Chapter Two
The woman held her small, lovely child in her arms and set off with her husband and daughter toward their destination. Doma's eyes, meanwhile, darted over everything around him. Remarkably, within a week his vision and hearing had normalized—indicators that differed drastically from what one would expect of any ordinary infant.
In his previous life, before his transformation, this demon had possessed no extraordinary physical attributes. He had been well-built, nothing more—a gift from his parents, which was precisely why he had always taken such care with his appearance. An apostle could not afford to look shabby. A face and an intellect a cut above the average. That was all he had ever been distinguished by.
The boy's rainbow-colored eyes tracked the cars passing by, filling him with quiet astonishment. He had seen things like them before his death, but they had been far more cumbersome and drab, and considerably slower. He watched the beautifully finished curbs, the even roads, and the enormous buildings.
His gaze kept slipping from one thing to the next, unable to settle—everything here was uncharted territory, so fresh, so interesting. And perhaps most importantly of all, Doma was under the Sun. He was standing beneath its rays, and he was not burning alive. His rosy skin was not smoldering or peeling away into ash.
"Wah-u," the infant let out in a sweet, awed little sound.
"What? What is it, little Doma?" His mother asked, her voice tinted with concern.
The one so named simply looked back into the woman's eyes and blinked. He couldn't understand most of what was said. It was clearly Japanese, but some distorted version of it—many words were simply unknown to the former Second Upper Moon. It seemed he would have to learn his mother tongue all over again.
The rear door of a black car opened with a familiar click, drawing the infant's attention. He watched as his mother settled in after her daughter, who had been fastened into some small seat with special straps. The girl was watching Doma very closely, with interest and uncomplicated childlike happiness.
"Mama, can I hold my little brother?" The small, girlish voice addressed the woman.
The mother glanced over at her daughter and held her gaze for a moment. She arranged her face into a serious expression and offered her instruction:
"All right, but be careful—don't drop your little brother."
The girl shook her head back and forth with an amusing flourish and hurried to answer with every ounce of her responsibility:
"I won't drop him!"
While the head of the family started the car with a smile on his lips, Himiko received the bundle with the baby inside. Because of the child seat, she had to stretch her arms out in a rather comical fashion to accept her new family member. With a wide grin, she began rocking him the way she had seen it done on television.
*What a sweet girl.*
Doma couldn't say he particularly enjoyed the rocking, but he certainly had no objection to it. His sister, however, had already caught the sharp attention of those diamond-bright eyes without question. If he were still a demon—and if the girl were a few years older—he would unquestionably have devoured her, gifting her with "bliss through salvation."
*Hm, but would that even be something I could do? She is, after all, my dear elder sister…* Doubts gnawed at the boy who smiled Himiko Toga's smile. *And I'm no longer a demon, either…*
Whatever the two butterfly sisters had said before Doma's death, he had been a monster, yes—but never a stupid one.
From childhood he had been deprived of empathy, incapable of understanding the most elementary things: why he ought to cry, when he was supposed to feel joy, and why anyone would feel anger. Even as a child he'd had to study the people around him and draw his own logical conclusions. Not everyone was capable of such a thing.
The emotions he had carefully and effortlessly imitated had made people trust the leader of the Paradise Faith cult. And though he had never been able to understand the reason why close relatives cared so deeply for one another, he understood something else quite precisely—the bare fact of that pattern. It was hardly as though every brother went around eating his own sister.
That was definitively abnormal, and Doma had always leaned in the other direction. Why not become a good little brother? In his previous life he'd had only a father and a mother, and even that had not lasted long. Would he get to feel that need—the need to protect a beloved sister? Just as with his love for Kocho Shinobu, which had washed over him for the first time in all his long existence.
*Give me feelings, Himiko Toga, and I will protect you forever.* The Second Upper Moon was quite poetic in moments like these.
"Doma-chan, you're so cute~," the girl cooed, pressing her cheek against the infant's.
"Hee-hee," he giggled in response—a funny little sound that bubbled out of him at the contact.
The father of the family watched it all through the rearview mirror with warmth in his eyes, and the mother did the same.