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Hector scratched his cheek, thinking on all they'd been through together in about a year of servitude. It was crazy to imagine that Garovel had been doing this kind of thing for millennia.

And abruptly, he found himself wondering something anew.

'...How many servants have you had in total?' Hector asked.

'You are the twenty-second,' said Garovel.

Hector's gaze drifted away from the reaper as he tried to wrap his head around that number. On the one hand, that felt like a lot, but on the other, taking Garovel's three thousand years of life into consideration, maybe it wasn't at all. That was way less than one per century.

'Now you're wondering who they all were and why I released them,' said Garovel.

'Er. Well. Pretty much, yeah.'

'I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually, but to be very blunt with you, I don't generally like talking about them. It's painful.'

Hector frowned. 'Did ANY of them have a happy ending?'

'Happy endings are a myth. They don't exist.'

Hector's eyes bugged out a little. 'Fucking...! Wow, Garovel!'

'What?'

'That's... just... super fucked up. You really believe that?'

The reaper shrugged. 'I'm not trying to be a downer here. But what do you want from me? I'm a grim reaper, okay?'

'Emphasis on the "grim" part, I guess.'

'Hey, I can be plenty uplifting when I want to be.'

'Maybe you need religion, Garovel.'

'Oh, fuck you. We are NOT having this conversation, right now.'

'I'm just saying. If you really don't believe happy endings exist AT ALL, then there might be something wrong with you. I mean, fucking hell, man, that's dark as shit.'

'It's not like I don't believe goodness exists. I just think it's fleeting--and therefore, that much more in need of protection.'

'Uh-huh...'

'Whatever. I don't have to justify myself to you. I'm the boss in this relationship.'

'Yeah, okay.'