Year 1678

Great and extraordinarily enormous dark clouds raged across the pale blue sky, bringing along a great source of distress, unrest, and wretchedness. The forest was covered up with a thick, cold, and elegant coat of white, which also contributed towards causing immense shivers to anyone tall or short, fat, or thin, male, or female. The trees were freed from their green clothes and the bushes were crushed due to the grave burden of snow upon their heads.

The wind had howled at an extremely high pitch and threatened anything in its undefined route. The snow continued to embark upon land for hours and hours. The trees were slaughtered limb by limb and hedges butchered to death. The blizzard at this point seemed to be considered as a brutal warlord attempting to lay an air siege as the land was sunk by snow from head to toe and left dislocated as an 'active war-zone '.

Sprinting as fast as his tired legs could carry him, Taehyung dodged swaying branches, stepping over cracks in the precarious ground. The black smoke of darkness and death began to catch up with him, pulling on his hair, attempting to snatch his life.

The boy dragged his exhausted body through the heaps of snow, meanwhile pressing a hand to the right side of his stomach where blood sipped out of a badly inflected wound. An ear-splitting cry left his chapped lips, and he fell to the ground, unable to keep himself going.

His throat burnt from how incredibly dry his mouth was after running for nearly an hour, muscles tense and rigid as he struggled to lift his body up, to no avail. His clothes coiled themselves around him like a deadly snake, encasing him, gluing his limbs to his sides, tugging him down.

"J-Jungkook," Taehyung managed to whisper, black dots appearing in front of his vision as more blood continued to pour out of his open wound, the paralyzing cold knocked the breath from his aching lungs.

The distant howling of wolves pierced through the air, overpowering the loud blizzard. At this point, all Taehyung could do was to lay there helplessly while the snow slowly continued to bury his body under an extra mass of ice.

He reminisced about his last moments of happiness. Just a while ago he was peacefully enjoying his day - getting the hearth stocked with woods and preparing for the upcoming snowstorm. What he didn't expect was to be attacked by a band of ferocious werewolves, their ugly snarls and glimmering irises were still imprinted in the back of his mind.

One of the raiders had managed to rip off the skin on his abdomen with their sharp claws before he could sprint into the woods. Badly injured and on the verge of dying, Taehyung couldn't do much but to pray for this particular dark angel to be waiting for him in the forest. Alas, so far no one had shown up to rescue him.

Right after he thought the world was coming to an end, two firm hands grabbed him, leading him to the utopian safety he had dreamed of since entering the forest. With a great effort, Taehyung succeeded to squint his eyes open, the unclear image of a familiar face surfaced in between the black holes of his sight.

"J-Jungkook," Taehyung chocked out and with trembling hands reached out to hold the face of his lover, too dizzy to care about the gore that smeared across his skin.

The loud slap of wings bounced off the woods and suddenly the harsh winds came to a halt. Taehyung no longer felt cold, and from what he assumed, Jungkook had used his strong wings as a barricade to keep them safe from the bitingly cold weather.

The painful aching of his frozen limbs switched off like a light - gone. His body was numb, his mind and spirit calm, and his heart barely beating, its rhythm slowed to a scarcely discernible boom, boom, boom, as much of an echo or a memory as an actual sound.

"Shh, Taehyung," the man above him whispered, pressing a hand onto his injured stomach with just enough force to reduce the blood flow. "I will heal your wounds, okay? You will be all right."

Taehyung, albeit on the verge of losing his consciousness, decided to hold onto these perfidious words. The minutes passed by. The frown on Jungkook's face became more prominent, and soon Taehyung found himself tasting the metal flavor of blood on the tip of his tongue.

"S-something is wrong." Jungkook looked bewildered and afraid. His heart rate began to pick up, desperation lacing the syllables of his quivering tone as he so adamantly continued to chant words under his nose, magic flowing through his fingers, but the wound didn't seal. "I can't heal you."

Taehyung strained his ears to hear him, solely focusing his attention on the only thing that could keep him back from jumping into the open arms of the darkness. "I-it's okay," his eyes were expressive and bright, daring for Jungkook to get lost in them. The boy lifted his hand and tried to reach for him, but the slender fingers never got high enough, they paused mid-air, as he winced in pain and gasped for air, then abruptly drained of his remaining energy, dropped to his side.

"No, no, no!" Jungkook's voice grew louder by the second. He shook his head in a massive protest, his fruitless endeavors to summon his mana going to waste. "It's not okay, Taehyung! You will die if I don't - "

"I said it was fine," Taehyung gave him a wry smile, his beautiful blue orbs welled up with hot tears. "W-we both know that no matter what, there is an unwanted end to everything we wish to hold on tight. Mine's just a bit sooner than yours." A thin layer of sweat began to form on his forehead, the blonde curls of his hair stitched to his face, and his breathing became more evasive.

Jungkook took his hand in his. It was freezing, but with one touch of those ice-cold fingertips, he could light the angel's entire body on fire. Of course, they knew the consequences of their forbidden love. A dark angel and a human could never be together because of the various differences in their worlds. Jungkook's realm had always been dangerous, unpredictable, and dark, while Taehyung's was calm, peaceful, and safe.

Yet, that didn't stop them from meeting each other every day after sunset, and without realizing it, they had both fallen into the trap of deep passion and desire, like flies in a spider-web. It was the most euphoric feeling one could ever experience. When Jungkook first met Taehyung, he had already lost his entire world. The human kept pouring love into the abyss of his unmoving heart.

Unrequited love was a concept most people would experience in their life at some point. It might not always be the idyllic form of passion we expected, true devotion that was. The kind that lasted forever and you remained pining until the end.

But every coin had two faces - the latter good and the former bad.

Trembling. Breathless. Weak. This wasn't how Jungkook pictured it. It was supposed to be easy, falling in love. Comparable to lulling to sleep. This was hard. He didn't want to know this madness. The chaos in his chest.

How cruel of fate to separate them now, when they thought that there might be a place on this endless Earth for lost souls like them.

"Please, promise me one last thing," Taehyung's voice piped up again, this time more trance like, as his lids fluttered wearily. "That you won't forget me."

Jungkook felt an irritating tug in his heart, incessant, messing with the rhythms of his whole being, impossible to ignore and making all the sadness buried deep in his heart gush out, tearing him up along the way. "I could never," he replied shakily, thinking back to all the deaths he had seen in the line of his immortal life.

It was never a pretty sight, the actual process of death, gruesome and full of tears, and lingering regrets. But sometimes, beyond the messiness of life and the inability to let go, right when that final tie snapped off, a serenity settled in. He had seen it on people's faces, felt it in the air, palpable and mysterious.

Taehyung's clothes were now completely soaked in blood, a thick puddle of gore forming underneath Jungkook's feet, staining the pristine white snow in crimson red. The wind picked up, and the angel shook off the snowflakes that had comfortably nestled in the furrow of black feathers.

The grip on his hand loosened. Jungkook grasped onto it but there was no strength left in these bony fingers, only iciness. Panicking, he gazed up at Taehyung, searching for any signs of life, and he heard a soft whisper, lingering like tendrils of smoke in the air. "I'm never going to regret loving you."

And just like that, they left each other for the first time.

Taehyung's last breath escaped his lips, and quickly all the butterflies, and all the flowers seemed to die in the awake of Jungkook's sorrow. Tears threatened to pour from his eyes, but the dark angel didn't let them, he wouldn't let them. Because, after all, tears meant the enemy had won, and he wasn't quite ready to lose.

Gingerly, Jungkook raised up on his feet, effortlessly lifting the human's lifeless body in his arms. Peering one last time at the flawless face of his lost lover, the dark angel took in the sight of his stunning features. Taehyung was mesmerizing even in death, with his eyes closed and skin drained from every color.

"I will fix everything," Jungkook whispered in the darkness, pressing his lips against the human's overly cold forehead, before spreading his midnight-black wings and flying right into the storm.

***

Kitsunes, or also known as fox spirits, were tricksters. They could attack you in numerous ways; with barefaced questions, ingenious suppositions, and distant surmises, but once you eluded the skill of them all, you became immunized to their little mind-games.

What most people were ignorant of was their reign over the afterlife. Although, they couldn't bring back a person from the death, their enigmatic powers allowed them to follow the string of someone's life and, if caught on time, give them the chance to live again. In other words, a fox spirit could grant you with the opportunity to be reborn.

Here was the catch - you could use a kitsune's gift only once. If you died in the next lifetime, there was no going back. What's more, not all fox spirits were acceptive and easy to deal with. They were mystical and powerful, creatures that shouldn't be messed with unless you had a death wish. Only fools had the guts to encounter them and, if you succeeded to make a contract with one, the chances of getting out of it without having to pay for your depts were minimalistic, if not nonexistent.

"Please," Jungkook begged, sagging to one knee. If the sight of a dark angel in a dire need of help wasn't entertaining enough, then he certainly didn't know what else he could offer in exchange for the fox's assistance. "I will sacrifice as much as I ought to. Just please, save him."

The kitsune gazed down at him with bored indifference, her honey-drenched tongue danced over the sharp point of her canine. Nine beautiful tails trailed delicately behind her, a set of two pointed ears popped out of her head, clearly giving one the perception that this woman was not an actual human being.

"You must know I cannot retrieve someone's life," her way of speaking was undoubtedly impressive and foreign to the ear. "What you're begging me to do is beyond my powers." She finished, tightening her silk kimono robe around her slender waist. Her Amazonian figure sat well on her wafer-thin body. She had a decanter shaped torso, and her complexion had an impeccable, ochrous hue.

Jungkook's shoulders slumped in profound dejection, the fear of not being able to atone the lost life of his lover shook the entirety of his innards, made him experience emotions he had forgotten over the perennially pain and sorrow.

The dark angel had never allowed himself to feel any semblance of vulnerability. It was a human trait that shouldn't wield a place within the angel's characteristics. But what could he say in his defense? When it came to Taehyung, he was willing to let his stone-cold walls crumble to ashes.

"But you can permit him to live again," Jungkook argued back, his arms beginning to get clammy under the death weight of Taehyung's corpse. "It is redundant of me to add how grateful I shall be if you save him."

The fox's stare on him was cautious and perplexed, as if she were amused by the fact this angel had got attached to a mere human whose existence barely had any value to their world. After a long period of considering Jungkook's proposal, she agreed to offer him her aid.

"Put him down," The kitsune ordered, her expression remained stoic as ever. "And don't forget to fulfill your part of the deal after we are done."

The angel did as he was told, carefully laying Taehyung's body on the cement. He couldn't think of the possible condition she would give him, nor did he care about it. His whole attention was focused on Taehyung. The human didn't move, didn't blink, didn't make any signs of acknowledging Jungkook's actions. It was as if he were asleep, peacefully roaming the dreamlands of endless happiness and carefree childhood.

The fox knelt before him and put a dainty hand on the human's chest, facial features contorting into a thoughtful grimace. "He hasn't passed through the gates of Underworld yet." Her voice was deceptively unsure, Jungkook thought, so falsely kind and amiable, as it was, in reality so, so painful against his eardrums, physically revolting to listen to it. "There is still hope, albeit small."

The dark angel nodded timidly his head, eyes surveying all over Taehyung's stance, goosebumps lining across the expanse of his neck, despite the stocky, clammy heat of the room. The anticipation soared high up in the air, suffocating him, making him drown into the depthless ocean of ineptitude to intervene.

"You know the rules, right?" The fox's voice pulled him out of his trance, almost startling him. "He won't remember you in the next lifetime, nor do we know when he will be reborn."

Jungkook swallowed down the thick lump that had lodged in his throat. Every nerve in his body was strained to the brim, urging him to ask her questions which answers he was already aware of. "I know," he said, secretly loathing the idea of meeting Taehyung again without him having a single clue of who Jungkook truly was.

The fox hummed, and after a short pause of summoning her mana, the spell was casted. The candles' sheer light had turned the room a-flame with orange when she began to spell out words in a foreign language which only fox spirits knew. Even though there were no windows or open entrances in there, the place got awfully cold, as if the ruler of the northern winds had came to pay them a hostile visit.

And just like that, before anyone could tell what happened, the imperial silence engulfed the atmosphere.

♧This is my second story, uwu! I hope you liked the first chap, cuz I did! Also, I'm not familiar with the Japanese folklore. Everything written in the book is made out of my imagination and has nothing to do with the reality, so I'm sorry if there are some inaccuracies. I'm, by no means, trying to offend someone's culture. ♧