The Turkey and the Severed Line
Rita had told the truth. The moment Bayul stepped into the estate's dining room, a scene both familiar and utterly foreign seized his attention. Death and Amon were face-deep in their bowls, shoveling food down as fast as they could, while Bar looked down on the pair with undisguised pride.
"Sob, thank you, sir!"
Overcome with emotion, Bar pressed his clenched fist into the empty air and shook it, his whole body trembling. Tears had even welled up in his eyes.
All his recent hardships flashed past like a revolving lantern. They say effort never goes unrewarded—and at last, he had tasted the fruit of it. Bar's joy was beyond anything words could express.
"Is there any for me as well?"
The demons ranked ninth, tenth, and eleventh in the Demon Realm hadn't even noticed Bayul's arrival, so absorbed were they in their food. The absurdity of it, and the wonder of it, pulled an involuntary laugh out of him.
"Huh? Young Master Bayul!"
"So you're back now?"
"...Oh. You're here."
Only then did Death, having scraped his bowl perfectly clean, lift his head and greet him. No further words were needed. His face wore an expression of pure, unadulterated satisfaction.
"You succeeded with the cooking?"
"Yes, sir! Thanks to Master Rita, I've finally created a dish worthy of the Commander's palate!"
Still buzzing with excitement, Bar had fumbled his honorifics. Ordinarily a scolding would have come down on him like a hammer, but Death's mood was at its absolute peak right now. He had just finished a meal, it had left him thoroughly content, and the one responsible for that meal was Bar himself. Bayul would have staked his entire fortune on there not being a single complaint out of Death today.
"It's really delicious, Brother Bar! One more bowl, please!"
"Of course. Anything for you."
Bar was generous to a fault. He told Amon to wait just a moment and bolted for the kitchen, returning shortly with three full plates.
"Please, sit down, Young Master."
Oddly enough, Bayul felt nervous. Bar's track record was so spectacularly bad that even watching Death and Amon eat with such gusto, Bayul couldn't quite bring himself to believe it. He suspected he'd have to taste it with his own mouth before it felt real.
"Um, but the dish..."
"Is something wrong?"
At Bayul's hesitation before he'd even taken a single bite, Bar's expression went rigid.
"Rita told me it was an appetizer."
"Yes, that's right. A light stir-fried meat dish."
Since when exactly did meat count as a light dish?
Meat was, by all conventional wisdom, the stuff of main courses. Expecting something salad-like after being promised an appetizer, Bayul couldn't help but be thrown off balance.
"Ooh, sounds delicious!"
"I want to eat it right now!"
Still more meat, huh—but Bayul's voice was drowned out beneath the two demons' chorus. They were already emptying their second plates of appetizer, and their appetites showed no sign of flagging. It was not an unfamiliar sight.
"Not going to eat that?"
When Bayul only watched the stir-fry without touching it, Death sidled up with poorly concealed covetousness.
"Death!"
Just then Rita entered the dining room and shot him a stern look of warning.
"Didn't I tell you to keep your eyes off the Young Master's food? He worked hard studying all day and just got here—how can you be like this?"
Well, Death isn't a person, so...
This was Death, after all—so blinded by food that he'd pretended to be human and even gotten himself hired as a servant. Not a single thing about the current situation struck Bayul as strange.
"And didn't I say what would happen if you kept eyeing the Young Master's plate? Do you want to skip dinner? I was planning to make sirloin steak tonight, to help the Young Master recover his strength—so what should I do? Should I just make one portion? One?"
"Sirloin steak?"
Not only Death's but Bar's and Amon's pupils shook violently. They'd spent the last several minutes lavishing praise on Bar's cooking, but he still had a long way to go before catching up to Rita. All he'd managed was something edible—there remained a vast gulf between that and Rita's food.
And it was going to be beef, no less. Beef was the food the demons had come to love most after descending into the human realm.
Grilled, boiled, stir-fried, simmered, dried—even eaten raw, beef was delicious every way it came.
"Why wouldn't I eat it? Hurry up and dig in."
Death surrendered quickly. He nudged the plate closer to Bayul and urged him to eat already.
"...Thank you for the food, Bar."
And so, before everyone's watchful eyes, Bayul began his official tasting.
Gulp.
Bar swallowed audibly, so loudly his nerves were plain to hear. Bayul was a different creature from them entirely—a scion of privilege who had grown up eating fine food his whole life. There was no way Bar could keep himself from trembling over what verdict would come down.
"Is this... did you really make this, Bar?"
Nod, nod.
"Seriously?"
"That's what I keep saying. What, is it bad?"
"No, not bad at all. It's incredibly good?"
"Then what's with that face?"
Death asked in Bar's stead, wearing a suspicious expression.
"I'm just... astonished."
Even when cooking exactly as Rita instructed right in front of her, Bar had somehow produced food that was nearly impossible to put in one's mouth. And now, suddenly, this same demon was turning out dishes with genuinely good flavor—how could Bayul not be astonished? It was practically a miracle.
"What happened while I was gone? Rita, did you give him special training?"
"No, I taught him exactly the same as always."
She could say it calmly now, but at first Rita had been so stunned she couldn't even speak. She'd been instructing him diligently only to watch his skill refuse to improve an inch—she'd been on the verge of giving up entirely.
"Either way, that's wonderful. Bar, you must have been through so much worrying about this—congratulations!"
"Thank you, Young Master Bayul."
"Congratulations to you too, Rita."
"Why me?"
Bayul's sudden congratulations caught Rita off guard.
"You suffered through teaching him too, didn't you? As the old saying goes, behind every great accomplishment stands a great teacher."
Bar's talent for transmuting any ingredient into a bizarre, unnameable flavor must have been an enormous headache for Rita. Her share of credit in today's achievement was by no means small.
"I did teach him well, I suppose. But he's still got a long way to go! He's only just begun making food that's actually edible. Bar, I said this before and I'll say it again—do not let it go to your head!"
"Yes, Master! I'll work even harder!"
"Good. Then follow me. We've got the rest of the menu to finish."
Rita was a strict mistress. Off the two cooks went to the kitchen to complete the remaining dishes, leaving only Bayul, Death, and Amon in the dining room. Ian had said he still had things to attend to and had returned to his room, promising to come back when he finished.
"So—how does it feel being back at the Academy? Is the chairman doing all right?"
Death asked casually, now that the three of them were alone.
"The chairman is doing well. He says he'll be coming in to work for the time being."
"Coming to work? I'd have thought he'd just vanish again."
"Yes, well, he's nicknamed the Gentleman of the Wind, so who knows when he might disappear again—but for now, that's how it stands."
A flicker of disappointment crossed Death's face at Bayul's explanation. He'd mentioned once that he and the chairman had crossed paths on bad terms in the past, and apparently that old resentment still lingered.
"More importantly—on the very first day of the semester, the Divinity and Magic faculties got into a brawl, and four professors were dismissed. Will that cause any trouble for the temple?"
"My temple, you mean?"
"Yes."
The professors of the Divinity faculty were priests as well as teachers. With two of the temple's priests dismissed in one stroke, the temple's work was bound to suffer.
"What's it to me? They'll sort it out themselves."
"Still, it's the Temple of Despair's business..."
Death was himself that very God of Despair. Priests were, by definition, those who served him—if he were ever to learn of this reaction, one imagines he'd be rather wounded by it.
"That sort of thing happens constantly. Every temple in existence is crawling with lunatics. I've got enough on my plate already—where would I find the time to worry about that too?"
"Trouble on your plate, you say?"
"Demon Realm business. A bit of a problem is about to arise."
Not that one arose—one is about to arise?
At Amon's peculiar answer, Bayul tilted his head, and the demon's closed eyes drooped downward into a crescent smile.
"Nothing serious, I assure you. We will have to be away for a short while to resolve it, but we'll return soon—so please don't worry."
"You mean you're going to the Demon Realm? All three of you?"
It wasn't unprecedented, exactly. But they had never announced it in advance like this, and so the whole thing felt strangely new.
"Yep. A summons."
Death scowled, looking thoroughly annoyed.
"A summons—then could it be...?"
"Whatever you're guessing is probably correct."
What came to Bayul's mind was the king of the Demon Realm—the Demon Emperor, Crudelis. Death supposedly commanded the Demon Emperor's armies as their Commander-in-Chief. What business would the Emperor have summoning him? Was war brewing, perhaps?
Just as Bayul was spiraling into these random imaginings, Death asked abruptly,
"Doesn't look like anything else special happened, then?"
"...Special, you say?"
Bayul's gaze drifted, without his quite deciding it, toward his own palm. If anything counted as a special event, it was that—more than the brawl, even. Every time he looked at his severed lifeline, Bayul was seized by an inner tangle of conflicted feelings.
"Why are you staring at your palm all of a sudden?"
Death looked him over with open suspicion. Bayul glanced toward the kitchen, confirmed that Rita wasn't anywhere nearby, and then spilled the story of how Lokha had read his palm.
"So you're saying this palmistry saw your future?"
"A kind of prophecy, perhaps? Something like an oracle?"
Amon rested his chin on his hand, looking intrigued.
"A discipline that can divine death from the lines of a hand... how marvelously mystical. I confess I'd almost like a reading myself."
Bayul didn't know it, but Amon possessed eyes that could see the future. From his standpoint, Lokha was a profoundly interesting individual.
"It's not even saying you'll actually die—that you'll come back to life afterward. So what's with the long face?"
Could it be because they weren't human? Death and Amon, upon hearing the contents of the reading, showed not so much as a flicker of concern.
"There is something I'd like to ask... is it possible for a demon to die and come back to life?"
"Not absolutely impossible. Though you'd have to jump through every imaginable hoop."
"For humans, it isn't. And an ordinary human like me certainly has no such ability."
"You? Ordinary?"
Death's tone suggested he had never heard anything funnier in his life.
"Hardly the sort of thing to come out of the mouth of a human carrying the power of all four Spirit Kings."
"Ah, well, that's... that's just..."
"Besides, humans do occasionally die and come back to life, same as demons."
"...I'm sorry, what?"
For a moment Bayul doubted his own ears. Wasn't this a world where even a dragon, once dead, was gone for good?
"There are always exceptions to every rule, you see."
"Could you tell me more?"
Bayul leaned forward over the table and pressed Amon eagerly.
"You've waited long enough, everyone! Tonight's specialty is served!"
And of course, at precisely that moment, Bar appeared before them with an enormous tray in one hand. At its center, a turkey of staggering size—the likes of which Bayul had never seen—proudly presented its bare, glistening form.
"Eat up, big brothers!"
Not a trace of palmistry remained in Death's and Amon's minds. From the moment of Bar's entrance, both their gazes had been locked on the turkey and nothing else.
I'll have to ask again later, then.
Bayul knew from long experience that getting an answer out of either of them now would be hopeless. It wouldn't be too late to ask once their bellies were full. Wondering what extraordinary secret might be hiding in that conversation, Bayul finished his meal half-tasting, half-absent.