The time for fear is over

Heaven is not, as everyone thinks, a place where people go if they’re good enough. It’s a place you earn. So maybe he was tired of that, of needing to earn a place. Maybe God got tired of him the way a mother gets tired of her starving children. Maybe the children could never get full. Maybe they tried — they ate and ate — but their stomachs were too large and empty and their mother got tired of their grumbling and sent them out. Out of the house, into the empty, hungrier world.

Ryo dreams of a world where he lives with Akira in a small town somewhere in Japan. Akira is a teacher and Ryo is a business consultant. Ryo works remotely, checking in every morning via video calls. The work is challenging, partly because his colleagues can be a little slow and ineffectual, but also because human nature is generally unpredictable. Akira can attest to that since he deals with children. Ryo clicks into his emails and commiserates.

On weekday mornings, Ryo, not being one to sleep in, makes breakfast while Akira drags himself out of bed and has a shower. He emerges, dripping with moisture, hair sleek and desirable and Ryo doesn’t wonder why neighbours think they’re celebrities incognito. Akira leaves the house in a rush, with shoes half-worn and bread stuffed in his mouth, Ryo waving leisurely from the door while sipping his coffee. Ryo isn’t housebound, he has his haunts. Places that will tolerate him taking up a chargepoint for hours and, when the weather permits, a favourite spot in the park that overlooks the lake. On the rare occasion he needs to meet a client in the city, he can always expect a warm meal and a warm bed at the end of the day.

“The thing about good and evil,” Satan says, aloud, barely breathless even though he's been pushed to the limit. “Is that it doesn’t truly exist. It’s a conflict of ideas.” Perhaps if he says it louder, the one who needs to hear it the most will listen and believe him. Everyone is a child who’s hungry. Everyone is a mother who is tired. There is no such thing as true altruism and someone like Satan knows this.

God was in power and Satan didn’t agree. He was flung out of heaven to the furthest edge of the universe. After that, God decided the final nail on the coffin should be that he would never be happy, and made it so.