Chapter 6: The 0th Legion Commander, Deon Hart (4)
Chapter 6: The 0th Legion Commander, Deon Hart (4)
The tone was as light as if he were asking about the lunch menu. It was so casual and ordinary that I almost answered without thinking before hastily clamping my mouth shut and stepping back.
Perhaps finding my reaction odd, the Demon King quirked an eyebrow, but now was not the time to worry about that.
Someone's life hung on my every word. I'd never once spoken comfortably since setting foot in the Demon Castle, but right now, I had to be more careful than ever.
Honestly....
'This is driving me insane.'
"Hmm?"
"I said the matter is already settled."
The Demon King, who had muttered as if he'd heard something strange, soon focused on the latter words.
"So what did you decide to do about it?"
"We agreed not to keep the plant."
"Too weak."
"Excuse me?"
The Demon King's face clouded with dissatisfaction.
"It attacked you. That's not something that simply ends there. You're a valuable asset, and as such, you must not be taken lightly by anyone. It's unlikely to happen, but what if you'd gotten hurt because you were off guard? Then the assessment of your level would plummet. From an opponent you could never defeat to one you might beat if you try hard enough. And yet you let it slide like this? No matter how much I respect you, this is unacceptable. You should at least sever his limbs."
I didn't even know where to begin pointing things out. The part about severing the gardener Hien's limbs, and the part about him respecting me.
So much absurd nonsense that I could feel my blood pressure rising.
......Considering my nosebleed just burst, it seems it wasn't just a feeling.
"Demon?!"
The flustered Demon King flung Hien aside and rushed over.
Hien, who had been unceremoniously tossed to the floor....
"Demon-nim!"
Why are you. Just stay lying down.
As if determined to reach me, he even performed the feat of rolling his body over once before springing up and dashing this way.
The ground seemed to heave. ...Come to think of it, I was hung upside down earlier because of that damn plant, something that wasn't in my fate at all. It was only natural for the blood to rush to my head.
I covered my lower face, which was surely a mess, with my hand and steadied my swaying, buckling center of balance.
My pathetically weak skin stung, and my eyes, which had faced the fire directly, throbbed. My vision warped this way and that, and my ankle, which had been caught by the plant vine, belatedly throbbed with pain.
Wow, this body really is something else.
"Atten... tion!"
"Demon... can you... hear... my voice?"
A new record set in a different sense. Damn it.
Amidst the faintly heard voices, I cursed my feeble body and slowly closed my eyes.
Just before my eyes shut, I thought I heard Ben's voice from behind me, but darkness came before I even had time to discern whether it was real or not.
Well, it must have been my imagination. His room was quite a distance from here, so how would he have known to come? Even if someone had called him via communication, it would have been impossible for him to get here in that short a time.
* * *
The moment I opened my eyes, I saw a very familiar ceiling. When I rolled my eyes a bit more to examine the walls, I saw perfectly fitted giant puzzles framed and hanging... meaning this was one hundred percent my room. Hmm.
I tried to get up without thinking, but a dull pain washed over my entire body, forcing a short groan from me as I curled up.
Just then, a familiar voice came from within the room, which I'd thought was empty.
"You'll be quite uncomfortable going about your daily life for the time being."
"......Ben?"
"Yes, Demon-nim."
Ben, who had been sitting at the table in the center of the room making medicine, scraped his chair back and stood up.
He approached me, checked my eyes, and then let out a faint sigh before deliberately grabbing my arm and lifting it. My arm was meticulously wrapped in white bandages all the way down to my fingertips.
"Do you see this? You sustained minor full-body burns."
"......."
"Your eyes were also slightly damaged, likely from staring at the fire for too long. Fortunately, it's a part capable of self-recovery, so it's a relief; you came dangerously close to permanent damage."
"......Uh, mm."
"Why would someone whose skin flushes red after just 20 minutes of exposure to sunlight start a fire? If you were angry, couldn't you have just killed the person responsible?"
Was he always this extreme...? Wasn't he, how should I put it, on the gentler side?
But the atmosphere was wholly unsuited for me to say anything. Look at those eyes. They were blazing hotter than the flames I saw in the garden. And the emotion contained within them was... rage?!
It felt a bit unfair, but it would be best to quickly move on from this topic. After racking my brain desperately, I brought up an unsettling memory.
The voice I thought I'd faintly heard back then, Ben's voice.
"Ben. At that time, when I was bleeding from the nose, did you come to the garden?"
"Huh? Why are you asking that all of a sudden? You even exchanged words with me."
"......Excuse me?"
* * *
It was only after talking with Ben that I could roughly grasp the situation. In short, I had been out of my mind.
I had faced the Demon King with a half-crazed mind, and as a result, Hien had survived with all four limbs intact.
According to Ben, I had spoken boldly before the Demon King.
I had said, if he respected me, couldn't he respect me just this once more.
"To be precise, you said, 'Did you say you respect me?' and when His Majesty acknowledged it, you then asked, 'Then could you not respect me just this once more?'"
Then the Demon King asked, 'In what?' and I had supposedly pointed my finger at Hien with the arrogant reply, 'What else could it be?'
Ah, the expression 'arrogant' is one I inserted on my own. There's no way Ben would have used such a misleading word, now is there?
Anyway, the fact remains that I dared to say and do such things to the Demon King.
Unable to openly despair, I faced Ben, who was looking at me with a puzzled expression, and barely managed to speak while twitching my facial muscles.
"......You have an excellent memory."
"Thank you. Actually, no one who was present at that time will ever forget that scene. No matter how much time passes."
Meaning it was that intense. Ah, I want to be alone. To hell with everything.
I quietly buried my face in the pillow.
To think I'd do something so outrageous. Honestly, if I could, I'd want to deny reality. Probably, if I had remembered those events, I would have done anything to forget them. So having no memory of it isn't entirely incomprehensible.
Ah, I don't want to think about it anymore. I just don't want to recall anything about it.
The only silver lining was that the number of people in the Demon Castle who spoke to me was extremely limited. So as long as I kept my mouth shut, no one else would bring up the matter.
......Or so I had thought.
"Hrmm."
Sitting on the bed and hugging a pillow, I furrowed my brow with all my might.
If someone saw me like this and still didn't notice I was displeased, they'd be a person lacking any semblance of social awareness.
I was very displeased right now. So much so that if anyone spoke to me, I'd glare at them with all my strength, demon-race or not.
The reason my mood was like this was because of those people who spoke to me, as I mentioned before. That extremely limited number of people, every single one of them, kept mentioning the incident in the garden.
Every single one! All of them!
[I decided to spare him, respecting you as you said.]
Even the tactless Demon King who came for a sick visit.
[Demon-nim, I am truly grateful for what you did back then. And I'm sorry. Because of me, you had to....]
Even the gardener Hien, who never had any sense to begin with.
Even Ben, my attending physician who came by daily to check my wounds, mentioned the garden incident every chance he got.
[Many must have been deeply moved. The fact that you blocked His Majesty's path just to spare a single gardener.]
Did you all plan this?! How can you all be so utterly tactless? Is it a demon-race trait?
"Hrmm."
"......Are you uncomfortable somewhere?"
"No, I'm fine."
Beside me today as well, Ben was changing my bandages.
Well, maybe I should just leave the thinking here. It seems to have lessened lately, at least.
Every time I furrowed my brow, Ben would flinch his fingertips, which made me genuinely wonder where all that audacity from when he scolded me right after I woke up from the garden incident had gone.
Anyway, I thought the full-body burns were just an expression, but I really did have minor burns all over. I hadn't even jumped into the fire; I was merely briefly exposed to the heat, and yet I got burns. How embarrassing.
If only I could forget this memory too. No, forgetting because of the injury would be too much to ask—wouldn't it be nice if the memory distorted so that I remembered making direct contact with the fire? That would be less humiliating, at least.
Unfortunately, such a miracle did not occur.
As I desperately tried to think of other things to shake off this shame, a question I'd had for a while suddenly resurfaced.
"......But Ben."
"Yes."
"Isn't there quite a distance between the room you stay in and the west garden?"
"Yes, that's correct."
"Then how did you arrive where I was in such a short time?"
Now that I thought about it, it was strange.
Ever since the day I submitted my resignation letter to the Demon King, whenever my physical condition turned abnormal or I got injured, Ben seemed to know like a ghost and came immediately.
Back then I suspected it was a delusion, but seeing how he showed up at the garden this time, it didn't seem like one.
I stared at Ben with blatant suspicion. Ben blinked a few times under my burdensome gaze, then smiled as if it were nothing and removed the necklace he wore around his neck, offering it to me.
"This is thanks to this."
It was a necklace strung with a coin-sized stone that emitted a strange light.
At a glance, it looked like a simple, crude necklace ornament, but there was something oddly eye-catching about it that couldn't be dismissed as just a jewel. Where had I seen this? I was certain I remembered it.
...Ah.
"A magic stone?"
"Yes, this contains a few drops of your blood, Demon-nim, along with His Majesty's magic. If the quality, speed, or flow of the blood running through your body becomes abnormal, a signal comes immediately. We've worked in various ways to ensure something like last time never happens again."
That incident he mentioned must be when I vomited blood in front of the Demon King. He didn't really have to go that far....
On top of that, it even informed him of my location. Though he pretended otherwise, I could see how proud he was, so I couldn't bring myself to say anything and just grumbled timidly in my mind.
'This crazy bastard. When did he even take my blood?'
As I kept my mouth shut, silence naturally lingered in the room. The atmosphere, which could have become awkward, soon softened as Ben changed the subject.
"Do you intend to eat in your room again today?"
"Well... that's how it's always been...."
"I never ordered you to stay lying only in bed."
True enough. Already on the third day, I had been holed up in my room without stepping outside even once.
Though that was how most of my everyday life in the Demon Castle went, Ben clearly wasn't pleased about it. He diligently finished tying off the end of the bandage and spoke in a feigned firm voice.
"I checked the menu for the Legion Commander-exclusive dining hall today, and it wasn't bad."
"I'm a patient...."
"The burns were minor in the first place. Moreover, I personally asked His Majesty for the best materials and used them in the medicine, so they should be nearly healed. Your eyes should have recovered too, and your ankle that was scraped by the vine shouldn't hurt even if you run now."
"......."
He only spoke the unvarnished truth, so I had nothing to say.
Only then did I understand Ben's switch. The switch that made him, usually moderate, open his mouth without reserve and deliver such harsh words.
Health.
It truly was a most admirable display of professional dedication. To become angry at nothing other than the harm done to one's health.
Of course, it was just faithfully following the Demon King's orders, not because he liked or worried about me, but still, it was touching in its own way.
Separately from that, annoying things were still annoying.
I pouted my lips and got up from the bed.
"I'm going to change, so please leave."
"Thank you for indulging my presumptuous request."
He withdrew, having maintained perfect courtesy right to the end.
When he acts like that, I can't even dislike him. He knows that and does it on purpose, I'm sure. Grumbling to myself, I opened the wardrobe.
The clothes hanging in rows on the hangers came into view all at once. All of them were things the Demon King and the 2nd Legion Commander had stocked for me.
The Demon King, fine, let's leave him aside, but why was the 2nd Legion Commander so bent on dressing me up?
He certainly brought only clothes that were tasteful and suited me well, but I had no intention of meekly accepting them. Because if I wore them once, he'd obviously hold me for ages rambling about picking out new clothes again.
Revolted, I shoved the clothes bought by the 2nd Legion Commander aside and took out the ones the Demon King had given me.