I'll always be in your corner
Cause I don't feel alive 'til I'm burning on your backburner
- Backburner, NIKI
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Years ago, Gabriel walked the halls of a Manila high school in borrowed flesh.
Her appearance was deliberately unremarkable, a young woman with deep brown skin, stark white hair, and thick framed glasses. The form was a concealment, a vessel for observation. She was not meant to be seen. She was meant to watch, to learn, to understand the fragile creatures her Father loved so fiercely.
But mortals, she discovered, saw everything. And what they could not understand, they rejected.
She was often bullied. Her skin was too dark, her hair too strange, her quietness too unsettling. Books were knocked from her hands. Chalk dust thrown in her face. Whispers that followed her like a curse. She endured it all, her divine power a coiled serpent she refused to unleash. To harm a human, even in defense, was a violation she would not commit.
Only one person ever stood in their path. A delinquent with fierce eyes and a fiercer heart. Amelia. She fought Gabriel's battles with fists and fury, a shield of righteous anger. But Amelia could not always be there.
On this day, Amelia was suspended. She had bloodied the nose of a boy who thought it was funny to glue Gabriel's shoes to the floor. Gabriel, alone now, climbed the metal stairs to the rooftop.
She knew of this place only through rumor. It was said to belong to a boy, a quiet student who spent his lunches here, away from the noise and judgment. It was his sanctuary.
Gabriel sat in the corner by the chain link fence, her back against the cool concrete wall. She unwrapped her sandwich with careful, deliberate movements. Chalk dust still clung to her cheek, a fine white powder she did not bother to wipe away. The sky was overcast, grey and indifferent. She ate in silence, grateful for the solitude.
The door creaked open.
She froze, a bite of bread halfway to her lips. Footsteps, hesitant. She did not turn around. Perhaps if she did not move, did not acknowledge, whoever it was would leave.
"Excuse me." A boy's voice. Uncertain, but not unkind. "Is that where your favorite place is too?"
Gabriel slowly turned her head.
A boy stood by the door, holding a worn lunchbox. Black hair, slightly messy. Glasses perched on his nose. A nerdy, unremarkable appearance. He looked at her with genuine curiosity, not the predatory interest of her tormentors.
Her heart seized. This was his place. She was intruding.
She scrambled to pack her lunch, her movements jerky with embarrassment. "I apologize. I did not mean to be here. I was not aware this location was claimed. I will leave immediately."
"Why?" he asked.
She stopped, her hands frozen over her bag.
"Why do you want to leave just because I arrived?" His tone was not accusatory. He sounded genuinely perplexed.
Gabriel looked away. Her voice was small, worn smooth by countless rejections. "People do not wish to be near me. Especially while eating. It ruins the meal." She forced herself to stand. "You may have this place now. I will go."
"No, I do not mind."
She looked up.
He was smiling. A small, awkward, earnest smile. "Wanna have lunch together?" He lifted his lunchbox slightly. "Do not worry. I get bullied too."
Gabriel had never received such an offer from anyone except Amelia. Her throat tightened. She nodded once, a sharp, quick motion, and sat back down.
He sat beside her, not too close, but not far enough to suggest distance. He unwrapped his food, a simple meal of rice and fried fish. She picked up her sandwich again. They ate in silence.
It was not an uncomfortable silence. It was the silence of two people who understood, without words, that the other simply wished to exist without being disturbed. The grey sky pressed down, but between them, the air was light.
He spoke first. "Why do they bully you?"
She considered lying. She considered deflecting. But his question was so direct, so free of judgment, that the truth slipped out before she could stop it. "My appearance. It is unlike the other students. Especially my skin color."
She watched his face, waiting for the flicker of distaste, the subtle recoil. It did not come. He studied her for a moment, then smiled again.
"I see nothing wrong with you," he said. "You just look like any student."
She stared at him.
He continued, speaking slowly as if working through a thought. "Being different from others with something, that is what makes humans human. If everyone was the same, there would be no uniqueness." He shrugged. "Just ignore the bullies. Enjoy what you want."
Enjoy what you want.
In all her eons of existence, Gabriel had been praised, worshipped, feared, and obeyed. No one had ever told her, so simply, to simply be.
Her heart did something it had never done before. It beat. Not the steady, mechanical pulse that sustained her vessel, but a real, human beat, quick and strange and terrifying.
This, she thought, is what it feels like. This is the rhythm mortals call feeling.
They finished their lunch. He packed his lunchbox and stood. She remained seated, her knees weak.
"I have to go to class," he said. "See you around."
He walked to the door. A desperate urgency seized her.
"Wait," she called. "Your name. I did not get your name."
He turned, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Cain. Cain Baltazar."
The door closed behind him.
Gabriel sat alone on the rooftop, the grey sky pressing down, and held his name in her heart like a newly discovered constellation.
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The flashback dissolved like morning mist.
Gabriel stood on that same rooftop, alone in the middle of the night. The city sprawled below her, a vast constellation of artificial lights. The air was cool, carrying the scent of exhaust and distant rain.
She had returned here often over the years. It was a pilgrimage, unacknowledged and unspoken. The spot behind the air conditioning unit was still there, unchanged by time. She sat down in it, her back against the cool metal, just as she had done decades ago.
03's earlier words echoed in her mind. A backburner. Waiting patiently on the stove. Ready to be used, but never the first choice. I did not expect an angel could be a backburner too.
A soft, melancholic smile touched her lips.
As long as he still thinks of me, she thought, I suppose I will never mind.
She tilted her head back, gazing at the moon. It hung fat and silver in the velvet sky, ancient and indifferent. She traced its craters with her violet eyes, her thoughts drifting through the labyrinth of her own existence.
She had spent eons serving Heaven. She had fought in wars, commanded legions, reshaped the fabric of reality with her authority. And yet here she sat, a discarded form, a former friend, a backburner. The weight of her choices pressed down on her shoulders.
Who was she really fighting for?
Heaven expected her obedience. The Council demanded she submit to their will, act as their instrument. But Cain was her friend. The only human, besides Amelia, who had ever looked at her and seen not a monster, not a weapon, but simply a person.
Her heart already knew the answer. It had always known.
A deafening explosion shattered her reverie.
The sound rolled across the city like thunder, a deep, concussive boom that vibrated through her chest. She snapped her head toward its origin, her eyes sharpening. Kilometers away, a column of orange flame roared into the night sky, consuming the silhouette of a tall building. The fire spread with unnatural speed, swallowing floor after floor.
Her mind raced through possibilities. A gas leak? An accident?
And then she felt it.
A presence. Ancient. Corrosive. Utterly wrong. It slammed into her consciousness like a wave of ice water, stealing the breath from her lungs. Her divine senses, dormant in her human guise, flared to full, agonizing awareness.
Her eyes widened.
An Aspect?!