“Hey, that’s you. The rabbit the Demon King was raising—that’s obviously you. Why would the Demon King have been raising an actual rabbit… It’s obvious the Demon King already knows everything and is just pretending not to.”
At Ren speaking with conviction, Beni was confused for a moment, but no matter how much he thought about it, he didn’t think the rabbit the Demon King was raising was him. He’d been hiding in the castle from the start, and the story about the Demon King’s rabbit had been around since the time he was hiding. It couldn’t be him.
“…No. His Majesty’s rabbit even has a name. He always just calls me ‘rabbit.’ Just recently he accidentally called me by his rabbit’s name and apologized. I must resemble it a lot.”
“That’s exactly why it’s you…!”
“And why would His Majesty lie to me about having another rabbit in the first place?”
Beni was full of secrets from the Demon King, but there existed a selfish trust that he wouldn’t have lied to him. At Beni’s question, Ren also hesitated.
“…I don’t know either.”
“Right?”
“Anyway, still, don’t trust the Demon King too much. Always be careful. Your guard drops too easily.”
“…But His Majesty is a good person…!”
Ren made a displeased expression and smacked his lips but couldn’t say anything. The atmosphere that somehow felt silent was a bit awkward, so Beni asked what he’d been curious about earlier.
“But Ren, have you seen a lot of people like me?”
“People like you?”
At the out-of-the-blue question, Ren stared at Beni’s face before shaking his head. White hair itself wasn’t common in the first place.
“No? There’s no way someone like you would be common in the Demon Realm.”
“Ah… I see. You seemed to know a lot about beastkin half-breeds…!”
Ren looked at Beni for a moment before belatedly muttering “Oh, that?”
“Before entering the Demon King’s Castle, I lived in the slums. There are a lot of chimeras like me there, and there are quite a few beastkin half-breeds like you or mixed bloods with other races too.”
So there were a lot of kids like him in the slums. Beni wondered what it would have been like if he’d grown up in such a place instead.
“Come to think of it, when I was young, there was a beastkin who looked similar to you. Their hair was on the white side like yours, and from what I heard, I think they were a rabbit beastkin.”
“Like me…?”
“Yeah, but um… they were missing one eye.”
Beni’s face hardened.
The enraged Count’s shouts, the nameless servant kneeling before him and repeatedly slamming their head down. And the woman covered in blood on her face, motionless.
〈Mom…〉
It was his mother. If he approached closer, her face—specifically around her right eye—had been torn open lengthwise. The servants grabbed Beni, who was wailing and embracing his mother, and locked him in his room, and three days later, the Count announced that his mother had died.
When Beni couldn’t believe it, he even showed him his mother’s corpse with half her face wrapped in bandages. Beni, who couldn’t accept his mother’s death, had no choice but to finally acknowledge it after seeing the body that had the exact same body scent as his mother but had gone cold. That his mother was dead.
Right after grasping that fact, he fainted immediately, and after hovering between life and death for three days, Beni barely opened his eyes, and strangely his memories became hazy. Only vague recollections of the words she’d told him, her comforting body scent and warm embrace, and a few shocking moments came to mind.
“What? Why’s your expression suddenly like that?”
When Ren grabbed and shook Beni’s shoulders, only then did color return to Beni’s ashen complexion. Beni immediately hid his stiff expression and asked Ren.
“Is that rabbit beastkin person still living there?”
“No. They weren’t there long in the first place. They suddenly disappeared and I never saw them again after that. They say beastkin can’t live long in the Demon Realm, so… I think they probably died.”
Ren also noticed what Beni was inferring from his story. Though he was forcing a smile, his eyes couldn’t hide his emotions.
“It’s probably not your mother. That beastkin always told us.”
“What did they say…?”
“That their child was on the surface. That they must be desperately searching for them, so they had to return quickly.”
“Ah… I see. Then maybe they didn’t die but returned to the surface?”
Beni knew too. That it probably wasn’t his mother. Because he still remembered well that moment he’d confirmed himself. Even so, beyond hoping that the beastkin Ren spoke of had returned to the surface, he felt a desperation wishing they had. Hearing it was the same rabbit beastkin as him with the same injury as his mother, a sense of kinship suddenly arose.
But Ren answered firmly.
“No, it’s impossible. Only noble demons, and only those with quite high status at that, can cross over to the surface. There’s no possibility a beastkin alone in the slums with no connections could have crossed over to the surface.”
“…I see.”
When Beni became gloomy, Ren thought perhaps he’d spoken too bluntly. He usually spoke without caring about others’ feelings, but since meeting Beni, it wasn’t once or twice that he’d felt ‘oops’ after blurting something out.
Ren, who had been watching Beni’s mood, picked up the book he’d placed on the floor and reached up to pull his pillow into his arms. Then he settled beside Beni.
“Let’s just sleep now. Do you know how to read?”
“Huh? Yeah, I can read to some extent.”
“Oh. You’re smart. Scoot over a bit.”
When Ren tapped and pushed Beni’s thigh, Beni moved toward the inside of the bed without thinking. Ren naturally placed his pillow against the headboard and sat leaning against it at an angle. Under the dim light, Ren opened the book.
“I sleep well when I read this.”
Beni also followed Ren, supporting his lower back with the pillow and leaning his body to the side. The book cover was made of luxurious hardcover, but the inside was dirty. There were unidentifiable stains, torn parts, and everything was faded.
Convergence and Divergence of Non-Euclidean Mana Circuits
…The magic circle drawn above cannot fully contain the three-dimensional flow of mana. Unless the knot of magic power is twisted from a topological perspective…
Most of the words were difficult for Beni to understand.
“Where did you buy this book?”
Ren kept reading only this book and no others. Was it a precious book to him?
“I didn’t buy it, I stole it.”
Beni’s eyes wavered. Looking to the side, Ren was already looking at him. The lamplight flickered faintly within his snake-like eyes.
“When I was young, my parents sold me to a chimera research facility. I was an ordinary demon back then, but they cut off my arms and gouged out my eyeballs as they pleased, and I became like this.”
Beni could only freeze and stare at Ren, unable to give any response.
“But then they suddenly kicked me out calling me a failure. It pissed me off. So before getting kicked out, I stole whatever I could grab, and it happened to be this useless book.”
Should’ve stolen something more expensive—Ren, who muttered softly, was calm. Beni couldn’t say anything until the end.
Like that, Ren gradually fell asleep while reading the book. Beni put the book away with a darkly sunken face and laid Ren down properly.
〈I was an ordinary demon back then, but they cut off my arms and gouged out my eyeballs as they pleased, and I became like this.〉
The voice speaking as if talking about someone else’s business wouldn’t leave his mind. Beni looked at Ren sleeping beside him for a long while with eyes that seemed about to cry.
* * *
Did I speak for nothing? Ren glanced at Beni washing up beside him. From the time he woke up in the morning, he’d become more quiet than usual and looked depressed.
It was definitely because of the story he’d impulsively told yesterday. He’d just talked because he felt he should say something too since he’d learned Beni’s secret, but it seemed to have given quite a shock to the emotionally sensitive guy.
Still, to not even know how chimeras are made—weren’t you locked up somewhere at that level?
What he’d said wasn’t even a secret in the first place. It was just an old story from the past.
Unable to bear the silence, Ren opened his palm and smacked Beni’s lower back hard. Due to the wet skin, a loud sound echoed through the bathhouse.
“Ow!”
A few startled servants turned their heads toward the two, but that was all. Since they’d come to wash later than usual, there weren’t many people.
“Ren! That hurt…!”
At his stinging back, Beni made a tearful face while struggling to rub the spot he could barely reach. At Beni’s gaze tinged with subtle resentment, Ren feigned indifference.
“That’s what you get for not saying anything since morning. It’s because of what I said yesterday, right?”
“…I didn’t know chimeras were made that way… by such horrible methods. Like me, just…”
The rest was omitted, but Ren could understand well enough.
“It was horrible like you said. It’s a time I never want to experience again.”
Beni’s shoulders drooped. He smacked his lips and looked at Ren but couldn’t say anything.
“But it’s already in the past. I don’t want to spend my future time depressed because of what happened then. I don’t want to consider myself unhappy now because of something that happened over ten years ago, and rather I want to prove I’ve severed it all.”
After hearing Ren’s story yesterday, Beni felt shock and upset that someone younger than him had gone through such a horrible thing, and additionally, he felt pathetic for not being able to offer any comfort.
He also felt frustrated that he wanted to do something for Ren but there was nothing he could do.
But Ren was a much stronger friend than he’d thought.
“So stop being gloomy now. Got it?”
Answer! Ren pointed at Beni with his finger and tilted his chin. At the index finger placed right in front of his nose, Beni flinched, then pressed his lips tightly and nodded his head vigorously.
“Yeah…! You’re really amazing, Ren.”
“Whatever. Just hurry up and wash, you bastard. You’ll catch a cold.”
Ren tried to hit Beni’s thigh with one leg but the towel tied around his waist came undone. The towel he couldn’t catch in time fell to the floor with a thud.
Eek—Ren nonchalantly picked up the towel and wrapped it around his waist again, but Beni stood there with only his eyes looking up at the ceiling.
And then said.
“I, I, I didn’t see anything.”
At Beni’s appearance, Ren burst into laughter.
Ren’s… there… there were 2…
