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Nanami, a far cry out from the rest of his power hungry and vengeful kin, was not a cruel demon.
He lived a respectable life between the mortals: or at least, he argues, as respectable a life as any self-sufficient twenty five year old demon could in modern society plagued with too much cruelty. It raged on enough that even he, born with a rite of passage to enforce it and wreak havoc as he pleased, finds himself looking away from time to time.
Violence, it was quickly turning out, was a currency these people were always more than willing to gamble their lives for. He decided to keep his cards close, just in case.
It was not his choice, after all, to have been burdened with the task of the previous Hypnos. The god of slumber who fell, like all the others who spent too long breathing the same air with the people down under that they could not tell themselves apart from the living anymore, for a human.
Getou, like he, did not think of mortals with such disdain; often too proud, negligent, and sometimes even savage: but they were not cruel, just misguided.
It was perhaps this likeness in thought that had him volunteering to assume the role of the dream sleeper himself, sparing his long-time friend the lengthy court trial of justifying the feeling of living in a place he was meant to end it altogether.
The man was eternally indebted, Nanami knew, but by then he had spent two millennia underground and was growing too complacent. He needed a change, and the High Lord was only too willing to send one of his best enforcers out on the field, already feeling drunk on the power of the souls he was betting on curating from then on.
So Nanami tries, as hard as he can, to put the people who needed to sleep into a comfortable endless drowse as comfortably as he can.
He gifts them the turning of autumn leaves in fall, the smell of cicada trees in the spring, the crashing of waves as they hug the shore, the comforting hue when dusk meets daybreak during hazy summer nights.
He brings, more than his god-anointed powers that have burdened him since birth: the comfort that is known only among those who have passed within the seasons and the unabridged complexity but exhilarating experience of human life.
They pass, quietly so, and the sleep god always finds himself feeling better about their passing than anyone of his born lineage should probably have been.
This part of the arrangement, though, Nanami could certainly do without.
Not even five minutes have passed since the little girl in the emergency room’s soul rolled off her too brittle body aged faster by chronic illness, Nanami is displeased to find Gojo already hovering.
Not for the first time, too, he soon came to realize after living with the court-appointed angel to aid him on his pilgrimage of the land for two months; Gojo always seemed to fashion himself out of nowhere just mere minutes after he has finished his job.
His hands, Nanami does not need to look, are already itching to catch this one’s still bubbling essence – the glow from children were more opulent, having been stripped of their vibrance at too young an age – and seal it into the encapsulated crystal jar meant for safekeeping.
“Not yet,” says Nanami, trying not to let some of his irritation transpire in his words, knowing that while this deity may have lived far a longer lifetime than his generous first life after rebirth: Gojo had the mental capacity of a ten year old human mortal, the snarking remarks of one even younger.
He need not glance behind him to see that Gojo is grinning from ear to ear, as he always does when he is always too early. “Of course, Nanami-san,” he chides, a breath’s hair away but seeming so far off altogether. The power of the voices ran with him too. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Nanami would like to chastise him and retort, that he would never truly be, especially when it came to younger souls who should have had full lives ahead of them but that his god was not as lenient with mercy as he so endorsed. He regresses at the last minute, because that was his own High Lord talking.
Nanami also learned, during this short tenure of the land, that his own ideology closely resembled that of what this world branded as “atheism”. What irony.
Taking one last look at the young girl’s fresh eyes that roared with life just a month ago when he was observing his charge, cheeks that were plump and fresh just two weeks before she had her first major attack. He searches for Celeste in the paths, known in her maiden mortal name as Utahime, and gives an extra note to make this one’s voyage into the next life through the passage of stars just a little extra bright.
To dim the pain, he explains.
Spinning on his heel, Nanami turns to Gojo who hovered just slightly so still. “All yours.”
“Sorry, I really truly thought you were done with the body this time.”
“You say that every time, Gojo-san.”
Gojo does, in fact, use that same excuse liberally: for every time their given ward of the week was bridled with smooth lines marring their face and not fine wrinkles, the voice just shy of dropping down a timbre but not quite yet, their eyes still shining from childlike luster and not the beguiled jadedness only those who have truly aged could ever dream of replicating.
It was clear this one was softer on children, and took a considerably longer time orchestrating their slumbers for them.
And so, if Gojo took to arriving just a few seconds earlier than he should have, and Nanami expressed growing annoyance but has never gone out his way to forcibly see him off despite having all means to do so: they continue.