Side-Scrolling Adventure

"So the girl goes, 'Keeheehee, I'm going to check out all sixteen volumes!' And then the boy says..."

The Demon King had, apparently, reread the newly published fairy tale seventy-three times yesterday. The moment I woke up, she launched into a sprawling review of the whole thing, as if she'd been sitting there waiting for me.

For about an hour.

Relentless. Truly relentless.

"Well. I'm glad you enjoyed it. That makes me really happy."

"Huh? Your voice sounds like there's no soul in it."

"No way. Anyway, shall we go eat?"

"Yeah!"

"Keeheehee."

"..."

The kimchi stew she'd served me for breakfast was not an ordinary specimen. A massive slab of jerky was floating on top of it. I genuinely couldn't tell whether this was kimchi stew or jerky stew.

I glanced over at her bowl. Hers was perfectly ordinary, no different from usual.

"There's way too much jerky. You take some."

"Keeheehee. It's fine. You need to eat a lot."

I took a sip.

Excellent.

As expected of the Demon King's cooking. It wasn't spicy, wasn't salty, but it wasn't bland either—the seasoning sat just right. However she'd learned it, she'd added just enough water to give it that thick, concentrated, cooked-down stew texture. The jerky standing in for pork had been scored just enough for the broth to soak all the way through.

"Want me to poke your cheek while you eat?"

The Demon King had been sitting there this whole time with her chin cupped in her hands, gazing at me, and she still hadn't even picked up her spoon.

"Then you won't be able to eat. Eat before it gets cold."

"...Keeheehee. Okay."

For a while she picked at her food, eating and not eating in equal measure. Then:

"Hey. I'll harvest the potatoes for you today. You rest with Red Hare."

"...Huh? All of a sudden?"

"Keeheehee."

Keeheehee, stop that and just talk...

This had a suspiciously sweet smell to it—the same flavor as someone buttering you up right before asking you to co-sign a loan.

"I'll sew all the dinosaur dolls today, too."

"..."

"Keeheehee."

"We're going to play Bubble Bobble later, and I'll give you five Golden Candies."

"..."

"Keeheehee."

"I'll give you a shoulder massage later."

"No, that's fine."

"Keehe... huh? Why?"

One thing was clear. The Demon King wanted to shower me with gifts. Well, to be honest, I sometimes felt the same impulse when I looked at her, but...

Let's find out why.

"Is there something you want from me? If it's something I can do, I'll do it."

Her enormous mouth stretched wide, all the way to her ears.

Right. She'd probably been piling on the gifts until those exact words came out of my mouth.

...Forget it, you idiot.

It wasn't anyone else—it was this pitifully penniless Demon King. There was nothing more I wanted from her. If I left her to it, she'd start prying the bricks out of the Demon King's Castle to give to me, so I shut it down early.

"Ohohoho. After we eat, I'll show you something amaaazing."

"Okay, okay, just pick up your spoon and eat. And you still haven't had your two spoonfuls of carrots for this week."

"...Why, why are you like this! We were having a nice moment!"

Whatever she wanted to butter me up for, she must have been desperate, because she ate her meal obediently. She even pinched her nose shut between her fingers ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and got down two spoonfuls of carrots.

With her showing this much sincerity, I was starting to get nervous. A stupid thought crossed my mind—was she planning to extract my soul and stuff it into a dinosaur doll?

"So? What do you think?"

"...What is this?"

Her barren room, which had held nothing before. Next to the paper house I'd given her sat a bookshelf I'd never seen.

"Um, you know... do you remember?"

"Remember what?"

"You said you'd write me one book a month..."

...That's a promise you made up on your own.

Looking at the bookshelf in front of me and the words she'd just spoken, I finally understood what she'd been trying to say all morning.

In other words: would I keep writing, and fill this bookshelf for her.

I'm not confident.

Having properly learned what the agony of creation felt like, I was reluctant to stamp my seal on a contract so readily.

"...Nngh. I-is it too hard after all?"

When I hesitated, her expression drooped, and she fidgeted with her horn. She might have felt guilty about pushing me to write, considering how I'd recoiled in disgust at The Demon King at Home just yesterday.

There was broken lumber ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in the storage room. Fragments of furniture, most likely, smashed when intruders had broken into the Demon King's home.

She'd clumsily fitted those pieces together to assemble a bookshelf. She might have wanted one while reading Library, the book I'd written for her yesterday.

"I'll write you one book every fifteen nights."

"...Huh?"

"I can't go any faster than that."

"...Say that again."

"One volume published every fifteen nights."

"Nnngh... nngh."

Something was welling up again inside the great Demon King of sentiment. I'd learned by now. Sensing I was fucked, I quickly shouted to stop her.

"If you cry right now, yesterday's book was the last one!"

"Snff... ah?"

On the verge of overflowing, the Demon King hurriedly clamped both pale hands over her mouth.

The door slammed open. Pattering footsteps. And then she kicked her way out and fled.

She'd come back if I waited.

I waited, passing the time by looking at the paper house I'd given her. The four paper dinosaurs I'd given her when she had a cold had already taken their places inside.

The door clicked open.

"H-here, sign this first."

When the Demon King came back, her nose had turned strawberry-red. I'd told her crying would ruin everything, so she'd gone outside to cry. And then she'd come back pretending nothing had happened. It was adorable. I'd just play dumb. Aigoo, what a dork.

"Sign it. Please?"

"...All right."

After finishing our daily chores—farming, sewing, and the rest—the Demon King and I sat down in front of the game console. She'd been looking at me with reverence all day, and it was a lot of pressure.

The proof was that she'd handed me the game selection. Normally, whatever she wanted to play came first.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The moment I slid the cursor over to Annabelle, she started twitching. Twitch, twitch, twitch, twitch—like a cheap alarm clock.

Separate from her mysterious number of clears, the Demon King was still terrified of the game itself.

Lately I'd been finding it more and more fun to tease her. It was like the thrill of sticking your arm into a crocodile's mouth and pulling it back out.

...Hmm. Maybe I should try something I haven't played. Oh, what's this.

As I scrolled the cursor around, I found a game with a sword-and-shield logo I'd never seen before.

"Have you played this?"

"No? I've never seen it either."

I narrowed my eyes at her. She had a colorful rap sheet. This veteran player had already fed me bald-faced lies more than once.

"Wh-what!? It's true! I've never played it!"

"Sure, sure. I got it. Of course you haven't."

"Y-you! You don't believe me! That's the same face as the gold-toothed Village Chief from Little Farm!"

"...I believe you, okay? So what's this game about?"

"I really, really haven't played it! If I'm lying, you can hit me in the head with a hammer!"

No... why is a kid like you so violent.

"...Fine. I'll believe you."

"It's true. I mean it. Here, hit me."

"Okay! I said I got it!"

She shoved her still-buffed Titan forehead at me, so I hastily tucked my tail between my legs.

"But why haven't you played this one?"

The Demon King was always bored. If there was a game she hadn't tried, there had to be a reason.

"...If you scroll down this far... Annabelle is right next to it. I just didn't like that."

Ah. That made sense.

When I pressed start, an old trumpet fanfare rang out through the castle.

A character who looked like a swordsman, along with a mage and archers, walked out one by one and started running in a single-file line. A classic old-school game intro.

"...Heehee. Those guys look like the mean kids who come to our house."

"They do."

Just as she said, the invaders who were always getting flicked in the forehead and passing out seemed to have been turned into chibi characters, toddling along all cute.

When I selected two-player, the character select screen came up. A warrior with a sword, a knight with a shield, a mage with a staff, an archer with a bow.

...Wait. This party composition.

Urgh...

Had someone knocked over a food-waste bin? My stomach turned.

The class setup is exactly the same as those bitches from my old party...

I couldn't help seeing Nine, Rebecca, Dorothy, and Yuria's faces superimposed on the characters' heads.

...This is a shit game.

I wanted to quit right then and there, but the Demon King had already picked the mage and was reading through the various descriptions. I was the one who'd suggested we play. I couldn't back out now.

Then... what's left.

I had the filthy feeling of picking between Rebecca, Yuria, and Nine.

Dongha, you're going to pick me, the Sword Emperor, right?

Dongha. Thou wouldst refuse a golden-haired elf archer?

Dongha. Can you even adventure properly without a tank?

Shut the hell up, all of you. You pieces of trash.

I couldn't bring myself to choose, so I asked the Demon King to pick for me. She picked Nine... no. The warrior.

Once we'd chosen our characters, the game launched straight in without even explaining the story.

The first map. In a rustic field, for reasons I couldn't begin to guess, all sorts of vegetables appeared as monsters.

Fwoosh!

"Oh my, did you see that? A fireball just shot out of the staff!"

When the Demon King's mage character used a skill to defeat a giant onion, she made a huge fuss, startled by the shoddy pixel effects.

Don't sit there marveling at this when you toss around ultra high-tier magic like you're eating breakfast.

Tap-tap. Taptaptap!

The side-scroller had a faint Super Mario flavor to it. The main point wasn't so much continuously defeating monsters as jumping and dashing to avoid obstacles and reach the next course.

...If that's the case, why even make us pick classes.

Boing, boing. Boing, boing.

As expected of the Demon King. Even though it was her first time playing, her fingers flew over the buttons, and she followed right behind me. Truly, there was no game she couldn't play.

"This really is my first time."

"...Who said it wasn't."

"...Nngh. It is, though."

She added that last part plaintively. She must still have been holding onto the time I'd teased her with Langplgank during Annabelle.

Tap, tap. Taptap! Tak!

We went on like that for a while, and then:

A giant corn monster appeared, tearing ears of corn off its own body and throwing them.

True to a stage-one boss, its only patterns were throwing corn and jumping to slam its butt down. A simple mob.

Tap, taptap. Click! Tap!

Naturally, it was no match for me and the Demon King, veterans of arcade Double Dragon. Corn kernels rained down in every direction, and the clear message popped up.

"We won! That's the ending!"

"Probably not yet. We just finished stage one."

"Ah, is that how it is?"

It was a one-pattern game. After that, the same process kept repeating. Go to the next map, dodge obstacles, kill the monsters that needed killing, enter the boss room, duel.

...This is boring.

It was a mind-numbingly dull game, similar to how Bubble Bobble had felt the first time. Then again, Bubble Bobble had been boring at first, too.

Still. If you're having fun, at least...

Huh.

The Demon King didn't look like she was enjoying herself the way she usually did. Even when we played word-chain, she'd pour with cold sweat and concentrate...

"Is it not fun?"

"...Huh? Ah, no... it's fun."

The Demon King and I had reached the final map. It was some kind of dark castle. Monsters shaped like demons came leaping out. Between the ominous music and the monster roster, they'd put in a fair amount of effort for a shit game's final stage.

Taptap, tap. Tap, tap.

"...Hmm... it suddenly got a bit harder."

"..."

"Don't you think?"

"Huh? D-did you call me?"

"...Is something wrong?"

"Ah, no. I'm concentrating."

Concentrating, my ass.

I'd been killing all the monsters by myself for a while now. It wasn't like the Demon King to not immerse herself in a game. She seemed to be thinking about something else.

Let's just finish this quickly.

Her reactions were so ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠flat that my own excitement cooled off too.

Thinking about it now, the reason I'd grown to enjoy that boring game of Bubble Bobble was probably because watching her have fun had become fun for me.

Since we'd come this far, we might as well see the ending.

Taptaptap, taptap. Tap, tak.

After pushing through for a long while, we reached the boss of the final chapter—the final boss.

I mashed the keys in a frenzy. I dodged what needed dodging and drove my sword into the dragon.

But then.

Kyaaah!

The Demon King's mage character died. She'd been hit by an ice spike the dragon flung, and gone down.

"...Sorry."

She apologized for making a mistake in the game, which didn't suit her at all.

"It's fine. I'll handle it."

Taptaptap, tap.

I'd seen all the patterns. Instead of dodging, I sent my sword flying and nearly emptied the health bar above the boss's head.

...One hit left.

Just as I was about to finish it, a mutter she let out, very quietly, slipped into my ear.

The fingers that had been frantically mashing the game pad froze.

But the warrior's final attack, already queued as a buffered input, did not stop.

Just like that, I drove the sword into the dragon.

Thud.

The Black Dragon died.

An outro rolled, announcing that peace had descended upon the world.

Only then did the story appear. A tale of heroes who had set out to vanquish evil monsters.

The place in the final chapter, it turned out, had been the monsters' stronghold.

I couldn't force-quit the console. That was a fact she'd told me last time, when she was playing Annabelle.

Tap! Taptaptap!

I mashed every button I could trying to turn it off, but the outro wouldn't skip, and the game wouldn't end.

That was when the walls of the castle where the Black Dragon lay fallen began to split. Crrrk. Crack.

A classic sequence. What came next was obvious. The ruins of the castle would collapse on top of the dead dragon's corpse.

I bolted upright.

"Let's go."

"Huh?"

"Come here."

I stood up and took the seated Demon King's hand. Then, as if fleeing, I pulled her to my room.

I couldn't apologize.

How could I?

The moment I apologized, it would be the same as equating Leviathan with the Black Dragon.

...And wouldn't that be like Leviathan dying a second time.

Between the cute little vegetable monsters and the shoddy pixel screen, I hadn't paid it much mind.

I should have noticed sooner.

That at some point, she'd almost stopped attacking.

Stuck in an awkward in-between where I could do neither one thing nor the other, unable to find the words I needed to say, I lay silently on the bed with her.

"Hey."

The Demon King started.

"...Do you... hate monsters?"

She asked in a low voice.

I was grateful.

The way she always reached out first like this. Her consideration. Her generosity.

Only then did I, a coward, find the courage to put her anxiety to rest.

"Do you know what I like most in this world?"

"...What?"

"Keeheehee."

The Demon King gave me a low laugh. It wasn't a perfect hundred-point laugh, but I could tell her heart had melted.

The Demon King really was strong.

"Little Farm is waaay more fun than that game just now, right?"

She asked, grinning.

"Yeah. Let's never play a shit game like that again. Little Farm is a hundred times more fun."

"Keeheehee! You do know a thing or two."

"Ah, do the potato harvesting you promised tomorrow."

"..."

"...Why aren't you saying anything?"

"...Tch. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠You remembered."

"What was that?"

"Nnmm, nothing."