Barbatos rose to her feet.
Her body felt heavy. It was as though she were wrapped in dozens of layers of waterlogged clothing.
Still, just as she always had, Barbatos moved her feet. Night had already passed and dawn had crept in while she'd been too busy weeping to notice the time slipping away, but Barbatos walked on.
"Ugh."
As she stumbled out of the undergrowth, Barbatos rolled across the snow. She slid down the slope. The moment she was deposited onto the snow, she got up without a single second of hesitation.
"Dantalion…"
Her foot dragged. Her foot had sunk into a snowdrift, throwing off her balance. Barbatos made no effort whatsoever to regain her footing, so she toppled over with every third step. But she got right back up and kept going.
Just a little farther.
There had been countless millions of "just a little farther" before. But this time was different. Now, if she walked just a little farther, Dantalion would be there. The mansion was in sight. The door leading inside was in sight. And they were getting closer and closer.
She could reach it.
If she stretched out her hand, she could touch it.
Just like this, right now—
"…"
She was right about to knock on the front door of the mansion.
Barbatos stopped dead in her tracks. Her right hand halted just shy of grazing the surface of the door. She stood rooted before the door for a long time. The focus in her eyes sank with a chilling stillness.
'…No.'
She couldn't meet him yet.
Barbatos belatedly recalled what she looked like now. She'd been deliberating — should she greet Dantalion with a smile, or should she embrace him while weeping — when it dawned on her. Right now, she bore hideous burn scars like a leper.
'I really don't want to meet Dantalion looking like this.'
Barbatos pressed her palm against her forehead.
'But I want to see him. I want to see him right now… ugh. I hate this, though.'
A sigh escaped her.
Her heart had been racing just moments ago, but now she felt oddly calm. It was almost funny. She wanted to show Dantalion her beautiful side. At the very least, she didn't want him to see her disfigured by burns. She never imagined she'd harbor such ordinary feelings.
'Wait until the burns heal. No — what if that idiot crumbles before then?'
Her dilemma deepened.
She wanted to see him. But she didn't want to see him right now. Two opposing desires clashed with bloody ferocity. Barbatos grabbed fistfuls of her own hair and began muttering, "Ugh… uuuugh…"
Then, several flower blossoms caught her eye. Yellow flowers that bloomed in winter — snow lotus. They were also called ice blossom or glacial blossom. The cluster had not yet fully opened, its buds just barely parted, and Barbatos stared down at them with bleary eyes.
"…Let's leave it to fate."
It was just like her to follow her instinct at the decisive moment.
Barbatos crouched down, settling into a small squat. She snapped off a single snow lotus and, petal by petal, began plucking them away while murmuring in a daze.
"I'll see him. I won't see him. I'll see him. I won't see him… I'll see him, I won't see him, I'll see him…"
Barbatos's pale fingers tore the petals free one by one. Snow lotus had over twenty petals, making it perfect for a petal-counting divination. With each petal that fell, Barbatos's voice grew quieter.
The last petal.
Barbatos carefully plucked it away.
"…I won't see him…"
The goddess of fate had cast her vote for not meeting. Barbatos pulled a sour face.
"Shit."
For a while, she glared at the bare stem of the snow lotus, stripped of every petal. The way she stared, it was as though the stem might tremble in terror and sprout a new petal. But Barbatos was wise, and she quickly hit upon a far more efficient method than threatening a flower that couldn't understand words.
"After all, the best of three decides the match."
It was a remarkably simple justification.
"Mm-hmm," Barbatos nodded. And so she plucked another snow lotus. Over the course of two minutes, she invested her hopes and wishes into the process, carefully tearing away each petal.
"…Huh?"
She wouldn't see him.
She'd failed the second divination too.
Barbatos thrust her face right up to the flower stem, her eyes bulging with murderous intent. If the petals had possessed human-like senses, they would have been drenched in sweat for certain.
"You wanna get wrecked by me?"
Unfortunately, snow lotus had no mouth.
Well, flowers didn't have mouths in the first place.
More to the point, Barbatos had already plucked the flower and killed it. Even if it died here, how could it die again? It was an utterly unfair threat from the snow lotus's perspective. Barbatos locked eyes with the tiny plant before striking upon yet another brilliant idea.
'Wait — the best of three means whoever wins first takes the victory.'
Barbatos marveled at her own genius and plucked a third blossom. Surely she wouldn't draw three blanks in a row. Despite everything, Barbatos was fairly confident she had decent luck.
"I'll see him, I won't see him, I'll see him…"
A blank.
"…"
Three consecutive failures — just as she'd feared.
The world had abandoned her. Barbatos let out a quiet curse. Things had started going downhill at some point, and now even the flowers were defying her fate.
"Fine then, you miserable, cursed little weeds — I'll meet him in a bit. Damn it."
Barbatos grumbled her way back to the city and checked into an inn. Once she actually got moving, her chest felt lighter again. As long as there was no immediate risk of Dantalion disappearing elsewhere, a small delay would probably be fine.
From that day on, Barbatos devoted herself to recovery.
She couldn't restore her body in one go like before. Slowly. Bit by bit. She channeled what little mana she had left with the utmost precision, regenerating new skin. It cost her lifespan, but Barbatos didn't hesitate for even a moment.
Even if she had only a single day left, she wanted to live as the beautiful self that existed in Dantalion's memory.
In between her recovery, Barbatos secretly walked close to the mansion. Even hiding far away and merely gazing at it made her heart warm. Dantalion was in there. The fact that such a simple fact alone could make her happy — Barbatos felt slightly resentful of that.
"Oh."
She had just caught a glimpse of Dantalion at the window. Without thinking, she craned her neck. Unfortunately, she couldn't see his face. Only his silhouette flickered behind the thin curtain. Still, the disappointment was fleeting.
'If I see his face like this, it'll make it even harder to wait.'
Barbatos grinned as she gazed at the shadow.
Then it occurred to her that she was being hopelessly smitten, so she deliberately scrunched up her face. The result was a deeply bizarre and uncanny expression — brows furrowed, eyes grave, yet the corners of her mouth stretched into a dopey grin.
Time flowed on gently.
A week later.
"…"
Barbatos gazed at her own face in a hand mirror.
She murmured softly, almost without thinking.
"So this is what I look like."
After nearly two hundred years living in a hideous state, she'd forgotten her own appearance. Eyes that gleamed with golden light. Neatly groomed, pristine white hair. Skin as soft as freshly fallen snow. The bridge of her nose, rising in a clean line, seemed to carry a touch of Barbatos's pride.
"…Hehe."
Barbatos beamed.
Her teeth showed as a bright smile bloomed. She continued trying different expressions afterward, wondering which one would be best when she met Dantalion. In the end, Barbatos decided to smile in the way that was most true to herself — the way Dantalion loved most.
Barbatos came down from her inn room.
"How have you been, cus… tomer?"
The innkeeper, watching Barbatos descend the stairs, was at a loss for words.
This was not the guest who'd been moping around in a hooded robe. The innkeeper swore she'd thought a fairy was coming down the stairs. The moment their golden eyes met, the innkeeper's heart surged.
Barbatos tossed a money pouch onto the counter.
"Stayed comfortably. Do well in business."
And then there was her voice.
The deliberately grating, raspy tone that had been scraping people's nerves had evaporated somewhere. In its place came a voice tinged with playfulness yet brimming with authority and confidence. A voice that was soft but carried a framework of iron beneath.
The innkeeper couldn't even think to count the money pouch, and simply stared after Barbatos's retreating figure. Unfazed by that gaze, Barbatos left the city.
—Crunch.
Her shoes pressed lightly into the snow. Barbatos felt her body grow impossibly light. Her slow walk gradually picked up speed until she was practically running.
'Dantalion.'
Barbatos couldn't contain her smile.
'It was really, really hard.'
Hard enough to wear the soles of her feet away.
She'd wandered until they wore down and fresh skin grew back — and wore it down again thousands of times over.
She had roamed the world with nothing but the thought of wanting to see you one more time.
'Dantalion.'
In her haste, Barbatos nearly tripped over her own feet. But she twisted her legs deftly and pushed off the ground again. Rather than slowing down, she ran even faster. Warm breath spilled from Barbatos's lips.
'Dantalion!'
How could she express what she felt?
What could she do to comfort that man?
She sprinted all the way to the mansion in one breath. Her lungs burned. She braced her hands on her knees and steadied her breathing for a moment. From the moment she'd left the inn room until arriving here, Barbatos hadn't lost her smile for even a second.
Barbatos extended her right hand.
—She hesitated, just a little.
Then she moved again, and knocked. Knock, knock.
There was no response.
But Barbatos simply and quietly knocked on the door one more time.
From beyond it, she heard the sound of someone stirring.
Barbatos simply could not bear it, so she knocked one last time.
She heard footsteps.
Ah.
Those were his footsteps.
Barbatos held back the tears that threatened to fall. If she cried here, it would be nothing more than a tantrum. I crossed one hundred and seventy-nine years to come here in order to comfort you. So it was fine if I wasn't the one receiving comfort.
Countless words and sentences collided within Barbatos's chest.
Before long, the hinges creaked — and even if "creaked" was a generous description — the door opened.
Through the gap, Dantalion appeared.
And just like that, every greeting Barbatos had rehearsed and agonized over vanished cleanly from her mind.
But it didn't matter at all.
"Hi."
Because the one standing in the place where those words had been was still Barbatos.
Before this man, she could always smile as herself.
"I'd actually been thinking pretty hard about what to say, you know. Turns out it's harder than I expected. Hm. Really feeling in my bones right now how the simplest things are the hardest. So I figured, times like this, might as well keep it simple."
"A-ah…"
The other man was already in tears.
You're crying already — what's the matter with you — Barbatos wanted to scold him. But instead of rebuking him, she gave him a wide, radiant smile.
"You still have that god-awful unlucky face, I see."
She thought to herself:
Born as a Demon Lord,
She had lived as a warrior,
She had always tried to walk out in front of everyone else.
"Dantalion."
I…
I do love you after all.