Less Than a Stranger
To the Heavenly Demon, that woman was less than a stranger.
Carol Narien. She had been born a commoner, into a house that owned next to nothing. As a child she was poor enough that a single proper meal was the height of her wishing. Why should poverty have to mean misery? She could not have said. Whether it was the want itself, or parents who simply possessed no sense of duty, her father drank himself stupid every day and came home to beat her, and her mother abandoned her and ran.
Even so, she lived. She was clever enough, and beautiful enough, that she did not starve.
What do I have to do if I want to make a great deal of money?
She remembered how, whenever she went next door to play as a child, the man of that house would press coins into her hand. The easiest and fastest way to earn a fortune. Once she came of age, selling her body followed as a matter of course. Was it not shameful? She did not care. So long as it let her eat and go on living.
Narien's popularity climbed by the day. On her busiest days she took as many as ten clients, and with demand so high her price shot straight upward. That beautiful face and those full breasts had surely done their part.
Then Duke Briton came. A duke had no reason to wallow in a brothel of such low standing; he had only meant to gift his knights a splendid night. Why, of all days, did Narien have to be so uncommonly beautiful on that one? Briton took one look at her face and found he could not simply walk past.
Narien made up her mind. She would bear his child and enter his household even as a concubine. This was her last chance to change her life.
Duke Briton had never intended to restrain himself. If he wished to finish inside her, he did. Had she truly believed that a mere whore carrying a duke's child would change anything? It was never a question of whether she conceived or not. The real trouble was that Narien's damned face kept rising in his mind. The thought of her sporting with other men sent rage boiling up through him, and so he installed a prostitute as his concubine.
"This place is heaven."
A magnificent mansion, gorgeous gowns. She could eat her fill whenever she pleased, and there were maids she could order about exactly as she liked. As if she would ever give any of it up.
The baby was only ever a means to a marriage, anyway.
And so she would kill Lilith.
"I can't go back to the life I used to live."
Huff. Huff.
Today, as on every other day, the Heavenly Demon ran. He drove the body to its limit without pause, and the fruit of that labor came quickly. The belly had slimmed, if only a little, and the line of the jaw was beginning to show. What still looked like fat revealed muscle the moment she put strength into it. Her features grew sharper by the day, and she had come down from extreme obesity to the merely ordinary kind.
Training the external arts has increased this stamina by leaps and bounds.
Thanks to that, Lilith, who had once run only at dawn, now trained alongside the knights. A few of them, naturally, had questions.
"Captain? Don't tell me that's Lady Lilith."
"Does it make any sense to train with a woman in the ranks?"
A yard full of men was one thing. A woman among them changed the whole shape of the day. They could no longer strip off their clothes whenever the heat took them, and if the young lady was using the privy, they had to wait. Whenever Lilith's name came up, Knight Captain Getz shut their mouths the same way every time.
"Sh—shut your mouths! Whatever that person does is permitted!"
"It's the inferiority that's killing us!"
One knight, unable to hold it in any longer, spat out his resentment. At first they had let it pass. She had said she meant to lose weight, and if she kept that body as it was, complications would have killed her sooner or later. Somehow, though, she moved astonishingly well beneath all that weight. Start a footrace and every one of them dropped out, until only the young lady was left standing.
"Are we just going to lose to a woman?"
Pride had driven them once. A sparrow that tries to match a stork only tears its own crotch, and ordinary knights who tried to keep pace with the Heavenly Demon came away injured for their trouble. Strength training was worse still. As if the fat were muscle through and through, she did pull-ups until the iron bar itself began to bend, then casually hoisted the heaviest dumbbells on the training ground and ground the knights' morale into the dirt.
"We look incompetent, and the young lady looks like the average one. It's unbearable, Captain!"
"That is…"
Getz hesitated, and the corners of his eyes grew damp.
"I understand how you feel. There's nothing I can do about it either. What you saw is real. The young lady is… a monster. It is only natural that a human should lose to a monster."
Even the captain they had trusted was spouting nonsense now.
"This won't do. I'm going to have a word with the young lady myself."
One knight in his twenties, all fire and no sense, snatched up two wooden swords and fixed Lilith with a glare fit to kill her.
"I'll break her momentum in a spar."
Getz jolted as if he had seen a ghost.
"D—don't! You madman!"
Thud!
They say a fist speaks plainer than words. Certain the fool was about to bring disaster down on all of them, Getz drove his fist into the man's face.
Whump.
One blow, and the knight collapsed unconscious.
"Forgive me. It was all to keep you alive…"
Getz offered the comfort of a man certain that, one day, his knight would understand.
Shaaaa.
A hard training day ended, as always, in a shower. Hot water washed the sweat away and settled the body.
I still can't get used to this.
The figure in the mirror was nothing like the dignified, splendid form that had once been his. What stood there was a woman slack with leftover fat. The privy was especially unbearable.
How is a person meant to sit down to do their business?
There was, he would grant, a certain advantage in simply sitting and bearing down, with no need to aim. Even so, it felt lacking.
Finished with the shower, the Heavenly Demon dried off and pulled on a gown without a single maid in attendance. Others said their maids even helped them bathe. There was not one maid in the house who would help Lilith. They would sooner make an enemy of her than ever stand on her side.
"And what is this, today? Maids sneaking in to match the hour of my shower."
Five presences waited in the room. They seemed to believe they were hidden, but whoever they were, they had never learned concealment, and the signs of them stood out painfully plain.
"How did you know?"
The head maid stepped out from behind the wardrobe, and the other four revealed themselves before her as well.
"Hide like that, and even a passing dog would notice."
The Heavenly Demon did not so much as glance at them. He was busy toweling his wet hair. Long hair was an inconvenience all its own. Plenty of men in the Central Plains had worn their hair long; he had no idea how they had ever managed it.
"Judging by the way you've shown yourselves, you've decided to stand with Lady Hoian after all."
The head maid flinched. Frightened before Lilith had even finished speaking, she took a step back.
"O—of course! A wretch like you has no choice but to die today!"
"This seat, die, you say… Death is something I would rather not taste a second time."
Did they know how sorrowful a thing death was? Die, and everything ended. That was why one had to live well while one still drew breath.
"Hmph! Your mad talk ends today! We've brought your weakness!"
The head maid flicked a hand, and the maids opened the door as if they had been waiting for the signal. Beyond it stood a blonde woman whose hair was the same color as Lilith's. Her face was half vacant, and a kitchen knife hung in her hand. She dragged her feet as she came into the room.
"Daughter…"
She called to Lilith with a show of aching tenderness.
"You missed me, didn't you? At last I've come to your room."
Lady Narien… a familiar face. So this is Lilith's mother.
The Heavenly Demon turned back through Lilith's memories. From childhood, Lilith had grown up without her mother's love. Her mother had always been mad for Duke Briton and for money.
Was Lilith's gluttony, and the obesity that came of it, born of that starvation for affection?
Her feeling for her mother had been that extreme. Had she only been able to receive that love, she would have done anything at all.
"You said it once, didn't you? That you'd be a good daughter and obey every word this mother spoke…"
Narien's lips twitched, and her mouth stretched until it nearly reached her ears. It was a smile that raised the hackles.
"Here, now… I want you to die with this."
She held out the kitchen knife—and not by the handle. She was offering Lilith the blade itself.
"If you kill yourself, I think this mother would be truly happy."
To the Heavenly Demon's ear, the words arrived as something else entirely. If you kill yourself, this mother can live the rest of her life without ever wanting for money.
"Is money that precious to you?"
He asked it out of pure provocation.
"Of course it is! You know perfectly well how hard this mother lived, and how hard she worked for money!"
"Foolish. Money like that is worthless in the end."
"Sh—shut up! Die! If you don't die, then I will!"
Narien's trembling hand brought the knife to her own throat. The edge kissed skin, and a thread of red ran down her neck.
"Heh… heheh! The mother you love is going to die! Well? Are you scared? Are you afraid? Better that you die than that I disappear, isn't it!"
Had it been Lilith, a threat that shoddy might well have worked. She had truly loved her mother—a foolish, gentle daughter who had wanted her mother's happiness more than her own. But to the Heavenly Demon, that woman was less than a stranger.
"Pathetic."
One word, and no more. Having spat the insult, he turned his back, as if she were no longer worth looking at. The undergarment that held his chest in place was still lying in a heap on the bed, and he had to put it on.
Inconvenient, but I have no choice but to wear it.
Did the body take after its mother? Lilith's chest was larger than he had expected.
"R—right now! Is that any way to speak to your moooootherrrr!!"
The point of the knife swung toward Lilith. Lady Narien's eyes flew wide, and she broke into a run.
"Diiiiiie!"