The Vase and the Photograph
Early morning.
A dull thud. Then a crystalline shatter.
I was fucked.
There were three things the Demon King liked to look at with quiet satisfaction as she came and went. One was the Paper Crane, set out to sunbathe. Another was my character, digging up king potatoes. The last was the blue porcelain vase she treasured above almost everything else—the one she'd been making me polish whenever she got the chance.
No. Absolutely not.
I have to fix this somehow before she notices!
But how? There was no way. I didn't even have glue, and even if I did, I didn't have the skill to put a vase smashed to pieces back together.
From inside the storeroom came a tuneless little hum as the Demon King rummaged around for something. I had to fix this before she came out.
How...
No matter how I ran the numbers, it wasn't happening.
Fuck! There's no other way.
I sprinted at full speed to the entrance of the Demon King's Castle, where a red tripwire served as a warning sensor—a device that filled the halls with a deafening alarm the moment an intruder so much as brushed it. Ding-dong ditch. The exact prank I used to pull with the neighborhood kids when I was little. I had to recreate it perfectly. I nudged the tip of my foot against the wire.
Just as expected, the siren blared like it was about to explode. I scrambled back inside before I could show up on the Demon King's screen.
Please... please don't let her have seen me!!!
From here on was the important part. Time to start acting.
"...Huh!? What's going on!"
The Demon King, who had been rummaging through the storeroom for Baek Dongha torture implements as usual, came running in shock. What met her eyes was the wreckage of the shattered vase—and me, covered in dirt, collapsed beside the fragments. She rushed over and laid my head in her lap.
"What's wrong!? Stay with me..."
"....Urgh..."
My closed eyelids fluttered, and then I lost consciousness. Or rather, I pretended to. The story I was selling: I'd fought an intruder to protect the vase and passed out doing it. The dirt all over my body looked pretty convincing after I'd rolled around in the Cabbage Patch a few times.
"...Hey! Wake up!"
"..."
"This isn't working. I'll use Mjolnir for an electric shock..."
A vicious crackle of gathering current cut through the air.
"No! I'm up! I'm awake!!! Get that goddamn hammer away from me!"
If I'd been a second slower, I would've been lightning-fried.
"...But... what happened here...?"
Once she'd confirmed I was all right, the Demon King's gaze turned to the vase, smashed to pieces.
Baek Dongha. Don't tense up. Your acting was perfect. Play it like usual. Just like usual.
I put on a look of bitter frustration and slammed my fist into the floor with everything I had.
"...What's wrong?"
"Damn it! I couldn't protect it. I'm a goddamn weakling."
"Tell me everything."
"You heard the siren, right?"
"Yeah."
"...An intruder showed up. Someone with a grudge against you."
"Yeah, yeah."
"What he was after was the vase you treasure. I fought with everything I had, but... I'm sorry. It wasn't enough. He smashed it and ran."
My gaze lingered on the broken porcelain, looking for all the world as if my whole body might tear itself apart. She would surely feel the desperate grief of a man who couldn't even protect one small memory shattered right before his eyes.
...Please. Buy it.
Tears welled at the corners of the Demon King's eyes.
"...You. You risked your life to protect my vase."
She suddenly pulled my head—still resting in her lap—into a tight embrace. The impulsive gesture filled me with a thick, concentrated guilt. I ran the blame-deflection circuit at full power.
You're the one who put the vase here in the first place.
This was actually a happy ending. I was free from vase-polishing slavery. She'd confirmed the loyalty of a slave who'd risked his life for her porcelain. Everyone was happy. Nobody had to suffer, and if it could just stay like this...
?
Of all times, a real challenger showed up right then. He looked far weaker than the Black Dragon or Bisang who'd come before—muscular, huge, mohawk, mustache, and a two-handed axe the size of his own head. A barbarian stuffed with every extra-character cliché that guaranteed he'd be weak.
"So you're the Demon King, wench! Your infamous reputation ends here! For you have met Kurdan of Destruction!"
Even his dialogue was dripping with flags that screamed he was about to get his ass wrecked. Kurdan of Destruction. I felt not even a shred of anticipation.
"What? Kurdan of what? What did you just say?"
"Kurdan of Destruction! From this moment, engrave it well into your—"
A whoosh. A slap. A thunderous crash.
Tsk.
Kurdan of Destruction never got to finish his sentence. A slap had already arrived and demolished his face. Naturally, he went down in one hit.
"This is the guy, right?"
The Demon King asked, dragging the unconscious Kurdan by his mohawk like a handle.
"Huh? What?"
"The intruder who smashed my vase earlier. He's 'Destruction of whatever,' so this is the guy, right?"
Bloodshot eyes. A voice cold as ice. She looked like she was searching for a place to land her wandering rage.
"...Yeah. That's the bastard."
Sorry, Kurdan of Destruction. Blame your name.
The Demon King, pissed off for the first time in a while, had gone into the storeroom, shut the door, and was making something. Kurdan and I waited outside, him still unconscious. Clanks and heavy thuds leaked through the door.
...What the hell is she making.
I was getting secondhand terror for no reason. If I'd been Kurdan, I would've just jumped out the window.
"...Ugh... where am I..."
The unconscious Kurdan opened his eyes. Only an hour of unconsciousness from a Demon King slap. That bulk of his clearly wasn't just for show.
The storeroom door unlatched and creaked open. The Demon King poked her head out.
"Is he up?"
"You dare smash my vase?"
Black smoke coiled around the Demon King's core. Those blood-red eyes, filled with nothing but hostility, were far more intense than when I'd first seen them. Her voice froze the room solid, and Kurdan and I both trembled in terror.
"...Come in. Over here."
She crooked a finger at him.
"W-wait! A vase?! What are you talking about! I never—"
The moment Kurdan tried to open his mouth—
"Shut the fuck up, you piece of shit!!!"
My soccer kick exploded into the jaw of the man who'd been kneeling to explain himself.
"Gaaah!"
"You—you piece of trash! You smash our precious vase and you still have the nerve to run your mouth?!"
"I-I never did anyth—"
"Be quiet! Shut up!"
I beat the living hell out of Kurdan the property-destroyer until he couldn't even open his mouth, then dragged him over to the Demon King.
"Hah... hah... here. Finish avenging the vase."
"Yeah. Leave the rest to me."
"P-please, spare me!"
Kurdan, dragged away by his hair. Not my problem. The door creaked shut and slammed. After that, screams echoed from inside the storeroom all day long.
The door finally opened much later. The Demon King came out wiping her hands with a handkerchief.
"...Hey, you've got a piece of tooth stuck by your mouth."
"Oh my, thank you."
"...What about Kurdan? Did you kill—"
"Hey."
"Huh?"
"Kurdan said something. He said he never broke the vase."
Don't panic. Baek Dongha. Excitement is poison.
"That's a lie from a guy backed into a corner."
"But no matter how I think about it, it's weird, right? Why would someone who smashed my vase and ran come back to pick a fight..."
"A normal person wouldn't break into someone else's house and smash a vase in the first place."
"So I checked."
"...What?"
"I tried to erase Kurdan's memory of breaking the vase with the Akashic Records. But it said it couldn't be erased?"
"...Explain that in a way I can actually understand."
"It couldn't be erased because the memory never existed in the first place."
There was nothing I could do about her icy gaze piercing straight through my heart. The Demon King's thumb and index finger seized my chin. She pulled me right up to her face and whispered.
The room where we'd played chess when I first arrived at this castle. On her orders, I sat here alone, hands folded, politely.
God. Please let that Demon King drop dead of some horrible disease before she kills me.
My prayer went unanswered. The door burst open with a creak.
"Did you wait?"
No.
She set a wooden box down in front of me with a heavy thud.
"...What's this?"
"Open it. Yourself."
Whatever was inside this was definitely Kurdan's head. She'd watch me gag at the sight of it and then say, I've prepared a separate box for you. Naturally, I couldn't back out. The Demon King's urging gaze was locked on my fingertips. Unable to withstand that stare, I flung the lid open and squinted at the contents.
Huh...
Vintage Instant Film Camera
An old-school camera that produces a picture identical to its subject with a single click.
A camera. No matter how you looked at it, a camera. An old-school Polaroid Camera that used film, the kind that used to be popular. So this was what she'd been looking for in the storeroom. Why the hell this, of all things...
Is she trying to take my funeral portrait?
Given the circumstances, my thoughts couldn't go anywhere else. She, still thoroughly pissed, tapped the camera with a fingernail.
"Do you know how to use that? It's a thing that makes a picture identical to the object when you go click."
That was the kind of description you'd give if you were explaining it to a caveman seeing a camera for the first time. She could turn on a game console just fine but didn't know cameras—I decided not to pick that fight.
"I know."
Then she suddenly raised her hand.
Eek!
I flinched, thinking she was about to deck me, but she was just fixing her hair.
"...Is it okay right now?"
"...What?"
"Is my hair okay...? Me."
"...It's pretty."
A compliment that rolled off the tongue. Half genuine, half flattery. Her cheeks flushing, she handed me the camera.
"That picture-making thing. Do it for me. Then I'll forgive you."
So she was a being capable of showing mercy after all. This meant I wouldn't be buried in the Cabbage Patch alongside Kurdan. From the distant recesses of memory, my mother's advice flickered.
"Son, can't photography just be a hobby? Do you really have to major in it? You'll starve to death."
No. It actually just saved my life.
"Alright. But let's move locations."
After that, I wandered from window to window around the Demon King's Castle. The wide angle's no good here, that window's too small—I spun her around for quite a while with excuses like that.
"Are we still not done?"
"Hold on. If we're going to take it, we should take it nicely."
That line was a cheat code that provisionally established the photographer as the one in charge. Even if I'd run her around a bit, she wouldn't dare hassle the photographer who was going to capture her appearance at two hundred percent.
"This spot should be good."
I sat her in a decent window frame and checked the backlight from various angles. Her appearance naturally filled my entire field of view.
...She really is beautiful.
She was so beautiful that if you let your mind wander for even a moment, you'd forget she was a demon. Even without mixing in any cheap tricks, from any angle, she put any painting to shame.
Let's take it here.
"Alright, smile."
"Huh? Why?"
the Demon King asked back.
"Smile. Big."
"...Just take it. Why are you suddenly making me do weird—"
"Smile. Or I won't take it."
Sure, I was in a disadvantageous position, but there was nothing more irritating than photographing a blank expression. And for fuck's sake, if the photographer tells you to smile, you smile. You don't talk back. The moment I held the camera, there was nothing in the world to be afraid of.
The same girl who normally flashed smiles with no cooldown whatsoever was now smiling awkwardly, clumsily, as if she didn't know how.
"Alright, here we go. One, twooo... three..."
"What are you doing? Is it done?"
The Demon King pressed me, her eyes round.
"Is it done?"
I clicked open the film compartment. Just as my ominous feeling had predicted, there was nothing inside. If I told her now that I couldn't take the picture because of some film issue, there was no telling what she'd do to me over the vase incident.
"Go click. Hurry up."
"...It's done."
"Really? Then give me the paper."
"I can't give it to you right now. Developing the photo takes about a year."
"What? Last time those people got theirs the instant they clicked?"
They probably had film then...
"The prettier the subject, the longer it takes to develop. The camera needs more time to process it."
It was a pretty cringeworthy line, but apparently not to her.
"Huh? I-is that how it works?"
"Yeah."
The Demon King pouted, but she looked strangely satisfied. I'd just created another reason I had to escape within a year.
"...Don't you want to take one together?"
The Demon King, taking the camera, asked me offhandedly.
"...Huh?"
"...L-let's take one together. The three of us..."
She grabbed my wrist and pulled me over. Click. Click.
"...Heheh... eeeheehee..."
The Demon King pressed the shutter of the filmless camera over and over, laughing brightly. Me, her, and the Paper Crane were captured inside it.