The Immortal Queen Cannot Escape the Lies and Obsession of the Demon — Not That She Wants To - Chapter 19

They say dancing is the best way for men and women to have private conversations in social settings, but for demons, floating in midair might be their equivalent custom.

In this sky where not even birds could fly through the darkness of night, let alone people, no one could eavesdrop.

Ariana finally felt like she understood why she had been brought out here.

“This is like turning gems into mere stones. Making value worthless, effort into foam. Rendering everything meaningless. That’s what it feels like to me.”

His quiet voice reached her through the wind.

It wasn’t spoken with joy or sorrow. Just a lonely statement of fact, delivered matter-of-factly.

“If stones remain in your hands, you can always polish them again.”

Rai’s arm wrapped around her back surely kept her cardigan in place. Even if she fell here, it wouldn’t be a great loss.

Ariana placed her left hand on Rai’s shoulder and gripped it tightly.

“For someone like me who nearly lost everything, including any gems, you left me with stones. To me, that’s everything.”

She didn’t understand the details of Rai’s power. She couldn’t comprehend his sensibilities.

Yet, he had given choices to Ariana, who had been ready to die without value or meaning.

(How saved I felt…)

He had picked up her life.

He had respected her.

He had stayed by her side during nights of shallow sleep.

Feelings beyond words churned in her chest.

Where should she start? What should she say to make him understand? To be understood?

His glass-like eyes that seemed to see right through her narrowed softly.

“Right. So, I suppose Ariana is my dream, my hope.”

“Me…?”

“Demons don’t need value or meaning. I can’t tell the difference between shiny stones, but I think I understand why humans desire gems.”

His heated gaze and enchanting smile directed at her from close range completely dominated her vision.

The thumping pulse echoed deep in her ears, and she even began to feel strangely breathless. Though Rai was right in front of her rather than beside her, Ariana was filled with an inexplicable tension.

Feeling utterly unsettled, she withdrew her hand from his shoulder, only to find herself with nowhere to put it.

“Hey, do you know what percentage of demons are female?”

“Huh!? Um, I believe it’s about one in…”

Another sudden, incomprehensible question came flying her way.

But for Ariana, whose entire body had gone stiff, any topic to distract her was most welcome. As she searched her memory for an answer, Rai cut her off with a “Nope, wrong!”

She wanted more time to think and cool her head, but as if declaring such time would be wasted, he revealed the chilling truth.

“The correct answer is approximately one percent.”

“……Huh?”

Female demons meant individuals who could become Demon Kings.

Their overwhelming scarcity was the one weakness of that terrifying threat, and humanity’s salvation.

Research which Ariana had studied. Indicated that even accounting for undiscovered ones, they were rare beings, with the total number of Demon Kings found worldwide being about one in a hundred thousand compared to the total casualties caused by demon beasts and demons.

But the demons themselves denied this, claiming the reality was different.

“We haven’t counted properly, but roughly one in a hundred demons is female. Well, even that’s few, and what humans call Demon Kings—the sturdy, highly fertile type are even rarer. Maybe about one in a hundred thousand. Normally, if they give birth to around two hundred, they die.”

“E-even two hundred would be considered very fertile from a human perspective…”

“Compared to Demon Kings who bear tens of thousands, that’s pretty normal, isn’t it?”

Normal.

The shock was so great that she even forgot for a moment that she was floating in midair. Combined with the feverish state she’d been in earlier, she felt dizzy.

“Th-that can’t be right. Precisely because we couldn’t find female demon beasts or demons, our search led us to the existence of Demon Kings. If it were one percent, it would be strange NOT to find them.”

“That’s because they’re hidden just as strictly as the Demon Kings. The reason other females aren’t found while Demon Kings are is probably because the males and children swarm out of their nests without any restraint.”

“I see?”

Assuming “normal” meant around a hundred, and Demon Kings meant tens of thousands.

If there was nearly a hundredfold difference in the numbers of demon beasts entering and leaving the demon corridor colonies, the more numerous ones would be easier to find, while the fewer would be increasingly difficult to locate.

“So, do you know why I, a demon, suddenly told you all this?”

“Huh?”

As Ariana’s mind worked at its limit, Rai calmly pressed on with his questioning.

“Eh, wait, give me a moment to think.”

“In other words, male demons have an instinct to keep females confined. It doesn’t matter if they’re human or their own kind. To prevent them from being taken, to keep them from escaping, we hide them away strictly.”

Without even a moment’s respite, as Ariana struggled to digest the facts being presented, Rai mercilessly continued revealing more, his faint smirk unchanged.

His momentum suggested he wouldn’t allow her to think anything through anymore.

“Just how reckless were those statements that rubbed our beastly nerves the wrong way? Since you didn’t seem to understand, I told you. Got it?”

“……”

“Ariana, do you understand?”

“I—”

Ariana’s left hand, which had been flailing aimlessly in the air with nowhere to go, came to rest uncertainly against Rai’s chest.

“You’ll… confine me?”

“————”

“I-it’s still in the future! I have to become queen, so it would be very troublesome right now, it’s a matter for later, but, um—”

Suddenly bombarded with so much information, Ariana’s head and face felt unbearably hot. That’s why, unexpectedly, feelings utterly unbefitting a queen or royalty overflowed within her.

It sounded as if he were saying, “Shall I lock you away?”

Of course, for the human Ariana, such a situation would be extremely problematic and frightening. But if that was how Rai the demon expressed affection, she found herself thinking that they could reconcile their racial values and find a compromise.

“Like that… like a treasure, me?”

In a place where she could exist not as a royal survivor or a queen, would he strictly enclose and protect the stone that was no longer a gem? Could such a dreamlike story exist?

When she looked up at him with moist earth-colored eyes as if seeking answers, Rai’s superficial smile completely crumbled.

“……Siiiiigh…”

It was a truly, deeply weary, enormous sigh.

“Ahh… six more years, no, five years until the successor comes of age. And at most nine more years, nine? …Nine years, huh…”

“Y-yes. Humans are considered adults at sixteen, but they’re still treated as immature, and the trend is that true adulthood starts at twenty.”

“Sigh—Well, whatever. We already made that contract. Thinking about it, Ariana’s body is still very human-like, so it would be premature. Dangerous, dangerous.”

Rai easily regained his smile, while Ariana froze at his outrageous statement.

“Hu-human-like!?”

“Huh, didn’t I mention it? Every time I extend your life’s remainder, your body becomes more demon-like.”

“That’s the first I’ve heard of it!? Immortality, floating in midair, and now such an absurd thing! H-how many times has it been? If I become a demon, how much will my appearance change!?”

“Who knows? If it bothers you, try hard not to increase it?”

“That’s—wah! Hyahhh!”

“You’ll bite your tongue.”

Feigning innocence and as if to avoid further questioning, Rai kicked off into the air and began spinning.

Unable to take steps midair, Ariana could only be swung around by Rai’s dance, which had neither basics nor form to follow. She could only cling to him to avoid being thrown off.

“Am I going to become a vampire too!?”

“Huh?”

“Because until now, many times on my neck.”

Those whose blood is sucked by vampires become vampires.

He had sucked her wound and bitten the same spot on her neck when extending her life’s remainder. But since there had been no physical changes, Ariana had mistaken it for false information. She never expected it to be cumulative, a blind spot.

Moreover, he had bitten her neck on various occasions beyond just extending her life’s remainder. She had lost count of how many times it had been.

Being confined by Rai was one thing, but having her living blood sucked was quite terrifying.

“Ahh, I see.”

Meanwhile, Rai realized she was referring to the times he had kissed the wound left on Ariana’s neck whenever the opportunity arose.

Now that he thought about it, he might have bitten her occasionally on a whim.

He just felt like touching it. Every time he touched the painfully lingering wound and saw Ariana’s reaction that suggested it didn’t hurt, it made him feel somewhat good.

At this new revelation that his series of actions had been misinterpreted by Ariana as vampiric behavior, Rai couldn’t hold back his laughter.

“—Ahahaha! Well, who knows? But a queen who sucks blood would be quite scandalous, so maybe I could at least arrange for you to only be able to drink grape juice?”

“That would also be problematic.”

“I don’t care how much it troubles you. I gave you proper warnings, didn’t I? I said it would be too late for regrets. Even so, it was Ariana who offered everything except her life.”

Rai had never once called himself a vampire.

But well, let’s leave it at that. It seemed somewhat interesting.

“So, I’ll save you as many times as it takes. But in the end, I’ll take all of Ariana for myself.”

And so the lying vampire continued dancing under the moonlight until he was satisfied or until the immortal queen was on the verge of feeling sick.

“Well, don’t worry. I’m the type who treasures his treasures, you know.”

“That part is fine but thinking about it carefully, I’m already in a state where I can’t live without Rai, so I think that means my life will be taken wholesale along with everything else.”

“Hey, were you listening? Could you not rub my nerves the wrong way? I really, seriously want Ariana to learn a little something soon. Should I make you disappear for about a day?”

“Ah, you’d let me come back after about a day?”

“Ahahaha… you reckless little thing.”

This is just a brief story from the time before the two would harmoniously fit together inside a treasure chest.

The End