The Misunderstanding Was Cleared Up
Goro-roong…….
The five hours I’d spent holding my breath and waiting had been the hardest of Satania’s life.
What person wouldn’t be terrified when Behemoth was sharpening a knife on a whetstone, clearly intent on catching the culprit who’d stolen his meat?
To begin with, Satania was one of the more timid demons out there.
The reason she’d never escaped and had just cowered deep in the cave was simple: she didn’t have the courage.
She was scared out of her mind and wanted to faint on the spot, but she knew that if she stayed like this, nothing would ever get better.
She didn’t want to freeze to death in a cold cave.
She didn’t want to end up being found by some monster and eaten alive, either.
So Satania fought her fear with everything she had.
She watched Behemoth without letting him catch her eye.
And she endured by imagining herself escaping from him and, in the end, surviving to live a happy life of her own.
Picture yourself getting out of the cave… and eating all the delicious fruits and deer meat you can possibly stuff into your face!
Endless self-suggestion had a way of breeding baseless confidence.
Goro-roong…….
The wingless dragon, its entire body covered in dark scales, still hadn’t moved an inch.
He’s asleep, right?
Patience always bore fruit eventually, and pain that couldn’t kill you only made you stronger.
Remembering what her master had once told her, Satania quietly wiped away her tears.
Master, are you watching? I don’t think I’m ready to join you just yet—I still seem to have a lot of living left to do!
Satania began to walk as quietly as she could.
Silently, so she wouldn’t wake Behemoth.
Her heart was pounding.
In the stillness of the cave, she could hear the rough, violent beating of her own chest.
Please, heart, don’t make a fuss. If the monster wakes up because of you, I’m dead….
In a situation where even breathing too deeply felt dangerous, Satania focused on the ground beneath her feet.
She kept herself on edge, afraid that she might trip over a stone or step on something noisy and wake the beast in some catastrophic blunder.
Satania made it past the monster safely.
Behemoth, curled up flat on the ground, showed no sign of waking.
Satania’s face brightened.
If I keep going like this, I’ll make it out of the cave safely!
After waking up, she’d lived wedged into a crack in the frost-covered cave wall.
She’d endured hunger, endured the cold, and even melted icicles from the ceiling in her mouth to drink the water.
What a time of hardship and suffering it had been.
She had even been careful not to sniff too loudly, afraid Behemoth might catch her.
But now it was time to say goodbye.
Satania moved forward with hope in her heart—right up until someone outside the cave greeted her with an innocent smile.
“Oh? Hello?”
“!”
She was carrying two iron buckets in her hands, and it looked as though she couldn’t see properly.
Is she under a high-level curse…? No, no, this is not the time to be observing her…!
She had no idea what danger stood before her.
Satania hurriedly grabbed the blind girl’s arm.
“C-c-c-come this way!”
“?”
Satania was only being this forceful because someone’s life was on the line.
If this girl kept moving forward, she would become a horrifying midnight snack for Behemoth.
And if Satania ignored it and just passed by, she was sure she’d have nightmare-ridden sleep for a year.
People dying was a terrible thing. It had to be stopped.
“T-there’s something dangerous here. A terrifying monster lives ahead. We need to run before it wakes up!”
The blind girl didn’t budge, even with Satania tugging at her.
Her strength was far greater than Satania had expected.
W-what kind of strength is this…!
Her body didn’t so much as tremble, like a huge boulder.
“P-please, just come with me…!”
Even so, Satania clutched at the blind girl with both hands and desperately tried to drag her away, grunting with the effort.
The blind girl scratched her cheek with a troubled expression.
“I think there’s been some sort of misunderstanding…….”
Even after all that warning, the blind girl was still standing there, stubbornly rooted to the spot, and Satania found her frustrating beyond belief.
It was more suffocating than trying to force a hundred potatoes into her mouth at once without water.
“We’re really all going to die if this keeps up!”
Satania’s right hand turned red with light.
She wasn’t giving up on the blind girl.
Even if she had to knock her out with magic, she’d drag her out by force.
Just as she’d made up her mind, the blind girl turned toward the presence behind her and spoke softly.
“Friend?”
“Huh?”
Satania’s gaze shifted over her shoulder as well.
Then she saw Behemoth, staring blankly down at her.
Satania’s mind stopped.
Her head went pure white, so empty it felt like even her breathing had ceased.
────────────────!!
Behemoth roared.
Unfathomable beastly fury swept over everything.
Satania’s legs gave out, and she collapsed onto the ground with a thud.
When Behemoth’s enormous pupils fixed on her, it felt as though her soul had been torn out of her body.
“E-euuh…….”
Satania couldn’t withstand the overwhelming terror, and in the end, she fainted.
“No, I thought you were someone who was tormenting Lucy….”
“Even so, you can’t just shout at people like that out of nowhere. Honestly… I still have ringing in my ears.”
“Sorry….”
Lucy slapped my tail a few times with her palm.
I lowered my head.
Hmph.
I’d been scolded by Lucy.
It was because I’d startled Lucy and the girl with a huge roar a moment ago.
In my defense, my body and mind had been worn thin by the meat-theft incident, and I’d also just woken up suddenly from a loud noise, so I hadn’t been thinking straight.
All I’d done was yell, “Don’t do that!” when someone was trying to drag Lucy away by force, and I’d never imagined it would end up like this.
“Honestly. Everyone’s too busy misunderstanding each other without even talking things through… ugh.”
Lucy glared at me with a sulky face.
“I’ll be more careful next time.”
“I appreciate that you’re trying to protect me, but I’m not exactly a weak little thing, you know. So you really don’t need to worry so much.”
“Mm….”
“If you hold out your hand, I’ll forgive you this time.”
Lucy and I placed our hands against each other’s.
Lucy smiled softly, looking relaxed, and before I knew it, my own mouth was tugging upward too.
The girl on the ground twitched.
It was so lively it looked like some sort of dead octopus having a postmortem spasm, but Lucy said her life wasn’t in danger, so I could finally breathe easy.
The girl had her hair in twin tails. It was a natural pink, the kind you almost never saw in real life, so it stood out a lot.
And on top of her head, a pair of horns jutted up.
According to Lucy, she seemed to be a demon.
You might think that meant demons were bad people, but in truth they were just sentient beings like humans, living in another world called hell. In modern terms, they were basically foreigners living far away.
“Actually, demons don’t have a very good reputation. Very long ago, among the ancestors of the demon race, there was a very wicked demon named Beelzebub, and he tormented humans and beastfolk a great deal. Because of that infamous history, people think all demons are evil, but really they’re just ordinary people like us.”
Even if Hitler had been the biggest bastard in the world, that didn’t make every German a bad person.
Besides, this girl had sadly mistaken me for a monster that ate people and gone to all that trouble to save Lucy from what she thought was a monster’s den, so she didn’t seem like a bad-hearted person at all.
“Grrrrroooannn….”
Just then, the girl let out a groan like she was dying and pushed herself up into a seated position.
It seemed she’d finally woken from her faint.
Until a moment ago, she’d been trembling so violently that she looked like a dead octopus in postmortem spasm, but Lucy had said her life was fine, so we’d kept an eye on her for the time being.
The moment she came to, she muttered something under her breath. Then, after rubbing the back of her head with a relieved expression, she looked around, spotted me, and screamed.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t talk directly with the girl.
Things like this had to be left entirely to Lucy.
“This isn’t the afterlife, it’s the real world. No? And he’s not something you store away so you can eat him little by little when you’re hungry… a friend doesn’t eat people in the first place. No? I’m not a witch. I’m not controlling him or anything—friend and I are just friends. No, actually, I guess we’re a little closer than that….”
Lucy did her best to calm the girl down.
Meanwhile, I tried to prove that I was a harmless creature and stayed as still as possible.
After about ten minutes of effort, we managed to settle the girl down.
In the process, we confirmed that the girl’s name was Satania.
Then Satania gave Lucy a dubious look and said something to her.
Lucy relayed her words to me.
“She’s asking, ‘R-really?’ And yes, I’m not going to imitate the stutter.”
At last, an atmosphere where we could actually talk to one another had formed.
I shot Lucy a thumbs-up. Lucy smiled faintly, and only then did Satania finally look at my face.
“I’m not a bad monster. So you can relax.”
She said she’d been startled because it was the first time she’d ever met a being like me, and that she was sorry for being rude.
Most of the monsters I’d met had been savage and rough by nature.
That was why the beastfolk always looked at me with caution whenever they faced me.
Lucy was the unusual one. Satania’s reaction was the more typical one.
“I understand completely. And I’m sorry for shouting earlier, too. I thought you were someone trying to hurt Lucy.”
Thanks to Lucy, the conversation flowed surprisingly smoothly.
We sat facing each other in the cave and cleared up the misunderstandings we’d had just moments before.
The atmosphere softened.
Satania’s stiff body loosened up a little.
“There’s something I’m curious about. Can I ask you?”
She said it was fine to ask anything.
I had a lot of things I wanted to ask Satania.
There weren’t any living things around the cave where I lived, so I wanted to know why she’d been there in the first place. There were also mountains of other things I wanted to ask her about.
For now, I asked the thing I was most curious about.
“Did you happen to see the meat that was in the cave?”
For some reason, Satania’s face went completely white.