The Name Scarlet
"For a whipping boy, the effect came through quite nicely."
"Whipping...?"
"It seems a sliver of conscience still lingered in No. 18's heart. Though Stockholm syndrome might also be at play."
The sight of me, battered and torn while trying to save her, must have stirred something in her. I had long known that inflicting ambiguous pain on her would only breed resistance. To draw out meaningful change through empathy, sympathy, or compassion, a deeper connection was needed. How I had managed to build that rapport in the meantime, I wasn't sure.
"More importantly, you look like you have something you want to ask. Or is that just my imagination?"
"..."
Sometimes I wondered if the team leader could actually read my mind. Nero insisted it was simply that every thought showed plainly on my face.
"...It's not your imagination. I'm confused by her sudden change, and I can't understand why she's making this request at all."
"Hmm. The explanation is a little embarrassing, I'm afraid."
"...?"
Embarrassing? For whom—me, or the team leader?
"First, are you aware that all angels take female forms?"
"N-no."
I glanced at her, still sprawled limply across the bed and not yet recovered, then quietly answered while forcing my eyes away from her exposed, heaving body.
"Don't celebrate too soon. Demons, on the other hand, are the opposite—male forms."
"I-I never celebrated."
"In any case, the creatures commonly called succubi, or those who were originally angels but have fallen, aside—most demons appear as beasts or men."
I still didn't fully grasp where the team leader was going, but the next words painted an image in my mind I couldn't ignore.
"Because of that, relationships with the opposite sex are generally viewed negatively among angels—especially anything involving Eros."
"..."
"In such circumstances, a new interpretation emerged: that Eros between those of the same female form might be permitted."
"Surely not... No."
So... if opposite-sex relations were forbidden, then same-sex ones were allowed? And the archangel Gabriel reaching out even to prisoners meant she was a genuine lesbian? I had wondered why her plea to fill her depleted heart had to lead to a physical relationship. If she was mistaking pleasure for love, and already possessed a special experience only she had known, then acting the same way toward me to recapture that learned happiness... it made sense.
Well, it made a kind of sense. But angels... right?
"Isn't that ultimately just wordplay?"
"It is. I've always thought dividing love into Platonic or Eros categories was meaningless to begin with."
Her straightforward admission nearly left me speechless.
"But for us, pretexts and excuses matter a great deal."
"...You really are an angel, aren't you?"
Seeing how they cared only for appearances—how they were perceived by others—while substance seemed irrelevant, I finally voiced the question I had swallowed before. The question that sounded like I was doubting whether they were truly angels at all.
"Of course. Even angels aren't without desires. Naturally, that includes sexual desire. Most of us are quite good at self-control... which is precisely why we fall, isn't it?"
"..."
I had no reply to that retort. And hearing the team leader calmly admit she too was a prisoner to desire made me flinch for no reason.
"By the way, it seems we've already achieved the goal of freeing her from the Stigma's control. Shall we end the counseling here?"
She was right. What mattered now wasn't angels' sex lives—it was this. Since the Stigma's command authority had transferred to me, I could simply order her to prioritize her own inviolable freedom above all other commands and be done. But I could never agree to ending the session while leaving her broken heart unattended.
"We'll continue. Until she regains her strength... or rather, her spirit."
I had almost said her original personality, but caught myself. The team leader didn't press the point or make any teasing remarks, perhaps because she understood.
"Well, I expected you to say that, Ung-ssi."
"...Of course."
Still, I couldn't let my guard down.
"After all, if you just keep your mouth shut, you get to hold such a delicious woman to your heart's content, don't you?"
"Th-that's not... not what this is..."
Having successfully flustered me, the team leader spoke calmly once more before ending the call.
"It was a joke."
*
"They say the site where that brat was found burned to the ground."
"Burned an entire village to ashes, parents included, without a trace left behind."
"A true seed of the devil, then. Surviving alone in that inferno that looked like hell itself recreated—only natural, I suppose."
The damp, pitch-black underground prison. Priests who chattered freely while casting cold glances my way as they passed. That was how I learned of my parents' deaths.
In the debate over whether abilities were blessings or curses, I was firmly on the side of curses. An uncontrollable power beyond common sense had brought ruin to me, my family, and everything around us who had lived ordinary, happy lives.
"Today's rations."
Thud. With a toneless voice, the usual lump of food dropped into the bowl before me. Before burying my face in it, I caught the faint number etched on the side of the bowl.
887
It was the first number I had been given. I thought it was an ambiguous one. ...That was the extent of my awareness.
In the cramped underground cell where not a single ray of light entered, treated worse than livestock, I endured by recalling the days when I had been poor but happy. Yet those memories gnawed at my heart whenever I opened my eyes to the present, and before long I forgot everything from before I was dragged here. My parents' faces and voices had long since vanished. The last thing I let go of was probably... my own name.
And then, on one of those countless days when the stench of food on my lips and the disgusting sensation of waste running down my legs had become familiar—
I was sprawled weakly like a drowned rat after being blasted by a water stream strong enough to bruise skin.
"Ah~ So this child is the flame-type ability prisoner? How adorable."
Pink hair the color of wildflowers I might have seen once, a pure face like a blooming flower. Even with her eyes gently closed, she turned her head precisely toward me and smiled softly. I remember her.
"Nice to meet you~ I'm Sarakael."
It seemed my ability had been deemed useful to them. From that day on, I was no longer confined to the narrow cell. Though the time that followed was so grueling I sometimes wished I had stayed locked away.
There was training to control my ability, combat training to handle situations without it, and... "reeducation" time.
"Now then~ Let's do our best again today."
That was undoubtedly the hardest part. Reeducation was nothing more than being tortured to my limits without reason, forced to swallow injustice. Even though I had never wanted this ability, it made me deny my own existence and reinforced the awareness that I was a prisoner. All I remember is that even as I screamed and spat blood before that ever-present smile, her gently closed eyes never changed.
Perhaps because of it, as my body grew and I gained control over my ability and combat skills, my number changed rapidly. At seventeen it was 501, the next year 377, then 212. After enduring hellish training and torture, forced to fight other trained prisoners to the death and surviving by any dirty means necessary, I—who had become an adult—found myself bearing the two-digit number 18 on my chest.
My miserable life, always hungry, cold, damp, and reeking... changed from that point onward.
"Congratulations~ Today's reeducation won't be with me. Someone else will be in charge."
The reeducation time I had thought I would never get used to, that I had only feared—only that day was different. Led by Sarakael with her detestable, benevolent smile, I was brought into a lavish bathroom larger and more splendid than anything I had ever imagined, even in dreams.
"We have to wash every inch clean today, all right? I'll help you~"
I hadn't thought so when I was only sitting in the interrogation chair, but as she clung to me in the bath, carefully washing every part with soft bubbles and warm water, I wondered if she had always been this small. Then I realized it wasn't that—she simply hadn't changed while I had grown.
...They were angels.
"There~ So pretty."
I experienced my first truly pleasant, warm, and fragrant bath in my life, one that felt like my body might melt. When it ended, I wrapped myself in a soft white bathrobe, savoring the unfamiliar sensation, and was led to a vast space lined with countless white pillars. Unlike the underground prison I had known, it was brightly lit as if under the sun. Walking with Sarakael between the pillars, I saw at the end a large bed surrounded on all sides by thin curtains that revealed silhouettes.
And then...
"...Hehe, come here."
The most beautiful voice I had ever heard. Golden hair that shimmered like threads spun from melted gold, and sparkling golden eyes that embodied nobility itself. Yet she spoke to me like this:
"Such pretty hair. And these red eyes... I think 'Scarlet' would suit you."
"My... name..."
My original name had long been forgotten. The new name given to the prisoner known only as No. 18.
That night, I experienced reeducation without pain for the first time... and received her traces upon my tangled tongue. The reddish marks of favor etched across my body were proof of the love and affection I had thought lost. Until those marks faded, I frequented that noble bedroom, and even after being sent abroad as an executor, I remained intoxicated by that newfound sweetness.
To never lose that sweetness, I devoted myself to every command she gave and constantly sought her favor. But after losing the branch I had been entrusted with to a vile heretic attack, and escaping with unsightly burn scars on both arms, I was never invited to her bedroom again.
The longing for her favor, the lack of love and affection, turned into hatred for the heretics who had ruined it. This time I would make up for all my mistakes, and if possible, return to her embrace once more... That was all I wanted. So why... did this man confuse me with something gentler, more ticklish, and somehow uplifting than the sweetness I had known?
Even though I had treated him so cruelly... watching him become battered and broken while trying to save me made my heart pound. This heretical emotion... what exactly did it want from me?