He Would Not Die

Killing a mortal should be easy.

Not murder, exactly.

I prefer the term assisted early transition.

Besides, I was not planning anything cruel.

A gentle accident.

A tragic coincidence.

A beautiful man arriving early in the Underworld, where I could give him a nice room, excellent food, and myself.

Very generous, really.

His name, I learned later, was Elias Shi.

Blind mathematics professor.

Twenty-eight years old.

Lives alone.

Excellent bone structure.

Annoyingly difficult to kill.

The first attempt happened at a crosswalk.

I transformed my face into the most horrifying ghost expression I could manage and appeared in front of an approaching driver.

The driver screamed.

The car swerved.

A bicycle fell.

A delivery man cursed.

Elias stepped back calmly, avoided everything, and even apologized to the driver.

No injuries.

Second attempt: falling signboard.

On a commercial street, I nudged the hand of a worker fixing a massive advertisement above the sidewalk.

The sign broke loose.

It crashed down.

One inch from Elias’s shoes.

He tilted his head, listening.

Someone screamed.

He said, “Is everyone all right?”

Everyone was.

Especially him.

Third attempt: open maintenance well.

I influenced his guide dog to tug left instead of right.

The dog did tug.

Elias tripped.

For one thrilling second, I thought he would fall into the open hole.

Instead, he caught the edge with both hands and lifted himself back up using muscles I immediately forgave.

A crowd rushed to help.

He smiled politely.

I hovered nearby, furious.

“This makes no sense!”

No matter what I tried, Elias seemed surrounded by invisible luck.

A golden shield.

A blessing.

A cosmic refusal to let me have nice things.

I returned to the Underworld in a rage.

“Dad,” I said, entering the Hall of Mortal Records, “can I borrow the Ledger of Mortal Fates?”

My father did not even look up.

“No.”

“Just one glance.”

“No.”

“Tiny glance.”

“No.”

“I am your only daughter.”

“And the reason I have white hair.”

“You don’t have hair.”

“Exactly.”

After an hour of strategic whining, dramatic sighing, and one threat to cry in front of the reincarnation clerks, he relented.

“One page.”

I flipped through hundreds.

Finally, I found him.

Elias Shi.

Child prodigy.

Olympiad champion.

Admitted to a top university early.

Mathematics professor.

Blinded in a car accident.

Scheduled for ocular surgery.

I skimmed faster.

Then reached the final line.

Lifespan: 128 years.

I slammed the ledger shut.

“One hundred and twenty-eight?”

No wonder.

I could drop a mountain on him and fate would hand him an umbrella.

My father eyed me.

“Why are you suddenly interested in a mortal man?”

“Bored,” I said too quickly. “Your ledger is full of stories.”

He looked suspicious.

I fled.

Back in my room, the repair ghosts were filling the floor hole.

I shrieked.

“Who told you to repair that?”

The ghost supervisor bowed.

“Princess, you filed a request.”

“I changed my mind.”

“But the hole—”

“The hole stays.”

All the ghosts stared.

I cleared my throat.

“Architectural feature.”

From then on, I visited Elias daily.

Sometimes I poked his cheek while he slept.

Sometimes I listened to music with him.

Sometimes, when he was halfway through a playlist, I changed the song just to watch him frown.

I told myself I was studying him.

Finding weaknesses.

Planning.

But slowly, strangely, watching him became a habit.

Then he went to the hospital for eye surgery.

For several days, I could not see him.

The Underworld felt intolerably boring.

Food tasted worse.

Ghost gossip lost flavor.

Even Cerberus Junior seemed less annoying, which was alarming.

When Elias finally returned home, I went to him that very night.

He was asleep.

I floated beside his bed and lay down near him, enjoying the quiet.

His sleeping face was beautiful.

Too beautiful.

I leaned closer.

Just one kiss.

He would not know.

I closed my eyes.

His eyes opened.

Amber light gleamed inside them.

“Who are you?” he asked.

My entire soul froze.

“You can see me?”

“Of course,” he said. “Otherwise the surgery would have been pointless.”

Before I could run, his arm locked around my waist.

A heartbeat later, I was beneath him.

Beneath.

Him.

His body was hot.

I was very aware that ghosts are usually cold.

“How can you touch me?” I whispered.

Elias lowered his mouth to my neck.

His voice was rough.

“You climbed into my bed.”

His fingers brushed my shoulder strap aside.

“This is on you.”

That was how I learned two things.

First, the surgery had given him spirit-sight eyes.

Second, he was not as harmless as a blind mathematics professor should be.