Chapter Text
Iruma’s deadbeat parents sold him to a demon. Iruma was terrified he was about to die. Instead of eating him, the demon begged Iruma to be his grandson. Apparently, he was jealous of his friends and wanted a grandchild. Iruma was a pushover and agreed.
“This is Opera, they will be your parent.” Sullivan shoved a new demon in front of Iruma.
“Hello.” This demon had red hair, cat ears, cat tail, and wore a servant’s uniform.
“Hi,” Iruma said weakly.
Iruma didn’t process much of what happened. Sullivan threw gifts at him, showed him to a bedroom, babbled something about a school, and closed the door.
A minute later Opera returned.
“Hello again. Lord Sullivan left. He gets bored easily. But I won’t leave until you ask me to.” Opera stood near Iruma, just out of reach. “I’m sorry you got involved in this. Lord Sullivan was jealous of his friends’ grandchildren. He is impossible to stop when he gets an idea in his head.”
“Oh. It’s okay.”
“You sure? You were just kidnapped and given the choice to either live as a demon or be eaten.”
“Um… eat me?”
“Yes.” Opera’s ears flattened to their head and their tail twitched. “I told him I would be very angry with him if he ate you but he said it was too risky to travel to the human world a second time. Traveling to the human world is illegal. He was willing to take the risk to get something he wanted but not to save your life.”
“Oh…” Iruma felt lightheaded.
“You’re upset.” The demon wrapped their arms around Iruma. “Does this help? I don’t hug often. My junior gives the best hugs. I’m copying his technique. There, there.” Opera continued to speak in monotone as they pet Iruma’s hair. A bit awkward but Iruma got the impression they were sincere. He calmed down a bit. “I don’t want to upset you. I just want to make sure you understand. Sullivan is very selfish. It’s best if you know that right away. He probably won’t hurt you. You’re his grandson now. I’ll never hurt you. I value family more than anything.”
Iruma took some deep breaths as he thought about everything. “Mr. Opera are you really going to be my dad now?”
“Parent. I’m neither male nor female. I know humans can be picky about gender things but most demons don’t care. Unless you want to take a seduction class. Do you like he/him pronouns? You can change if you want.”
“No that’s okay.”
“Call me Opera, my family name is…” They cut off speaking abruptly. Iruma waited as Opera stayed perfectly still except for twitching ears. “No matter, Lord Sullivan will probably want to call you by his surname.”
“Are you Sullivan’s child?” Iruma tried to understand.
“Sullivan is my master. I have worked for him and lived with him since I was the same age you are now.”
“Oh? We’re alike then?”
Opera’s ears perked up. “I suppose we are.” They patted Iruma’s head some more. “I will do my best to make you happy. If any demon tries to hurt you or does something you do like, tell me and I’ll take care of it.” Iruma couldn’t remember the last time he heard that from an adult. “Just remember that I can’t go against Sullivan. I can say no to him on small things but if he gives me an order, I have to follow it.”
“Have to?”
“Yes. I’m his servant. If I try to fight him I will die.”
“Die!?”
“Yes. I’m cursed to obey him. If I could tell him no I would never have allowed him to eat you.”
“Do you want to eat me?”
“I would never eat a human. To me that is…” They cut off mid-sentence again. “No. I will never eat you. I will never allow anyone to eat you. Other than Lord Sullivan, I can’t stop him.”
“Right…” Iruma didn’t know what to day to that. He also didn’t know how to ask Opera to leave. So he just sat in silence until Opera eventually carried him to bed, tucked him in and sang him to sleep.
Chapter2
“Lord Sullivan, I need to tell Iruma important health related things for a human living in the netherworld.”
“Of course, go ahead.”
“…” Opera stood in silence for a moment. Their tail started swishing from side to side. Iruma had met enough stray cats to recognize this as irritation. “Lord Sullivan.” Opera prompted again.
“Hm?”
“Iruma is unaware of my status.”
“Status?”
“My birth.”
“Oh, Opera is half-human.” Sullivan said casually.
“Wha? Half…” Iruma squeaked.
“Half-human half-demon. Their mother was a demon, their father was a human.”
“Thank you, Lord Sullivan,” Opera didn’t sound very thankful. “My name is Opera Roth, named after my father. I have never been to Japan. I grew up in Europe. Do you speak English?” They said the last sentence in English.
“Oh, English? I never spent much time at school but I learned a few words from some coworkers.” Iruma then listed off the words he knew, which were mostly swear words. This made Opera’s tail perk up.
“Well, I don’t know Japanese but I will do my best to teach you Devispeak and Hell Script so you don’t have to rely on the translation spell.”
“Opera, that’s boring!”
“You said Iruma is my son. I have the primary responsibility for his education.”
“Boo.” The elderly demon pouted.
Break:
Opera sat Iruma down in his lap and opened the large photo album. The first photo was of a family. Mother, Father and child. The child was a younger Opera with black hair rather than red. The parents smiled the camera while the child wore the same blank expression Opera did now. “My mother’s name was Pulna Hanna, she went to the human world to see an opera. My father worked at the theater. He knew all the history of the building and the play. They talked for days. Mother made a few more risky trips back and forth before she decided to stay. She faked her death in the demon world and married my father. I was a surprise. They didn’t think humans and demons could breed.”
Opera turned the page, to a similar family portrait only this time, the mother looked like a demoness and the father wore a cat ear headband. They posed with their hands in the shape of sixes.
“Mother had horns and a tail. She could make them disappear inside her body. She tried teaching me to do this but I never could.” They tapped the man in the photo. “Father would wear fake ears sometimes, to match. As a baby I thought everyone had big ears and tails. They just kept them hidden, like how everyone wore clothes. When in public, keep your clothes on, don’t talk about your ears and tail, don’t hit people. That’s how Mother taught me.” They turned the page. A slightly older Opera sat in a similar family photo. The father didn’t wear his fake ears this time.
“It took me a very long time to realize Mother and I were different from everyone else. I broke Pa’s arm by accident. I felt bad. I broke a lot of bones when bigger kids pulled my tail. I didn’t feel bad about that. They told of course but nobody believed them. Adults who don’t listen children when they say things, are stupid. Nobody believed how strong I was or that my tail was real, even when I said it.” A photo of little Opera wearing tiger pajamas, their real tail replacing the fake striped one.
“If an adult noticed, Mother always cast a spell to make them forget. She didn’t like using spells, said it made it easier for Boarder Control to find her. But she would do it when necessary. I wore clothes that didn’t make my ears and tail look strange. People assumed they were fake.” A picture of young Opera and their mother, demoness features hidden, standing in front of what looked like a school. Opera wore a shirt and overalls that were cat themed. “I went to kindergarten with human children.”
“Ma homeschooled me when I was too old to wear a ‘costume’ to school without getting in trouble.” In a new photo Opera wore a long black dress and had their hair completely covered by a scarf. “When I decided to go back to school, Ma gave me this outfit. One of the human religions preaches modesty. Humans are touchy about religion, so they never asked me to take off a headscarf.”
The next photo was of the family at the beach. Opera looked like a girl, wearing a sundress and a wide-brimmed hat. In many of the old photos, Opera seemed to prefer skirts and feminine hats. “Did people think you were a girl?”
Opera shrugged. “Humans are picky about gender. I never cared. Human pants aren’t made for tails so dresses were better. I tried wearing a wig once, it was too itchy.”
“I spent a lot of time swimming. My inhuman strength was less noticeable in water. Mother and Father saved money to buy breathing gear. Every few weeks we rented the cheapest boat we could find and went out to sea. Father stayed on the boat while Mother took me diving. Nobody was around to see, I could swim as fast as I wanted.
“Father taught me to fish. He preferred a rod. I like spear fishing or using my hands.” The next page showed a collection of father and child standing side by side, each displaying their catch of the day. The father had fish of varying sizes, the normal thing you would expect an amateur angler to catch. In the oldest photo of the collection, young Opera held a fish similar to their father’s. As years passed in the photos, Opera’s catches became larger. Opera held an eel in one photo, a stingray in another. In the most recent photo, the father helped Opera display a blacktip shark, that was longer than Opera was tall. The man wasn’t looking at the camera, he was beaming with pride and mirth at his demonic child. An expression Iruma’s parents had never given him.