Momo awoke, to her great surprise, in her childhood bedroom. Something that would not be so shocking if she had ever lived in this apartment.

  She had stumbled to the room late last night after a long dinner, her hands prodding around in the dark to find the bedpost, and had failed to take in the room outside a quick search to find blankets. She had falsely assumed it would just be like any other room in her parent’s new apartment–blank walls, the occasional unopened cardboard box full of pantry items and socks. This was an assumption that haunted her immediately as she opened her eyes, and found herself surrounded, like a villain in the penultimate scene of a 2000’s movie, by a cast of Jennifer Anniston, Halle Berry, Salma Hayek, and Angelina Jolie.

  “Dear god.”

  She clapped her hands over her eyes, and then carefully peeled each finger from them. The portraits, vivid black and white sketches with horrid facial proportions, were arranged carefully and pristinely on the walls, with each actress that Momo had endured a brief artistic obsession over showcased like a museum exhibit. They were all stolen from her highschool sketchbook, the single one she had left behind—torn from their original dusty catacombs and plastered around the room like a bunch of police sketches.

  It wasn’t just the sketches, either. There was the bedside table she had hand-painted as a toddler, a framed picture of her on the lap of the shopping mall Santa they had visited on their first American Christmas, and even the collection of Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy comics that Momo had hidden under her bed and hoped they would never discover. All stacked neatly on shelves; arranged alphabetically or by color.

  They kept… all of this?

  Her room looked no different than the day she had left for college. A perfectly conserved artifact, frozen in time, waiting for her return as if it was some inevitability. It was as touching as it was painful. She would have to hug them extra hard before she left.

  Leaving. That was right. She had gotten so comfortable floating in the nostalgic soup of it all, she had nearly forgotten that her time here was limited. Inextricably linked to the deeply questionable fate of Richard Smith.

  As if reading her thoughts, the System’s visual panel materialized in front of her, two fuzzy white numbers blinking in front of her her face:

  1 day, 0 hours, 0 seconds.

  23 hours, 59 minutes, 59 seconds.

  Huh. Richard Smith was destined to die in 23 hours, and all Momo could think about was whether there were any leftovers in the fridge.

  ***

  The unfortunate thing about being the Grim Reaper is that you're never supposed to stay at the party for very long. Momo had always heard the saying that Death lingers—but in practice, it was more like Death knocks at the door, asks if you have any spare dishwasher detergent, then exits as soon as she possibly can, without so much as a thank you very much.

  This is what Momo contemplated as she sat at her mother’s dining room table, her fork buried in some ice-cold dumplings. She hadn’t wanted to turn on the stove in case she would wake anyone, and she felt that she needed more time to consider her options. A quick glance over at the analogue clock told her she wouldn’t have much time to do that. It was already six AM, and her father rose as reliably as a robot for his morning smoke.

  So, to review the problem. His name was Richard Smith, and Momo still had no idea what to do with him. She knew that when she did help him pass along, that meant she’d have to leave for the Nether, and she had no idea just how much time would pass on Earth before she could return again. That notion terrified her. Twelve years had passed while she was on Alois. What if she went back to the Nether, blinked for all of three seconds, and then returned to Earth to find herself at her brother’s funeral?

  Yeah. No thanks.

  And worse—what if she couldn’t return that fast? The Nether was in complete disrepair. Valerica needed her help. Morgana needed her help. Sumire was probably still burning under the world’s worst god-given heat wave. She felt like a mother who had left their toddler alone at the grocery store and then driven off a cliff into a ravine. There was so much left riding on her relatively small shoulders.

  Momo shook her head, dropping her fork into the plate. It clattered noisily against the bowl.

  This was just too much. She was ready to retire.

  Could gods even retire?

  She really should have read the fineprint a little more before signing up for this whole immortality business.

  I suddenly understand why Morgana’s trying to host her own funeral.

  Momo huffed, and kneaded her temples. She would just have to shepard Richard as planned, and then get in touch with one of those System admins as soon as possible. They were dreadful, and very much hated her guts, but they probably had valuable information about how time translated from one planet to another.

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  If only there was a way to get into contact with Valerica from here.

  She sighed. No chance. If there was, she was sure Valerica would have already used that channel to spam her with endless messages. Still, as a precaution, Momo checked all of her System panels, but the scope of them was entirely limited to her singular quest—transmigrating one Richard Smith.

  Very annoying.

  Her back went rigid, her System immediately dematerializing as she heard the familiar scuffling of slippers towards the kitchen.

  Her father's face peeked out from behind the wall, and he adjusted his blue glasses to take in the sight of Momo eating the dumplings straight out of the fridge.

  “You’re up early.”

  He gradually made his way over to the dining room table, then sat himself in the chair opposite her. She said nothing as he peeked into the small ceramic bowl that contained her sad breakfast. The judgment didn’t require words. But of course, he provided them.

  “Momo-yah, do you still not know how to work a stove top? I do not have any idea if you are twenty-two or thirty-two or fourty-two years old at this point, but any age above ten should understand how to add heat to a bowl of cold leftovers.”

  He looked deeply concerned. Momo flushed in embarrassment.

  “Of course I do. I just… didn't want to wake anyone.”

  His lips formed an o. Then he nodded.

  “I was worried someone had broken in when I heard a sound from the kitchen. I didn’t know you had it in your ability to rise before the sun.”

  Momo rolled her eyes at him, but it was affectionate.

  “I have a bit of a better schedule these days.”

  “Is that so?” He paused. “Death can really shock the system, I've heard. Reset a few core functions back to factory settings.”

  Momo blinked at him, nervous, but then he just laughed, giving her that familiar grin.

  “Don't you worry, Momo. I will still not bug you for the details. I have my own theories about where you have been, anyhow.”

  Now that surprised her. She had promised herself not to dive too far into the subject with her parents, but her curiosity got away from her, as usual.

  “Oh yeah? You do?”

  “Yes. I have had a lot of dreams.”

  He looked out of the window. After a moment, he pawed in his pocket for some Lucky Strike cigarettes, placing them on the table aside her breakfast.

  “It's strange, I have these dreams about you when you were younger, working at that big store in the… the… pregnant woman section?”

  “The maternity section.”

  He waved his hand and yawned.

  “Whatever you want to call it. I have dreams that you got lost one day in the pregnant section, and you came back… different. Different hair, new clothes. You were much more talkative than before. Used your hands to speak, like an American.”

  He pushed the cigarettes closer to her.

  “And you smoked these. I was so mad at you. What a terrible habit to pick up.”

  “Your terrible habit, you mean?”

  He shrugged. She eyed the cigarette package, recognizing it immediately.

  These were the same cigarettes that she had seen in that broken Toyota Yaris in the Nether.

  The same cigarettes her younger clone had been smoking.

  The same cigarettes that Daehyun had out on his balcony.

  Before that first sighting in the Nether, Momo had never seen this brand of cigarettes before in her life. But now here they were, showing up everywhere, like a bee dusting pollen across the various timelines. Maybe they were merely an artifact of Momo’s disruption—a blinking signal in the dark to show that everything affects everything else. A small error in the giant warning log that started on the day that Momo arrived in Alois.

  Or maybe they were just cigarettes.

  “I think I might know a little bit about that dream,” Momo whispered.

  “I’m sure you do.”

  He gave her a look as if he knew everything.

  Of course, that was impossible. But then again, her dad had always had these sort of inclinations. He wasn’t the kind of guy to give psychic readings in the Target parking lot, but he did have a certain penchant for it. Knowing things that he shouldn’t, that is.

  Her mom had always been the paranoid one, but her dad was observant. He would call Momo out of school before she even started sneezing. He would take her to get ice cream before she knew she was sad. He was the type to lift his hand and then, a second later, catch a ball he didn’t know was headed there.

  It occurred to Momo that maybe he was a wizard in a world without wizards.

  A regular guy who could peek into the Nether, then go back to life as it was.

  “So, when will you leave? Tomorrow, or today?” he asked.

  Momo’s eyes widened as the sudden question pulled her from her thoughts.

  “How did you…”

  “I know you Momo. The world does not allow you to stay in one place very long. It has been very nice to have you back with us again, and I thank the universe for that momentary grace, but I will not be mad when you must leave us. I know it’s not your fault.”

  He put his warm, aged hand, its veins now blue and protruding, over her own.

  “But I will make one demand,” he said.

  “A… demand?” she muttered.

  “Yes. You will have to write me letters.”

  “Letters?”

  The cogs in her head felt like they badly needed oil. The look on his face wasn’t full of anger; just tenderness. A patience she had forgotten she had inherited from him.

  He nodded. “For as long as you are away. Even though I know we will see each other again, you will write to me and your mother about what you are eating. If it is nutritious or not. What types of places you are going. If you are sleeping enough. Who your friends are. Their names and ages and jobs. You will tell us if you have anyone that is more than a friend.”

  He arched a mischievous eyebrow, and Momo blushed.

  But then his face turned more serious.

  “When you went to college, I let you go too much. That is what they tell parents to do–to let their children go. But I don't think that advice works for every child. I should have held you closer. You are like a balloon—with your tendency to float away.”

  He squeezed her hand, then smiled at her, his dimples creasing.

  “Then again,” he breathed. “I look at you now and I see the girl from my dreams. You can see it in your face. You smile brighter. You have grown these… wings. So maybe the advice was not so bad. Maybe you floated exactly where you were meant to float.”

  He let go of her hand, and pushed the chair backward. His eyes had glanced toward the door to the porch. He was itching for his morning smoke—he had delayed it past his schedule, and Momo knew he could only do that for so long, the robot that he was.

  “But that changes nothing. You must still write me letters.”

  Momo opened her mouth, but then he shut her up with two narrowed eyes.

  “There is no excuse. Even if you die again, you must still find a way to keep in touch. Do you understand, Momo-yah? Distance cannot be measured in miles.”

  Momo bit her lip, and nodded.

  “I understand, Appa.”

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