A/N: With special thanks to Fox Populi, who will be Beta reading TEotB from now on. =) A little nod to Zeitdieb, too. I miss your stories, dear. I hope you'll have the time to write again soon.
I do not own or profit from any of what Kazue Kato has created.
Shiro had discussed right and wrong quite extensively with Father Hayashi over the weeks. Topics like "good and evil" and all its relatives had also been touched a few times. Hayashi was well aware that the headmaster of True Cross Academy was a demon. Each time that was mentioned, the old, heavy-lidded eyes grew surprisingly sharp, and opinion carved a clear set of kanji lines into the skin around his mouth. Yes, Hayashi was well aware that the headmaster of True Cross Academy was a demon; and philanthropic demons didn't exist.
Good and evil applied to humans, and only humans. Demons were God's antithesis: pure evil, with no concept of or ability to do good. Every act they performed, by virtue of their nature, was evil regardless of the act itself. Hayashi had been firmly convinced of that. Slaving away at a stove in Faust Mansion's spacious kitchen, Shiro saw no reason to disagree with the abbot's words.
"He says to hold the straws in a bundle and place them in the middle of the pot, then release them and let them fall evenly in all directions", Belial translated crisply.
Ukobach was a perfectionist. Someone like Samael only hired the best chef in existence, of course. The wooden spoon he carried around was alternately a conductor's baton, when he explained how to dice the eggplant so that the cubes became perfectly even, and alternately a drill sergeant's riding crop, when the outer leaves of an artichoke weren't removed the exact right way.
Food, is culture; it is the seductive tongue in which each society imparts its unique customs, history, flora and fauna. The dinner table is the battlefield of social life, where knowledge of a nation's culture decides the role of clown and that of king; where it is determined who is in the game, and who is out. You will be faced with customs very different from what you're used to in Italy, and a palette of food ingredients you aren't familiar with; and, as an ambassador of the Japanese Branch, it falls on you to represent us in a favourable, cultured manner. On that note, this ravioli was grossly overcooked. Good thing we started practising in time, isn't it?
Twice a week, before every Italian class, Shiro was made to cook a three-course dinner. "Cultural hands-on practice". Before every such dinner-class, he had to change from school uniform to shirt and suit. "Acquiring a sense of professional Italian dress-code".
"Did you know?" he asked without inflection. Peeling plum tomatoes was nothing like peeling daikon radishes, but his fingers were slowly getting the hang of it. "That he was going to trick me?"
"His highness isn't fond of sharing, be that plans or valuables. No, Bocchan, I didn't."
Shiro kept peeling his tomatoes. Moist, plump flesh under a thin coating of waxy skin.
"Don't call me Bocchan, okay?"
Belial was Manners incarnate. Starched and pressed with etiquette, and a smile that was a mere crease between his lips. A different kind of façade than Samael's, but still a demon underneath; thin as it was, that smile was just enough a crack for his true nature to seep out.
"Fascinating", he said to Shiro's back.
"What?" He didn't need to see that smile to know it was there.
"All that emotion swirling underneath the surface of your composure. I can imagine what it is like for a cat to watch goldfish swim circles in a bowl, one thin glass barrier away."
Shiro smiled humourlessly into the steam that coated his glasses, when he tried the spaghetti with a fork to check if it was al dente yet.
"Too bad Samael isn't fond of sharing, huh?"
The pasta needed more time. Meanwhile, Ukobach indicated with his spoon that he ought to pay the chicken scallopine in the skillet some urgent attention.
"You need to turn it more often: no more than 3 minutes' browning on each side. As for aversion to sharing, that is the least inconvenient quality his highness possesses." If his lungs hadn't been as thoroughly starched as his shirt collar, he might have heaved a sigh. "However, underlings have to stand their superiors even when they are unreasonable."
Shiro wiped his hands on his apron, and set to turn the sage and cheese stuffed chicken rolls without compromising the toothpicks that held them together. Belial was okay. A demon, but also another poor bastard under Samael's rule. He had to see Samael every day, serve him food and drink every day, drive his car and keep his opinions to himself. Thinking of it that way, the cooking exercises were okay, too. It was only the dining part that wasn't.
"How did you get stuck with him, then?" Shiro glanced over at the butler's straight-backed form. "They don't teach anything about demons 'cept the best ways to kill you, so I don't know how stuff like employment works in Gehenna."
"The tomato sauce is about to burn", Belial enlightened over Ukobach's distressed chattering.
Shiro cursed under his breath, balanced the last scallopine on his spatula and reached over to hurriedly turn down the heat and pull the other skillet off the burner plate. They could have at least allowed him to cook one dish at a time… Ukobach wasn't happy with the sauce – he didn't need Belial's translations to get what the irate jumping up and down meant.
"Sorry, sorry." He let the remaining scallopine sputter down with the rest in the olive oil and garlic. "Doing two things at a time isn't easy."
"That is why we practise it. To get back to your question, Gehenna is not much different from Assiah, from what I understand. There are two ways to rise in rank: prove your power, or buy into someone else's." A crisp pause followed, the kind that might have contained body language in someone inclined to more overt forms of humour: "Both ways present their own hardships."
"I can imagine." Shiro measured up half a cup of white wine, all the while keeping an eye on the boiling spaghetti. Overcooking pasta was a downright sin in Italy, apparently. "So what does that mean, if you translate it to practical terms? You get paid for working here, or leeching off his status is the payment?"
"As you ought to be aware, Fujimoto-kun, demons deal in favours. I supply the Prince with services his highness wants, and his highness in turn supplies me with things I want. 'Leeching off his status', as you put it, is a bonus to my employment."
"Right." Remove chicken, discard garlic: add wine and simmer for two minutes while scraping brown bits from the skillet with a wooden spoon. Not Ukobach's. Nobody separated Ukobach from his spoon. "I've heard him mention rank pretty often when he speaks of Gehenna. Why's rank so important? You get more benefits if you're higher up?"
Belial gave him an odd look; the kind that questions if you have been walking through life blindfolded, since you suddenly ask if the sky is blue. Ukobach was casting him similar looks, accompanied by some hand motion to his head that could, maybe, indicate that Shiro must be stupid. Or have an insect in his hair.
"Do you know how demons gain power to rise in rank, Fujimoto-kun?"
Come to think of it, he didn't.
"They grow stronger with age?"
"That is part of it, yes. They also consume those who are weaker than themselves."
Oh.
Shiro's stirring of the sauce became slightly slower.
Oh.
"You eat each other", he said flatly.
"We absorb spirit energy." Demons. It always came down to the choice of words. "Rising in rank is an insurance for survival: consume others and gain power, or gain protection from a demon so powerful others won't dare cross him."
When Ukobach realised his chattering didn't reach through to Shiro, the little familiar rapped him smartly over the knuckles with his spoon and pointed to the spaghetti.
"That's one sick system you've got. Move a bit, will ya?" he said, and took the pot to pour out the water in the sink using a pair of pink-and-white polka-dotted oven gloves.
"It fosters the best warriors, as per Lord Satan's wishes", Belial replied as he slid out of the way with minimum movement.
The best warriors. The best butlers. The best chefs. As Shiro's vision disappeared in the steam from the pot, he began to see how it all fit together. Ukobach wasn't a perfectionist: he had become one, to keep his job. Belial had made his own adaptations, to meet Samael's demands and exercise damage control in response to whatever ludicrous ideas his master got into his head. Same with the rest of the staff, which endured lethal piano floors and thankless servitude to ensure they were good enough to gain protection from Gehenna's second strongest.
"Suppose it's efficient for that, yeah." He let the train of thought go without waving farewell, and focused on getting all the spaghetti in the sieve. "Has any demon ever gained so much power he could rival a King?"
"Not in my lifetime – maybe never. Kings generally consume them before they become real threats."
So, they were that much stronger? Figured. They were Satan's own children. Nobody could possibly…
"What prevents a King form eating all his subjects?" Shiro mused aloud as the question addressed his mind.
"If they ate us all, demonkind would go extinct. Other than that, nothing." That thin, creased-paper smile Belial had was getting unpleasant. "They rarely bother, unless it is for punishment. Consuming a demon of my level would be to them like adding a single drop of water to an ocean."
Samael had said something like that, hadn't he? That the Kings didn't fight each other, because the damage would be tremendous if they did. Without missing a beat, Shiro took the mixture of tomatoes and red pepper flakes and poured it into the simmering wine, and proceeded to add the pasta to the tomato sauce in the other skillet. Enough power to lay waste to continents. It was like trying to grasp that the universe was infinite, and yet expanding. That kind of power was godlike.
And if the Kings had been gods to humans in ancient times…
No. No, there were tracks that trains of thought shouldn't travel. That was one of them.
"There is a third way to choose, of course", Belial spoke up, and successfully pulled Shiro off track: "Escape to Assiah. There are quite a few who do that, I'm sure you've noticed. Coal tars. Goblins. Greenmen. Chuchi. Assiah is full of weak little things. And full of spirit energy one can capture and consume without risking one's own." Unpleasant smile: the kind that would look the same regardless if he were cuddling with kittens or skinning them. "Plenty of fish in glass bowls."
"I suppose I should say welcome to the aquarium, even if it's a little belated. Bigger fish is still fish", he returned flatly, focusing entirely on tossing the spaghetti with the tomato sauce. "If you didn't have to worry about getting eaten and didn't have to work for Samael: what would you do? What do you dream of doing?"
"Please rephrase the question."
A strangely blank expression had crossed Belial's features. He winced at the name, yes – Shiro had thrown it in there for that purpose alone – but that discomfort gave way to… incomprehension?
"What…?" He stopped the tossing for fear of spilling it all over the stove if he didn't keep his eyes and hands in the same place. Instead, he turned to look at Belial to be sure he didn't misread the tone in his voice. "You don't know what dreaming is?"
"It is when the human brain uses fragments of memory and emotion to create nonsensical show reels while sleeping", he replied, in the voice of one who reads aloud from a lexicon. Belial had a human brain. No human consciousness and no human emotions, but he did have a human brain; and yet… he didn't dream?
"Demons don't dream?"
"We do not. Ukobach says you need to check that the sauce flavours have married, and return the chicken to the skillet as soon as they have."
"I'm on it, I'm on it. But oneiroi… No, they only induce dreams in humans, now that I think about it. Live in dreams, but can't create them. Anyway, when you say you dream of doing something, you mean there's some special thing you'd like to do in life."
And of all the possible answers Shiro could have expected, he had never thought that Belial would want to try figure skating.
"Ahh~ Looking delicious, Shiro." There was the option of interpretation to Samael's statement, and Shiro pointedly ignored it. He set the stuffed squash blossom antipasti before the demon without a word. "Your background in cooking shows clearly in the swift development. So, concerning your other important homework…?"
"I haven't chosen one yet."
"Any candidates, then?"
"Not really", he dodged as he seated himself and felt an annoying tug in the back, where his shirt was properly tucked inside the lining of his trousers. Properly. God, what an annoying word.
"Have you even started looking?" asked Samael with that kind of pointed skepticism that Has Already Guessed.
"What's the hurry? It's months left."
"It is; and you can barely spell your own name in Latin letters."
"Can we keep this a practical lesson?" he said, catching himself a hairbreadth from snapping rather than asking.
He needed practice. Chopsticks weren't used in Italy. You weren't allowed to lift your plate and bring it closer to your mouth, either. It made him wonder if people in Italy ate at all.
Samael had decided to put the kitchen in junction with the grand dining hall, the one with not one but three carved stone hearths and an equal number of crystal chandeliers lighting the long table. The demon took the head seat, of course, dressed in something that could only be – of all idiotic things he owned – a noodle-themed suit. Shiro found himself placed at his right side, with the remaining fifty-or-so seats awkwardly void of occupants.
"If you wish. Did you know Italian TV is considering airing Grendizer once the production is finished?" he picked up effortlessly while fastening the napkin in his shirt collar. "I do hope they air it with subtitles. Dubbing is an unforgivable atrocity", he concluded with delicate repulsion. "Even more so when the West equates anime with children's cartoons and treats it like second class productions. No thought whatsoever in the assigning of voice acting roles. You should hear the German dubs – goodness, they make my beard hairs curl!"
The appetizer was quickly finished, and invited the primo onto the table: the dreaded spaghetti, with tomato sauce, arugula, and shaved Pecorino cheese. Shiro watched his plate as if the food would attack if he tried to eat it. It was noodles, basically. He knew how to eat noodles. Sadly, knife and fork had very little in common with chopsticks.
"What are you doing, you barbarian?"
"Eating, if I didn't have to do it by some dumb rules of etiquette." He had barely even started cutting it, and Samael was already aghast at his table manners. "Tch…"
"Put away that knife: the proper way to eat spaghetti is with the fork."
"Only the fork?" How? Was he playing some dumb prank again? Teaching him wrong just to make him laughing stock in Ita- "That… is just wrong."
"It's ingenious~" And with those words, he scooped up spaghetti with his fork and wound it up, like on a spindle, with a few expert flicks of his fingers and wrist. "Mmh~ Perfectly cooked this time. Pity the same can't be said of the sauce."
When you disconnect enough from yourself, from the world, you can feel how you start… drifting. Fading, like an old photograph, until you move through the picture like a ghost, and everything passes right through you without making contact. You might remember how it felt to slide your fingertips over oiled wood… but you won't feel it. All you feel is a surreal sensation of undulating between reality and dream, withdrawing bit by bit until your head is a locked room filled with still air and cut connections.
When Samael spoke, the air moved. Connections reformed. Sparks were struck.
The glass bowl cracked.
"You won't have to eat it once I'm in Rome", he muttered harshly, trying to cool the simmering irritation before it could build up to anger.
"I pity whoever will."
Bullshit. He wouldn't know pity if it hit him in the face with-
"Calm down." Calm down, because fish outside the bowl were easy prey. "Fine, I'm a bad cook. I'm more worried about the Scrutinies", Shiro posited the third time the spaghetti slipped and unwound from his fork. "I know it's just more of the same self-development and spiritual maturation thing, but I'm not sure I can fake convincing belief that some guy really could instant-clone fish. Or make blind men see by rubbing a handful of spit and mud in their eyes. I get the symbolism, but… I don't understand religious people. To believe that literally, you need a few screws missing."
"Some of them would say the same of you, for not believing", Samael snickered. "Religion requires faith, not proof; and faith is to trust with all your heart in that which your brain cannot prove through any of your senses. That said, legends are fashioned from a measure of truth, if that knowledge helps your acting", he continued, swirling his fork in slow, pensive circles over his plate. "There have been humans with gifts out of the ordinary, although few and far between in time. No real sons of God, mind you: just poor souls unfortunate enough to be born different. Soothsayers, healers and miracle-workers, all forced to explain their gifts in some way that made them less frightful." A single straw of spaghetti rose up to the movements of his fork, like a snake charmed by a flute. Samael cocked his head and glanced at him with a lazy smile. "Your own ability to synchronize with demons might have seen you counted among them, had you been born in an age when people were more inclined to believe in the supernatural."
"And then I would've been hung for wizardry", he retorted dryly, and gracelessly shoved a bundle of spaghetti into his mouth before it fell apart.
"As many of them were", he confirmed flippantly. "Although the penalty for wizards was generally death by stoning in Christian territories."
"Lovely. And they just had this kind of 'thing', ability or whatever, from birth? For no reason?"
"Just like you~" he smiled wide and winked, and sipped his wine without a care in the world.
A/N:
Dear Guest
I think I can live with that. =P
Dear gecko (is that gecko-samedi for "full name"? Yeah, I remember almost all names of people who read my stories. ^_^')
At first I thought you were the Gecko, my good friend, but then I realised you just happen to use the same name. ^.^ You never review? I'm honoured to be an exception, then! Reviewing is a very easy way to make somebody somewhere in the world very happy, though – if you ever feel you need to boost your karma quickly. ;P And on that note: thank you for the motivational fuel. I need that from time to time, when I feel like I can't even accomplish getting out of bed in the morning. x') I hope you'll still find TEotB enjoyable in the future, too.
[I remember you once told us you were writing a book? if it is in anyway written similare like this, it's going to be an awesome book 8D]
- Ah, that book. I suppose it's similar in some ways, and different in others. I was in my teens when I wrote it, so if I go back and look at it now I might want to rewrite most of it… But it's been good for writing practice, at least. =)
Dear Dare mo
The lazy people are the ones who lead human civilization towards new frontiers. I'll leave the note in TEotB's first arc so you can keep being lazy. ;)
["more on this in Rome", "more on this in Rome","more on this in Rome", you! sadistic!... If I try, try, and get to create an account, you will tell me?! 3]
- … actually, I might do that, because if you got an account it would shorten my author notes considerably. x'D
[concerning the final chapter of TEotB 4: Paradiso… I have the certainty that this final chapter will make me cry until i've no more tears. So, I want you to know i will be there to demand an alternative end, where Shiro doesnt die or he die but has a post-mortem dialogue with Mephisto (Like the one Shiro has with Kuro in the OVA). Not a melancholy dialogue, but a dialogue that makes me say "Wom, this is a GREAT end, for a masterpiece". Haha, don't feel pressed! :3]
- Is that a challenge? It's accepted, my good sir. ;)
[Ah, another question: tail is very important for a demon, and is because it's important that they always hide their tail. But Ryuuji's mom cut his tail when he was a baby,. Then, is Ryuuji weaker than a standard hanyou?]
- I think he's on par with other hanyous in terms of raw strength. In my imagination, losing a limb such as a tail would be more of a motor impairment: the loss of his tail is the reason he's clumsy and not-in-tune-with-where-his-body-is-and-what-it-does.
[Angels and demons are like slugs?! Oh, now i understand why many cultures use salt in the rituals of purification. xD ( I doubt that a circle of salt was sufficient to keep out Mephisto.) Samael is in the body of a male, isn't he? Where he hidden his second "feet", I wonder?]
- That is brilliant! Now it's clear to me too, the salt thing. x) As for where his second "foot" is, I chose that chapter's title for a reason. My brother and I
have running jokes about Bible Black and its abundance of futanari. (Don't question my brother's innocence, thank you.)
[Mephisto has his curl, Amaimon his cone /broccoli...why demon-Shiro don't have any weird protuberance on his head? or that is something that only the members of Royal Demon Family have?]
- Go to deviantArt. Search for a deviation titled "Satan's Kids" by narutolover6219. That doesn't answer your question at all, but it's fun. Now, to answer your question: demon-Shiro normally cuts off his weird hair protuberance, because other demons made fun of him for always having a question mark hovering over his head. =3 (Yep, I made this up on the spot.)