DAISY

The word "hometown."

It always filled me with two feelings: hunger and shame.

When I was four years old, I realized that I was born of the most wretched origins in the world. Slash-and-burn farmers were drifters, belonging to no nation and no city. The life of a slash-and-burn farmer—clearing forests by fire just to survive—left no room for settling down anywhere.

The edge of the world.

That's what I secretly called my village. Whenever I looked out at the endless expanse of forest stretching in every direction, the thought crept into my mind whether I wanted it to or not. Especially in winter, when snow piled thick on every side, the village fell into such profound silence that I sometimes fell into the illusion that every human being had died.

Winter.

The winter of the slash-and-burn farmers.

Cold and hungry—a season where you had to do anything, anything at all, just to survive.

"Just a moment is all it'll take, dear."

"That's right, Daisy. It's nothing, really."

I had long known that the adults in the village harbored strange feelings toward me.

Looking back now, I think it was because I was too mature for my age. Physically, mentally—strangely, I was ahead of other children in every way. For an eight-year-old, my eyes already held a depth of sorrow. That, no doubt, had stirred the dark desires of those adults.

A village cut off from the outside world.

A girl born far too beautifully for a place like that.

How that story would end had, to a certain extent, already been decided.

I could have resisted. Easily.

But if I gave up one meal in their stead, that meant more food for my parents and Luke. My mind was too sharp when it came to calculations and profit to simply look away from that truth. So I let the adults do what they wanted with my body.

"Daisy is really beautiful, isn't she?"

"How did she end up with skin so fair?"

Whenever my parents went out to work the fields and Luke ran off to play with the neighborhood brats, the usual game would invariably take place in some corner of the village or the far end of a hut. I stared down at the men pawing at my body without expression.

"......"

They reminded me of stray dogs gnawing at their own shadows.

I had never particularly considered myself unfortunate. It was just that every time the cold winter wind hammered against the outer walls of the hut — *thud, thud* — heavy and sluggish, I couldn't help but wonder.

Why didn't people just die instead of continuing to live?

Someone's tongue traced across my skin. As though it were the most delicious fruit in the world. According to what the village elders said, my body gave off the scent of peaches. As if people as dirt-poor as us had ever actually eaten a peach — they were just spouting whatever came to mind. Every last one of them was a liar.

Take, for instance, the wife of a certain family.

She was a woman who spent her days gathering herbs. She was found in the mountains three days after she went missing. Her entire body had been torn to shreds by wolves. Her husband collapsed into despair, wailing in grief, and the villagers consoled him, saying what a terrible tragedy it was.

But the truth was that men had torn her apart.

The gang bragged about it while playing with my body. They said they had ambushed a woman wandering alone on a mountain path and violated her until she died. They didn't seem to feel any guilt whatsoever. Proof that concepts like morality had no existence in this world lay plainly before my eyes.

"Hey, you."

One of the gang members, apparently noticing my gaze, walked over. Albert. He was the most brutal man in the secret gang festering like a tumor in this village. He slapped me across the cheek.

"What are you looking at me like you're so pretty for, huh? You're a whore who barely survives the winter thanks to us, and you dare look down on your benefactors?"

"......"

"Disgusting bitch."

*Ptui.* The man spat on my chest. It didn't much matter — I was already caked in the spit of men far worse. But the man seemed satisfied by the mere act of having humiliated me, and he turned back to his companions.

The absence of guilt.

The skill with which they justified their own evil deeds.

The humans who, no matter what happened, shifted the blame to others and refused to accept any responsibility for themselves — they were the ones who had gone missing.

I accepted it as simply what humans were. A shameless knack for self-preservation was probably an indispensable tool for getting through a life thoroughly crushed underfoot. Looking down at the men rubbing their hot, rekindled arousal against my spit-stained thighs, I felt a measure of relief, in a way.

And.

This grotesquely twisted world called the slash-and-burn village was crushed without ceremony.

A raid.

A massacre.

Golems the likes of which I had never seen before surrounded the village, and amid them, someone walked out in silence.

"I am the master of all demons. The seventy-second ranked Demon Lord, Andromalius."

He was a man entirely cloaked in black.

His hair covered his eyes, and his body was shrouded in a black cloak. His two pupils swept slowly across his surroundings with an air of someone testing us. I only learned the truth later, but at the time, he was hiding his name.

"Why do I threaten you. Why did I raid your village. Put all such questions out of your minds. From this moment on, you are permitted no questions of your own — you will answer only what I ask."

Caught off guard by the sudden intrusion, the villagers were paralyzed with fear. Eight people had already been killed — it was hardly unreasonable. I remembered their names clearly. René, Albert, Jean, Toby, Abel, Bruno, Thibault, Lucien……

Of course I could remember them.

They had all been men who treated me as a toy.

"G-great being… Please, show us mercy."

The village chief spoke.

I thought him a fool. The black-clad man had just issued a direct order: *answer only what I ask.* The village chief had, in that very moment, defied a freshly given command. Not a wise choice.

Sure enough, one of the man's subordinates threw a short blade. The chief took the knife straight through the center of his throat and died instantly. The villagers screamed, but they had brought it on themselves.

"This is my final warning. You are permitted no questions. You have only the obligation to answer what I ask of you. If anyone fails to answer my words properly, I will execute them one by one as an example."

The man spoke calmly. Only then, it seemed, did everyone finally grasp his sincerity, and they shut their mouths in silence. Humans with such slow comprehension truly were hopeless.

"Among you — is there a boy named Luke?"

For some reason, the man was looking for my brother.

The villagers resisted at first, hoping that by staying silent they could weather the crisis. But the man was far more cunning than they were, and he shattered their little scheme with ease.

"So you have the gall to let my orders go in one ear and out the other. Admirable nerve."

The man let out a soft, scornful laugh.

Up until now, I'd been watching the situation unfold with a certain detachment. Even if I didn't know why the man wanted Luke, one fact was clear: we had no power to resist him. We couldn't beat him. It was better to stay quiet than to resist for no reason.

But in the very next moment, my jaw dropped.

"Humans who live by burning the forest—I will tell you why you must die, and why this boy named Luke must die."

Despite possessing overwhelming power, the man showed the villagers a measure of respect.

He told us, word by word, slowly and deliberately, why we had to die, why he had to kill us.

"Therefore, I have honored this place with my presence to kill the boy called Luke. It is a misfortune you will find hard to accept. I will waste no more words. For the sake of myself, the other Demon Lords, and the future of the Demon race, you must die here."

He could have killed us without any explanation at all.

Yet, as if even lives as wretched as ours deserved a "reason to die," he spoke honestly and clearly.

—I couldn't understand.

In this slash-and-burn village, even a beggar wouldn't hesitate to use violence against a young girl. Treating people like livestock was simple enough. A man like the one standing before us could easily slaughter the villagers, could dismiss us as trash—yet he treated us instead as human beings.

I was the only one here who noticed that.

The villagers were still trembling in terror. It seemed his words weren't even reaching their ears. I was astonished. No nation, no city had ever acknowledged you as human, and you cursed your lives because of it—yet now, when that acknowledgment was finally given right before your eyes, none of you recognized it.

"......"

I stood up.

Perhaps you are a man who lives in a different world.

A man who knows that the evil deeds he has committed are his own responsibility, and that it must remain so forever.

A man who can look himself straight in the eye.

"Great Being."

I put strength into my voice as I spoke. The man's black eyes turned toward me. Even though a child had addressed him, there was no hint of contempt or disregard in his demeanor. The man was looking straight at me.

The moment our eyes met, I sensed something. Though he hadn't said a word yet, I had a vague but firm conviction of what was about to happen. That he could not reject me, and I could not reject him — this became unmistakable from a single exchange of gazes.

"Presuming upon that magnanimity, I have something I wish to say."

I was careful not to let my words come out tangled as I continued. I swear, never before had I focused so intently on my tongue and lips. I studied the man's expression with meticulous care. I could feel him watching me just as intently — almost frighteningly so.

I struck at the man with my voice.

The man answered with his voice.

And as time passed, our certainty only grew firmer.

"Trusting in the King's magnanimity, I make my plea. If the boy spoken of in the prophecy is only Luke, then you need not kill us all. Please, punish only Luke."

If you are the man I imagined.

The man I so desperately wished to meet.

You will surely respond to these words.

"I do, however, beg that you allow me to kill Luke with my own hands."

A brief silence settled.

The man spoke softly.

"…I have one question."

"Anything, Great Being."

"Killing one's kin is the gravest of sins. Why do you willingly embrace sin?"

Why do you willingly embrace sin.

That question was the crux of everything.

I smiled. Because the question was also a test. If the man had regarded the villagers as nothing more than livestock, he could have slaughtered us far more easily. What grand reason would one need to butcher cattle and dogs?

But the man had deliberately treated us as human. He had elevated the act of butchering livestock into the atrocity of slaughtering people. An immense chasm lay between the two. Why did he insist on calling it sin? That, too, was something I had asked the man.

"Because, great being."

There was only one answer.

"I need to remember forever that I am the scum who drove my own brother to his death."

That was the truth.

The adults had treated me as a whore. They had violated a ten-year-old girl who was no different from a child. They made excuses—'we showed you mercy,' 'it was thanks to us that you survived'—but the truth was that they had brutally assaulted the girl.

You were probably the kind of person who could not make excuses to yourself.

The kind of person who drew a clear line between yourself and ordinary people who lived by making excuses for everything.

"…Lift your head,"

the man said.

"Lift your head and look at me."

And for the second time, our eyes met.

An illusion overcame me, as though the two of us were the only people in the world.

On some winter day, I met a Demon Lord—and—.

In a life stained ash-grey, for the first time, I met one of my own kind.