Things That Approach (7)
Marei gently licked the soft belly, his tongue gliding slyly over the smooth skin where not even the faintest down had grown yet. He stared blankly at the adorable trembling figure before him, then naturally slid his hands down to tug at Ran’s red hakama, slowly lowering it. His tongue crept toward the tightly closed mound between her legs, ready to lick—
“Marei.”
The familiar voice rang in his ear. Marei snapped back to his senses.
Ran lay beneath him. She stared up with eyes filled with such profound sadness and pain that it was nothing like the lust-drenched gazes he had known from her before. These were eyes lost in confusion, unsure what to do. That was how they looked.
What am I supposed to do? He didn’t know. It was the kind of look that even he, driven by the belief that this was what he had to do, could not ignore. He couldn’t put it into words. He simply understood.
“Lady Ran…?”
“It’s alright. Come here…”
Ran opened her arms and gently wrapped them around Marei’s neck. He felt like he would go mad with lust. No—his body was screaming at him to take her right now, yet an inexplicable guilt and fear forced him to desperately soothe the aching penis twisting inside his pants.
“Who… who are you? What are you?”
Marei pulled away from her touch and slowly sat up. He carefully adjusted the loosened front of her robes and looked at her. Ran remained silent for a moment, simply gazing at him, before cautiously rising to her feet.
“…As I thought, you must dislike this childish body.”
Marei realized for the first time how obscenely erotic her slender ankle looked as it peeked out from beneath the hakama. Why did he want so badly to lick and bite that small foot with its faintly visible ankle bone? He couldn’t understand it himself.
“Lady Ran… why…?”
“Just a whim… I suppose you could call it that.”
Ran smiled bitterly. In that instant, every emotion he had felt from her seemed like a lie. Before him now stood an ordinary fox girl. No—looking at the noble, sacred young shrine maiden before him, Marei felt as though the lust he had experienced moments ago had been nothing but a sin.
“It’s fine… It was only a foolish wish. Child, it seems I’ve done something terrible to you.”
“…Lady Ran, just who… just what are you?”
“Well now, who am I…? That’s a difficult question. Even if I cannot answer it in words, I can show you.”
Ran laced her fingers behind Marei’s neck and pulled him close, pressing her forehead against the young boy’s. At such close range, he could feel the warmth of her flushed, delicate cheeks. The immense pull he had sensed earlier was drawing him in once again.
In the center of her irises, tangled like shattered metal, Marei found himself helplessly falling into the black pupils.
He saw a mountain. An incredibly tall mountain. So vast its scale could not be comprehended. A colossal mountain visible even from the farthest edges of the continent. A mountain covered in snow that could not possibly exist in reality. When the wind blew across its peak, the entire mountain trembled. No—it wasn’t a mountain. What shook were not trees or snow, but countless strands of fur.
Marei looked up.
A fox of unimaginable size was looking down at him. White clouds drifted beneath its paws. Its golden eyes—eyes that seemed larger than the very land he stood upon, something that should not exist even in imagination—met Marei’s gaze. Then he woke from the dream once more.
“You saw it. Mari saw the same thing. In that case, I shall explain it to you with the same words: a beast abandoned by myth.”
Ran’s voice reached him, but it did not truly touch him. Though he had awakened from the dream, Marei still could not escape its grasp.
The surroundings had become a sea of flames. Black rain poured from the sky. The enormous fox he had just seen let out a tremendous cry. Giants and countless other races—smaller than the fox yet still of incomprehensible size—wielded weapons and magic, battling against it. The colossal beast tore out the giants’ throats with its fangs, ripped the earth apart with its claws, and summoned tidal waves with its roars.
For hundreds of sunrises and sunsets, the fox slaughtered every living thing upon the land. It killed, and killed, and killed again. Only after hundreds of cycles of day and night did dozens of weapons finally pierce the beast’s throat. And above it, only seven beings remained alive upon the earth.
“Kill it, Kalpen. Our blades have all shattered.”
The witch sitting upon the giant’s shoulder let out a long sigh.
“I cannot kill it, Erzsebet.”
The giant’s axe was so riddled with cracks it looked ready to break at any moment.
“……Then we shall seal it. We have already taken its divinity, Corkiel.”
The demon smiled unpleasantly.
“Lilith, a mere rival has died. This land now belongs to us.”
When the angel shook her wings, golden feathers fell upon the earth and seeped into it. The fox glared at them with murderous intent. Yet with dozens of weapons lodged in its throat, it could not utter a single word. The sight of it baring its teeth and growling lowly made all seven beings flinch.
“Damn it… A cursed weapon… Does a seal that cannot last forever even mean anything, Erzsebet?”
“It must be checked every five thousand years. Your children would be best suited to sealing and managing this god. Their lifespan is at most three thousand years, so… Labius?”
The witch let out a bewitching laugh. Her gaze fell upon a black being that was catching its breath.
“Don’t try any tricks, or I’ll rip your mouth apart before you can speak.”
Golden eyes widened. A winged beast rose to its feet and growled lowly.
“We shall each offer power and compensation befitting the task. We will grant you this land. After all, what matters most is that this is our first victory…”
“I expect a price that will satisfy me, Erzsebet. And the rest of you.”
The black being—no, the enormous dragon—rose into the black sky. And Marei woke from the dream.
“…You saw something you shouldn’t have.”
Ran let out a long sigh.
Incomprehensible scenes flashed through his mind. He had dreamed something terrifying, something grotesque. He had seen the past. Or was it truly a dream? He couldn’t tell. He didn’t know how to describe the emotions surging within him, but one of those waves was fear.
Marei realized his entire body was drenched in cold sweat.
“Labius, Erzsebet, Baal, Corkiel…… Labiu…? Labi? La? Why… why can’t I remember? I can’t remember. What did I just say?”
“You said nothing, child.”
“Lady Ran?”
He couldn’t recall the words he had just spoken. Had he even spoken them? Marei couldn’t remember whether a voice had come from his parted lips or not. Everything felt hazy. No—his mind was perfectly clear. He remembered everything, including how he had nearly pinned Ran down and violated her moments ago. He had come to his senses, asked her what she was, and she had shown him a vision. In that vision, he had seen a wolf so enormous it dwarfed anything else in the world. And then… And then?
“What did you see?”
“A giant wolf… and… a giant wolf.”
He felt as though he had seen something else. A giant wolf, and…? And what had he seen? It felt like he had seen it. Or had he? What was it? His mind was in chaos. No—why was it in chaos? He didn’t know.
“You saw it properly.”
“…Lady Ran?”
His stream of consciousness broke. Without realizing it, Marei called out the name of the fox girl before him. He couldn’t remember what he had been thinking. No—why was he trembling so much when he called her name?
“A very, very ancient demon. The first demon. An evil god. That is what Mari called me.”
With an appearance far more suited to the word “angel” than “demon,” Ran smiled. No—she was pretending to smile.
Demon. It was an incredibly ominous name. Not even the heretics who performed human sacrifice, the orcs held back by the northern barrier, the barbarians crossing the southeastern mountains, or the foreign rulers beyond the mountain range who had waged war for centuries had ever been called demons. In a world where gods existed, “demon” was not a word one could utter lightly. Even in the current empire’s system, which emphasized reason and rationality, the word “demon” remained a kind of taboo.
It had taken less than twenty years for the kingdom to rise into an empire, devouring all the fertile lands of the continent except for the remote southern regions turned into vast mountain ranges. No matter how much the empire preached reason and rationality to its citizens, the gap between its ideals and reality remained vast.
That was why, the farther one traveled from the capitals of the old kingdoms—now the central hubs of administration—the more superstition and heresy still burned brightly, spreading their presence. For Marei, who came from a village on the edge of the Northern Barrier, far from the heretics of the west and the superstitions spreading like cancer, the word “demon” that left Ran’s lips carried far greater weight and threat than its literal meaning.
Yet Marei was neither foolish nor ignorant enough to tremble at a single word or flee from Ran because of it.
“You don’t believe me.”
Ran’s eyes narrowed until the corners stretched long. Her golden, mystical eyes nearly vanished behind those elongated slits. Her mouth drew a long line as she covered it with her hand and laughed softly, chuckling for a long while.
“No, I believe you.”
Ran’s laughter stopped.
“When I first saw you, Lady Ran… the feeling of familiarity was… different.”
Marei raised his hand to his left eye. He felt the soft texture of the eyepatch his mother had made for him. A mysterious object that would not break no matter how hard one pulled. Not even Erden Fabel, the one called the Saintess, had sensed anything strange about it. The left eye hidden beneath that patch—it had been longing for Ran.
Marei shook his head. Sometimes he even forgot he was wearing the eyepatch. He only remembered when he noticed the pity mixed in people’s gazes. These days, thanks to the illusion magic Ilien had cast on him, others simply saw him as an ordinary young boy.
“I have lived far too long and seen far too many things pass by. I began imitating things I once watched without meaning, one by one. In doing so, the being called ‘me’ grew faint and small. There are times when I feel I could become anything… and yet am nothing at all.”
Ran continued speaking words he could not fully understand, but Marei simply stared at her. More accurately, his gaze had become fixed on the multiple tails swaying behind her.
“When things grow that blurred, you become familiar with everything before your eyes. The same must be true for the other party as well. Hm…? Where are you looking…? Do you like my tails?”
“Ah, well…”
Even though Marei clearly wasn’t paying proper attention, Ran simply laughed it off lightly. She gently tugged one of her tails forward and slowly offered it to him.
The seductive aura that radiated even from such an innocent gesture made Marei tense up. He carefully accepted Ran’s tail.
“It’s so soft…”
The pleasant texture against his palm made Marei unconsciously voice his thoughts. Ran covered her mouth and laughed quietly, clearly delighted by something. Unlike her earlier reflexive, reactive smiles, this one made even the soft tail in his grasp momentarily vanish from his sight.
“I waited quite a long time, but now that I’ve finally met you, I don’t know what I should do.”
Ran gave a faint smile. It was sad, joyful, and pitiful all at once. Marei pondered what answer he should give the shrine maiden before him, then carefully parted his lips.
“It’s okay.”
“Yes… That kindness of yours truly resembles Mari’s…”
His mother’s name kept coming up. The mother whom even relatives on his father’s side—who had never even seen her face—barely knew. The mother whom even Labella, who now played the role of mom (?), barely knew. The young boy who wanted to hear stories of his birth mother, whose memory had grown faint and blurry in the depths of recollection, could finally look straight at Ran.
“What kind of person… was my mother?”
“What kind of person… Well, that’s a difficult question.”
What kind of person. Not “what kind of person,” but “what kind of being.” The word “being.” Ran mulled over Marei’s choice of words several times before looking up at him with sad eyes.
“Mari was a half-demon, child. Have you heard that before?”
It was the kind of story that could be called a secret of birth, yet Marei wasn’t particularly surprised. Perhaps it felt too unreal. Or perhaps it was because the being sitting before him was claiming to be his mother’s demonic parent. He wasn’t sure.
“Where should I begin…? Five hundred years ago, a half-human, half-demon was born between the hero Hagen and Lilith. That was your great-great-grandmother, though she left behind no name upon this earth. In the demon realm she is called something else, but it cannot be pronounced in the languages of the surface… And then came the child of that child’s child—your grandmother, Leona.”
Hagen de Pawen. He was also Marei’s great-great-grandfather. The name Hagen had appeared often in history books and in Labella’s family lessons, but the name Lilith was new to him. And yet… it felt familiar. As if he had heard it very recently.
Just as Marei tried to trace the memory, Ran continued without pause.
“Leona escaped the demon realm a hundred years ago and wandered the surface. Forty years ago, she fell in love with a knight who possessed a small estate in the north and gave birth to Mari. For a child who wished to happily put down roots upon the surface, the suicide of her grandfather must have been a tremendous shock.”
At the sudden mention of his grandfather’s suicide, Marei’s eyes widened as he stared at Ran. Ran, who had been speaking, repeated her own words, realized her mistake, and let out a small sigh accompanied by the word “oh dear…”