Two hours before her death, Daien Zheng had been in a meeting about a button.
It was a hot summer night past midnight; the AC was broken and most of her department was on paid leave for the summer holidays. As one of the few software engineers left (read: had nothing better to do than butt in chair and eyes on computer), a surplus of tasks was unceremoniously offloaded to Daien.
She’d spent approximately ninety percent of the meeting staring at the bizarre way the fan whirled. It wasn’t completely rhythmic, not quite. Every five cycles it slowed. Somehow, this was more interesting than the meeting itself; her coworkers bickered endlessly over whether the button should be left or right aligned.
She debated between going to the gym—she had missed today’s workout session—or going home. After four precious seconds of deliberation, she decided that she was tired. She wanted to lie in bed and finish the last episode of A Court of Silk and Flowers, a random melodramatic soap opera, instead of lifting and lowering heavy objects.
Her laziness, ultimately, ended up getting her killed.
The first thing Daien sees is an angel.
She comes to this conclusion because a) she distinctly remembers dying about two seconds ago and b) this creature is the single most beautiful being she has ever seen in her miserable twenty-seven years of living. Ergo, angel.
She comes to this conclusion before she notices anything else—not the blaring pain in her skull, not the steady flow of blood from her nose, not the black spot in her vision, and certainly not her ostentatious and somehow vaguely familiar surroundings. For one absurd moment, she stares at the glowing beauty and her mind goes blissfully blank. Then:
“My liege? Should this servant summon a physician?” the angel asks, eyes lowered. She—rather, they(?). Between the long hair and facial features (again, vaguely familiar?), Daien’s brain had automatically assumed female, but angels are probably genderless?—has the soft, smooth voice of a young man.
Daien very intelligently says, “Huh?” She’s dead. What can a physician do for her? And why is the angel talking like some C-novel character? She clears her throat; her voice is sounding somewhat strange. “I’m fine.”
The angel hesitates, then responds, “This servant shall give his liege space,”
His liege, Daien thinks. It seems like angels do have gender after all. The angel is so soft-spoken Daien needs to strain to hear him over the pounding in her ears.
Only then does she realize the angel’s cautious expression, as if he’s a zookeeper trying to hand feed a particularly ill-tempered tiger. There are dark, purpling shadows under his large doe eyes, and he’s so thin his flowing robes seem to be swallowing his body. She’s faintly wondering if the afterlife is overworking their employees when the angel reaches into his sleeve and produces a folded square of cloth.
“Please forgive this servant for this pitiful offering. This is the only thing on this servant’s person that could staunch the bleeding, if it pleases Your Grace.”
Daien takes it and holds it to her bloody nose. Before she can even begin to start asking questions, the angel bows and leaves her alone. She stares at the hallway, completely confused. Strange customer service aside, she should take a minute before trying to find her guide(?) again.
Okay. Okay, so she’s dead. She’s supposed to be angry and sad about this, right? She’s supposed to have the sort of flashback montage they put in prestige television to make audiences cry. Except all she can feel is a vague sense of irritation at the fact that she will never know the ending to that damn drama. Maybe because her life flashback montage would consist of only her studying all day as a child, then working all day as an adult.
She blinks rapidly, shaking her head. There’s still something wrong with her vision, and she has to crane her neck at odd angles to look around properly. Between the pain and the sudden swap of scenery, she’s so disoriented she’s only getting a good look at her surroundings now: black, lots of black broken up by gold and red flourishes. High ceilings and ornately carved wooden columns and a truly absurd amount of decor; and she counts eleven different chandeliers in this area alone. The light, filtered through the complex wood lattice of the windows, casts patterns on the walls and floor. She’s slouched and leaning against a wall with gold detailing. It’s all very fantasy-looking, and not at all like the Hallmark card depiction of the afterlife.
She pinches the bridge of her nose with her free hand, feeling the pulse under her fingers, trying to stop the bleeding. Except. These are not her hands. She opens and closes a fist, and the strange hand follows—scars she doesn’t recognize, broad palms, uneven knuckles that have clearly been broken more than once. A sense of unease sweeps through her, like reaching for the next step of a ladder in the dark and missing it. She spots a nearby vase that seems reflective enough, trips over some sort of cape—she’s definitely wearing way more fabric than she’d been when she died five minutes ago—and faceplants with a thud. Pain radiates through her skull, but when she lifts her head she’s at the perfect level to get a look at her reflection, warped by the vase but clear enough to see—
Angular, harsh features. One visible eye, the other covered by dark, blood-red hair.
She recognizes this face.
“Oh shit,” Daien mutters, more hysterical than she’s felt in her life. She scrambles to her feet, cursing every time she trips over the stupid long robes. She pats the body down, finding the handles of several concealed weapons, and, on a whim, unsheathes a dagger.
This time the reflection is even more clear. The eye that widens at her command, the blood smeared everywhere, the scars and wild hair. Daien has seen this face across a few hundred episodes, being petty and incompetent and almost comically unpleasant, killing extras, threatening maidens, so on and so forth. This is a face she has seen too many times in A Court of Silk and Flowers, the face of the bloodthirsty, arrogant, cruel emperor’s dog.
This is the face of the Cold Duke of the North, Dayan Uzun, a semi-unimportant soap opera antagonist who would die about halfway through the plot.
