I Wanted to Retire, but the Gods Forced Me to Stay

After working around the clock for millions of years, the Archangel Michael finally died of exhaustion.

God, that old geezer, had a sudden attack of conscience and gave His most ruthlessly exploited subordinate a long vacation:

Transmigrate to a parallel world, be reborn as a low-ranking angel, water the flowers, feed the birds, drink tea, and play chess every day. After dying of old age, return to the original world and get back to work.

Michael: This is the life. I'm clocking out.

And the life really was good. Watering flowers, rubbing walnuts, feeding sparrows, and catching up on gossip every day.

They say the god of this world isn't an old man but a beauty. They say the god and His Seraphim are growing increasingly estranged. They say the god's time is almost up and Heaven is about to fall into chaos...

Michael: Not interested. I'm just here to enjoy my retirement.

Until one day, deep in the garden, He found a beautiful silver-haired man. Pale and fragile, with blood at the corner of his lips, the man looked like he was about to die.

Michael's compassionate heart took over. He brought the man home and began trying to save him.

Healing with spiritual power didn't work. Neither did nourishing him with medicine. With no other options, the angel steeled His heart and kissed him.

As king of the Seraphim in the oldest realm, His spiritual power was warm and healing. But He never expected the half-dead, sickly beauty to react so intensely...

After three whole days and nights of it, Michael was still working overtime, groaning in distress, His eyes unfocused and His waist no longer His own.

Three days later, the beauty finally woke up.

He looked at the little angel pinned beneath Him, red hair in disarray and trembling as He cried. After a moment of silence, He parted His thin lips: "...You... insolent..."

Michael sniffled, tears blurring His vision. "...Are you feeling better? Let me rest for a bit."

After that...

Michael somehow became the personal angel of a high-ranking official in Heaven, somehow got shoved into Heaven's most cutthroat elite academy, and somehow kept rising through the ranks. Somehow... He was promoted to become the next Archangel?

Wait, what happened to my retirement???

Later, Michael finally realized...

The sickly beauty He had taken in seemed to be the legendary Creator.

Michael: ?????????????

Reader's guide:

1. A sickly beauty with overwhelming possessiveness in the later stages as the gong × a gentle, compassionate, devoted angel as the shou. The shou is a beauty too.

2. A retired veteran gets completely wrapped around someone's finger and eventually gets rehired, a tragic tale of working around the clock for love.

3. Bittersweet, with just a little angst. HE

God Michael. The original world follows the canon setting. God the old man and Michael have a strictly father-son relationship, a master-servant relationship, and a capitalist-and-worker relationship (x).

Theme: So much for retirement.