Kate LSY

It was half past nine in the evening. 

She sat in front of the laptop, shoulders hunched, and eyes drained of light. Her fingers moved over the keyboard in erratic bursts, followed by frantic punches to the backspace key.

The ache in her neck throbbed, and a fog loomed over her with a dreary kind of hazy exhaustion. Pressure coiled at the base of her skull and crept upward, slow and dull like clouds gathering for a storm named Migraine. 

She groaned, rubbing her face with the heel of her palm. Every word on the screen bled into the next until “Business Case” jolted her heart into panic. 

The hard drive screeched, and the screen went black. 

She froze, hand still pressed to her temple as thin, dark tendrils of smoke slithered between the keys, curling up from the surface like the laptop had finally combusted from the weight of her burnout. 

A hooded figure breached the screen—faceless, its features swallowed by shadows, nothing but a void in cloth.
Silent as breath.
Calm as Death. 

She shrieked, chair squealing backwards, spine cracking from the whiplash of motion.

“Screen time’s up, Darling,” said Death, voice low and gravel-rough, like they’d feasted on a plate of prickly souls.

“Oh my God,” she gasped, holding her lower back with one hand, “a notification would’ve been just fine. You didn’t have to unleash The Ring on me,” she hissed. 

“This is more effective,” Death said, sounding pleased beneath the void of their hood. 

She sucked in a breath. “You better not have messed up my document,” she snapped, arms crossing. “I didn’t save.” 

Death didn’t dignify her sass with a response, and simply stared with that hollow shadow where a face should be, still half emerged from the screen like a 3D pop-up. 

“I worked all day on that!” she barked, voice pitching into panic. 

With deliberate slowness, they slid the rest of their body through the screen. Their robe unfurled like spilled ink, silent as shadow, absorbing every sound in their wake.

The laptop blinked back on with a scratchy sound from the hard drive, and the fan whirled on, kicking into overdrive like it was exorcising whatever just crawled through it. 

“Your file is intact,” they finally said. 

Now standing fully upright, Death loomed over her. 

She rubbed the back of her neck where it throbbed. The headache flared. “Alright. What do you want—”

“Go eat.”

Her eyes snapped wide, anger spiked through her like a hot wire.

The audacity—like she was a child who needed reminding.

“Don’t tell me what to—”

“Now.” Their voice cracked through like ice, sharp enough to slice past the boiling heat in her chest. 

One beat.

Two.

She glared up at the faceless figure, stared right into the void. Her nostrils flared, spine locked, and stood abruptly. The chair slammed into the wall with a clatter as she stormed forward—Right through Death. 

Their body unravelled like smoke, sizzling and breaking apart. Shadows shredded in her wake—twisting, evaporating—like darkness recoiling from light.

A chill skated across her shoulders, but she refused to look back. 

“Go eat. Now,” she muttered mockingly under her breath, eyes rolling so hard they clicked as she stomped into the kitchen. 

A bowl of congee sat on the counter. Still steaming.

She stopped short.

What the hell—

The air smelled of earthy warmth, smoky and threaded with the unmistakable tang of preserved egg and simmered pork. The kind that melted into rice, slow-cooked till silken. 

It smelled good. Better than good. It smelled like…home—though she couldn’t say why.

Her stomach betrayed her with a growl.

“This… is where I accidentally sell my soul for sustenance,” she muttered.

“I am Death.”

She jumped at the sudden announcement. 

The temperature dropped as shadows shifted next to her. 

“Bearer of the Scythe no one sees coming. The Silencer of Heartbeats. Keeper of the Last Breath. The Gate to the Beginning and The End.”  Their voice boomed, echoing like they should be in a place way bigger than her town home kitchen. 

“I am not the Devil,” they added coolly, their voice filled with disdain. 

“I don’t tempt. Don’t need to. I collect what’s mine.”

“Okay!” she held up one hand, the other already clutching the spoon. “No need to be so dramatic.” 

She shoved a spoonful of congee into her mouth—and before she could spiral deeper into whatever beef Death had with the Devil—the familiar taste of comfort hit like a memory from a different timeline.

The porridge coated her tongue—warm and familiar. The pork tender, and the century egg velvety and strange. Something inside her softened. Her jaw unclenched. Shoulders dropped. The storm behind her eyes didn’t vanish, but it loosened its grip.

By the fourth bite, she sank onto the stool. 

“Feeling better?” Death floated closer, their voice quieter now. 

“Yeah…” she mumbled.

She couldn’t say how she knew, but something in the stillness told her they were holding something back.

The silence stretched. 

She swallowed. 

“Sorry, I—” she inhaled. “I get hangry.”

“I know.”

She stole a guilty glance at the abyss of their hood, and pushed the nearly empty bowl further onto the counter. “I was gonna take a break after I finished that section.” 

Death hummed knowingly. 

“I just got caught up,” she said.

“It’s always the next section. The next hour. The next day,” Death mused. “And then you see me.” 

Her gaze flickered to them again, but the darkness beneath the hood revealed nothing.

“Don’t you have actual work to do? Like, reaping or something?”

“Don’t you have better habits?” 

She opened her mouth to argue, but Death flickd a sleeve, and a glass of water slid across the counter. 

She drank without protest, but also refused to acknowledge she was, in fact, thirsty. 

“So,” she set the glass down with one gulp left in it, “why are you here so early today, anyway? Are you on break or something?”

“I was nearby,” they said. Like it was no big deal.

That made her pause again. But she doesn’t ask.

“So what now?” she said instead. “You gonna stand there and watch me slurp congee like some kind of stalker?”

“You like it,” Death said dryly. “You watch Netflix. Same difference.”

“Oh. So I’m entertainment.” She huffed. 

Death drifted into the kitchen’s far corner, where shadows gathered thick and dark. 

“If you want to keep walking through me,” they said, “then stop starving yourself. Stay hydrated. And for once—sleep before 1 A.M.”

And just like that, they vanished.

She stared at the empty corner, letting the silence settle. 

She frowned, wondering if that was a cryptic threat…or the closest thing to care.

---

Death’s Darling Diary: A collection of quiet moments with a shadowy guest who shows up uninvited—
and, as it turns out, provides annoyingly good company.

Written by Varrow Yu.