Cupids: The Wrong Kind of Spark

Chapter 7 Eye of the Warden

It was like a Siberian ice cube just blew up inside the urinal. A sudden silence swallowed all the city noise from outside. Right at that moment, the water dripping from the sink faucet stopped mid-air. It just hung there, stiff like glass crystals dangling from invisible threads.

Reyhan frowned, feeling like his jaw was about to freeze as cold steam puffed out of his own mouth. "Yo Aeros, is the AC in this fancy place busted, or is some angel upstairs just bored and messing around with frostbite?"

"Frostbite my butt!" Aeros roared inside Reyhan’s head, his voice shaking with a cosmic panic he’d never heard before. "This isn’t about the AC, you brat! Time around you is being warped! The Warden... the most ruthless gatekeeper of destiny has just dropped in on these coordinates!"

Elena Moretti, who had been busy wiping her bloody fingers on her jacket with a wild and possessive look, suddenly froze in a really weird slow-motion. Her mouth, which had been halfway open to cuss him out, locked up instantly, her eyes staring stiffly in one direction. She was frozen solid, looking like a Madame Tussauds wax figure of a street mafia draft.

"Elena? Boss?" Reyhan waved his hand in front of the mafia boss's face. Elena didn't blink at all. Forget talking back, not even a single strand of her maroon hair moved despite the cold breeze from the vent.

"Don't waste your breath on a time-doll!" Aeros snapped, his spiritual shadow in the mirror pressing his panicked face against the glass. "They’re using outer-dimension freezing authority to isolate our Veil rip! Look out the window, fast! Don't let your eyes pop out like a goldfish!"

Reyhan swallowed hard. His feet, still in those hospital flip-flops, trembled as he stepped toward the heavily fogged-up toilet window. With his stiff fingertips, he wiped the frost away, leaving a tiny viewing gap about the size of his palm.

Outside, the Jakarta city view that’s usually packed with loud delivery bikes looked like a dead oil painting. A family SUV speeding along was now hanging tilted on the asphalt, with its exhaust smoke hardening into solid gray clumps in the air.

And right above the highway intersection, about fifty meters from the restaurant, some entity was floating calmly without touching the ground.

It didn't look like an elegant white-winged angel from a medieval painting. This thing was more like a clump of computer visual distortion—black and white armor plates without texture, spinning randomly around a single dim blue light core. Its face was blank, just a pure cosmic crack radiating static vibes that sounded like a broken radio buzz.

"Low-level sweeper-type Warden," Aeros explained, his tone dropping significantly to hide his brainwave vibrations from Reyhan. "If it catches our resonance directly, it'll fire anti-existence particles that'll crack your soul all the way back to your great-grandparents' bloodline."

"Crazy..." Reyhan whispered, clutching his chest which was throbbing again from coughing up that golden blood earlier. "Why’s its face look like a computer error? I mean, if it's gonna slaughter an amateur like me, the least it could do is have a decent aesthetic."

"You're seriously critiquing the aesthetic of a slaughter angel right now?!" Aeros barked angrily but kept it to a whisper. "Kill your aura now, idiot! Hold all that golden vibration inside your gut! Imagine yourself as a useless rock on a riverbank!"

Reyhan immediately shut his eyes, hugging himself tight to keep Aeros's resonance from leaking out of the room.

Right then, from a dark alley corner across the fancy restaurant, a middle-aged man came stumbling out. The guy looked like a mess with a bottle of booze in his left hand, while his right hand gripped an ancient talisman with a glowing purple one-eye symbol—totally illegal.

Turns out, that drunk guy was one of those street occultists who secretly practiced cheap black magic to peek behind his own Cupid’s Veil just to win a late-night gambling bet. Since he didn't have high-level protection, his body wasn't fully affected by the cosmic warden's time freeze. He stumbled into the middle of the street, giggling like a lunatic.

The flawless crack on The Warden’s face that was spinning calmly suddenly stopped. Its broken radio buzz turned into a high-pitched screeching melody that tortured Reyhan’s spiritual ears.

SCREEECH!

The blue light in the cosmic warden's chest flared blindingly. Without moving a hand, without any verbal warning, a single needle of pure icy-silver light shot out like lightning from its core, piercing right through the drunk guy’s head.

"Uh..." The drunk guy stopped. The bottle slipped from his hand, hanging stiffly before hitting the ground.

The next second, the guy's entire skin turned into fading blue digital particles that slowly washed away in the invisible dimensional wind. No bloody screams, no mangled meat left behind. In less than two seconds, the middle-aged man, his occult talisman, and his very memory in this world evaporated into clean gray cosmic dust without a trace.

"Holy crap! Man got deleted from the universe's family tree instantly!" Reyhan muttered with wide eyes, reflexively feeling his own neck to make sure his head was still attached to his spine. "Aeros, I’d rather get busted by the cops than get that permanent delete service, I swear!"

"Shh! Quiet!" Aeros warned.

The static-armored entity spun once over the drunk guy's ashes, as if making sure not a single drop of illegal spiritual residue was left behind. Once it felt the cleanup was done, the Warden shot vertically into the night sky faster than sound, leaving behind a ripple of transparent air bubbles that slowly popped.

Whoosh!

Seketika itu juga, dimensi waktu kembali berputar normal dengan hentakan yang kasar.

Just like that, the time dimension snapped back to normal with a rough jolt.

The water from the faucet finally hit the sink with a clinking sound, and the loud roar of engines outside returned, blasting everyone's ears.

"THAT BITCH COOK—wait, what?!" Elena Moretti was suddenly flustered, her breath coming in fast like she’d just woken up from a nightmare about running out of ammo. She frantically looked left and right before grabbing Reyhan’s shoulders tight with a mix of panic and protectiveness. "Reyhan! Are you okay?! Why does it feel like my heart just skipped a beat for a second?"

"I'm fine, Elena. I just witnessed the scariest pest control session in the history of my life," Reyhan answered while wiping cold sweat from his forehead.

Inside Reyhan’s head, Aeros was now slumped over his broken emperor’s chair. His spiritual breathing sounded heavy and exhausted.

"Reyhan... we're in trouble," Aeros hissed weakly. "We can't keep hiding in a restaurant bathroom hugging this yandere mafia lady forever. That Warden left, but he's still on active patrol in this district. His sensors are super sensitive to the smell of our Veil leak."

"So, what are we supposed to do? Move to another country?" Reyhan asked in his head.

"No time for that!" Aeros snapped. "They’re monitoring the outer-dimensional flight gates. The only way to survive tonight is to use 'Aura Camouflage'."

"Aura Camouflage? How do I do that?"

"We gotta find a human whose Cupid naturally makes them loved, worshipped, and the center of attention for millions of souls all at once in the real world. If we stay near that person, the glow from millions of their fans' worship will become a 'fake sun' that blinds The Wardens' sensors. Our illegal resonance will be totally buried under the noise of all that mass worship energy!" Aeros explained with his hype levels peaking again.

"Naturally loved by millions..." Reyhan mumbled, his eyes staring blankly out the restroom window, trying to wrap his head around the idea of a "mass idol" serving as his cosmic human shield.

Reyhan stepped out of the restroom with Elena still tailing him closely like his own shadow. As he walked back through the messy restaurant dining room, Reyhan turned his gaze toward the building's massive glass walls.

Across the street in that fancy district, a giant thirty-meter LED billboard stood tall, glowing with colorful lights that really popped against the rainy night sky.

On the digital screen was the silhouette of a teenage girl holding a gold-plated mic with the most dazzling smile ever. Around her image, silver soundwave animations were pulsing hard under a big, neon-red slogan:

"MIA: THE GOLDEN VOICE — ASIA TOUR COMLINE SPECIAL AT GRAND ZENITH MALL tonight!"

"HER!!! THAT'S HER!!!" Aeros roared in excitement from inside his brain, making Reyhan's head throb with pain again. "Look at that, Reyhan! Her Cupid is giving off a 'Siren' class vibe! She's the ultimate metaphysical eye-candy who can calm the rage of the deepest ocean storm! If we can sync that girl up under your thumb, those Warden detection signals won't ever track us down, not even in a thousand years!"

Reyhan stared at the photo of the girl named Mia in silence. Her pretty, innocent face on the digital billboard shone brightly under Jakarta's cloudy sky.

He realized one bad thing: for the sake of his own safety, he had to ruin another pure soul's life tonight. He had to drag the brightest star on the world stage into the mess of his new tyrannical destiny.

Reyhan turned around suddenly, looking straight into Elena's grey eyes as she stood right behind him, still clutching the back of his jacket.

"Elena," Reyhan called, his voice turning flat, edged with a hint of that ancient emperor vibe starting to leak into his tone.

"Yeah, Babe? What's up? You want some chocolate dessert now? I'll have my guys raid the nearest bakery!" Elena replied with a crazy, loyal energy.

"Nah," a thin smile touched Reyhan's lips, which were starting to look ice-cold. "Call all your guards. Get your armored trucks to Grand Zenith Mall right now. We're gonna... watch a free concert tonight."