11. Disappointment

Bishamon has asked Kazuma to stay with her again. He is lying beside her and running his fingers through her hair slowly.

He sighs and closes his eyes.

He doesn't deserve to be there. He is the cause of all her grief. She shouldn't seek comfort in him. She shouldn't hug him like that. She shouldn't want him by her side.

Even when he was first named, he became a nail of all things and hurt her.

He couldn't manage to draw a mere borderline in all the years after that.

When the blight started to spread, he couldn't do anything. He let the battle team take Touma away. He couldn't catch her hand.

The only solution he could think of was to destroy the whole clan.

He kept lying to her for all those years. He never stopped seeing Yato. He has made friends with him behind her back and let her blame him in his place afterwards.

She fell into a depression because of him and ignored all of her godly duties for years. He sees her energy weakening but he can't convince her to answer wishes. Even if he could, he isn't able to assist her and she refuses to take any other shinki because she believes him. She believes a liar like him. She trusts a traitor.

Even now, he is lying to her. He is stiffling the guilt so that she doesn't understand anything. He is trying to make her fall asleep faster so that he can sneak out to see Yato. When she learns everything, she will surely hate him.

He shouldn't hurt her anymore. He should just confess. He should be punished and sent away or even killed. What right does a failure like himself have to survive when all the others are dead?

He is just a disappointment. He has failed her many times. He has betrayed her. He has failed his family. He has failed Touma. That's right, he is nothing more than a disappointment.

12. Treasure

Bishamon carefully enters Kazuma's room. It is the middle of the night but she has an urge to see him suddenly.

It happens nearly every night now. It has become a habit of hers to check up on him and watch him sleep for some time.

She needs to make sure that he is okay. She needs to see him to be able to sleep herself. She needs to know that he is there. She needs to confirm that he hasn't gone away and won't go anywhere in the night.

She is pitiful. She used to be a goddess but lately, she doesn't feel like one. She has lost everything she had. She was weak. Too weak to protect her family. They are all gone and it's all her fault.

She only has Kazuma left and she is afraid of losing him. She is so afraid of him going away one day that she goes to check if he is still there every night.

She doesn't care. It doesn't matter how low she sinks. It doesn't matter what becomes of her. It doesn't matter if she disappears entirely one day. None of those are important.

Only Kazuma matters to her. He should always be with her because she can't imagine herself without him now.

She needs him. He is like air for her. She needs him to breathe. She needs him to exsist. She can't define it. She doesn't understand the warm feeling in her chest. It's a little uncomfortable but strangely pleasant nonetheless. It's not like anything she has felt before. It's not fear. It's not excitement. It's not happiness. It's not dread. It's not exactly affection. It feels like a mix of all of that but she doesn't know what it is called. She only knows one thing. She will certainly die if she loses Kazuma.

Bishamon pulls the blankets over his sleeping body and smiles down at him. She will not lose him. He is the best shinki she could ever wish for. She is proud of him. He is her treasure. So she will keep him safe no matter what. He will be with her until the day humans forget her and she disappears.

13. Mirror

Kazuma dresses himself slowly in front of the mirror.

There is no blight on his body. He isn't stinging his mistress. He isn't doing anything wrong. Even if he did something wrong, he would still be rightous as he did everything for his mistress and Touma.

He is repeating the words to himself over and over again like a mantra as he faces his reflection.

He tells himself that he is different from the man he sees in front of himself. He is Kazuma. He is Bishamon's shinki. He is Touma's student. He hasn't done anything wrong. It was all for Bishamon. The reflection is the guilty one. He is the killer, the liar, the traitor...

The mirror is like a window seperating that reality from him and his world. It is safe as long as he doesn't look for too long, he tells himself.

It is a new way he uses to calm down and it's working good in his opinion. He sometimes can feel the ghost of guilt biting him but it is not as strong as it used to be. He is getting better and better at supressing it, he thinks to himself.

That's good. Bishamon is going to learn everything one day. The man in the mirror will face the punishment he deserves then.

14. Loathing

Bishamon is slowly combing her hair in her room. It's another ordinary summer day passing slowly and quietly.

She is used to the silence now. She is calmer. She can even stay put and continue with what she is doing when she hears Kazuma going out for an errand instead of rushing to pull him back inside and begging him to not leave her as she once did.

She now knows that he will never leave her, she finally believes him fully when he tells her that...

...yet, she can't help but tell herself to let go.

She doesn't deserve him. She isn't worthy of his faith and his love. He shouldn't smile at her. He shouldn't take care of her. He should want to leave. He should treat her with hate. He should scream and cry. He should sting her. He should go away. He deserves better.

She is nothing but the remains of a late goddess. She is only a shell. She is disgusting. She loaths herself and for all she knows, he should do the same.

15. Alone

He has always been one to find comfort in solitude. He has never liked crowds or the occasions which he has to be among other people.

He has always been different, strange, a freak. Humans have never liked him or accepted him and he has never accepted them for that matter. Yet he has always been aware that he needed them. Although he had a mortal dread of humans, he has always been unable to renounce them.

So, all through his life, he has kept trying to fit in. He has managed to maintain, on the surface, a smile which never deserted his face, an accommodation that he offered to others, a precarious act that he managed to perform only with excruciating efforts within.

He struggled all his life, the curse never leaving him alone or letting him take a breath of relief.

He has never stopped seeing them, feeling them.

In time, he stopped trying to avoid the monsters with many eyes and claws which no one other than him ever saw.

He accepted them, even started to greet them like old friends in the nights after the long sessions of beatings that he spent trying to treat his wounds in pitch dark, too afraid to light a candle lest he could attract the monsters with two eyes each and claw like pitchforks in hand.

He started to talk to them and to him they always seemed to be listening just like they always, always watched. And although only for a few moments, they numbed the crushing pain of lonesome.

Therefore he was happy when he made his decision. He was happy as he walked in the dead of the night in the woods that not even hunters dared to enter after dusk and they followed him.

He had a wide smile on his face as the howling of the wild wolves got louder.

The corners of the lips of the young man were tilted upwards as he laid on the grass, bleeding out. His head was spinning, he was freezing yet, for once not by himself.

He was surrounded by the friends who never insulted him or beat him, the friends who could fly and see everything with their dozens of eyes, the friends who always smiled and called him to their side.

o

Kazuma sighed soundlessly as he watched Bishamon sleep.

They were both used to this life now. Being only the two of them in the small shrine in the Near Shore.

He knows that he can't really confide in her though. Beyond that secret that chews on his soul, she is a goddess and he is a shinki.

He isn't as bothered as he should be, he finds. Being alone comes natural to him after all.