Chapter Text
Nagisa's POV
The brush is running through my hair as I sit on the stool trying to pretend that this is not happening. I look around the room for any distraction. My eyes land on the newspaper left on the dining table. The picture on the front cover is of a young girl around my own age. Below her picture is a headline.
“Murderer raped and murdered in her own prison cell,” the caption reads.
How ironic. She had murdered someone and then got murdered herself. I do wonder who would go on and commit murder like that. Dad always said murder was wrong, but sometimes that can be hard to remember on your own. He left us a couple of years ago, ran away to someplace unknown without a word to either mom or I. The least he could have done was bringing me along, but no, he had to go by himself, leaving me to get my hair styled on the daily, like mom is doing now. She tugs at one half of my hair and ties it in one pink ribbon, then she does the same to the other half.
“There, you’re all ready,” mom says, turning me around to give me a satisfied smile. Her hands run through my pigtails and I can tell how satisfied she is with her work. In the beginning, I felt a little sorry for her for taking out the ribbons and pulling my hair into a ponytail instead, but ever since she said she didn’t care if I got bullied for my hairstyle, I had stopped caring for her feelings too.
I get up from my seat and go to grab my school bag and head to the door.
“Have a nice day!” Mom calls out, cheerfully. Well, at least she is in a good mood today.
“See you later,” I tell her before I close the door behind me and head down to the street. There, I nearly bump into a stranger I have never seen before. He has red hair and a mischievous grin on his face. I can’t decide if I’m comfortable with him this close or not.
“Watch where you’re going,” he tells me, smugly.
“Same should you,” I tell him.
“I’m always watching, everywhere I go,” he says.
Something unknown is burning inside me. No, it’s not unknown, I just haven’t known this feeling in so long I have forgotten what it feels like to have a will. When did I last have something like that?
“Well, I’m sorry for nearly bumping into you,” I tell him, not being completely sure I mean that apology as from where I stand, we were equally to blame.
“So long as you admit it,” the red-haired says.
“I see you aren’t taking any responsibility,” I say.
“Well, I was planning to do a little more than give you some apologetic words. Wanna go for lunch?” the red-haired asks me.
“It’s eight in the morning,” I argue. “And I’m not going to skip school for an apology.” I turn around and begin going on my way.
“You could use a spice of evil in your life!” I hear him call out, but I ignore him. What do you answer to that anyway?
I see the guy popping up here and there for the next few months. I usually catch him near our apartment building and when I see him, it is usually because he has been staring. Not that I have seen him staring, but I have had that feeling you usually get when someone is watching you and when I turn my head, he is always there.
Mom is not letting up on her styling of my hair or wanting me to be her daughter rather than her son. I have long since given up hope that I will be able to satisfy her.
The only way my classmates are satisfied with me is as a target for bullying. My grades are going down, so my teachers aren’t exactly happy either.
For the last month up until summer break, I have been researching ways to kill someone. I know I won’t go do it. I know it’s wrong and the quickest way to ruin my life even more than it already is. But the thoughts can be very tempting. I do know better. I want to do better, and seeing that red-haired boy from time to time is enough to grant me the will to withstand the temptation. I will turn 18 and graduate high school. I will get a good job, move far away from my mom and reclaim my independence.
The last day before summer break begins is a half-day. I’m walking home from school when I pass by a café and once again feel that guy’s eyes on me. I turn my head and he looks away. But he is sharing his table with someone. The other person is a man who appears a little older than the red-haired. He has black hair that frames his face and he is wearing a black suit with an oddly shaped silver pin. He is observing me with a dull expression. His eyes don’t leave me, even when I look. He just raises his glass of water to his lips and gets a drink. We maintain eye contact for a while and then I decide to move on. I desperately need those few hours of freedom at home. I can’t just let time pass me by here.
“Nagisa, please go to the store and get me some eggs and whatever fish they have on sale,” mom calls from the kitchen in the evening about a week into summer break.
“Okay,” I say, getting up from my table to go change into something I actually want to wear outside.
“Where are you going?” Mom asks.
“I want to change,” I tell her.
“What’s wrong with what you’re wearing?” she asks, and by the way she asks the question alone, I can tell that she is in a bad mood. I don’t want to confront her when she is like this. I look down at what I’m wearing. My t-shirt fits fairly tightly around my upper body and my shorts are widening the further down they go. It looks a bit like a skirt.
“Nothing,” I tell her reluctantly before I head to the door to put on my shoes and head out. “I’ll be back,” I tell her.
“Take care!” mom calls before I close the door to go down to the street.
I’m not exactly lucky. On the nearest corner are a few of the bullies from school. They are quick to spot me, like I’m a magnet to their attention. I wish I wasn’t. I wish I was invisible, but when I’m dressed like I am, I attract their attention, and where I live has been known to them for some time. I hate that fact.
I try to walk past them, but one grabs my hair and yanks me backwards.
“Nagisa-chan, come have fun with us,” he teases.
I say nothing. I want to get out of the situation, but I have never been terribly good at resisting them. I have come home dirty and beaten before. It’s also not the first time they talk to me as if I’m a girl. It’s the hair. I know it’s the hair, but I’m not allowed to do anything about that either.
“Let’s go for a walk,” another says and they begin pushing me along the street, away from my destination. I’m never too far ahead of them that they can’t catch me and pull me back. I can feel it. I know it, so I don’t do anything.
We reach a crossing and the light is red. We stand there and wait until one of them gets bored and plants a good strong push to the center of my back, sending me tumbling into the street, right in front of a yellow car with a determined looking man behind the wheel. His hair is black and framing his face. He is dressed completely in black and wears a dull expression. Our eyes meet in the last millisecond before the car hits me, and I know I have been staring into those eyes before.
The last thing I see is the silver pin on his clothes. It has a strange shape, like an octopus in clothes and with a wide grin on its face.
“This boy is not on your file. I will not allow you to take him with you,” A male voice argues. He isn’t shouting, but there is no doubt he is serious.
“Nonesense! I was given a file about a person with blue hair who needs to be escorted downstairs!” a woman shouts. She is a lot more annoyed, but not in the same way my mom usually is.
I open my eyes. The man is wearing a black suit and he has short dark hair. I can’t really tell the color in this dim light. The woman he is arguing with is dressed in a long red dress that fits her tightly, clearly displaying her figure. It also has no sleeves and is very low cut, so little of her chest area is left to the imagination. She is wearing full make-up, more than my mom has ever worn, and her hair is long, blonde and fairly beautiful. The only thing that isn’t pretty about her is the angry expression on her face. It makes her look like a demon. Meanwhile, the expression on the man’s face is so calm it makes him look like a saint.
“But your file says it’s a girl, not a boy,” the man argues.
“Everything besides the gender fits!” the woman shouts back.
“Be quiet. He’s awake,” the man says as he turns to notice that I’m staring at them.
“Finally,” the woman says. She walks across the floor and looks down at me. “Sit up,” she says. “We need to clear something up.”
I shake my head to make my thoughts go clearer and then sit up properly.
“I’m Irina Jelavich. This here is Karasuma Tadaomi. What’s your name?” she asks me.
“Shiota Nagisa,” I say.
“How old are you?” Karasuma asks.
“I just turned 16,” I say.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Karasuma asks.
I think back. “I…” Then I remember. “I was hit by a car,” I say. “Am I… dead?”
“You are,” Karasuma says before he walks to a desk and picks out a file. He walks back and hands it to me. I find a file with my own picture on it and with all my information except one mistake.
“Is everything on here correct?” Karasuma asks.
“Everything except the gender, yes,” I say, wondering how people can make this mistake even after I’m dead.
“I told you it was right!” the woman who’s name I can’t quite remember says.
“What’s the problem?” I ask.
“Well, Ms. Jelavich and I are in charge of taking the dead people where they belong, to either Heaven or Hell, until their souls are ready to be reincarnated into new bodies,” Karasuma says. “I escort the people going to Heaven while Ms. Jelavich escorts the people going to Hell.”
“A request came in for the person on the file you’re holding to be sent straight to Hell upon arrival,” the woman says. “It’s a request from Death himself.”
“Since the gender is listed incorrectly, we have been debating on whether you were the right person on the file. I am against the belief that we should just send whoever we think it is down to Hell without making absolutely certain that this is where they belong,” Karasuma says.
“Well, all the other information is correct,” the woman argues.
Karasuma thinks. “Shiota-kun, do you have any idea why your gender would have been listed incorrectly.”
“His appearance is definitely androgynous enough that you could make the mistake easily,” the woman says.
“Please, call me Nagisa,” I say, biting my lip. “Honestly, I think Ms…. Hella Bitch? Is right.”
The room falls eerily silent for a moment. I could hear a pin drop if it did, and then the woman snaps.
“He definitely belongs in Hell!” She screams. “He’s just like that… that… that devil they have got for a king down there!”
“You are basing that off of a pronunciation mistake,” Karasuma says, seeming exhausted. “I need to clarify this. You do not happen to have a twin who happens to be female and named the same as you, do you?” he asks.
“I don’t,” I say, while the woman tries to calm herself down.
“Then there is a mistake in the file,” he says. “I will need to sort it out with Death, but in the meantime, you should probably go with Ms. Jelavich to Hell.”
“It can’t be worse than what I came from,” I mutter.
“We’ll see about that,” the woman, I think I’ll call her Irina, says. “Since it’s a special request, you must have done something exceptionally bad.”
I wonder what I have done, but I stand up and walk with Irina out. As I’m about to leave the room, I catch sight of my reflection in the mirror. My hair is hanging down my back, for once, nothing is in it. I’m surprised to find that not only are the ribbons gone, but the clothes I wore on the day I died are gone too and have been replaced with a gray t-shirt and gray pants and gray shoes. I watch myself for a moment.
“Everyone wears that when they come here. You’ll be given something new to wear once you arrive in Hell,” Irina says as she opens the door and holds it open for me as I pass through.
We find ourselves atop a long stairway leading downward. This place is even more dimly lit than the room I woke up in. Irina begins walking down without hesitation and I slowly follow her, one step at a time.
We walk in silence down the many steps. In the beginning, I assume it will take only a little while, maybe 15 to 20 minutes, but after a very long time, we are still walking down and the end is not yet in sight. It feels like at least three hours before we reach the bottom of the stairs and irina leads me down a short path to a large black gate, guarded by some demons. A female one with curly orange hair walks up to us, a cheerful smile on her face. If not for the horns on her forehead and the tail sticking out from her short dress, I would assume she was just a normal girl who could have easily been in my class.
“Is that…?” she asks, her eyes rounding with excitement.
“If you are expecting someone, I suppose this will be the one,” Irina says before turning to me. “I’ll be leaving you here. We are not allowed to pass through the gates unless it’s an emergency. Someone should escort you inside shortly.”
“Thank you for walking me here,” I tell her.
“Not a problem,” Irina says before she turns around and leaves.
As soon as she is out of sight, the girl begins bombarding me with information and questions and gives me no time to respond. Her name is Kurahashi Hinano. Apparently she investigates the dark creatures that live outside of Hell together with other scouts. She will also sometimes guard the gate outside and alert the people on the inside of when someone is coming. She then begins talking about what kind of people she has greeted and what kind of creatures she has studied. This is until she is interrupted by a young man about my age with black hair and blue eyes.
“I think that’s enough, Kurahashi-san,” he says. “I’ve come to escort our guest to the palace.”
“That was quick,” Kurahashi says. “Hello, Sugino-kun!”
“Hello,” he says before turning to me. “My name is Sugino Tomohito. As I said, I’ll escort you to the demon king’s palace. He expects you, Shiota Nagisa.”
“I see,” I say, wondering why someone like that wants to see someone like me. Maybe he just wants a bullying target for fun. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was the case.
“Come with me,” Sugino says before he leads the way past the black gates that have now opened. I step inside too and follow him through the streets of an early 20th century town. There are houses and shops, people buying and selling stuff here and there, children playing around and laughing and elderly people sitting and talking. It all looks fairly normal, except the fact that everyone has horns and tails and the light from the sky paints it all in an orange glow that I have never seen before.
Some people on the street greet Sugino when they see him. Some salute him, some just wave or call out. A particularly cute girl with black hair offers him a wave and I can see how Sugino’s cheeks flush red as he waves back. His tail makes odd shapes behind him, and I’m not sure he is completely aware of that himself.
The closer we get to the white castle that towers above the town, the larger the houses get too. Soon, we are in an area which I would clearly describe as upper class. We walk the last bit of the way and enter another set of gates to a yard where people wearing the same uniform as Sugino are exorcising their fighting skills.
“This is the palace guard,” Sugino explains. “I’m a member of that too. We’re in charge of keeping the palace and its residents safe from getting harmed by the mortals.”
“The mortals?” I dare ask, as Sugino seems friendly.
“People who used to live as humans but have come down here after death to receive their punishments of what they have done in life,” Sugino explains. “Technically, you’re a mortal too, but you’re a special case.”
I wonder why I’m a special case as we walk up the white steps to the front door, which swings open. A blonde boy and an even more blonde girl stand behind the door. It was the boy who opened it. He smiles calmly as a greeting while his tail is hanging down. The girl’s tail is going from side to side in the same excited movements Kurahashi’s tale was making during her monologue. I have a feeling this girl is excited about something other than creatures, but I will probably get to know what that is later.
“This is Mimura Kouki. He is responsible for watching who enters and exits the palace,” Sugino explains.
“Nice to meet you,” Mimura says with a bow.
“And I’m Nakamura Rio, completely capable of introducing myself,” the girl says. “I’m the royal advisor,” she grins at me as she says this and her tail freezes in the air for a moment before it moves again.
“Nice to meet you,” I say, hesitantly. She doesn’t seem like she would be competent enough for such a position, but I’m fairly sure she is smarter than she seems. That’s the only thing that makes sense.
“Sugino-kun, I’ll take it from here,” Nakamura says. She then turns to me. “Come with me. His Majesty has been waiting.” She then spins around on her heel and heads into the hall with confident footsteps. I get busy following her.
The hall is big and dark. The floor is made of black tiles and the walls too are painted black, with red tapestries hanging down with golden embroidery, most of them depicting devils punishing humans or angels or each other or creatures I have never seen before. We enter through a door made of oak, painted in black. At the end of the long hall are five steps leading up to a throne which is also painted black. Here I see a familiar face.
His hair is bright red, his eyes are mercury and he is dressed in black from head to foot. He has the longest black horns I have seen on anyone down here and his tail is draped over the armrest of the throne he is sitting on. He is resting his elbow on the other armrest and resting his chin in his hand. A familiar mischievous smile is playing on his lips as he sees us entering.
“I brought our guest,” Nakamura announces.
“Then you may leave,” he says in a tone that clearly doesn’t leave any room for argument. He seems more cold than anything else.
“As you say,” Nakamura says, although she sounds reluctant. She does obey. The oak door falls shut behind her with a heavy and ominous sound. I stand still and watch this king of hell who has been watching me since March.
“Come over here,” he waves at me, clearly expecting me to come over.
I do, but I only go close enough that I’m still at a safe distance from him. Clearly, he is not pleased with this.
“You could go closer,” he says.
“From experience, I find it best to remain at this distance,” I say, not moving.
He makes an annoyed sound, but doesn’t repeat his demand. He studies me for a time, then narrows his eyes.
“Your name is Shiota Nagisa, correct?” he asks, seeming cold and lethargic.
“It is. What’s yours?” I ask. He owes me that much, since he brought me here.
“Akabane Karma,” he says. “You should know who I am.”
“The king of Hell,” I say. “You brought me here, or so I’m told anyway. I just don’t know why. What did I do?”
“Nothing much,” he says casually. “You peeked my interest. That’s what you did.”
“How exactly did I do that?” I wonder aloud. Normally people don’t take interest in me for any other reason than to bully me.
“You talked back to me,” he says, and I can’t interpret his tone of voice. It seems like he wants to play down what he says, but I feel like there is also a desire in there somewhere, something he has been missing.
“And is it bad?” I ask, just in case, even if I’m fairly certain it is not.
“It’s not bad,” he sighs before he puts his hand down and looks straight at me. “Look, I brought you down here because I have decided that you shall be my bride.”
His… what?
“And you think I’ll just do that?” I ask him. I feel anger beginning to boil within me. I’m no one’s bride, least of all the bride of someone I don’t even know!
“If you aren’t willing to go through with a marriage right away, we can wait awhile,” Karma says.
“That’s not the issue,” I say.
“What’s the issue then?” he asks. He’s looking down on me now. He doesn’t think there could be any other issue. Well, I’m about to prove him wrong.
“I’m not going to be anyone’s bride,” I say.
“You don’t want to marry ever?” he asks. “That can’t be. All mortal girls want to marry.”
“I see where the mistake was made,” I say. “I didn’t think the demon king was so dense he wouldn’t even care to find out whether he was bringing down a boy or a girl. I guess I just got another reason why I don’t want to marry the likes of you.”
The change is so sudden I only barely notice the anger on his face before that face is centimeters away from my own. I thought I was at a safe distance, but apparently, nothing is safe when you’re dealing with an angry demon king. I feel his hand under my chin, lifting up my face as I can’t look away. I feel his hot breath on my face and his anger like a force that paralyzes me to the ground.
“I don’t care if you’re a boy or a girl or a talking bear. You’re marrying me, no matter how much time it’s gonna take for you to agree,” he snarls.
“I’ll never marry you,” I say, feeling more reluctant than ever.
“We’ll see about that,” he says so quietly I can barely hear it. Then he lets me go and begins to walk away, his black cape floating behind him. “Either way, you’re stuck down here. There is no way for you to go back where you came from.” He walks to a door behind the throne and leaves through that. I stand still in the hall, processing all that has just happened.
I am here to marry the demon king who brought me here believing I was a girl and not a boy. It’s an unforgivable mistake for me, but he still insists on marriage. Who does he think he is? He can’t just go take whomever he likes to be his partner! On top of all this, I can’t even get out. My life in the living world is over. This is all I have left. I wish there was a way out.
My feet finally become able to move and I turn to walk out through the big doors I entered through with Nakamura, but then a thought crosses my mind.
He’s not cold. He’s just lonely. He thinks he is special because being the king of Hell is special, no matter how you look at it. And I’m pretty sure everyone around him knows this too and treats him accordingly. You don’t exactly meet much resistance when everyone around you is busy sucking up to you.
Suddenly, I feel a wave of empathy wash over me. I don’t like the demon king, but I do feel a little sorry for him.
Since I can’t leave this place anyway, I might as well give him a chance.