myself. More importantly, however, was the fact that I was able to see all the other spirits.

The first god I ever met was neither here nor there. As a matter of fact, I didn’t realize that he was one until he pointed it out. And even after he did, I didn’t fully believe him. How could I? I had expected something grand: someone who was dressed richly, someone who oozed with power, and someone who looked at me with sympathetic eyes and an outstretched hand. Isn’t that what we all were told gods were like? The one I met was none of that. He had dark hair, wore a beat-up red hoodie with oddly uneven sleeves–the right one was clearly stretched out longer than the left one–and a pair of tattered jeans. To me, he looked like an average, perhaps less fortunate, student. But even worse, he didn’t seem particularly interested in me.

“Another lost soul, huh? What’s your name?”

“Akio,” I responded warily.

“Akio,” he repeated, “Nice to meet you! Wanna know something cool? I’m a god!”

I almost laughed at that, but upon seeing his offended expression, I quickly covered it up with a cough.

“Oh yeah? What are you the god of?” I inquired, mainly just for the fun of it. I expected something ridiculous, but nothing compared to the answer I received.

“I’m the one and only God of Air Conditioning!” he announced proudly.

This time, I really couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Looking back at it, that was the first time I laughed in the last three or so days.

“That’s so dumb!” I wheezed, “Can you really be considered a god?”

He stared at me with an affronted look, “Yes? Yes, I’m a hundred percent god!”

When he noticed that my skepticism was still there, he let out a huff and suddenly, a bright flash of white covered my vision. I quickly opened my mouth to scream, protest, or anything, really, because, well, I didn’t want to die a second time. However, it ended nearly as fast as it started and I found myself standing on a sidewalk in a completely different location. It looked to be a neighborhood or some sort of residential area.

“See?”

I turned around and spotted the supposed “God of Air Conditioning” standing in front of me.

“I can even teleport! That’s like a god-only thing, by the way,” he smirked.

“Sure,” I muttered, still reeling from what just happened, “Don’t you have a shrine then?”

He nodded triumphantly, “Yup! I'm so glad you asked! It’s rightttt there!” he pointed behind me.

Alright. So he does have a shrine… Not bad. I turned around, and suddenly my previous thoughts got wiped from my mind as my eyes landed on a shabby, wooden shack with a bucket outside, a few sticks of old incense, and a picture of some god that was most definitely not the one hovering next to me. That’s… really disappointing.

He gestured to the small building, “What do you think?”

“I… I think I should leave,” I mumbled. I should probably locate an actual god.

“Wait!” he called out frantically, “I know how you can return to being human! If you… y’know, want to.”

I paused. Now that’s what I want to hear.

“You do?” I reverted my focus back to the dark-haired deity.

“Yeah,” he responded, “It’s really simple; all you need is money.”

I blinked, “What?”

He nodded his head hard, “Yeah, just pay the Goddess of Returns enough money and she’ll send you right back! Buttttt, she’s out of town right now,” he grimaced, “So you’ll have to wait until she gets back. You have about two months before becoming a spirit permanently, anyway, which is more than enough time.”

“Well,” I frowned, this whole thing sounds kinda stupid, “I don’t have any money. Won’t it be expensive anyway?”

“And that’s why you have me!”

I look pointedly at his run-down home, “Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

The god scoffed, “I’ll have you know that she and I are on good terms, so I’m sure I’ll get some sort of discount!”

“Alright then,” I responded, still a bit unconvinced.

Despite my reluctance, I agreed to check out his so-called shrine; after all, it’s not everyday that one gets to visit the inside of a deity’s house.

The building’s interior wasn’t far off from how I imagined it. It was dusty in certain places, lacked any real design, and was liveable at best. To his credit, however, the air conditioning worked fantastically.

“So,” I say, “Don’t gods have, like, names or something? I don’t want to address you as the God of Air Conditioning, y’know? It’s a mouthful.”

He paused, “I mean, yeah, we do have our names, but mine kinda got, uh, taken away.” After seeing the unimpressed look on my face, he quickly spoke up again, “You can call me Kira, I guess,” he offered, turning away.

So for the next few weeks, I spent my time at Kira’s shrine. It worked out surprisingly well–most of our time was spent inside the one-room house while amiably chatting–and I ended up learning quite a lot about gods. For example, despite the fact that food wasn’t a necessity, they still needed money if they wanted to upgrade their shrine (which Kira was desperate to do) and because “the Goddess of Taxes is unusually cruel.” Following that, the only way to make money was through donations. However, the money isn’t theirs–they can’t even touch it–until they complete the donor’s wish.

Some aspects of the “god life” were also more industrialized than I had expected. One point being that when someone makes a wish, the request would get printed on a slip of paper, which he would pin onto his “Bulletin Board of Success” when he granted it. I noticed that a few were thrown away into the trash can but didn’t make any note of it, assuming that they were missions he didn’t take up.

Sometimes, I would be curious about what life was like for the other deity’s.

“The big ones make a lot more money than I do,” Kira explained, “because they have so many donations and they’re usually large sums of money.”

“Do they have people working for them, then? Since they’re like, so important.”

He nodded, “Yeah, they got everything. As a matter of fact, the God of Knowledge, for example, only needs to run around ten missions per day. Obviously, he chooses the ones that pay the most,” he scoffed.

Only ten? I don’t pay much attention to how many runs Kira does daily, but I was sure it was higher than ten. He’d grant every wish we received. If it were five, then he’d complete five. If it were seventeen, then he’d complete seventeen. And if it were New Years and he received thirty commissions, I’d bet everything that he would accomplish them all.

So when Kira wasn’t lounging around in his shrine, he’d be away on a mission to bring someone’s prayer to life. Meanwhile, I’d watch over his bucket of offerings from outside because despite the risk of the money getting stolen, he insisted that there must be cash inside of it to sell his authenticity. For a bit, that was how we functioned. Shockingly enough, Kira wasn't terrible company and I was content with how things went.

Sometimes, though, when I see how eagerly he runs off on a mission to fulfill a wish, I can’t help but feel envious of the person who would get their prayer answered. If I had met Kira when I was still human, then maybe my life would’ve been different. If all I had to do was offer a measly five yen to some overly desperate god and one of my problems would be magically solved, then surely, I wouldn’t end up dead at fourteen.

By the end of the fourth week of living with Kira, I was getting antsy about returning to the real world. Still, the Goddess of Return had not arrived.

On Saturday, a girl came by, made a wish, and dropped a twenty yen bill. Curious about what she asked for, I waited with Kira for the machine to finish printing, gazing over his shoulder when the piece of paper slipped out. Once he read it, I was immediately shoved away defensively, but it was too late–I had already caught a glimpse of the words.

I wish that xxx would die.

I froze, my mouth dried up and my mind continuously replayed the message. Kira, on the other hand, hardly reacted besides stiffening up when he realized that I saw the girl’s wish. His back was turned to me, but I could tell that he was clutching the slip tightly. Like he wasn’t going to let go.

“Hey…” I began slowly, “You’re not going to do that, are you?”

A thick silence fell over us.

“It’s just twenty yen,” I tried, “You can make that up easily. It’s not worth it, right?”

Finally, he faced me and spoke, “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right,” he responded, crushing the paper into a small ball and tossing it into the trash can. Still, he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

Nevertheless, I could see the flash of guilt that crossed his face, and I automatically knew that it wasn’t the first time someone had requested such a thing, nor would it be the last. And more importantly, Kira had acted upon it in the past, successfully granting their desire. Unsure about how to react, I glanced at the wastebin, where he had thrown the paper away.

Ah, I realized, those other slips in the trash weren’t for missions he didn’t accept. It’s not like he would deny them anyway… They were the ones he wasn’t proud of completing.

The rest of the day was spent in deafening silence. The next was back to normal, if not a bit forced, but as if nothing happened. And on the third, I noticed that the twenty was missing from the bucket. Only the twenty. The rest were still there, but the twenty was gone.

“Kira, did you grant her wish?” My voice was deathly calm.

He froze like a deer in headlights, “What?”

“The money from that girl is gone, and only hers is gone. Did you grant her wish?”

“I–uh–”

“That’s a yes,” I seethed, “You killed someone for twenty yen? I know that you’re a god, so maybe you don’t understand, but doesn’t human life mean anything to you?” What if my death too, was the result of someone’s desire?

For a moment, he didn’t speak.

“Should it?” he quietly asked. That’s it. “They just cause me more trouble than good and–”

“They’re the reason why you even make money!” I snapped.

“...Well, of course I don’t hate the ones who bother donating to me, but… that’s not a lot. And because of that, I’ll be biased towards the ones who do, so why wouldn’t I make them happy?”

“Is that it?” Steam was practically escaping my ears, “So you’re saying that because of your ego and greed, you’ll do anything to get some money and attention? That’s honestly pathetic.” I spat out.

Again, he remained quiet.

“You know, just because I’m immortal doesn’t mean that I live forever.”

Is he seriously trying to change the topic right now? But before I could get a word in, Kira continued talking.

“Our existence is actually based entirely on you humans,” he admitted bitterly, “I bet you didn’t know that, did you? Us gods who aren’t as famous or popular can’t make it far. And the ones that get forgotten disappear forever. I don’t have a lot of followers–you’re aware I don’t–because who in their right mind is going to worship a god of air conditioning?”

“The only way for me to gain more attention and remembrance is with a new and alluring shrine–something that catches people’s attention. It doesn’t matter who’s inside the shrine–the only thing that matters is how it looks because that’s how you draw people in. And how do you think I’ll get the upgrade? I need money. It costs a million yen and I’m so close–ridiculously close–but I don’t have forever.”
Conflicting emotions swirled around in me–Kira’s life appeared to be significantly more difficult than I had initially thought–but in the end, that doesn’t justify everything.

“Why?” I croaked out.

He blinked, “Why?” he repeated, “Because I’m disappearing too, Akio.”

He pulled up the right sleeve of his hoodie, the stretched out one, revealing a ghostly arm. A pang of guilt hit me like a truck as I stared at the near-translucent limb, an undeniable sign that he was vanishing.

“This isn’t even the first thing I lost, actually,” he said softly, “Remember when we first met and I told you that my name got taken away? Yeah, well, now you know why.”

Oh.

“Granting wishes doesn’t get you far in popularity, believe it or not. Maybe a girl prayed to me and got a hundred on her exam like she wanted. But is she going to think of me? The God of Air Conditioning? Absolutely not. She’ll think about the God of Knowledge that she visited three days ago or perhaps the God of Success she visited last week. So I’m telling you this now, Akio. I don’t want a shrine just because it looks fancy or cool. I don’t want money to show off how superior I am. I need it because I want to live.”

“A title I didn’t choose and people that I don’t know ultimately screwed me over.”

For who knows how many times this week, dead silence once again filled the room and Kira turned away, mutely walking to the door.

“I didn’t kill the girl’s ex-friend, by the way. I made her forget about their past and connections. We don’t have to always grant the exact wish, so as long as they’re content with the outcome deep down, then it counts,” he concluded. Then, he left.

Kira was gone for several hours. It wasn’t unreasonable to me, really–after all, he had just spilled some of his deepest secrets to a fourteen-year-old. I needed some time to reflect too. Once he returned, I apologized for what I said. It was awkward, but I meant it and he must’ve known, for he accepted it with an honest smile.

We didn’t go back to normal after that, but it was better than normal.

***

Third POV:

Akio was a good kid. Kira had no doubts about this–in many ways, he was better than the god himself. Sometimes, he had to remind himself that Akio was only fourteen and had a bright life ahead of him. As a result, he was adamant on sending the boy back home.

In the seventh week, there was news that the Goddess of Returns was back. Thus, he immediately met up with her in a nearby restaurant.

“What do you want?”

Kira sighed–the woman was as straightforward as ever, leaving no room for chit-chat and greetings. Normally, he’d pester her about it, but he was there for important matters, so he figured that he’d let it slide.

“Look, I need you to send someone back.”

“No.” The response was given quite literally after he had finished pronouncing the last consonants.

“Why not?” he prodded.

She glared at him, “You know why.”

Kira shook his head, “No I don’t. Promise. C’mon, please? I know the kid misses his family and I don’t want to disappoint him, y’know?” He’d seen Akio stare longingly out of the window at the passing families and friends more than enough times to confidently state that.

The goddess’s face softened, “A kid?”

“Yeah,” he quietly affirmed, “It’s just that… I don’t want to take away his childhood, and I know he’ll have a good future so…”

The other laughed, “Honestly, it’s unlike you to be so concerned about someone else. Good for you. But aren’t you about to hit a million yen?”

Upon hearing that, Kira’s heart dropped, immediately knowing what was about to come next.

“It’s expensive to send someone back,” she smiled ruefully.

“You’ll give me a discount, though, right?” He could tell that desperation was starting to seep into his words.

A sigh escaped the woman’s lips, “Yeah. You know I will, but it’s still going to be around seven-hundred fifty thousand. Can you handle that? I don’t know everything about you, but there’s absolutely no way your condition isn’t getting worse.”

“...”

“Can it go any lower?”

“Lady of taxes is getting on me. I already gave you a fifty-percent discount–I can’t go any lower. I’m sorry, I really am. I want to help the kid, and I know you do too, but this is the best I got. Think about it carefully. Please. And if you do come to a decision, you know where to find me.”

With that, she got up and left, leaving Kira by himself in the restaurant.

He stared blankly at the empty chair in front of him, his mind swirling between the two options. Do I send him back then? He seems to be content here, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind living in a nicer place hopefully with more money. It’s an idea that could work out for both of us, right? … Right? Somewhere, he knew that even if it were true Akio didn’t mind being with him, deep down, he was forcing his justification. I’m not wrong though, am I?

But I told him I could bring him back; I can’t break my word.

Would he be mad if I did? He misses his old life. I know he does. I can’t cheat him out of his childhood–there are so many things he won’t get to experience with just me. I want him to grow up, but with that price? That’s a gamble, and there’s a very, very good chance that I’ll lose.

Can I throw everything away like that and start from nearly the beginning? Knowing that there’s a good chance that’s the last thing I’ll do?

But can I bring myself to potentially ruin a boy’s–Akio’s–life?

Kira left only when the restaurant closed for the night, indecisiveness eating him up. He walked mindlessly for a while. Why is it so hard to choose between the two opportunities that I’ve waited for? Because I won’t be able to retrieve the one that I leave behind? And at some point during the night, he ended up standing in front of his home.

Three days passed and yet he remained lost between the two choices. At some point, he simplified his dilemma to: my life or Akio’s. It didn’t make anything easier, and every time he thought he was set on one of them, he couldn’t help but switch to the other side, only to find the arguments he used to convince himself invalid.

On the final day of the two month period, Kira found himself bringing Akio to the Goddess of Returns. It was the last chance the kid had, after all, and the idea that he wouldn’t have a say in his own future sat wrong with the deity. And maybe it’d be for the best to let him decide on his own because Kira wasn’t stupid–if he made the kid permanently unhappy, the weight of the guilt would be far too heavy of a burden. He also didn’t want to be the one making the decision.

He snapped out of his thoughts when the woman entered the room.

“I see you’ve come to a conclusion,” she said, glancing at Kira before locating Akio, “What’s your name?”

“Akio,” he stated.

“Akio, I’m the Goddess of Returns, and if you want to return to the real world,” the woman offered, “I can bring you back.”

There was a slight pause before he responded warily, “How much does it cost?”

Kira immediately jumped in, “Don’t worry about it! I can afford it and I told you that I’d handle it, didn’t I?” It was the least he could do.

“Well,” the student muttered, “I can’t say that I trusted you then, but I guess I can now.”

Now? The god took back every kind thing he said about the kid.

“Are you sure, though, Kira? I don’t mind staying…” he trailed off.

The former nodded, “It’s alright, I told you already,” he reassured, “ Just go with what you want; that’s the whole reason why I brought you here.”

“Okay, then, uh, one last thing? If I do return to being human, will I still remember you?”

Kira took back his previous claim about taking everything back.

The goddess stepped in, “Yes, you’ll remember him because you’ve been a spirit. So do you have your mind made up?”

The few seconds of silence that passed felt eternity.

“Okay, I…” he nervously began, inhaling a deep breath, “I want to go home.”

A small smile spread across Kira’s face.

“Good. Then I hope we meet again.”

***

First POV:

Shortly after reawakening as a human again, my life reverted back to what it was before I died. I still went to school, hung out with friends, and spent time with my family. The only real difference was that I walked to school using a different path–one with a concerningly ratty shack. Every day or so, I’d drop a bit of money in the bucket followed by a remark of “look after yourself” because, well, the god that runs the shrine is an idiot. I could tell that he took the money because the bucket would be emptied everyday. A couple yen wasn’t going to change much, though, and definitely not make up for the amount he spent on bringing me back.

Honestly, all I want is to bring more awareness to Kira, the God of Air Conditioning.