Libum watched the cat twins sporadically for five years. He hated to admit it, but he found himself struck with a morbid fascination. These certain Inapo, in particular, gave his sordid mind something to study. In the last few years, he’d grown obsessed with the cat curse.

After all, the change was most drastic compared to others he witnessed, in his opinion. What did dying, and surviving the aftermath, feel like? To die so many times, and lose the parts of themselves that made them human in the first place, what kind of prolonged, horrible effect would that have on someone? After each death, the girls gained a cat quality. Who was to say they’d even be human, once their final life was complete?

The twins were both raised the same, but had radically different outlooks on life as they grew up. The youngest daughter adapted quickly to the austerity of the environment they’d been born in, while the eldest rebelled every step of the way.

The youngest, Carmin, was beloved by her family. In the world of cursed humans, she was what Kolupati would call a success story. The elder twin, Carnelian, once she found out she’d had multiple lives, ran off from home. She stopped caring about how many lives she could live, before the curse overtook her body.

Misfortune followed the twins everywhere. Once Carnelian died the first time as a result of a freak accident, her want to protect clouded her sense of self. She’d kept herself vigilant and her little sister out of danger for a few years, but the stress of the life her family wanted the twins to have caused her to break. She didn’t want to stay hidden away from prying eyes forever. 

The second time she died, she protected Carmin from a threatening man on the train. The man was terrified by her, so she took Carmin, ran, and that night at home, she disappeared. Carnelian’s lives quickly stacked up. With two girls so closely intertwined with death as a whole, they could sense Libum more than others.

The two girls were back home again.

“Can you just stop! Are you fucking stupid?” Despite Carmin’s proper upbringing, swears came easy to her. “Carnelian, grow up! Shouldn't you be ashamed of yourself?” Libum felt the reproach in her voice as if it were thrown directly at him. Tikba stood at his side, but unsure of what to do. They looked at the two black smudges on the roof, far above their heads. “Do you care about anyone but yourself? We're cursed with this burden together, you know!” she yelled. 

“Oh, am I stupid?” The other yelled loud enough for their family below to hear. “What a rotten life! Someone has to care about me! You think I'd want to be locked up in a place like that?” The two teetered on top of the roof of their family bungalow home, at the highest point, now silhouettes in the twilight. Libum could hardly tell from this distance which one he was supposed to pick up, but he’d learned their mannerisms by now and could tell which one was speaking by their voice.

Libum stepped on something under his feet. On the floor beneath the house, red-bordered pamphlets littered the ground. 

“I care about you!” Carmin said, desperately. “Why do I matter so little to you that my opinion isn’t taken into consideration? Why are you deciding to die on your own? There's hope for us! A future!”

“Come on,” Libum commanded. “Let’s start climbing.” Opening a portal in the middle of this argument would only lead them straight into the danger. He didn’t want either of them to show up at an inappropriate moment, so he pulled Tikba forward, climbing on top of a white fence that surrounded the patio. Libum used his arms to lift himself up and scrambled for purchase on the loose red panels. The sloped roof didn’t make it any easier, but he grabbed Tikba’s arm and helped pull the soul up.

“Is this a bad time to mention I’m afraid of heights? Can I hold onto you?” Tikba reached for Libum’s hand, but he only rushed forward to the girls. He didn't have time to focus on the lie, and he knew that it was one. If the soul were afraid of heights, they wouldn't have reached for him on the bridge. Libum just thought it was another attempt at flirting, but looking back, Tikba genuinely appeared woozy as they stared down at the ground.

“Don’t look down!” yelled Libum. “Keep your head up and keep your eyes—” He fumbled with his tongue. “Just look at me, Tikba.”

“I won’t let them take me away, nenei,” Carnelian’s face visibly softened. Tufts of hair poked out on her skin, her hands already long morphed into paws. When she tried to touch her paw against her sister’s face, Libum noticed the white pale scars, each the same length, slashed across her palm. He counted eight. A white tail with a black cap twitched back and forth.

“You’re the one killing yourself!” Carmin had to have been on third or fourth life, given the differences between the curse’s progression. Her elongated nails were painted black, whiskers protruded from her cheeks, and what used to be the whites of her eyes were now yellow, and bleary with tears. The ends of her hair were fading into a sandy, orange color. “You’re just trying to get to the last life. Once you get there, what am I supposed to do? We can be healed together. Why would you leave me alone?”

Libum walked—crawled was a better term, clinging to the panels until he was just behind the eldest. Tikba joined him. 

The eldest of the twins grew out her hair and it was more red in color, piercings that once decorated her lips and ears had been scratched out and now left dried blood on her skin. Fangs protruded from the top half of her mouth. “You’re my little sister,” she said. “I’d give up all nine of my lives for you, if I could. But not for them.” She pointed out her chin, to the group of family members that were gawking at the fight. 

Uselessly, they waved more pamphlets and fliers in their clenched hands.

The Anito reached out his hand and touched her back with the tips of his fingers. “You are already close to death. Would you die for your sister?” he asked. The girl spun around and saw both Tikba and Libum for the first time, and her claws were ready to strike. Her eyes crinkled in recognition when she saw Libum, as if she'd seen him with each death she met. “If you make a deal and give your last life to us, you can watch over your sister and protect her.”

Carnelian’s feline ears narrowed. A dawning realization came over her, and she seemed to understand what was happening without having to be told. “Can you make that happen? Will this be enough to protect her?” she asked. Libum jerked his head upwards. She bit her bottom lip, as if contemplating something, before agreeing. 

All she had to do was die, Libum glanced over at Tikba, whose face held such grief he had to look away.

The eldest walked to her sister, who had been clutching her chest and attempting not to cry. The two hadn’t seen one another up close in a few years, but they looked to each other and picked out the similarities. Without warning, she brought Carmin into a crushing hug. Libum could only pick up the gist of what they were saying. 

“I’m sorry for being selfish,” she said. “You don’t have to forgive me.” Carmin looked like she was at a loss of what to do. All the possible outcomes she’d come up with after she started this fight, she hadn’t predicted her sister would do such a thing. And it was written all over her face.

Carnelian plunged her sharp nails into her own chest, too fast for it to really register for Libum, and quickly ended her own life.

The two Anito took to the sidelines as they watched the girl’s body transform from a human-cat hybrid to a complete cat. Carmin grabbed frantically at her sister’s clothes, trying to find the girl underneath. Her eyes were cloudy and swollen. 

“How am I supposed to protect her like this?” the cat yowled, running up to the Anito. Tikba dropped to their knees, hung over the side of the roof, and vomited from the sight of blood. “You tricked me!” The cat jumped from tile to tile. She still had evidence of a scar over her left eye. “I can’t do anything without my body.”

“That is your body,” Libum explained. “This is the curse.”

“What did, what did you just…do?” asked Carmin. “Carnelian, you can’t really be dead, right? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?” She held the clothes her sister wore close to her chest, as if holding it tight enough, close enough to her heart, it would bring Carnelian back. Blood stained her clothes. She threw her head back and screamed until her voice was scraped raw. 

Libum recognized this. Unfiltered grief. It was eating away at him, too. He chewed on the inside of his cheek until the taste of copper filled his mouth. Exhaustion overwhelmed him without him having to do much. Emotional exhaustion took his senses, and an internal switch had been placed from on to off. She was just another soul to tick off, another step closer to his goal.

The cat trudged over to her little sister and attempted to nudge her head against the girl’s hands. A pathetic attempt at comfort, but it was all she could give. “I want to keep you safe—and alive,” said the cat. “I want you to live, nenei. For as long as you can. I love you so much. I’m sorry for doing it in front of you, but I’ve never been one to think things through. Even death is turning out to be unfair, but isn't it for most?”

No one dared move from the roof.

“You’re allowed to watch over your sister until she passes on and completes the cycles.” Libum broke the silence. “But you now work for the God of Death, and must complete your contract with her. Come. After you agree, you’re free to do as you wish unless summoned otherwise. Tikba, open a portal back.”

Tikba did so, albeit reluctantly. When the cat disappeared from their sight, their eyes lingered on Carmin, still sobbing on the roof. Just as Libum was about to walk through himself, he felt a hand tighten around his wrist.