By the late 1970s/early 1980s after establishing himself as Europe’s most deadliest Reaper, Richard was told by Fate he approximately had five more years before he had to return to his true form as Death for an unforeseeable time.
This made things even more complicated for him since becoming the current heir of the Kasper bloodline after his older brother Heinrich gave up the title when he married Yoko and their two children didn’t inherit the family’s infamous “Odin’s Eye” (Richard enjoyed being single and breaking many young women’s hearts for fun as a wandering Playboy, and as the youngest of two son he expected to live a carefree laidback life).
Richard had agreed to get engaged to a high-class Enchantress named Sheila handpicked by the family’s patriarch to stop the incessant lecture of needing a new heir.
But after a year of dealing with her expensive spending habits driving him to close his private medical practice from bankruptcy and witnessing Sheila mistreating his sister-in-law, he immediately threw her out in the rain with her newly bought clothes and vowed to let Fate decide what will happen – otherwise he would be one of the last three in the Kasper bloodline to use “Odin’s Eye”.
Out of a whim a few months later, Fate assigned him to observe Sigrid who had a life curse due within two years, knowing he would have to personally claim her soul as the price promised by her father to extend his life.
Richard’s heart was immediately smitten by Sigrid’s beauty and snarky personality, but he also felt pity knowing that most of her dreams and wishes would never happen because she didn’t have long to live (Sigrid was already suffering heartbreak after her childhood crush Batty chose another girl to be his eventual fiancée, and she was constantly the target of bullies at the academy due to her Wicca background); after seeing Sigrid’s cursed condition, Richard felt determined to woo and give her the best quality of life – even to the point he developed Lovesickness while away on a rouge monster hunt.