A Shock for the Cat (1)
"What? Why are your eyes like that?"
For a moment, I wondered if I'd misheard.
But no matter how I turned it over in my head, that word had been unmistakably clear, and now it kept flickering through my mind, refusing to let me look away—constantly gnawing at me, refusing to be ignored.
"Say that again. What you said earlier."
"Live long enough, and you see all sorts of things. This, that, and the other."
"Not that. The other thing."
"...Our situations are admittedly different, but as someone in the same position, I understand completely."
The tin can's words came out flat and mechanical, syllable by syllable, and my brow twitched slightly—but even so, that suspicious phrase rang out clearly a second time, and my eyes slowly began to widen.
"What exactly do you mean, 'the same position'? Am I understanding this correctly?"
"Understanding what, how?"
"'The same position as me' means you're not human either, doesn't it?"
"Oh. Is that what we were talking about?"
Here I was, speaking quite seriously, and yet for some reason this tin can was responding with complete calm, without a trace of alarm, as if it were nothing worth mentioning.
One look at him made it obvious he had no particular intention of hiding what he was.
Without ceremony, he began lifting off the helmet that had been covering his face.
Shhhk—
"...!"
The moment mere suspicion hardened into certainty.
And yet, bafflingly, the head that should absolutely have been there—his head—was nowhere to be seen even with the helmet removed.
As if it had never existed in the first place, the space inside was cleanly, seamlessly empty, without even a hint of wrongness.
"And here I thought you already knew."
"Wh-what... what is going on...?"
His voice drifted out from the removed helmet.
The voice was unmistakably the tin can's.
But behind that voice, there was no longer any trace of humanity, no sense that he was alive at all.
It was cold and monotonous, like an echo reverberating through an empty hall.
"As you can see, this entire suit of armor is my body."
"It's really... completely hollow in there...?"
"I'd appreciate it if you didn't stare too much. It's embarrassing."
Having finally confirmed what the tin can really was, I had no choice but to be shocked in more ways than one.
Because not once, not a single time, had I ever imagined this tin can might be a demon.
Virtually everything he'd shown us until now had been behavior that could only belong to a human being.
Maybe that was why—alongside the bewilderment, a strange sense of betrayal came washing over me.
"This is... so you've been deceiving me this whole time?!"
"I never hid it, and I never lied about it."
"If I'd known from the start that you were a demon, I never would have brought you here...!"
"That's just because you never paid attention."
"Shut your mouth!"
The shock refused to fade.
No matter how hard I tried to steady myself, the thunderbolt of it had already spread through my whole body, and it wasn't going anywhere easily.
"Unbelievable... how could anyone keep something like this hidden so perfectly..."
"Is it really worth being that shocked over?"
With that remark, the tin can set the helmet he'd removed back in its place.
"Isn't that only natural? Three children live in this house, if you'll recall."
"So what? Nothing's happened so far, has it?"
"The problem is the fact that you're a demon, plain and simple. Do I seriously have to spell it out for you?"
Honestly, if I calmed down and thought it through, this might not be something worth getting this angry over.
And for good reason—if the tin can had approached us with bad intentions, he would have acted on them long ago.
But he hadn't.
Despite being a demon, he had done us no harm whatsoever.
On the contrary, he'd grilled meat for us at the picnic and played so warmly with the children.
"...By that logic, you're a demon too."
"I'm obviously an exception. I'm their guardian, after all."
"Heh. Then you can think of me as staying here under something similar, for the time being—"
I knew the words had slipped out without any real thought behind them, and yet my expression twisted all on its own.
"Don't overstep. The time you're allowed to stay here lasts exactly until the sun rises."
"How decisive."
Well, whatever the circumstances, the fact remained unchanged: the tin can was a demon.
I had no intention of keeping a potential threat whose behavior could shift at any moment under my roof and inviting needless chaos.
"Ha... I just assumed you were human... I never dreamed you'd actually be an empty suit of armor..."
"Calling me a tin can feels a bit harsh, even for you."
"In any case, do not tell a single soul what you are. Just sit quietly and vanish like dust when it's time."
"At least let me say goodbye to the children."
"Why would a demon get so chummy with human children in the first place? That's exactly what confused me."
Granted, I'd only ever seen two demons in my life.
But even that was enough to get a rough grasp of a demon's temperament and characteristics.
And among those characteristics, the fact that demons despise humans was common knowledge—something you didn't need to witness firsthand to know.
Reaching the conclusion that this tin can was a demon after watching him play freely with the children, without a shred of hesitation, was an all but impossible leap.
"I don't think being a demon means you have to loathe every human on principle."
"...I'm sorry, what?"
"There's no reason to, and I hate wasting emotion on pointless things."
With that, the tin can began walking slowly toward the window.
"Whatever race you happen to be—if you can get along, that's all there is to it."
A quiet remark, oddly tinged with the melancholy of the small hours.
The luminous moonlight glimmering faintly through the window washed softly over the tin can's frame, deepening the mood of the moment all the more.
"Well, that's easy for me to say... but the moment an order comes down from above, my personal feelings stop mattering entirely."
That sudden, gentle shift in atmosphere turned my mind white for an instant.
Even so, the tin can's matter-of-fact words somehow landed with a strange sincerity.
I had never once imagined that a demon capable of such earnest, sentimental reflection could exist.
"...For something completely hollow inside, you're rather sentimental, aren't you?"
When I tilted my head slightly and asked in puzzlement, the tin can abruptly began thumping his own left chest with a dull, heavy sound.
"I may not have a body like yours, but everything I am is contained in this magic stone. Call it the equivalent of a human heart."
I'd been letting it go in one ear and out the other, thinking it hardly mattered—
until, a beat too late, I noticed something peculiar quietly bleeding out of the tin can's final words.
"...Wasn't that sentence just an admission of a fatal weakness? Yours, specifically?"
"Yep! If this magic stone is destroyed, I die—so yes, it's absolutely a fatal weakness!"
"Then why would you just announce it like that...?"
"I already know your weakness, don't I? It felt a little unfair being the only one exposed."
"That's hardly a reason to—"
"It's fine, it's fine. Nothing will come of it."
I couldn't fathom what he was placing that much confidence in.
Could it be that this one, too, looked down on me as harmless once he learned I was a vampire?
"Tch. You're honestly impossible to read."
"Part of it is that we're both demons, sure—but more than that, I've figured out your personality by now."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Simply put—as long as you don't touch the children, we'll never have to be enemies."
Contrary to appearances, the tin can was a fair bit sharper than he let on.
Apparently he hadn't revealed his weakness out of any underestimation of me, after all.
"...I suppose that's true."
A vague unease did come creeping up on me, slow and smoldering.
But the whole thing had wrapped up on a fairly heartwarming note, so there seemed to be little need to dwell on it.
He'd be gone the moment the sun rose anyway.
Just as the tin can said—for now, there wasn't a single problem.
"You seem to understand the current situation perfectly well, so I don't suppose there's any need to say more."
"Heading back to your room?"
"Well, is there anything left to talk about?"
"No. Nothing."
And the moment that somewhat fraught conversation drew to a close—
leaving the tin can still standing blankly before the window, I turned my back on him without a second glance and set off straight for my room, not a hint of hesitation in my steps.
Whereupon—
"Oh, right. Come to think of it, I forgot to ask—back in that forest, was there anyone else there besides me?"
The tin can's flat voice rang out, calm and quiet, at my back.
"Pardon?"
"I told you at the start, didn't I? I received my orders and was heading to the destination together with a mid-rank."
"Ah. Yes. So you did."
I fell into brief thought.
But the tin can had been the only one I'd seen in that forest, so there was no real need to spend any time pondering it.
"Let's see... no one besides you, as far as I—"
"An old face, wearing oddly round spectacles."
The tin can's words barged in so abruptly that I found myself at a momentary loss, a faintly blank look crossing my face.
Ordinarily I would have frowned on the spot and made my displeasure perfectly plain.
But for some reason, the description of the companion the tin can mentioned struck me as strangely familiar, and instead of scowling, all I could do was tilt my head in puzzled thought.
"An old face... and round spectacles...?"
"Mm. He was rather neatly dressed, too."
Somehow, every detail of the companion coming out of the tin can's mouth sounded familiar—like something I'd seen somewhere before.
An old face, round spectacles.
Neat attire. And a demon.
Gathering the clues the tin can had tossed me one by one in my head and calmly fitting the puzzle pieces together—
a single scene, growing steadily clearer, began to surface in my mind.
"......"
"I only asked on the off chance. Why are you so angry?"
Despite my own intentions, my brow had somehow creased itself into a deep frown.
This was absolutely not a frown born of anger.
"Or is it that something's coming back to you?"
Even as the tin can's questions kept coming, I held my silence to the very end, blinking my eyelids slowly, deliberately.
"......"
There was something niggling at me...
No—truthfully, I was almost certain of it—
and yet I couldn't bring myself to say what I was thinking to the tin can.
He had a fairly rational personality, granted. But he was still, at the end of the day, a demon.
"I don't know."
"...Something's off about you. Could you think a little harder?"
"I don't know."
"......"
And just like that, I'd found yet one more reason I would have to hurry this creature out of here, whether I intended to or not.