It had been born in complete darkness. There were no sights to see, no sounds to hear. In the terrifying, stagnant void, the creature let out a small cry.
The creature had a black body, golden eyes, agile limbs, and a brain. People called it a demon. From their first breath, those born within the miasma had but one goal: to find humans, attack them, and be killed for it in turn. A fatally wounded demon would dissipate into nothingness. Emerge, rampage by instinct, be hunted down, and die without leaving a single trace behind—that was the cycle of a demon’s life.
One day, the demon broke into a small house, where it found an old woman asleep on a square box. It approached stealthily, and just as it was about to bite down on her throat, the woman opened her small eyes.
“Oh, what a cute kitty!”
The demon growled softly in response, but the woman wasn’t frightened. She reached out a hand, stroked the demon’s gaunt cheek, and smiled cheerfully. The demon was so surprised it entirely forgot about biting her.
“What pretty, sparkly eyes you have,” she said. “You’re just like Kira...”
“What...is...Kira?” the demon asked, surprising itself with the sounds coming from its own throat.
Though its speech was clumsy, it had definitely uttered words—very similar to the sequential sounds humans used.
“Kira is a character from an old story about a twinkling star, little one. It means your eyes are beautiful, like stars,” the old woman said plainly, smiling.
She told the demon the story so many times that it did its best to learn the words. The woman was knowledgeable and taught it many other things as well—about human life, about the differences between nobles and commoners, about money, school, inns, restaurants, temples, meeting halls, magic, and saints.
A saint was, apparently, a special woman whose role was to suppress the miasma that erupted from underground. In other words, she was a natural enemy of the demon’s kind. Should it ever encounter her, she could obliterate it.
I never want to meet her, it thought. But...at the same time, another part of it did.
“The current saint’s name is Evelyn,” the woman explained. “She’s so wonderful that people of all kinds name their children after her.”
Soon after that, a young couple—apparently the old woman’s relatives—came to pick her up. On the morning of her departure, the demon could hear her desperate cries of “Here, kitty, kitty,” as it left that town behind. It knew that if other humans saw it, terrible things would happen.
By then, it had become capable of taking human form. It clearly was not an ordinary demon. It headed for the royal capital, where it knew a big temple named the Grand Basilica—the saint’s home—was located. But one day, while searching for food in its demon form, it was discovered by a group of humans. They slashed its leg, but it managed to escape. Finally, it reached the royal capital.
But no one would help it. They just averted their eyes, their expressions filled with pity, and treated the demon as though it didn’t exist.
Its sudden encounter with the saint was pure serendipity. The demon had been dragging its right leg through a back alley when someone called out to it.
“Hey, are you all right?”
It turned around and saw a beautiful woman with long silver hair and large emerald eyes. She had to be around eighteen years old. The young woman wore a white dress with modest but elegant gold thread embroidery, and her appearance was otherworldly, somehow. It struck the demon at first glance that this woman didn’t seem like an ordinary noble.
Her name was Evelyn and she knew surprisingly little about the world in general. She claimed she could use healing magic but had no idea how valuable that was. The demon thought she might be more innocent than the average child, even.
Did her parents not teach her anything?
Though demons had no parents, it felt as though the old woman had been a mother to it. The demon wondered whether Evelyn had a mother at all. But her speech was proper, lacking any regional accent. Her voice was like a songbird’s and pleasant to the ear—so much so that the demon forgot all about fleeing and instead started talking to her.
To its absolute shock, Evelyn healed its injury. The spell was completely different from what the old woman had described seeing once. Dark orbs floated up into the air, and golden particles flowed into the wound. The sight was completely foreign to the demon, but...nevertheless, its pain had disappeared in an instant.
When it watched Evelyn get as excited over a single piece of bronze as if she’d just come across the greatest of treasures, it let out a sigh.
Flusters easily, laughs easily, gets excited easily, cries easily... Weirdo.
Even as it thought that, it found itself laughing at Evelyn’s foolishness—something it very quickly tried to cover up.
Evelyn mentioned wanting to work in the royal capital for a while. The demon considered just parting ways with her there, but seeing how stupid and gullible she seemed, it couldn’t just leave her to her fate.
Next thing it knew, it was extending an invitation to her. “Then why don’t you stick with me? We can make money together.”
Evelyn beamed, nodded, and exclaimed, “Yes! Oh, yes!”
She has no sense of danger, the demon thought. If she had any modicum of common sense, she wouldn’t have accepted.
“Right!” Evelyn said. “What’s your name?”
The demon was about to shake its head—it didn’t have a name, after all—but suddenly, the memory of the old woman came to mind, and the name tumbled from its mouth without warning.
“Kira,” it said.
“What a lovely name!” Evelyn said, smiling.
The demon took that as meaningless social courtesy and looked away.
Seemingly unoffended, Evelyn thought for a moment, then clapped her hands. “I see! I get it!”
“What?”
Evelyn smiled brighter and said without missing a beat, “Your eyes! They’re pretty and sparkly, like stars! That’s why your name is Kira, like the star from the story!”
Her smile looked far prettier to the demon—to Kira.
As they spent time together, Kira came to realize that Evelyn was actually the saint. It made sense, of course. Her healing magic was extraordinary. Even the most skilled physicians could only use such spells about three times a day, yet Evelyn had declared without hesitation that she had no daily limit. Not only that, she’d demonstrated it by casting over and over. Kira was convinced his guess was correct.
When a boy named Cain took them to see a man whose arm was nearly consumed by miasma, Kira began to brace himself. Evelyn would surely dispel the miasma and heal the man’s wound. Hell, with her power, she would easily dissipate the miasma covering this entire region. And when that happened, with Kira standing right there—or anywhere nearby—he figured he’d probably vanish along with the miasma.
Kira had been born a demon, after all. They were fundamentally incompatible with humans, and the saint especially. He’d always known that.
I don’t think I mind if it’s by her hand, he thought.
Despite knowing what awaited him, Kira didn’t move from his spot near her.
But...he wasn’t erased. Evelyn cast her spell, but he felt nothing. No physical abnormalities, no pain. It was only then that it hit him—she had probably figured out his true nature too.
“Kira!” a voice rang out, snapping him out of his thoughts.
Kira slowly raised his head. “Cain?”
After the girl named Europa had called Kira a “dangerous thing,” he’d fled into the town of Semme. Looking for a deserted place to hide, he’d kept running, and next he knew, he was outside the entrance to the nearby woods.
He hadn’t expected the timid Cain to chase after him like this, alone. He also hadn’t expected the slight disappointment he felt. How strange.
Though Kira had been sure that feeling wasn’t showing on his face, Cain seemed to have noticed and hesitantly mumbled, “Kira, um...”
Kira didn’t respond.
“If you’re looking for Ms. Angel, she’s right there,” Cain said, staring intently into the woods.
Huh...?
Kira gasped. No way. But...somewhere in his heart, he had hope. He turned around, hoping to find—
“Kira! Help me, Kiraaa!!!”
Not that. In fact, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. There was a pair of arms sticking out of a bog in the woods, flailing around vigorously, and a muffled voice was calling out his name.
Kira looked back at Cain, pointing at the mysterious scene. “What the heck is that?”
“Ms. Angel’s arms, as you can see.”
Oh. Yeah, it figures...
“We split up to search for you, and I searched the town while she searched the forest,” Cain explained tearfully. “She probably fell into the bog in the process.”
Kira was baffled, but...yes, he could see how an airhead like Evelyn might fall into a bog.
“How is she breathing?” Kira asked.
She should’ve suffocated, yet here she was, shouting her heart out. Or...shouting her arms out, he supposed.
“Well, she’s an angel,” Cain mused. “Maybe she’s calling out telepathically.”
Cain’s ideas of Evelyn were definitely unrealistic, but Kira could worry about that later.
“What a racket,” Kira muttered, exasperated. “Let’s go help her.”
Off the two went to rescue the pair of shouting arms. Cain grabbed the left hand while Kira took the right. Their feet sank into the mud as they pulled together, shouting, “Heave-ho!”
But...
“Sh-She’s so heavy,” they both groaned simultaneously.
The arms flailed. “I-I’m not! It’s the mud, I swear!”