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“So… what do you think?”
I fidget with my scarf nervously as Wolfram turns his critical emerald eyes around the temple compound. I’d only brought him and Conrad along with me this time – each to their own duties, I say, and everyone seems to agree that their primary job is to stick with me wherever I go –but Dad had pulled Lord Weller aside earlier for some... ‘grown-up fun’.
Considering it’s late morning on New Year’s Day, I’m guessing by that he means a game of chess or calligraphy. Or is that ‘old people fun’?
Murata is on a hard-earned trip with his workaholic parents, Mom is still playing hide-and-seek with Shouri and his new girlfriend. Last I heard, my brother was seriously considering getting a flight back to Abigail’s hometown in the USA. In other words, I’m now alone with a full-blood Mazoku prince. At a Shinto shrine. Surrounded by (mostly) double-black humans.
I watch his reaction closely.
“...Well, I don’t feel sick yet.”
My shoulders droop. “Yeah, right. Not feeling sick is always a good sign.”
“Idiot, you don’t get what I mean, do you?” He flicks me on the forehead. “The reason we feel nauseous in human lands back home is because the gods there spite us. Obviously your gods here aren’t as judgmental.” He flexes his jaw, scowling a little. “Your gods. It still feels strange to know that my Maou worships gods.”
“Not really… I mean, I was never particularly religious…” Faced with a pretty boy’s displeasure, I can’t stop myself from saying sacrilegious words at a temple. “I think the gods here are pretty peaceful. I know Dad’s been coming here every year without any problems.” Though there’s always that… I shake my head. “Anyway, I want to know what you think about this place! Do you like it, hate it, meh it?”
His beautiful eyes narrow suspiciously at me. A demon who looks like an angel, in a Japanese shrine… and he still doesn’t look out of place. “I thought you said this place isn’t that important to you?”
“I just said I’m not very religious, stop putting words in my mouth! Besides, this place is like tradition… you know, like how the Mazoku treat cutlery as challenge letters!” To me, a marriage is a battle, therefore a proposal still counts as a challenge.
But truth is, I myself don’t understand why it feels so important to have Wolfram acknowledge the temple I’ve been visiting every year for as long as I can remember. Maybe because it’s my first New Year’s Day after falling down the toilet and meeting the people I can no longer imagine living without. Maybe it’s because I want to see them get along. My two lives, two worlds. Two homes.
I glance at the temple and the crowd, then at Wolf. My past, and my future.
Finally, he speaks. “It’s plain and poor-looking and way too crowded…”
“Hey, maybe it is to you royalty, but—”
“…but it has its own charm,” he finishes reluctantly. “It feels warm and homely and pure… Exactly like you, actually.”
“Like me?”
“Yeah, in every last way.”
So I’m plain and poor-looking and… “I’m too crowded? What’s that even mean?”
“Exactly what I said,” he scowls, and I find myself mesmerized by the flush in his pale cheeks, the way his breath crystalizes faster and thicker than most people. “Now are we here to actually do something, or can we go back now?”
Huh, I never knew he was the type who doesn’t like crowds… “Wait, first we have to pay our respects at the shrine.”
It’s only when we’ve both clapped our hands twice and rang the bell before the shrine that I realize what I’d done. I asked a proud Mazoku to kneel before an Earth god?! And he did it, without even protesting?!
“…How long do we have to stay like this? Yuuri.”
“I-i-i-it’s okay now! Let’s go!”
People stare as I pull him down the wooden steps and to a tree away from the crowd. Once we’re well and truly alone, I pull of my glove and, ignoring the bite of the cold winter wind, press my hand to his forehead.
“Crap, you’re burning up! Or wait, are you always this hot?”
“No, it’s your fingers that are freezing over.” He impatiently yanks my glove back on for me, rubbing my hands a little to get the blood flowing again. “If you’re wondering why I went along with it… Well, if my king has bent his precious knees, as your subordinate it’s only natural that I do too.”
“Huh? But you don’t always do what I do, more often than not, you--”
“That’s because sometimes you do stupid things,” he interrupts, trying to keep his voice level. “And besides, I thought… Well… This isn’t Shin Makoku, or even the same world, is it?”
“No, but…”
“And over here, you’re not the Maou, I’m not your minister, and gods don’t hate the Mazoku.” He breathes into his hands, his gaze cast low and the fog hiding his expression. “So for now, I’m just your fiancé. And as your fiancé, I don’t see what’s wrong with doing what everyone else is doing. What you’ve always done.”
“Wolf…” I know what he’s trying to say. That no matter what happens, or what has happened, where or who we are, whether I’m Maou or not—regardless of all that, he’s still gonna be my fiancé. Now I’m not sure if I’m touched or just impressed by his stubbornness, but I do know that something feels warm and fuzzy in my chest, and that something is directly related to the hands that are holding mine.
“Ah, wait!” I pull away from those hands to smack my forehead. “There’s one more thing we have to do!”
“Huh…?” The third son blinks in confusion, and is still confused when he sees me picking out what probably looks like flat chopsticks to him.
“They’re fortunes,” I say excitedly. “This shrine is known for being accurate, so you gotta take one too!”
“If you want your fortune read, you can just ask Ulrike.” But he takes one anyway. “It’s a number… Does it mean something?”
“Not yet,” I laugh, handing mine over to the priestess on duty. Normally I find their costumes fascinating, but this year I’m too occupied by the boy beside me to notice. I wonder what he’d look like in a miko’s uniform? I imagine the gold of his hair and the green of his eyes would clash with the bright red skirt, but then again I’ve yet to see him not look good in something.
“So what did you get?”
“Hmm?” That’s weird, he sounds almost nervous… but this is my fortune, not his. “Oh, hey! I can’t believe it, I finally got ‘good luck’!”
“What, don’t tell me you never got it before?”
“Hehe… I was always getting ‘neutral’…” And Dad always got ‘bad luck’. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the god here does have a vendetta against Mazoku, but then again Shouri disproves that by being the current household record holder of the most ‘good luck’s in a row. “‘Spring has finally come, treasure the flowers by the roadside’… Huh? Is this a lesson on loving the environment?”
“Maybe it’s telling you to pick up gardening?” There’s an evident note of relief in Wolfram’s voice that I don’t understand. It’s just a fortune, right? I don’t think a slip of paper with the word ‘good luck’ written on it however nicely will stop me from screwing up as king, or butting my way into someone else’s business again this year.
“Anyway, hand yours over so I can read it for you.”
Compared to his anxiety just now, he hands his own fortune over to me with a nonchalant shrug. You’d think he should care more about his own—
“Yuuri? Something wrong?”
“I don’t believe it…”
“What? What is it?”
“I’ve never seen so many ‘very’s in a fortune before…” There are four. “And the word for ‘bad luck’ is written so powerfully you can practically see the anger and misfortune emanating from it…”
Maybe I was wrong, and the resident god does hate full-blood Mazokus after all?
“Ah, that’s all? Jeez, you should stop scaring me like that.”
“I’m scaring you? Wolf, do you see what this means?” My eyes scan the short poem quickly. “‘Beware the quick blade of responsibility, the stars do not favor your career—‘”
“So I’m going to get hurt in the line of duty? Big deal, I’m a soldier, that’s what we do.” Then something seems to occur to him, and his expression lights up. Perhaps he’s having some fantasy about being the knight in shining armor sacrificing himself for the damse—king-in-distress, but all I can imagine is the smell of his blood that time I accidentally stabbed him, or the sound that arrow made when it hit him in the chest—
If he gets hurt—If I lose him—
“Yuuri?”
And then I remember.
My fingers are trembling so hard I almost tear apart my own fortune in my haste to unfold it. But eventually I trace the large calligraphic word on that tiny piece of paper with my finger, assuring myself it’s real. It’s just ‘good luck’, not ‘very good luck’ or ‘very very good luck’, but it’s more than enough.
I’m sorry, kami-sama, for doubting you. You’re kind to me, after all, even though I’m the Maou, supposedly your mortal (immortal?) enemy. Wait, maybe it’s because the Demon King is a Western thing and these are Japanese gods? It’d make sense that these gods hold on to the principle of ‘the fewer the enemies, the better’.
“Wolf, stay by my side this year, okay?”
“That goes without saying.” Lord von Bielefelt looks at me curiously, glancing from my expression, which had switched so quickly from panic to peace, to my fortune, then back to my face. “What, do you think that your good luck will counter my bad luck? Does it work that way?”
“I don’t think so… Besides, you have a lot worse luck than I have good luck.”
“Then why are you looking so calm?” He’s pouting, though I think he doesn’t realize it himself. I have to hide a smile at that. He’s not worried about his own safety, he’s more upset than I’m not worried about him.
Well, I’m not. Not anymore.
“Because I can prove that nothing too bad will happen to you,” I say proudly, feeling pleased with myself for figuring it out. “With this!”
“…That’s your fortune.”
“Precisely!” Thank you, kami-sama, for giving me good luck this year, and not the ‘neutral’ I always got. Even if this is the culmination of all the good luck I was supposed to get in the previous sixteen years, even if it’s only a ‘good luck’ without a single ‘very’, It’s worth it. Because…
“As long as I know this year is going to be good for me, then I know that you’ll be fine. Because Wolfram is a very important person to me, so if you got hurt, then I definitely can’t be lucky.”
Eh? Wait, that made a lot more sense in my head…
“Pfft—Hahaha!”
“Hey, what’s so funny? Crap, now I’m starting to wonder if I was right… Maybe you get hurt, but not too hurt? Or maybe you’ll get so hurt, I’ll feel lucky you didn’t die? Or maybe you will die, but I— What the hell am I saying?”
I smack myself in the mouth, but the person who just got cursed to die by his fiancé on New Year’s Day doesn’t look too fazed. I argue that he should still be worried for himself, and maybe ask for a lucky charm from the shrine to ward off some of the misfortune, but he just keeps laughing as we weave our way through the crowd.
And eventually I notice our intertwined fingers, thinking, Huh, he’s like a little kid, scared of losing me in the crowd…
The heat in my cheeks is there to combat the bite of the cold January air, and not because I suddenly realize how cute he is.