Chapter Text
Yoshiko Tsushima was on the verge of a breakthrough.
Red-black powdery mixtures covered a cloth, patterned in a strange, fiendish formation. The room smouldered from incense and candles, smoke swirling and wisping through the air as if caught in some invisible dance. Various items were positioned about points of a star, black salt, a small goblet of red liquid, two piles of singed petals placed symmetrically and finally, at the crux of the pentagram, Yoshiko herself. Aside from the orange glow of the candlelight, the room was in utter darkness. She deemed the conditions perfect, checking over the symbols she had written in charcoal one last time for good measure. Excitement bubbled within her, thoughts of what powerful demon or monstrosity she could summon flooding her mind.
It was time for the ritual to begin. She carefully chanted a mixture of Latin and what seemed to be gibberish, each word was announced slowly and precisely, she feared the slightest mistake in pronunciation would lead to her failure.
As she spoke, the smoke seemed to take shape, converging in the centre of the room. Trails of it interlaced, sewing itself together. It was as if the room around her was alive, she struggled to continue her chant as she stared at the mystical happenings before her. Next, the blood rose from the goblet, floating and positioning itself at the core of the ever-shifting smoke. It made itself into a misshapen orb, almost like a heart. Yoshiko recalled it’s purpose as to give the demon some life energy once it entered the human realm, luckily the type of blood was unspecified, so she just bought pigs blood.
Her chant ended, from there on out. All she had to do was watch. And watch she did, observing the twisting mass of smoke and blood as it abducted the petals and brought them into the vortex. It seemed to be the final piece, as the whole thing began to solidify, the stray smoke being pulled toward the figure the rest had created.
Bursting, blinding white light overtook Yoshiko’s view. As well as the entire room. A force exploding from within it, launching her from her place on the mat and causing her to smack against the wall with an unsettling crack. The light slowly ebbed away as Yoshiko faded from consciousness.
Bit by bit, vision returned to her. At first it was blurred, as if the world were a painting that had been smeared. Two oddly shaped figures stood before her, leaning over somewhat. After a couple of seconds, they converged, a voice coming from the now single mouth. “Are you okay?”
To her surprise, there was no monstrous creature, no horrific beast, there was hardly even a demon before her. If not for her horns and tail, she would have assumed her to be a mere human. “Fine.” Yoshiko managed to say, struggling to her feet, watching the girl in front of her rise in tandem.
Immediately, she noticed that she was cute. An unfitting characteristic for a demon, but it was prevalent in her nonetheless. Everything about her was profoundly innocent, she was about as far from a demon as a demon could get. From her doe-eyed stare to her meek stature, she was a complete contrast to any expectation Yoshiko had laid out.
Of course, she wasn’t a bad one; Yoshiko quite liked her already. Her mind already filling with thoughts of the true deviousness that must lie behind such a cute and innocent facade. The sharp rows of dangerous teeth that must be covered by those soft lips.
“Uh. Human-San? Are you alright, zura?” her voice came cutting in, bringing Yoshiko back to the reality of the situation. “Did you not mean to summon me?”
“Of course I did! The great Yohane requires your help, demon.” she grinned devilishly. “But first, show me your infernal powers. I must know what you’re capable of.” she spoke dramatically, hardly able to contain squeals of excitement from slipping into her speech.
“I-infernal powers?” she whimpered, eyes widening at Yoshiko’s requests. “Well, I-I’m not very good with those.” she muttered, looking down at the floor sombrely. “B-but. I’ll try my best!” she proclaimed, looking up with a newfound spark in her eyes.
All but blushing at the cuteness of it, Yoshiko mumbled a simple. “Proceed.” hardly maintaining her persona.
Despite her attempts to calm down and ignore how cute she found the demon girl, she only became more flustered as she watched her knit her eyebrows together in an intense focus, looking down at her hands as if attempting to recall something greatly important. Words were whispered under her breath, a set of instructions in some language Yoshiko found vaguely familiar. After a few seconds, a deep crimson fire formed in the demon’s hands, blazing intensely before quickly shrinking. The demon let out a sigh of disappointment, snuffing out the flame in her fist. “I’m sorry that was really-” she paused, amazed at the gleeful stare Yoshiko was giving her.
“That was incredible! Demon, what’s your name?” she smiled toothily, intently watching the demon as she awaited her answer.
“Zura! M-maru. W-wait no. H-hanamaru!” she stumbled over her words, struggling to recover from the exclamation of zura she had started her sentence with. “Hanamaru.” she stated conclusively, blushing with embarrassment.
“Zuramaru, got it.” Yoshiko said cheerfully, either completely unaware or wilfully ignorant of her real name. “Zuramaru, you’re amazing. You’ll do just perfectly…” she cackled. Or well, attempted to. It came out as more of a giggle than anything, without the slightest malice to it.
“Do perfectly for what, zura?” she let the issue of her name drop, she liked the way her nickname sounded, so she saw no reason to stop her.
Yoshiko drooped. “I uh… I haven’t planned that far ahead yet.” she admitted awkwardly. “But you can stay here until I do! I’ll give you whatever you want!” she bargained, looking around her room desperately for something a demon would like. “I have plenty of cursed items. There’s this skull, these candles-” she rambled on, scrambling around the room to hunt down items she could present Hanamaru with.
Meanwhile, Hanamaru wandered into the kitchen of the apartment, it was interconnected to the living room. She stared curiously at the microwave, slowly reaching out with one finger and pressing a button. “Zura!” she exclaimed, shocked at the sudden beep it produced.
“-This weird thing I don’t really know what it i- Huh? Wh-what’re you doing?” she stepped into the kitchen, watching as Hanamaru prodded at the buttons, utterly mystified at the sounds they created. “Are you okay?” she asked, leaning over her shoulder and inspecting the microwave.
“What is this, zura?” she asked curiously, slowly poking another button, somehow expecting it to do something different to the other five she had already pressed.
“That’s a uh, microwave. It cooks food.” she said matter of factly, in all of her research she had never come across the concept of demons being so utterly invested in simple human technology.
“Really?” Hanamaru exclaimed, turning to Yoshiko, the stars in her eyes practically visible. “How?”
“I dunno, vibrations or something? “ she said, struggling to recall her high school science classes. “I can show you if you want.”
“Yes! Do that!” she nearly shouted, stepping back a great distance as if Yoshiko needed the great deal of space for the simple act she was about to perform.
She glanced back at Hanamaru, bemused at her actions. She reached into her cupboard and extracted a simple microwave meal, poking a few holes in its film and shoving it in gracelessly. With a few quick taps, she stepped back, being level with Hanamaru for only a second before she dashed forward to watch the boxed meal spinning. She gawked at the simple device, amazed at it’s spinning. “It’s moving!” she said enthusiastically, her tail swishing back and forth like a cat’s. “Does that mean it’s cooking?”
Yoshiko snickered. “Yep.” she replied, finding herself grinning as she observed the girl. It was becoming evident the depths of evil she had expected the demon to have weren’t present in the slightest. It wasn’t upsetting, nor disappointing, she was honestly quite happy to have this innocent demon. “Besides, I’m sure I can make her into my evil apprentice anyway.” she thought, she had no idea what to do with an evil apprentice, how to make one, or really how to make her into one, but it sounded cool in her head.
After five long minutes of staring, the microwave beeped, scaring Hanamaru into letting out a quick “Zura!” she squinted heavily at the microwave, backing up away from it until she was behind Yoshiko. “Why is it beeping? I didn’t do anything…”
Performing the same attempted cackle as before, she simply opened the microwave to stop the sound. “It’s done.” she announced, taking the food out and putting its contents onto a plate. It was an inexpensive macaroni cheese, not particularly good, nonetheless it fascinated Hanamaru. She approached it cautiously, her eyes locked on it.
“Is that food?” she questioned, poking it curiously, not reacting despite the its intense heat.
“Yeah. Do you want it? I’ve eaten already.” Yoshiko shrugged, eyes widening as Hanamaru lit up at the concept. She excitedly took the plate, preparing to just eat with her hands. “Whoah, whoah. Hold on.” she stopped her dead in her tracks, handing her a fork. “There, eat with that.”
“Isn’t this for poking people?” she asked, poking at the macaroni curiously. Then, without a second thought, she turned and prodded Yoshiko in the arm, earning a yelp from the girl. “No, it’s too blunt, zura.” she stated, ignoring Yoshiko’s noise as she continued to play with the food.
“You okay? You can go sit down y’know… You don’t have to just stand in the middle of the room.” Yoshiko explained, pointing to the sofa, it was misplaced, resting on the border between the kitchen and the living room. It was clear she had moved it to make space for the ritual. “I really should clear that up…” Yoshiko thought to herself, curiously taking note of the lack of damage to the setup, despite the explosion that launched her into the wall.
Slowly, Hanamaru approached the sofa, collapsing onto it curiously. “So soft, zura…” she whispered, using a hand to lightly rub and squeeze at the material.
Yoshiko took a place next to her tensely, it was still surreal to have a demon next to her. “It’s really not that soft, this sofa’s all messed up, I got it years ago.” she complained, scratching at the tiny spots of peeling leather.
“Well, I like it.” Hanamaru replied, smiling at Yoshiko warmly before returning her attention to the macaroni cheese in her hands.
After a minute the whole thing was gone. “That was good.” she said contently. “Is all human food like that?” she sat up enthusiastically, excited at the prosepect of more delicious human foods.
“Well, no. Uh. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.” Yoshiko stuttered, how overwhelmed she was became evident. She rubbed her eyes, she needed rest, a sleep to help her process all that hat transpired.
Luckily for her, Hanamaru yawned, curling up on the sofa and resting her head on it’s arm. “I’m gonna sleep. Goodnight, zura.” she mumbled, drifting off in a second. Frankly, Yoshiko was amazed anyone, even a demon, could fall asleep so quickly.
Retiring to her bed, Yoshiko sank into her sheets, the realisation that she had successfully summoned a demon hitting her like a truck. Pride overwhelmed her, warming her as she began to drift off to sleep.
But before she could sleep, one terrifying, fiendish thought entered her mind.
“She’s your responsibility now.”