Going to the Capital Turns You into a Beast - 5
The Demon Duke’s sobs continued above my head, but I did not look up. More accurately, I could not look up—that might be the better way to put it.
Was it because I had already received her apology and simply did not want to see her face? No. Honestly, the moment I saw how wretched she looked, my resolve had already begun to waver. And when she cast aside every last shred of her dignity to apologize, even the faint resentment I still held onto vanished completely.
How could anyone hate someone after seeing her like that? No excuses, no self-justification—just a bare, honest apology.
This is a foul.
That was how far my thoughts had gone. Of all times, she had started apologizing while I was washing her feet—those pitiful, heartbreaking bare feet.
No matter how clean the roads of the Imperial Capital were said to be, wandering them barefoot was not something you walked away from unscathed. And the Demon Duke, magic aside, was nothing more than a delicate woman who had never trained her body in the slightest.
That was why I could not lift my head. If I looked at her now, I was afraid I would get angry for an entirely different reason—raise my voice and demand why she had been walking around like that, if she had truly believed I would be happy about it.
And then she would cry again and say she was sorry. Obviously.
“Your Excellency.”
I took a short breath and finally raised my head. There she was, weeping like a child. A surge of emotion rose in me for reasons completely different from before.
“…Could I have the comb, please?”
But I forced it down at once. Getting angry at someone who had just apologized—for a different reason, no less—would have been far too much.
At my words, the Demon Duke went pale and shook her head.
“Ah—my baby. This, this is…”
She clutched the comb she had been cradling so carefully even tighter against herself. As if pleading with me not to take this one thing away. As if begging me to forgive her for this much, at least.
“I’m not asking you to give it back. Don’t you need to comb your hair as well?”
I let out a small sigh at the pitiful sight. Even at the height of my anger, I would never snatch back a gift I had given. And right now, my anger had already faded, hadn’t it?
I simply wanted to brush her hair for her. I had wiped away the dust earlier, but those locks that once deserved to be called silk were still a tangled mess.
Fortunately, my words seemed to soothe her. She carefully held out the comb—though not without glancing at me several times for permission.
“This may take a little while.”
I sat down behind the Demon Duke and gathered her hair into my hands.
It had looked long enough at a glance, but collected like this, it was extraordinary.
“That’s all right. Take… take your time.”
The moment I took hold of her hair, the Demon Duke’s ears—which had been hanging low the entire time—twitched faintly upward.
…I would pretend I hadn’t seen that.
Silence settled over us. There were no more sniffling sounds, no more apologies.
All that remained was the soft rasp of the comb through her hair, and the faint whisper of loose strands brushing against the blankets.
It’s soft.
It was so quiet that useless thoughts drifted in uninvited. But it really was soft.
So soft that a few careful strokes were enough to set most of it right. The work I had expected to take forever finished far sooner than I thought.
Whether that was because the Demon Duke doted on it so carefully, or simply an elven trait, I had no idea.
“Hnn…!”
My hand brushed her ear as I combed, and a faint sound escaped her. At once her ears fluttered restlessly.
“I’m still angry.”
At that, they drooped right back down.
Of course, it was a lie. I was not angry in the slightest. People who actually say things like “I’m angry!” out loud rarely are.
It was just… a little spite. My anger had cooled, but my feelings were still a tangled mess. I couldn’t decide whether simply letting go and forgiving her was the right thing to do. And in the middle of all that, her emotional displays were working so hard that I couldn’t help but be petty.
Childish of me. Not something worth doing twice.
“Why did you say it like that?”
I kept my hands moving and spoke flatly.
“You could have at least made an excuse.”
But the words themselves were anything but flat. I was demanding something buried deep in my heart—something I desperately wanted to hear from her own lips.
“You could have said it was for my sake. That once I calmed down, I would be glad.”
Longevity. In a way, it could even be called a blessing. Longevity with wealth and renown already in hand—wasn’t that something anyone would want?
She could have said that. That I was only worked up. That once I cooled my head, I would be happy about it.
“Or you could have said you were too sad. That you didn’t want to lose me.”
Or she could have appealed to sentiment. That she loved me. That she loved me so much she couldn’t bear to lose me. That the thought of living hundreds of years without me was unbearable.
If she had said that, I might have been thrown off balance. Just as I hated the idea of outliving all my bonds and being left alone, she would hate sending me on ahead and being left alone herself.
“…Why didn’t you make any excuses at all?”
And yet she had chosen none of them. She had only said she was sorry. That she was wrong.
“Because I wanted to be honest.”
And the Demon Duke answered without the slightest hesitation.
“I had already deceived you, my child. I had already kept everything from you. I didn’t want to do that anymore.”
Her voice was a tangle of self-loathing and hollow exhaustion.
I couldn’t see her face from behind her, but I doubted her expression was any better.
“How could I do something like that… when I was supposed to be asking for your forgiveness…”
Her head lowered little by little. Her shoulders trembled.
“I hurt you. I can’t turn around and say that I’m hurting too.”
In other words, having already deceived me, she had no right to appeal to my feelings.
That was why she had never mentioned my lifespan. Never said that without the potions, she would have had to watch me go first.
“…I’m truly sorry. I’m so sorry…”
She repeated her apology again. But this time it was not the desperate, sobbing plea from before. It was an apology that sounded as if she had set something down—something almost transcendent.
“I was far too selfish. I said I loved you, and yet I never considered you at all.”
With that, the Demon Duke carefully turned around.
Tears that had just stopped were flowing again, and a faint smile rested on her lips.
“It was greed. I had met the person I loved more than anyone in the world, and still I wasn’t satisfied—I wanted to spend a whole lifetime together.”
She was definitely smiling. And yet she was crying. She was definitely shedding tears. And yet she was smiling.
It was a face right in front of my eyes, a face I could see perfectly clearly, and yet I could not make sense of it at all.
“Even if you never forgive me. Even if you say you’ll never see me again. That would be my fault. You would only be making the natural choice.”
When I remained silent, lost in confusion, she smiled even more deeply, shed even more tears, and went on.
“But still… still, won’t you at least allow me to watch you from afar? To keep you in my heart?”
And then, quietly, she added one more thing. That if she could only look at me for a few more decades, she would not need the hundreds of years that came after.
Damn it.
The instant I heard that, I stood up. Anyone who could hear those words and still refuse to forgive her wouldn’t be human.
If she had shown me sincerity like that, I had to answer it with something worthy of it.
“M-my child?”
Startled by my sudden rise, the Demon Duke blinked at me.
My chest ached at the sight, but I forced my gaze away and opened a nearby drawer. If my memory was right, they should still be here.
There they are.
Thankfully, they were just where I remembered. The butler and the servants must not have cleared them out while cleaning.
Three or so bottles of potion nestled together in the drawer. I had set them aside to drink over summer break, then forgotten to take them back and left them buried there ever since.
I never thought a byproduct of my own forgetfulness would come back to me like this.
“Your Excellency.”
“W-what is it? What’s wrong?”
When I spoke to her with a serious expression—and with a potion in my hand, no less—the Demon Duke stammered, clearly tense.
I looked at her for a moment, then drank the potion down.
“…You said it would take about forty years for the effects to show, didn’t you?”
I let out a soft sigh. I wasn’t entirely sure this was the right choice, but further fretting didn’t seem likely to produce a better one.
“There’s still plenty of time. Let’s figure it out together until then.”
Whether to match my lifespan to hers, or find another way entirely.
“So stop talking nonsense about watching from afar.”
Where had she even studied lines that dramatic? Honestly, it was enough to drive me mad.
At the words that spilled out with my sigh, the Demon Duke stared at me blankly—then burst into tears all over again.
I quietly pulled her into my arms. We were going to end up here anyway. All I had done by losing my temper was make her cry for nothing.
“I’m sorry as well, Your Excellency. Back at the Magic Tower, I was angry for a moment and said things I didn’t mean.”
At that, she wept even more forlornly.
My karma. This was all my karma.
Even after she finally stopped sobbing, the Demon Duke still would not leave the circle of my arms.
And I was not enough of a madman to say something like, “Now that you’ve calmed down, please let go.”
…What do I do now?
The problem was that the atmosphere had become unbearably awkward. We had both let go of our grudges, apologized, and restored our relationship. A happy ending, by any measure.
But the situation itself was mortifying. How was I supposed to pull away without making it worse, and steer us naturally toward some other topic?
Ah.
I glanced toward the window and found a pitch-black sky waiting for me. A suitable subject presented itself at once.
“Your Excellency, it’s gotten late.”
I felt the Demon Duke’s grip tighten on my clothes.
She had misunderstood, it seemed. I was not about to tell her to go back to the Magic Tower.
After all, she had already wandered the Imperial Capital looking like a sight no one who saw it could ever forget. If she then returned alone to the Magic Tower in the middle of the night, what kind of stares would she draw? The rumors that would spread by morning would be even worse.
“It’s too dark to go back. If you don’t mind, would you like to stay the night?”
Apparently that was more to her liking—her head began nodding furiously.
“And you, my child… will you sleep here too?”
She carefully lifted her face and spoke.
Separate rooms, of course. What on earth was she talking about?
“…Yes. I’ll take the sofa. Your Excellency can have the bed.”
But the moment I saw those tear-stained eyes, the concession left my mouth on its own.
Fine. Sharing a room was acceptable. It wasn’t the same bed, after all.
“…….”
“Your Excellency?”
Strange. She suddenly buried her face against my chest and said nothing. And the hand clutching my clothes only grew tighter.
Honestly, even if a hundred magicless Demon Dukes came at me at once, I could probably throw them all off with raw strength alone.
“…Are you asleep?”
At that, her ears gave a startled little twitch—but the rest of her remained stubbornly silent. As if she were pretending to sleep.
What.
I seemed to be getting quite a few surprises today.