Sunset was spreading across the sky as I left the academy. I walked towards the dormitories, feeling the slight chill on my arms as I went. I was slightly fatigued, but had a bottomless feeling of joy in my heart nonetheless.
That fight against Yolande was fun. Really, truly enjoyable. When was the last time I got that excited about something? Honestly, it was way more satisfying than the fight with Abel.
Perhaps that was the reason why my legs felt light underneath me, despite my tiredness.
“Luke.”
I heard a voice.
“Yolande?”
“Can we talk for a moment?”
“Sure.”
I’m in a good mood, and it’d be hard to think up a reason to refuse.
Yolande and I walked side by side under the evening sky.
✦ ✦ ✦
Once there was a young boy who was very clever—too clever, even. He began to notice the “strangeness” when he reached the age of five. Those around him were simply unable to understand things that he took for granted as obvious. They were terribly unintelligent, he judged, and they could hardly be considered humans at all. This cruel reality overwhelmed the young boy, driving him into a bottomless pit of loneliness and isolation. It was so very dull.
From that point onwards, the boy’s view of the world began slowly but steadily to shift, as color faded from everything around him. All of his hope for the future eventually dried up, and he started to lose his reason for living. The faded, colorless world took a great toll on him, and his mind began slowly to warp and twist. He no longer cared whether he lived or died. By the time he reached his ninth birthday, the young boy had lost all attachment that he once had to the world. He lived only because he happened to still be alive. It was an incredibly passive life.
But one day, the world finally smiled at the boy.
He was injured, just slightly. The wound was nothing much, a small cut that any child might find themselves with after rolling in the fields with their friends. The cut didn’t trouble him in the slightest.
“Are you okay, Big Brother?”
Someone spoke to him. It was Alice, who was four years old at the time. She had been so insignificant to him up until that point that he had been unconsciously ignoring her, even when she did enter his line of sight. That was the first time he had really paid any attention to the existence of his little sister.
An angel.
That was the moment that color returned to the young boy’s world. He’d been shown a single beam of light in the darkness. She was so innocent at heart, kind in a way that was completely pure and unclouded. If she was not an angel, then nothing was, thought the boy. It was such a small thing, but it restored to his life such meaning so quickly and completely that it made everything he had been through feel like nothing at all. But in truth, it was too late. Far, far too late, indeed. The days of despair had eaten away at his heart, and the youth was twisted beyond repair.
I want to drag this angel down… To turn her into a devil.
The boy’s heart was ruled by a desire so heinous that it would have been incomprehensible to any normal man. He wanted to take those pure eyes filled with endless kindness and turn them cold and contemptuous.
The thought sent a shiver up the boy’s spine and made all of his hair stand on end. He resolved then, without a moment’s hesitation, to use all of his abilities to manipulate the emotions of others. The boy decided that he would win the hearts and minds of everyone who got close to Alice, including his own.
By controlling every one of the many variables that determined a person’s character and disposition, he would bring about the angel’s downfall… He would turn her into a devil.
The long-term planning for the boy’s terrible deed began that day. He decided to think of all the time he had spent powerless and despairing at the world as a sort of preparation, a method of maximizing the joy to come. Those around the boy thought of him as incompetent—and that worked perfectly for his purposes. He spent every day slowly nurturing within his sister the right emotions.
He sought to turn Alice into a devil with the heart of a sadist.
He completely manipulated those around him. It should have been impossible, of course, but the gods had unfortunately chosen to bless the young boy with a monstrously talented mind. It was when the boy became a young man that his efforts finally began to bear fruit.
“Big Brother, you disgust me. Would you stay away from me, please?”
“A-ah…”
Everything went as planned. The angel became a devil, and the days became like heaven for the young man. He was so shocked to find that living true to his own heart could bring such vibrant color to the world. Every time Alice showered him with looks of disdain, his body was filled with such uncontrollable pleasure and joy. But just as light had once entered the young boy’s life, the dark returned once more. When Alice was twelve years of age, she was invited to a party.
It was a celebration for a boy named Luke Witharia Gilbert.
As respected aristocrats who worried for their own reputation and standing, the young man had never been allowed to attend parties. It was, in a sense, an inevitable consequence of his playing dumb. To the young man who cared about nothing aside from his sister, Alice, however, parties were of no worth whatsoever.
Then the tragedy occurred.
It only took a single day.
In one day, Alice was changed completely. The young man had spent several years nurturing Alice’s sadism each day, but the boy named Luke had overwritten everything in but a single night. The young man realized it at once: There was no longer any devil in Alice’s eyes when she returned from the party that night.
It wasn’t that the sadism in her had disappeared completely, but that a pronounced sort of “masochism” and “love” now dwelled within her, similar to that of her brother. She no longer looked at him. The young man could not make sense of the situation, even with his extremely talented mind. What could possibly cause a person’s heart to change so drastically in such a short time, he wondered. He could have understood if Alice had simply fallen in love, but then where did the masochism come from?
What did she see? What did she experience? How has she been so thoroughly changed?
A few days later came the announcement that added insult to injury: Alice was engaged to that Luke boy. The young man could do nothing but laugh. He was shown that he had built his own happiness on thin ice.
But strangely, he did not despair.
The days that he had spent with Alice had changed the young man somewhat. He had become human enough to feel genuinely happy that his little sister might find joy of her own. Luke came to visit, and the young man was quite interested in him. He wanted to take the measure of him, this boy who had changed his little sister in a matter of days. The first time he laid eyes on Luke, he knew. He sensed Luke’s demeanor, and after a brief exchange of words, the young man was confident. He had never met anyone who was on the same level as he was until he met Luke—no, Luke was superior, even.
I see, thought the young man. Luke has not changed Alice but has instead returned her to who she always was. Alice must be so happy to have met a man of such stature.
As for why he knew, the young man’s desires and Alice’s were, deep down, of the same sort.
“I want to surpass myself in every way and yet still be abused by the one I love.”
That one twisted desire took complete hold of the young man. He had never had an equal before and had doubted whether one might ever appear. That was why he had tried to turn Alice into a devil.
The young man laughed. He laughed because he thought of how truly happy Alice must be and felt a little envious of her. There would be, he thought, no partner in the world more worthy of standing by Luke’s side than his supremely beautiful and precious little sister. He could not think of getting in their way, but neither could he give up on his own happiness. That is why he scrapped all of his plans and set sail on a new course.