Track 1. War of Hearts - Ruelle

The lone fluorescent light shudders for nth time that night.

In the heart of Seoul, South Korea, a woman curls in on herself inside a one-bedroom apartment, just between the border of Mapo-gu and Yongsan-gu. The curtains are drawn tight, the four-walled room is blanketed by the inky darkness. There's no audible sounds except for the harsh breathing pouring from her lips and the occasional creak of the wooden floor.

When the curtains are disturbed by a small breeze, an object catches the street light from the outside, and in the woman's hand, a butcher knife glints threateningly.

Lalisa takes a deep breath. Two mouthfuls, three. Her limbs feel weak, her knees howl in pain as she remains kneeling on her apartment floor. A sigh leaves her mouth as she looks at the trail of blood that's splattered all over the room. On the couch, atop the coffee table, in the cabinets. But it doesn't matter though, there are things more important than the gore everywhere.

Because in her right hand lies what may be the answer to her freedom and behind her back, a pair of pristine white wings unfold, the weight of them a sole reminder of what she is, what she was, and what she may all be.

Three more breaths. Four, for good measure.

With a swift flick of her hand, she aims for the base part of her wings, and cuts them off.

The florescent light shakes with the force of it.

When she looks back to check on them, a disappointed huff is all she could muster. What was supposed to be a clean cut remains useless; the wings were still there, standing proud and tall and big in the midst of the living room. A few feathers had fallen into the ground, droplets of blood falling from the knife, yet they were unharmed, healing as quickly as they were injured. They continue to glow, all in their glory as they ripple, causing a small breeze that allows the curtains to part again and the moonlight to shine in on them.

At the sight of the sky, Lalisa recoils and hurries to pull them together again. She thinks that if she looks too long, her brothers and sisters might see her and she'll be brought back to the Silver City to be punished by the Almighty for betrayal.

She doesn't want that to happen.

And so with much regret, she pulls her wings in again, and decides to finish for the night.

There's still time. That, she knows.

The bowl of kimchi stares back at her mockingly.

Lisa grits her teeth, hands twitching as she moves the apparently edible concoction around the small side dish placed right in front of her. The bowl of jjajangmyeon noodles lay askew, empty and almost nearing the edge of the table as the angel takes it upon herself to try the side dishes after consuming the well-made meal. The japchae was good, she notes, as well as the pickled radish, but she has never seen kimchi in her entire celestial existence.

"It's...it's red," she points out in a soft voice. The kimchi looks unfamiliar, almost threatening with its bright crimson color. Lalisa didn't recall having this in the Silver City, where food aren't necessities as all the occupants of Heaven need not to eat. It strikes her as odd. Apparently, the mortals use this to cleanse their palate after eating greasy food--whatever that means.

It seems like humans are a different kind.

A sigh. "Of course it's red!" A little girl grumbles from beside her. When Lisa entered the small restaurant half an hour ago, the child immediately clung onto her that she had no choice but to indulge. It's been a few millennia since she's had face-to-face contact with humans, anyway. "It's spicy, too! There's pepper paste in that, you know?"

Lalisa, having not tasted a single spicy dish and has never tried pepper paste in her life, blinks confusedly.

"Spicy?" She repeats, looking back and forth the girl's face and the kimchi. "Does it hurt?"

The little girl shrugs. "A bit, but you get used to it."

"Humans," she mutters under her breath, playing with the small golden bracelet around her wrist. "You always like to punish yourselves, don't you?"

"Excuse me!" The child scoffs. Scoffs. If this child were in the Silver City, Archangel Saraqael would chastise her for being rude to her elders. "Eating kimchi is not a punishment, for your information."

Lisa doesn't quite know if she's genuinely mad or not, so she scoops a bit of kimchi with her chopsticks and puts it in her mouth.

Huh. It tastes...unexplainable. Guaranteed, Lisa has not eaten any human food until she left Heaven, so she doesn't quite understand the taste that's bursting in her mouth right now. The kimchi definitely burns a bit--that's probably what spicy meant, but then it becomes sour, and when she swallows it, a residue of saltiness remains on her tongue.

As someone who just tasted human food for the first time, she's stunned.

"So?" The child demands out of the blue, placing her head on top of her palms. "How is it?"

Surprisingly, she doesn't hate it. Lalisa is still chewing when she says, "It's nice." If she were to be honest, she could eat a hundred jars of this and probably a hundred more, and the fact that it's possible due to her celestial metabolism makes her consider it. Technically, her kind doesn't need food, but that doesn't mean she wouldn't not eat kimchi. It's just too good.

The little girl seems pleased by her answer that she leans back and smiles. "Good, because my mom made that. If you don't like it, you're out."

Again, she isn't certain if this is a joke, but she takes a moment to stop stuffing her mouth with kimchi and faces the child. "Is it possible to take home a jar of this, please?"

A pair of doe eyes blink back at her. The child looks at the empty kimchi side dish, and then at her, and then the dish. "W-what? What do you mean by jar?"

Lisa wipes the running kimchi juice from her chin and spreads her arms wide to elaborate. "It's a container made of clay and it's this big. We use this to store red wine in the Silver City and it's really good in preserving the flavor," she explains in earnest, not seeing the confused look the child gives her. At the mention of the city, she sighs, sentimental. "Archangel Gabriel only brings that jar out during feasts though, like when we celebrate the welcoming of a new batch of souls from the mortal realm. It's really good."

There's silence, then.

"Um," the child says after a while, awkward. "Are you, like, drunk, miss?"

"Why would I be?" She asks innocently. Surely, humans are aware of the existence of celestial beings, yes? Lalisa is certain they are, if the houses of worship and statues that they've built were any indication. She thinks she even saw a statue of Archangel Michael the other day.

The child stares at her for a few seconds before shaking her head. "Anyway, we don't sell those in jars. However!" She straightens and points at the small shop just right across the restaurant. "An ahjumma sells fermented kimchi at that place right there. All you have to do is to ask for it and she'll give it to you."

Lisa squints at the quaint shop. "For free?"

"No, silly!" The girl giggles and Lisa smiles at the sound. "You have to pay for it."

"Oh, yeah." She vaguely remembers the wad of cash that she's had when she came here. From her early observation, humans use these paper things as a medium to trade items. It's all gone at this point, but she thinks she has a few somewhere in her pockets. Shaking her head, she takes her eyes away from the shop and faces the girl. "I'm sorry, I forgot to ask, but what is your name?"

"I'm Sieun!"

"Sieun, wow." The name is pretty. It suits her. "Well, Sieun, what do you want?"

Sieun stares at her as Lisa scoots closer. "Me? Um..." The girl looks around and purses her lips in thought. "Hm. I want a lot of things. But first I want my dad to get better!"

"Your dad? What happened to him?"

"Well, he's really sick, and my mom's trying to gather as much money as she can to pay for his stay in the hospital," she explains simply, and yet it didn't stop the hurt that crawls up to Lisa's heart. "Mom says he'll be okay, but whenever I visit he always has more and more wires connected to his body. He's bald, too."

"Oh, you poor thing," she whispers. She knows what hospitals were; it's always the place to be whenever she picks up dead souls to lead them to their Judgement. The atmosphere is always heavy in those kinds of setting, the stench of death just lingering in the air. With a soft voice, she says, "Come here. Place your hand in mine."

Sieun frowns, looking at her open palm but does as asked. "Huh? What for?"

The angel beams at her and holds Sieun's small hand in hers gently. She ignores her question in favor of her own mission, closing her eyes in the process. The golden band in her hand glows as she mutters words in her Angelic tongue. She faintly feels a small burst of warmth in her stomach, lasting for a couple of moments, and as soon as she feels it leave, she opens her eyes again. "There you go."

"What was that?" Sieun asks, rubbing her hands together.

Lisa nears her face and beckons her to come closer. "A blessing," she whispers, giggly, and pulls away to stand up. "Okay, now I'm off. I'll see you soon, Sieun-ah!"

"Um..." the child still looks unsure, but waves goodbye anyways. "Okay, miss! Bye!"

Acquiring kimchi was... to put it simply, a mess. She was not aware that there were various types of kimchi, some even varying in color, that her mind panicked right in the middle of the store Sieun pointed her to. The angel found herself stuck in the middle of what seemed to be a maze of kimchi jars, all towering and intimidating that she thought she got crossed eyed at one point.

("Um, I'm looking for the red one?" Lalisa repeated as the old woman's eyes narrowed towards her own. She'd come all the way from the back of the store, abandoning the cash register in favor of helping her find what she's specifically looking for.

"Be specific, girl," the woman snapped. "What do you want? Cabbage? Radish? Cucumber? Do you want fresh kimchi, white kimchi, fermented kimchi?"

Lalisa has never been confused in her life. "Uh," she stammered. "What would you recommend?"

"I recommend choosing one and finally paying for it so I can take a break."

She bristled. Have humans lost the basic respect? "I th--"

"But fermented cabbage kimchi is the most common."

Long story short, she bought the cabbage one anyway, making sure to leave a little blessing by the store's door in the form of a prayer.)

The Seoul wind is much colder this time around. The last time Lalisa dropped by the city was half a year ago, when she picked up a dead soul to deliver to the Judgement. It had been summer back then--hot winds, glaring sun, sweaty bodies--and yet now as she loiters in a Myeongdeong alley, her teeth chatters from the slight breeze of the late September wind.

Her hand tightens around the bag of kimchi she's holding, eyes eagerly tracing the graffiti walls and chalked floor. Humans really have bursting imaginations, she observes, looking over a painting of a man's private area with the words Suck My Dick written next to it. The following walls showed a bunch of doodled words, some even threatening messages, that she was too caught up in staring at them that she didn't notice she's already entered a shady area of the alley.

It isn't until there's hand holding her neck that she realizes something is wrong.

Lisa almost drops the kimchi in surprise. "Wh-- what--"

"Don't move," a gruff, heady voice sounds right next to her ear. Lisa attempts to turn her head to do just that, but the man tugs her hair back and forces her to stay still. "I said don't move."

"I'm not moving--"

"Give me all of your cash right now or I'll kill you right here," he says in a dark tone. "Hurry!"

At the odd request, Lisa manages to untangle herself from his hold and backs away from him quickly. "What did you just say?"

The man looks surprised but he regains his shock in half a second. It's a bit dark now, she notices, just between the afternoon sky and the sunset. "Your cash. Put it in my palm, now."

She's always been a curious little thing, so she can't help it when she asks: "Why?"

"What do you mean why?"

"What do you need it for?"

His nostrils visibly flared. Not even a second later, he's pulling out something silver from his coat pocket, the metal nearly indiscernible until he cocks it and points it straight towards her forehead.

Oh.

It's a gun. She's seen it too many times to know what it is, all in different hands of different people; all pointed in different ways.

Lisa doubts it's going to hurt her like the man thinks it would though, but she flinches at the sight of the weapon anyway, anger coating her insides. "Did you know that murder is a mortal sin?!" She screeches, unable to stop herself at the sight of the human disobeying the Law. He looks startled at her outburst. "It's the fifth commandment, thou shalt not kill! Have you not read the Bible?!"

He actually scratches his head at that. "I don't-- I have no religion...I used to, but since my sister...uh, my sister fell ill, I lost faith."

Her heart immediately softens, and soon she finds herself losing all the tension in her limbs. She holds the kimchi a bit loosely, now a bit calm and collected at the new information. "Your...your sister is unwell?" He nods, staring down at his feet. "Is that why you're asking me for cash? Because of her?"

"Um...y-yeah. Yeah, it is." He sounds unsure, almost as if he's not confident with his answer, but of course Lisa doesn't mind. Someone's hurt, and she feels like it's her responsibility to help that person whatever way she can, just as long as it's not included within her angel jurisdiction. "She has...um, a fever? Yes! A fever."

"Well," she begins, licking her lower lip, "there's no need for violence! You could have just asked!" The man gives her a puzzled look. "Here." She takes out a small pouch and takes half of her cash into her hand, smiling genuinely as she did so. "I hope this'll help."

His eyes widen as Lisa hands him the wad of cash. Without looking at her, he counts the money, tucking his gun under his armpit. "Wait, I forgot," he adds as soon as he's finished, something hopeful dancing in his features, "she also has...um, stage 11 cancer and she's gonna die in an hour."

Stage 11? The new term sounds foreign to her. She knows there were four stages of cancer, but 11? Is that new? She doesn't have time to ponder about it though, because he just said his sister is about to die and her angel instincts are telling her to help, almost going crazy within her system. She won't allow anyone to die, not on her watch. "Don't worry, here's more!" She happily offers, giving her entire wallet to the guy, who accepts it eagerly.

Too eagerly, it seems.

But there's nothing wrong with that, right? He must be so desperate to save her. Lisa empathizes with him so much that she lets out a small laughter, glad to be of help.

"Heol!" He exclaims under his breath. "25,000,000 won...this is fucking crazy."

"Yeah!" Lisa beams brightly. Proud. "I donated my celestial blade to a museum as soon as I came here and they gave me a hefty amount of cash for it. Nice, huh?" He looks at her like she was crazy, almost unbelieving as she rambles on. "Oh, I also have this kimchi thing, do you want it?"

"Wha--" He sputters, looking back and forth the jar of kimchi she was holding out and the cash in his hand. "I don't want it!"

Lisa huffs at his change of tone. "No need to be so rude! I just helped you."

"Whatever, I'm out of here!" He starts to back away while stuffing the cash in his coat pocket, making sure to keep all of them safe. "Thanks!"

She's about to bid her own goodbyes, but then-- "Wait!"

His head whips back. "What?!"

The angel sheepishly scratches her nape. "Um, I'm actually going to use the bus so, can I get a few thousand wons back?"

"Damn it!" He screams back, but drops the money on the ground anyways. Lisa scrambles to pick them up from the cemented floor, heart slightly warm at the feeling of helping another person.

It's always nice to do good deeds, especially to those who needs them.

"Take care of your sister!" She yells, but the man has already disappeared around the corner.

The bus ride back home is slightly better than the usual commute. It's a bit past 8pm, there are plenty of seats empty and Lalisa had just gotten off the nearby mall after strolling for hours. The ride is a far cry from her usual mode of travelling which was flying, but she thinks she can manage using mortal transportation as an alternative. She's only rode the bus once which was three days ago and they may require a handful of cash, but they work for now.

As she's indulges herself with the captivating view that Seoul offers, a shrill sound of ringing echoes in the bus that she can't help but to look around. Lalisa's eyes instantly zeroes in on a small rectangular device in a woman's hand, which she instantly recognizes as a phone. The woman accepts the incoming call with a sigh.

"Hey. Doing fine, as usual," the woman says as Lalisa leans back on the bus' leather chair. "How about you?"

A small smile graces her face as she catches sight of a child and his puppy walking on the sidewalk. It's quite a beautiful scene, a perfect picture of innocence that humanity seems to be lacking these days.

"By the way, did you watch the news today?" Lalisa hears the woman ask. "A factory exploded somewhere in Seoul. The place is burning like hell right now, the firefighters just can't seem to kill the fire."

This piques her interest that she leans even further in her seat. A fire?

"Oh, no, no. It's a gas factory. One of the workers apparently smoked nearby and everything just exploded," the woman explains dramatically in that had Lalisa frowning. Humans just don't take precautions, do they? "I think the factory is somewhere near Guro-gu, so if you live near the area, be safe. It's scary, you know?"

Lalisa shakes her head and adjusts again on her seat. She shouldn't be listening to this, it's an invasion of privacy and she feels ashamed for eavesdropping. With a sigh, she hugs the bag of kimchi closer to her chest, and tries to spend the rest of the ride without sleeping.

Home for Lalisa used to be a luxurious penthouse in the Silver City, with a massive glass window overlooking the Earth and its Sun. It had endless hallways containing rare paintings made by the Archangels and an enormous living room with furniture that were crafted from the trees in the Garden of Eden. It used to have an endless supply of wine, with constant music and joy that any human would want to trade anything just to be there.

But that's the thing, it used to be.