1 - Hyacinth in Bloom

By the Law of Chaotic Causality, the Creator may not, in His full form, touch what He has made, or all of matter would unravel.

So He sends emissaries, ever and again, to perform His wonders in His stead.

Even as the Lord Jesus walked among men, bearing the love of the Maker to all the earth;

Even as Moses cleft the sea and led forth the captives of Israel from the hand of Pharaoh;

Even as Michael, hearkening unto the will of the Most High, made war in Heaven and cast down Lucifer and his host, and was lifted to the right hand of God, to take the place of the fallen Morning Star.

Now the fall of Lucifer, who rebelled and was cast into the pit, is named among the hosts of Hell as the “Fall from Heaven”; but in the records of the Most High, it is written thus: the Judgment of God.

Chapter 1: The Devil in a Suit

Even knowing, I’ll wake tomorrow to a world that still holds you.

Lucifer…

Lucifer.

Some overpowered thing, a feeling, swelled in my chest. I jerked my eyes open. The professor was mid-rant in front of a PPT titled “Aggravated Kidnapping”, flailing and failing. I stared right past him, at the birds going nuts chirping outside. Yep, I’d nodded off, again. And I’m calling it — all these weird dreams lately had everything to do with Mei.

She was positively ghosting me, wouldn’t even look at me straight when I’d caught her on campus. Her eyes had gone all flickery, like she knew something I didn’t — but I did. I’m not some idiot. I know the signs. She was about to hand me the famed “green hat”.

People think guys are stupid. We’re not. Not always.

Case in point: yesterday afternoon. She texted me to meet up at our usual spot by the trees, showed up in the purple dress—yes, the floral one I dumped two months of part-time into—and the designer bag that ate my life savings and probably part of my soul. Then she turned around in slow mo, all hips and timing, and just went:

“Li Bin, I’m in love with Lulu. So I’m breaking up with you.”

Boom.

Right there. Under our tree. Wearing my money, holding my bag, breaking up with me.

Also, that double syllable nickname? Disgusting.

Lulu’s full name is Yang Lu and he was the newest hotshot professor in the Divinity department: Deep eyes, sharp nose, a face so small it shouldn’t even count as a face, a profile straight out of some shoujo manga, yada yada. Word is he’d just gotten back from overseas two years ago. The guy looks half-foreign to begin with, and on top of that, his Chinese is so embarrassingly bad that the first time I met him, I thought he was a foreigner.

But hey — these days, girls are into that vague, identity-crisis aesthetic shit.

He’s apparently from some ludicrous European family — ambassadors in the bloodline, power, influence, and all that. As for why he came to China? His exact words:

“To look for a beautiful angel lost in Heaven.”

No, seriously. He said that.

If anyone else had dropped a line that cringe, people would’ve gagged in their mouths on the spot. But when Yang Lu says it? It’s suddenly “a poetic reflection on the nature of life” or some crap.

Ok, maybe Yang Lu looks good. Like, dumb, “are we even from the same species” kind of good. But at first, we thought the rest had to be some kind of BS. No one seriously believed he was that god-tier.

Then one day, this girl got into his Ferrari — because of course it was a Ferrari — and saw this gold-trimmed photo frame sitting right by the driver’s seat.

And yeah, god-tier status solidified.

It was just a photo of some guy. But according to the girl who got into the car, this dude looked just as insane as Yang Lu — maybe more? Annoyingly oozing the same vibe, but extra oomph. Short hair, dark, wavy. Kind of feminine in the features, but apparently it was the eyes — bright red (Are we sure it wasn’t some visual artifact? Photoshop?). And smiling like he wanted to ruin you for fun. He had a rose tattoo right under one eye — also blood red — and half-reclined on a black velvet couch in some kind of cliched, over the top palace, holding one of those long-stemmed pipes like he was dripping evil.

The outfit? Full-on vintage formalwear. European aristocrat meets final boss.

Someone asked Yang Lu who that was.

He just smiled — the usual faint, borderline smug smile — and said in his broken ass Chinese:

“That’s our baby young master.”

Baby young master.

WTF. Seriously — what a… magical, ridiculous, title.

I’m not sure how long this shenanigans is supposed to go on for, but, BUT, there are only four creatures in this world with red eyes — vampires, demons, rabbits, and people with conjunctivitis.

Yang Lu, you piece of — .

May he rest in pieces and reincarnate as customer service.

Ok, I know cussing out the guy who stole your girl is petty, no class, and morally bankrupt. But who cares at this point?

I‘m Li Bin and I had my first crush at age eight. Which means, I’ve been in this emotional war zone for over a decade. With my stupidly attractive face and swag so strong even a vending machine would fall for me, probably, I’d breezed through girlfriends number one to fourteen like a hot knife through butter — undefeated, unchallenged, legendary.

Then college hit. And starting with Girlfriend #15, it’s been hell. Every time I made a move — she’d says yes, great start — two weeks later? She gone. At this point, I had stopped calling them relationships. I call them limited-time events.

Wins and losses are part of the game, yes. You chase girls, you’re gonna fumble a few. That’s life.

But losing to the same guy every single time?

That’s just depressing.

And the worst part?

Yang Lu never once made a direct move on any of the girls I’ve dated. Not a single time.

Jesus once said: “If you’re not dating to marry, you’re just dicking around.” Well, Yang Lu was the undisputed king of dicking around at our school, a walking felony in a suit.

Just thinking about what Mei had said pissed me off.

She delivered her breakup speech like a TED Talk, on the edge of bursting with emotion and conviction. In my head I was already going, “Of course. Him again.” But I had to my pride to keep intact, so I stared at her dead in the eye and said:

“I’m better than him, obviously.”

Mei didn’t respond right away. Instead, she got this look on her face — all blushed and spaced out — and went, “Binbin, you are really handsome. Like, a little angel. So clean, so pure… every time I see you, I just wanna pinch you and squeeze and protecc…”

Then she hit me with:

“But the first time I saw Lulu? That was revelation. The kind of seductive, dangerous — like he’d pull me straight into hell with him, like, I’ll stuff my face with the forbidden fruit just for him…”

I swear to God, I could smell the art films and weeaboo references coming off her.

So I just went,

“Yeah? Sounds super hot.”

Watching Mei roll her eyes and strut away, I was fully convinced: I must’ve owed Yang Lu something in a past life.

Since the day his tenure started, he’d been looking at me like he wanted me dead. Stealing my girlfriends? Check. Following me around like a damn stalker? Also check. And don’t even get me started on how he uses Systematic Theology, the one I’m auditing so I could see my girl, to go after me every time I show up. The guy’s a certified creep.

Now that whole criminal law lecture on kidnapping had ended, I was twice as depressed.

Two days of this crap and I was starting to lose it.

It probably had something to do with how life around Yang Lu was constantly flooded with keywords like “prince,” “aristocrat,” “Europe,” “mixed blood”. Add in Mei’s whole angel-vs-demon dissertation, I snapped, a little.

Just now, when I’d dozed off in class, I dreamed that I was in a huge mansion. It was pouring and I was saying something soul-crushing to an angel called Babylor, I think. I can’t remember what I said, but toward the end I just kept repeating the name Lucifer. Over and over. The kind of out-of-no-where-makes-no-sense sad that followed you into waking up. My pathetic eyes were damp when I opened them.

Anyone with a shred of pop culture knowledge, or culture in general, should know who Lucifer is, if not from anime, novels, or games. He’s basically depicted the same way in every medium, as a blend of OP and/or absurd levels of lethal appeal.

Girls around here say Yang Lu has Lucifer energy.

They say Lulu stands for Lucifer.

They say Yang Lu is Lucifer.

Whatever.

Pretty sure that’s why I was, no, I was not crying in my sleep and whispering that name like some goddamn cultist pussy.

That evening felt extra bleak. Even the sunset looked mournful. I followed the crowd out of the lecture, stopped by the campus store for two bottles of Heineken, and flopped on the lawn outside the dorms. Didn’t even move when the sprinklers come on — just let them soak me like I was one of the plants.

Jonathan Evans once said women and alcohol easily devastate men into mediocrity.

He wasn’t wrong.

I took a bitter swig of beer and muttered to myself, “Are women blind or something? A guy like that is only great — IF you’re a homo!”

“Maybe you’re the one who is.”

That familiar, broken Chinese drift over — and I instantly jolted like I’d been electrocuted. I buried my face in the grass, playing dead, but I could practically feel dark clouds settle over my miserable existence. Eventually, I raised my head.

There he was — Yang Lu, calmly adjusting the collar of his suit like he owned the lawn.

I am not backing down.

“Professor,” I began, “if every girl on Earth dropped dead, I’d still chug a gold brick before I go in for some dude.”

Yang Lu ignored my solemn, albeit unhinged, declaration. He just tilted his head, smiling slightly as he asked,

“Really? You don’t feel anything when you see me?”

It was already dusk, and with the light behind him, I couldn’t really see him clearly. But maybe that made it worse — the way the sunset blurred everything. This aggravating mix of frustration and heaviness started rising in my chest. Finally, I stood up, pointed the bottom of my beer bottle straight at his head, and spat:

“How you f— around is your business. But Mei — if you so much as hurt her, I’ll kick your sorry ass.”

The autumn wind stirred around us as Yang Lu approached, too tall for his own good, the whole infuriating package of height and proportions, reminding me of what some BBC radio host had once said: “There’s no great secret to male charm. Just be tall.”

I looked up at him and suddenly didn’t feel like standing that close so I took two steps back.

He laughed, cold. “Sounds like you’re really are into that girl. You actually don’t remember anything then?”

“I’ll say it again — I swear, if you screw her over, I’ll end you.”

“Your Highness, I understand why you escaped. But you should at the very least reclaim what you had lost. And if you can’t, I will.”

“I didn’t lose anything. Wait, what did you just call me?”

“Your Highness, I know you’re in pain, but I also need you to understand the situation you’re in. And with all do respect — you wronged His Majesty first.”

“Are you…rehearsing for a play or something?”

“So,” He suddenly zoned in on me, “Get back there and see for yourself!”

Huh, look who’s dropping the act today. So much for that ear candy of a voice, he’s just as loud as the rest of us.

He didn’t look all that stable, to be honest, definitely not in a state I wanted to mess with, so I narrowed my eyes, gave him a quick once-over, then bolted straight for the gates, dashing right to the median and waited for the next car to pass.

Cars blurred past the crowd of students. A massive bus roared, packed with passengers. And somehow, in that chaos, I caught sight of Yang Lu across the street. Tailored suit — expensive. Black overcoat — immaculate. A long scarf hung loose around his neck, careless but calculated, straight out of a British gentleman catalog. He leaned gracefully against the door of his Ferrari, tilted that annoyingly perfect jaw up, and smiled at me.

The girls around me had already melted into puddles.

But cold sweat was running down my back.

Wasn’t he just inside the school? How did he end up across the street?

I glanced over again to make sure — and saw him wink. Even from across the road, as impossible as it sounds, or maybe because the road wasn’t that wide, I could see it: those eyes were dark red.

What kind of hyper-realistic contacts is he wearing?

Behind him, two long, massive protrusions, wings — bony and bat-like — grew out of his back.

His shadow kept rising, wings twitching in wide, deliberate strokes. And he just stood there, calm and unbothered, as if completely unaware he was being possessed.

In the next second, his black coat and short hair seemed to come alive, whipping like wild blades of grass in the wind.

I’ll admit it — the bastard scared me.

I double-checked the ground, made sure I weren’t hallucinating or just too drunk. Then, with the eeriness seeping in, I took a step back. And then another.

Now probably wasn’t the time to be thinking about this, but —

A blinding light hit me.

I whipped around, eyes stinging from the glare.

A car horn screamed.

“Your Highness—!!”

And in that instant, my soul lifted.

I looked back at where I’d just been — Yang Lu was gone.

I kept rising, higher, and higher. Below me, my body lay motionless.

And all I could think of was that scene from The Grudge — the one where the body gushes blood like a waterfall, while the soul floats up into thin-air void.

So this was it?

I died?

From above, I watched the chaos unfold, the bus driver frantically slapping my face, pulling out my student ID, calling for help.

Meanwhile, my soul just kept rising — terrifyingly, hopelessly fast — like I was about to break through the clouds and shoot straight into the endless, empty cosmos.

Some record store down the block was playing an old pop ballad. The melody drifted quieter and quieter, but the lyrics stayed unexpectedly crisp:

Let me see you one more time, I’ll etch you ~~ into my heart ~~~

And as I looked down at the mangled corpse that used to be me, I thought:

Say I really was inspired by the song, sat up, and went “okay, one more look”—

that poor bus driver would definitely never forget me.