An Unexpected Visit
"Are you really going to cut it off?"
"Or is that just talk?"
"Where did that come from, all of a sudden?"
"Bar's arm. Amon says you might chop it off sooner or later……"
"Ah, that?"
At the mention of it, Death's indifferent expression curdled into pure irritation in an instant.
"I'm thinking about it. There's a limit to how far he can toy with me, and he plays games with food? Useless bastard. Someone like that would be better off quitting cooking altogether."
"Aw, come on, it's not a game. Bar seems pretty serious about it—ready to risk his life, even."
"Risk his life, my ass."
"He's working hard, anyway. The results just haven't quite lived up to expectations yet. Be generous and give him a little more time. I'm sure you'll hear good news soon."
Bayul was determined to prevent an actual amputation if it was at all within his power. Death, however, seemed unmoved.
"That idiot's doing it wrong. He follows the recipe right beside her, so why does his food taste different? There's clumsy and then there's hopeless—the real problem is that someone like him became a cook in the first place."
He had returned to the Demon Realm trusting that fool, and ended up ruining his own appetite. Honestly, he couldn't fathom how he'd ever stomached that swill before. If anything, the problem was that Rita's cooking had ruined him for anything else.
"Rita's putting her heart into it, so it'll work out. Just have a little more patience."
"How am I supposed to have any more patience than this? Letting Bar live this long is already me showing enormous restraint."
You'd kill your own subordinate just because he can't cook?
It was unthinkable to Bayul—but then, the other party was a demon. This was the man who had already cut off one of Bar's arms, after all. It was entirely within the realm of possibility.
"Why doesn't the Demon Realm have anyone talented like Rita!"
At some point, Rita had ascended to the rank of a rare talent nonexistent in the entire Demon Realm.
"I'd love to scout her. Won't happen, though, will it?"
"…Scout her?"
"Yeah. What do you think would be the best way to lure Rita over?"
"Are you saying—right now—that you want to take our Rita to the Demon Realm?"
Nod, nod.
"You do know Rita is like a little sister to me, right?"
"Does she?"
"Yes. She's precious to me."
"Well, I suppose anyone who cooks that well every day would be."
Death agreed with fervent, wholehearted passion.
Truth be told, if not for his silence on the matter, he had once even drawn up a plan to abduct Rita. But humans don't live long. Hence the arrangement with Bar—have him learn her cooking. And since the fool made no progress whatsoever, it was enough to drive anyone mad.
"Don't you touch Rita. Not ever. It's not going to happen."
The instant Death's black eyes turned to the subject of Rita, they rippled with crimson. Bayul, having instinctively sensed the man's ambition(?) toward her, issued his warning with utter gravity.
"Touch her and you'll beat me up, is that it?"
"If it's to protect someone precious, there's nothing I wouldn't do."
"Hoh. So you had a side like this in you? That's a surprise."
Coming from Bayul, who usually acted nothing more than a strict schoolmaster, the earnestness felt refreshingly new.
"Right. Good. That's how it should be. If you're going to make all four of those kids into Spirit Kings, you need at least this much backbone."
"So you're giving up on Rita, then?"
"Persistent, aren't you? Fine. I won't touch her. Who would I be bothering humans for, anyway? Getting tangled up with dragons is off the table for me too."
Naturally, he was confident he'd win in a fight—but even so, dragons were not a species Death cared to pick a fight with needlessly. If only to keep eating Rita's food, staying quiet and out of trouble was the wiser path.
"Now that we're on the subject, may I ask you just one more thing?"
"Rose! Crystal!"
Just then, two of the Gem Foursome made a bold bid for escape. Jasper glanced back at them briefly, but upon seeing the two pups hauled back by the scruffs of their necks in Amon's grip, he returned his attention to Ruby.
"That Amon fellow is completely head over heels for the pups, isn't he. What's your question?"
Death asked, settling his backside onto a freshly felled tree stump.
"It may be an impertinent one."
"Then you shouldn't have brought it up."
"…It concerns Ranos. Rai's birth father."
"That mad dragon? What about him?"
Death's brow furrowed slightly, but fortunately the atmosphere suggested he wouldn't object to further questions. Hoping not to sour his mood, Bayul brought up something that had long been nagging at him.
"I'm well aware that relations between dragons and demons have never been good. But even taking that into account, the hostility toward Rai seems excessive. Could it have something to do with his father?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Because he's my friend."
There was clearly some tangled history there, but with Eli refusing to speak of it, there was no way to learn. Naturally, even if Death laid out the whole story today, Bayul had no intention of letting on that he knew anything.
He simply wanted to understand why Eli suffered so deeply. Only then could he be of help, whenever the moment came.
"Whew. Where should I even begin?"
Though it had happened over five hundred years ago, Death still remembered it vividly. That wretched situation—so tangled and knotted that the Demon Realm and the dragons had no choice but to cooperate.
And it was the Red Dragon, Ranos, who had set it all in motion.
"He was exceptionally bad at controlling himself. The Red clan runs hot-blooded by nature, but Ranos was far worse. He raged, consumed by madness. And I mean serious madness—he dragged a demon ranked ninth at the time into it with him. That one had blood boiling over too, couldn't hold it in. The Demon Realm has its share of lunatics like that, every so often. Anyway, the number of demons swept up in Ranos's frenzy, him included, exceeded a hundred."
That was how far gone Ranos had been back then. The only way to quell the boiling pressure inside him was to cut down and demolish everything in his sight.
With high-ranking demons joining in on top of that, the human continent reduced to a wasteland was the entirely inevitable result.
"Neither we nor the dragons could just stand by and watch. It had to be resolved before the continent was destroyed."
"So that's when the Chairman and you stepped in yourselves?"
"The dragons couldn't kill demons, and the demons couldn't kill dragons. That would amount to declaring war on each other, wouldn't it?"
In other words, by mutual agreement, Rayegar executed Ranos while Death dealt with the demons.
It was also that incident which revealed Death's hidden strength and sent his ranking soaring. And Eli—only much later did he learn that he had been raised at the hand of the very enemy who killed his father.
There was a twist in that Rayegar had staked a thousand years of his lifespan to save Eli, the last of the Red clan—but even so, until then, Eli had hated his adoptive father and hated him again.
"If my guess is right… the way the Chairman keeps provoking Rai—is that a kind of training as well? So that he won't be swept up in madness the way his father Ranos was?"
"Why are you asking me? Their affairs are their business to handle."
"Then a different question. Rai's father died over five hundred years ago—so why is Rai only 176 years old?"
It was absurd to hear an age of more than a hundred described as only, but Bayul couldn't find a better word for it.
"He hatched late."
"Hatched?"
"Dragons lay eggs. From what I hear, they convened the council of elders to decide whether he'd be spared or not. They must have kept him from hatching while they deliberated. Easier that way than killing him after he was born."
"…They certainly take their time with deliberations."
"For our kind, a few hundred years doesn't amount to much."
To beings who lived for thousands of years, centuries were but a fleeting instant.
"Perhaps that's part of why Rai resents the demons. He probably believes that if they had never been involved, his father could have lived."
"Hard to say. The state I saw him in back then—there was no coming back from it."
Having swallowed who knows what, he'd lost his mind entirely and gone on a rampage—a sight truly impossible to watch and leave be. Death was the only way to stop him; nothing else would do.
"What exactly did it mean, for a dragon to stake his own lifespan?"
"Exactly what it sounds like. It means living less than his allotted years. For Rayegar to do that was quite the surprise. To strike such a bargain just to save one hatchling he had no ties to whatsoever. It gave me reason to see him in a new light."
"Still, the Chairman must have plenty of time left, wouldn't you say?"
He was a dragon, after all—even after sacrificing a thousand years, his lifespan would be generous. Bayul's most earnest hope was that father and son would manage to reconcile within it.
"……"
But Death gave no answer. He didn't know anything for certain either. He could only vaguely sense that the life of Rayegar, the ancient dragon, was not long for this world.
"If you're done with questions, shall we head down? I'm getting hungry."
Rita's breakfast was waiting for them. At the thought, Death's expression brightened at once. Bayul offered him one more piece of news he was sure to like.
"To celebrate the end of the rainy season, we're holding a festival."
"A festival?"
"Yes. You remember the night market in Carrington, don't you?"
"Of course I remember. It's my second-favorite place in the world—there's no forgetting it. Is this festival anything like that night market?"
Sure enough, Death's interest was immediate. With any luck, the bloody talk of chopping off Bar's arm wouldn't resurface for a good while.
"There'll be a huge spread of food, free of charge. You can head into the city and eat and browse to your heart's content."
"Ooh! When does it start? And since it's free, I can eat as much as I want, right? All of it?"
"Of course. Eat as much as you like. It'll probably begin within the next two or three days, at the latest."
"Excellent! Food always ran short up here in Hamilton, which was a bit of a disappointment—looks like I can make up for it now!"
Death was already burning with purpose.
"Hey, Amon! Let's head back!"
"Jasper! Ruby! It's time for breakfast!"
At the word breakfast, both of Jasper's ears shot straight up. The dog nuzzled his nose against Ruby's face, then came bounding swiftly back toward Bayul.
"Woof! Woof!"
Determined to follow their father's lead, the Gem Foursome scampered along with all their might. And so the morning walk drew to a close, peaceful as could be.