Show Me the Meaning (Every Beat...)

Oh, sorry! Shinigami are Japanese "death-gods". In some versions, they decide when a person is going to die, sometimes they are believed to guide the souls of the dead to the afterlife, etc. I don't know what actual shinigami from traditional Japanese mythology are supposed to be like, but, for some reason, shinigami are popular characters in manga and anime. Though even in popular culture they are depicted in various different ways. In Yami no Matsuei anime and manga, as far as I remember, the main characters were shinigami, and they were people who died and started working as some kind of supernatural agents, investigating mysterious deaths, stopping evil spirits from murdering people, helping lost souls find their way into the proper sector of the afterlife, that sort of thing. Some of them sort of dressed like ordinary fictional detectives would, a white shirt, a tie, a suit and a long coat... and that's how Paul was dressed in Tory's dream from Chapter 1, so I assumed he was supposed to be a shinigami.

An onmyoji is a "Master of Yin-Yang", a traditional Japanese ghostbuster medium or shaman. They are also popular in manga and anime. They are usually depicted as helping people when mischievous spirits cause trouble... or helping spirits when mischievous people cause trouble^^ (when someone desecrates a sacred place, for example)

And kitsune are fox-spirits from Japanese folklore, they are shapeshifters and can turn into humans, they are often cunning and mischievous. They are also often character in manga and anime.

So, in a Japanese-mythology-and-popular-culture-inspired fantasy setting - like that dream of Tory's - it is not strange to see an onmyouji, a kitsune and a shinigami interact. So, onmyoji Tory is chasing after kitsune Colin, because a kitsune is a mischeavious spirit and chasing after them is what an onmyoji does, it's like the natural order of things ^^ And if Paul is indeed a shinigami in this setting, it makes sense that Tory can hear/see him, because he's a shaman/medium. Also, Paul being a shinigami - or some other kind of spirit - explains how he apparently appeared out of nowhere, surprising Tory.

And... I'm doing relatively fine, thank you! How are you? ♥

Um... I must confess it's still too soon (after OffBeat ended) for me to be doing much rational thinking about this particular line or anything from the last chapters and epilogue. (I do have some totally irrational thoughts - like the time Colin and Tory spent apart paralleling the time between Volumes 2 and 3 - but you already know about them. So, in a similar vein,) I could say that this line could as well be describing the bittersweet ache that is the ending, as in "OffBeat ended, and for a while every beat was painful" - but that's more about what I am 'feeling' about it, and not so much 'thinking'...
Oh! But maybe I do have one thought about that line, after all. This is something that occurred to me yesterday. This line stands apart from all the other non-dialogue lines, like so: all the other "narration" lines have exact time and place specified (like: "5:21 P.M., Friday, December 23rd, 2005. Colin Stephens left Woodridge, Queens...") or are in the present tense (like: "The commute is fine, because it gives me plenty of time...") - and they are entries from Tory's notebooks, right? But this line - it can't be something that Tory wrote about the current events, it's a look back on a past part of his life after a long long time. Every beat was painful "for a while" - it's something you can't really know before that while has passed and then some more time has passed after that and you are able to distance yourself a little.
With this last line, what appeared to be a series of journal entries turns out to be a memoir, sort of. And I think it gives a sense of closure, I guess?

And what do you think about that line?