Fairy Tale Books (2)
"Read me the next chapter."
"Where'd we leave off again?"
After returning to the mainland, Geppetto shot to fame overnight by making Pinocchio, the talking doll, his promotional model. Rising from a one-room dollmaker to a first-rate designer, he had this to say: Every piece of clothing has a soul. That soul is what brought my son Pinocchio to life. What a load of absolute garbage. If I'd been a reporter, I'd have pelted him with rotten eggs. That same bullshit had nearly derailed my whole plan once before.
"That was a good story..."
"Yeah."
"What happened to Grandpa Geppetto after that?"
"Beats me... Guy had a good nose for things, so he probably dumped his money into some blue-chip stocks and lived out a wealthy retirement. After that, I bet he and Pinocchio just went around playing golf."
"What are you talking about?"
"They lived happily ever after. The two of them."
"The two of them?"
"Yeah."
"...Hehe."
The Demon King pulled out the next fairy tale book. It was Beauty and the Beast. Of course, the author's name was James. Wow. This shameless son of a bitch. He wasn't even bothering to mix it with anything else anymore. This wasn't some half-assed plagiarism-and-mashup job — this was straight-up theft.
"Want to read this one together?"
She made a most welcome suggestion. I'd been dreading another round of her ripping into me for not sounding enough like the female characters anyway, and my head had already started to ache just thinking about it.
"Sure. It's more fun when we read it together."
"Yeah, yeah! Heheheh."
Beauty and the Beast.
There once was a prince who, cursed by a witch, had been transformed into a Beast. One day, a merchant who had wandered into his castle plucked a rose from the garden without the Beast's permission, intending to give it to his daughter. Enraged, the Beast moved to beat the man to death, and the merchant groveled until his hands might as well have been feet. The Beast then offered to spare his life — if the merchant gave him his youngest daughter. And so the merchant's daughter took it upon herself to live in the Beast's castle, all to save her father.
...Why did this not feel like someone else's story?
"Ah, when will I ever be able to leave this place? I miss my father and my sisters. Is there no way to escape the clutches of that dreadful Beast?"
The Demon King, playing the youngest daughter.
She's good.
At this level, I wouldn't even have a comeback if she tore into my Captain Hook performance. She'd been living here all alone all this time... instead of talking to herself, she must have been reading fairy tale books out loud.
Still.
Acting ability aside, a thick sense of wrongness clung to the line she'd just delivered. The hand holding her half of the picture book twitched. My turn — meaning, say your line.
"... 'You are mine now. Think not of leaving, and become my bride.'"
"...You think that's weird too, right? Read it again."
Of course it was weird. Fuck. This was the exact opposite of our situation right now.
Switching roles would probably go a lot better.
"Want to try switching parts?"
"Yeah, okay. Let's do that."
"'Please! Let me out of here! Send me back to the arms of the family I love!'"
That was Baek Dongha as the youngest daughter. In answer, the Beast Demon King bared her teeth and growled out her line.
"'Grrrr! You cannot leave. You must stay in here with me for the rest of your life. Otherwise, well — I'll have no choice but to gobble up that old man of yours.'"
"'Hic... You cruel thing! You're a beast through and through! An animal! A beast of a man! You brute!'"
"..."
The Demon King suddenly snapped the fairy tale book shut.
"...Want to stop reading?"
"Yeah."
"Is the book not fun?"
"No? These are the books I treasure most... I just don't want to read this one with you. It feels weird."
...Of course it did. This book was basically calling her out for everything she'd been doing to me.
"...Hey. Why are you so good at playing the youngest daughter, anyway? Why'd you get so into it?"
"W-well."
The Demon King pinched my cheek between her thumb and forefinger. Just like I'd done to her earlier. Fortunately, the cheek stayed attached.
"Suspicious..."
She narrowed those crimson eyes and glared at me. We were still sitting so close that the breath leaking through her pressed lips brushed against my face.
"Do you hate the Beast?"
An out-of-nowhere question. She was talking around it, of course. It amounted to the same thing as asking if I hated her.
"I like the Beast."
"The Beast locked her up on a whim. Even so?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"...Think how lonely the Beast must have been all that time. Just holding on by herself is impressive enough."
At that answer, the Demon King's eyes went enormous. The biggest I'd ever seen them.
The hand gripping my cheek went slack.
For a long while she just stared at me, dazed.
"What's wro—"
Tears began spilling from her eyes in a sudden trickle.
Wh-what the hell!
It hit me like chain lightning straight to the heart. I nearly did five somersaults on the spot. Out of nowhere, tears were dripping, dripping from the Demon King's eyes.
"What's wrong with you!"
"Huh? Wait...?"
With no warning at all, the Demon King was leaking tears like a water bottle with a hole punched in it.
She threw back the blanket, got up from the bed, and bolted for the door.
The door creaked, then clicked shut.
What was that. Did I say something wrong?
But even replaying the words I'd just spoken, I couldn't find anything I'd actually done wrong.
...What am I supposed to do.
I tried to recall the last time the Demon King had cried, then stopped. That night she'd been soaked in alcohol. Not a memory I was eager to revisit.
...This felt different from back then.
It hadn't felt like she was crying because she was terribly sad.
...Should I go after her?
Honestly, for the sake of my own safety, the right move was not to go. I shouldn't even ask why she'd cried. That was how you lived with the Demon King.
...She left the fairy tale books.
The books she treasured. We hadn't even read the remaining two. Maybe that was for the best.
I reached out and touched the spot where she'd been sitting. In that short time, the warmth had already vanished.
And then.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
Dawn was only just about to break. The intruder alarm went off.
I opened the door and stepped out to find the intruder already inside the castle.
That man.
Snow-white hair. An eyepatch over one eye, a red cloak around his shoulders. The Archwizard of Fire, Nephilim. I'd seen him talking with Dorothy before. Meaning he and I were technically acquainted.
"...You? The porter from Nine's party?"
The man addressed me the moment he spotted me.
"...Yeah."
"So this is where you were. Your companions are looking for you."
...What? Those women?
Well. That was some shitty news.
Tell them to go eat shit. I'd rather live here with the Demon King for a thousand years than join those bitches' party again.
"Well... how convenient. I'll kill the Demon King. And I'll take you with me."
...I'd like to see you try.
Footsteps echoed from the far end of the dark corridor as the Demon King walked toward us. She'd clearly wiped her tears in a hurry — her nose had gone all strawberry-red.
"...Your mana capacity... you're a monster."
Nephilim said it after taking the measure of the Demon King's power.
"You wear the form of a woman... but within, you are the Demon King. I'll come at you with everything from the start."
"Fire Dragon!"
⟨ Five Magic Circles ⟩
The instant he shouted it, five red magic circles drew themselves simultaneously at his feet. This bastard was on a different level from every enemy so far.
Flame surged up from the floor and gathered in midair, shaping itself into a dragon. The dragon locked blazing eyes on the Demon King, as if it meant to swallow her whole.
He swept his staff, and the fire dragon shot straight at her.
"Dodge!!"
The shout tore out of me before I knew it, my voice cracking at full volume. In that instant, my eyes met Nephilim's.
"I can't. The house'll burn down again."
Without a single chant—
⟨ Ice Dragon ⟩
The Demon King created an ice dragon without even chanting. It was at least five times the size of Nephilim's fire dragon. The ice dragon cracked its jaws wide and swallowed the fire dragon in a single bite.
The look in his eyes went vacant as he watched a spell that could have wiped a village off the map vanish in an instant.
"I'm not done. Not yet."
After that, Nephilim loosed three more fire dragons. That casting speed, that circle deployment... this man was stronger than Dorothy.
He just had the wrong opponent.
"That's enough firing."
The Demon King cocked a finger for a forehead flick, and just as she was about to teleport—
The tip of the man's staff suddenly swung toward me.
The fastest-casting fire-element magic
Flare Wheel. Its power was significantly weaker than the fire dragons before it, but among fire-element magic it had the fastest cast. Why was it suddenly coming at me?
"You told that woman to dodge just now, didn't you? So you're in cahoots. Well, Demon King? What will you do now?"
The Flare Wheel had come close enough that I could have reached out and touched it when—
The Demon King stepped in front of me and slapped the magic away with her bare hand.
"Ah...! Hot..."
The flames ricocheted off somewhere else.
"Y-you deflected that with your bare hands?"
That's what I was saying. She just slapped that thing away barehanded.
"I can't let this go on. You."
She teleported, closing the distance in a blink, and finished him with a slap like a cannonball. Same as every tough guy before him, Nephilim sprayed teeth and slammed into the wall. No matter how strong you were, everyone was equal before a slap.
I sniffed the air.
Something's burning...
The smell was coming from my room. Flames were spreading from there in every direction.
"It's on fire! Fire!"
"Yeah. It's fine. I'll put it out. It's a little slow, though."
She flicked her palm, and the flames began to die down, little by little.
...She's so calm.
Come to think of it, there were scorch marks here and there all over the Demon King's Castle. So this kind of thing wasn't all that rare.
Having a freshly cleaned carpet walked on by muddy feet. Getting stabbed by some thug's sword. A treasured vase shattering... ah, wait, that last one was me. Anyway — the fact that this kind of thing was just everyday life for her... it must be so hard.
Wait.
Inside my room.
Oh, no.
There was something in there that must not catch fire. I didn't think twice. I ran for my door.
I kicked the wooden door open with a crack.
They weren't supposed to touch fire!
The room, still beyond the reach of the Demon King's fire-quenching magic, was full of flame.
"Ah! What are you doing! If you just wait, it'll go out on its own!"
I paid no attention to her voice trying to stop me from going into my burning room, and went in anyway.
The fairy tale books were already engulfed in flame. Luckily the blanket beside them was still intact, so I wrapped the books in it and ran back out.
I sprinted over and shouted at the Demon King.
"Hah... huff... Hey! Put this out already!"
"Huh? Okay..."
A blue light spilled from the Demon King's hand and snuffed out every last flame on the fairy tale books I'd brought.
Paper blackened and charred. The Peter Pan, Pinocchio, and Beauty and the Beast we'd been reading just a while ago, plus the other two volumes — all of them had been reduced to ash, beyond any hope of recognition.
My dazed gaze drifted to the flames still clinging to the wall. Embers slowly dying under her magic. How many times had this place burned?
"There's no way to undo this, is there?"
An obvious, stupid question. But I wanted to ask it anyway. If it was her — if it was her, maybe, just maybe, it would be possible. That kind of blind hope.
"...Yeah."
"..."
My chest ached.
Was even the simple everyday act of reading fairy tale books alone not permitted to her? Did they have to barge in as they pleased, trample it, crush it, burn it?
"I-it's okay...! I've read them a lot. Already. I remember all the stories too..."
She forced the words out one by one, her voice trembling. But she couldn't hide the way her hand was shaking too — the same hand she'd swung to protect me, the one the fire had burned.
"This is okay too."
Then she cast a heal on her own hand. The wound closed with startling speed. I sincerely wished that, if she could, she would use a heal on the wounds in her heart as well.
"...I'm okay. So..."
The Demon King came closer and squeezed my hand tight.
"Don't make that sad face. Okay? Once the fire's out, I'll rebuild the room for you too."
...In a situation like this.
Why was she the one comforting me?
Why?
Because she was afraid I'd get sick of this place and say I was leaving?
The Demon King was gathering the ashen remains of the fairy tale books with her hands, rustling through the scraps.
I had no obligation to cheer her up, and nothing to gain from it.
But.
It felt awful. The face I wanted to see on the Demon King wasn't one that looked ready to cry at any second. It was a brightly smiling one.
"Hey."
"...Yeah?"
The Demon King, still sweeping up fragments of fairy tale book, looked up at me.
"I'll write them again for you."
"...Huh? What?"
"The fairy tale books. I'll write them again. Me. From now on, for good."
"..."
She bit down hard on her lower lip.
Tears fell, drop by drop. She could put out the flames swallowing the castle, but apparently there was no magic that could stop tears from falling. I'd made her cry twice today.
"...*sniff.* *sniffle.*"
She whipped her head away — after showing me her crying face to her heart's content, as if she meant to pretend none of it had happened.
The Demon King set down the paper in her hands. She clapped the ash off, pat, pat. It seemed she had no more lingering attachment to the burned fairy tale books.
"...Hey."
The flames had almost entirely died out. In a voice still rough, she started to speak.
"What's a word that's way better than 'like'?"
"...That's probably the best word there is."