Accepting Love
Karia. Karia, Karia. Karia······ The name had a strangely satisfying ring to it. I found myself repeating it without thinking. But more than that—yes, last night the Demon King had returned to the castle. Tia Belberman had shown enough consideration to let me sleep alone in this room, at least for one night, so I could rest without fear. Yet somehow, when I tugged at the hem of her clothes and told her she didn’t have to go, something in her seemed to flip. She abandoned any thought of simply reassuring me and spent the entire night chattering away, whispering my name until my ears felt ready to form scabs, all while nibbling at my body bit by bit. Because of that, I ended up sleeping in later than I ever had since being brought to the Demon King’s castle.
Of course, before this I had either died and woken at a set time or fallen into a state where oversleeping meant nothing at all, so the count itself didn’t matter. Still, this was probably the first time I had properly overslept. More than that, the moment I woke, one thought had already taken root in my mind.
“Jemma. Jemma?”
I called the familiar attendant’s name to confirm my suspicion, but as I had vaguely feared, no one answered.
“···Ah.”
That was it. I had been so thoroughly broken that Jemma must have given up on me. After all, who would serve someone who had completely fallen apart? I accepted it without question, assuming Jemma had done the same. Yet—
“Hop hop. Hop hop.”
As expected, my one and only attendant was still right there beside me. The rabbit I had missed so much soon appeared in my line of sight, performing her usual imitation.
“Hop hop. That is correct. I am Jemma.”
With that long-missed morning greeting, she welcomed me with her usual bright, expressionless face.
“Have you finally awakened, Master···”
Jemma gazed at my somewhat clearer face and immediately covered her mouth as if overcome with emotion, pretending to shed tears. I smiled faintly at her, then suddenly pulled her into a hug.
“Ah, Master—— You finally···!”
“I missed you, Jemma.”
The moment she drew close, I embraced her tightly while still lying down. Jemma started to make another strange sound but stopped short.
“····”
After quietly savoring the moment in my arms for a while, she spoke.
“I also·····”
She paused mid-sentence, swallowed, and continued.
“I am sorry I could not assist you sufficiently····”
For some reason, the way she trembled while hugging me made it seem as though she was about to cry.
“It’s all right, Jemma··· Why would you apologize····”
I knew full well that everything was because of the Demon King—Tia’s greed—so I tried to comfort her, but—
“I am unfit to be an attendant···! Hic····!”
Watching Jemma shake me back and forth while still holding on, I realized she was playing around again. However—
“····”
When she finally let go, I noticed real tear tracks on her face.
“···I’m fine, you dummy. Everything’s already been settled.”
I naturally reached out to wipe away her tears.
“I am glad····”
Jemma closed her eyes for a moment with the saddest expressionless face I had ever seen from her, then opened them again.
“Then, is there perhaps a reason you called for me?”
She asked why I had summoned her. I closed my eyes briefly, pressed my lips together as if deep in thought, then spoke after a moment.
“Jemma.”
“Do you really think I can kill the Demon King?”
Jemma stared at me with a momentarily shocked expression, then mirrored my thoughtful pause before giving her answer.
“····”
Instead of speaking, she raised both thumbs and shook her head firmly from side to side.
“I knew it····”
Of course, the gesture was ambiguous—it could mean either possibility—but I took it as negative, and there was a reason for that.
“No, Master. Please do not give up.”
“No, it’s impossible···”
Truthfully, last night I had spoken with such bravado, swept up in the moment, but the changes to my body from Tia’s training···· activities had been far too severe.
“···Look at my arm, Jemma.”
It had already been thin enough, but now it looked as though a single calf kick could slice it clean in two.
“···· It is sufficiently beautiful.”
Jemma, of course, regarded it with an even more tilted gaze, but I was serious.
“Like this, I’ll never regain my strength, let alone kill her···”
Even if I had no real intention of killing her, to be honest, this incident had made me desperately aware that I needed at least one means of resisting the Demon King. Still, even if I could not recover the unique magic my parents had passed down to me when I was Belberman—the Counterattack’s Potential—I felt I needed something, anything.
“Then, Master——”
Just as I was resigning myself to accepting my comrades’ silent resentment while giving up on killing her, Jemma called my name.
“Karia.”
But before she could continue, the way she addressed me bothered me, so I corrected her.
“Huh?”
“From now on, you can just call me by my name.”
It had bothered me from the start, but until now I hadn’t had another name to suggest, so I had stayed quiet. Now that I had finally received a new name yesterday, I decided to correct it.
Jemma stared at me with sparkling eyes for a moment, then nodded vigorously.
“Yes, Karia Master!”
“Drop the ‘Master’——”
Unfortunately, she still used the same title.
“Karia Master! I have a method.”
“Why do you keep emphasizing ‘Master’····”
Jemma ignored my words and maintained the title, about to explain her method. However—
Click——
The door opened at a completely unexpected time, and a familiar voice rang out.
“Attendant Jemma, I believe this is the time you should be preparing the meal.”
“My apologies, Demon King.”
As Jemma bowed her head, Tia continued.
“I will look after Karia. Leave at once.”
“Yes, Demon King.”
The Demon King, Tia Belberman, appeared in the doorway, sent Jemma out, and approached me. Though I felt a great deal of pressure from her presence, she was speaking unusually gently today, so I greeted her kindly in return.
“What brings you here so early today?”
“There was no work. As I mentioned last night, the human situation does not look favorable, so there was nothing urgent for us to do either.”
Tia carefully sat beside me and stroked my hair.
“If you’re going to conquer them, shouldn’t you invade when they’re in this state?”
I asked, suddenly feeling something was off as I looked into her pitch-black eyes. Tia smiled faintly and answered.
“Humanity is not so easily subdued. If it were that simple, we would have already made this planet ours.”
“Are the demons struggling right now too?”
The topic had come up suddenly, but the more we talked, the more curious I became, so I bombarded her with questions. Perhaps because of our conversation, Tia, who had grown much gentler toward me, answered each one. However—
“You have no need to concern yourself with such things.”
The Demon King pulled me into her arms and buried my head against her chest as she spoke.
“In the end, you lost to me, did you not? You are merely my captive···· Even if the world you lived in perishes, all you need to do is stay quietly by my side.”
Logically speaking, her words were not wrong. I had been defeated on the battlefield where lives were at stake and had become a captive whose life and death now rested in her hands. For such a captive, the destruction of their homeland or the defeat of humanity lost all meaning. Once the freedom of one’s own life had been taken, what use was humanity?
Yet I still had an ideal I wished to pursue. Among the many words Tia had carelessly spoken last night, I had realized something. And from the very beginning, I was someone who had gambled my life on impossible odds and won. Even though I had been defeated at the very last moment, I still held onto hope. It was not necessary to kill the Demon King to end the war. If I could erase the reason for the war that Tia had spoken of, if I could remove that motivation, then there would be no need to fight at all. Until now, we had believed the sole motivation for this war was the Demon King’s very existence, but last night I had managed to have a conversation with her. Even though it had been a conversation between a captive and a master who loved her captive, I had learned that the Demon King was not incapable of dialogue. And even now, she was talking with me.
“Tia.”
So I asked her, suddenly.
“If the demons win and this war comes to an end···· what will you do afterward?”
I wanted to hear her true voice, the one that would reveal the Demon King’s true feelings as she had lived solely for this war of conquest. Tia fiddled with my cheek for a moment, then answered with the smile gone from her face.
“I will protect them.”
Finally, she spoke.
“Our race, our homeland, our families···· our homes.”
Then, gently stroking my head, she continued.
“And for a very long time, we will walk the path of a long evolution.”
For some reason, her pitch-black eyes, which I had been gazing into, seemed to reflect the vast galaxy I had seen last night.
“After that, we will reach even farther, toward even wider places····”
From that expression of hers, I felt an inexplicable lift in my chest. I buried my face in her embrace for a moment, then lightly placed my hand on my own chest. But—
“····Karia.”
Tia seemed to have finished thinking about that shining future. She suddenly called my name, placed her hand lightly on my back, and said,
“I still do not know what it is you desire.”
Her hand slowly moved to my shoulder.
“But I can feel your thoughts and emotions to some extent.”
It rose to my nape and began tracing the line of my neck.
“····You are trying to stop me.”
Then, gently wrapping her hand around my neck as if tickling it, she asked. I lightly held onto her waist and replied.
“You don’t seem angry anymore.”
I had no intention of denying it. In truth, I was also so tense that if I said the wrong thing again, I might fall back into those painful memories that I could barely find the right words. Still, I thought it was correct to say that I was trying to stop Tia, so I answered that way. Tia kneaded my neck little by little as she replied.
“You are both something I love and something precious in a different sense than an attendant.”
From those words, I got the feeling that Tia was not someone who treated attendants carelessly either. But without giving me time to think about it, she continued.
“That is why, as you requested last night, I am trying to suppress my true desires and speak with you honestly·····”
She made her declaration.
“But if even you try to block the path I intend to walk, I will kill you without hesitation.”
In the distant future, if I did not look in the same direction as Tia but instead faced her, she would cut me off at any time.
“I cannot kill you now, but I will drive you into a pain akin to death and one day find a way to bring you to a true end.”
At that, painful memories surfaced, and my fingertips trembled as my wrists began to shake. Tia’s hand, which had been stroking my neck, now felt only cold, and my breathing grew difficult as I began to gasp. But—
Slide——
Tia took the hand that had been holding my neck and grasped my trembling wrist instead, while her other hand wrapped around my body and covered my eyes.
“However, if you do not head toward such a future····”
Soon, Tia’s voice grew gentle again, and I could hear her heartbeat.
“I am willing to offer everything except my own race for you alone.”
At her sweet words, for some reason my body gradually calmed. I caught my breath for a moment and said,
“You are mine alone, so whatever I do is my freedom, is it not?”
I released her waist, which I had been holding, and grasped her shoulders instead.
“So as long as you do not choose that future, I will do anything to nurture you with joy.”
Although the memories and sensations of that moment still tormented me, now that I was certain the Demon King would stand on my side, I smiled and answered her words.
“Then I’ll set a condition too.”
Tia’s words had clearly reached my heart, conveying what she wanted to say. But within those words, I had found something I could do.
“Don’t conquer the humans.”
The Demon King’s body flinched slightly. Even though the words she had just spoken were no different from a threat, she could not hide her obvious bewilderment as she looked at me, who had still voiced my opinion.
“Don’t conquer them. Stop the war···· and find a way for us to coexist.”
War was an unbearably painful thing. I had felt that deeply, having devoted my entire life to it. Tia probably felt the same way—I had begun to realize that since last night.
“Then I can say with certainty that I will never stand against you.”
Even if it felt too late for that now. Still, if it was to reduce the number of people who would continue to suffer and demons who would continue to be sacrificed—
“Tia Belberman, you can do it, can’t you?”
Although I did not know whether I was choosing to trust the existence called the Demon King or to oppose her, even if this conversation truly meant nothing, I believed that these small conversations, piled one upon another, could change a person.
“Siphel, pull yourself together—you can do it——!”
“I·····!!”
“Sipheeeel———!!”
I had realized it deeply through memories of those who had always been with me in my most brilliant moments. The Demon King, who had listened to my words to the end without getting angry, closed her eyes for a moment, then spoke in a tired voice.
“You really do put me in a difficult position····”
She pulled me into an even tighter embrace.
“You put me in a difficult position first.”
Not to be outdone, I answered immediately. Tia opened her pitch-black eyes again and replied to my condition.
The answer was rejection.
“Why····?”
I looked at Tia with a truly desperate expression. Honestly, this was the best I could do. To stop Tia through dialogue. To somehow restrain this war. As someone whose right to life had been taken away, that was all I could do.
“It is something that cannot be helped. It is not something you need to know.”
Tia spoke in a heavy tone once more, then added,
“And again, you say it cannot be helped—— Why do there keep being so many things that cannot be helped····!”
It felt as though she was hiding something from me again. As I tried to continue the conversation with increasingly heated emotions, she—
Thud———
—covered my mouth. Slide——
I did not know when it had happened, but the collar that had been loose for a while was once again fastened around my neck.
“Ugh, mmph—— Wait, mmph——!”
The moment I felt a genuine thrill run through my entire body in surprise and tried to grab Tia, begging her to wait—
“Last night, I tried to have a calm conversation with you as you desperately pleaded, yet why do you always do this?”
Tia spoke while holding the collar and my shoulder, pushing me back down onto the bed.
“I have always tried to respect and listen to your thoughts, so why do you keep ignoring my feelings?”
At that moment, I finally realized—too late—that this version of Tia was the one most desperately trying to control her anger. And as if I had touched her reverse scale again, the Demon King’s furious fingertips began to press down on me.
“Ugh, I-I’m sorry···! N-no, I was wrong, you, you have your own circumstances too, p-please don’t——!”
Even as I poured out desperate excuses the moment my mouth was freed, still swept up in terrifying memories, in the end—
“Aah, kyaa····!!”
She wrapped her arms around my small, curled-up body and dragged me back into the swamp of pleasure. Still, the Demon King who had promised to change for me did not do anything as harsh as before. She only hurt me enough to make me suffer through the trauma in proportion to my mistake, and after that···· how should I put it? It was a touch filled with the Demon King’s own desires.
“Obey me, Karia···”
“Stop, stooop········!”
She simply poured out stimulation that made me feel good, nothing more.
“Hngh, kyaa———!”
Contrary to the anxiety that had been swirling in my heart due to trauma, I was being disciplined with a truly peaceful mind. Of course, the physical relationship itself had deeply rooted unpleasant memories, so my heart ached intermittently even as it happened. Perhaps the Demon King knew that too. Slide——
Not long after, she placed a blindfold of some soft material over my eyes. At first I was afraid, but with all visual information cut off and only pleasant sensations remaining, I thought this level was bearable. Covering my eyes had been a really good choice. No, wait a second. Wait, but why—why was I gradually becoming serious about these things? Why did Tia keep disciplining me with sex? This damn— I used to be a man···· I shouldn’t be treated like this. Click——
“Master, Demon King, this morning the dining hall——”
“Get out——!!”