Chapter Ten - Be safe, be warm
Maou quickly realizes that he is no longer used to teleporting. It is shameful how something that seemed quite natural a year ago can disturb the sense of balance.
He has hardly materialized, he stumbles, but all he can think of is Lucifer's weight on his back and that he must not let him fall! - and so he resolutely pulls himself together.
To his great relief, he realizes that he has landed exactly where he wanted to go: on the porch, right in front of the front door.
„Papa! Papa!" A small pink whirlwind with long, silver hair runs to him. Alas-Ramus almost stumbles, so hurriedly she jumps up the stairs.
"Alas-chan, not so fast, slowly!" Chiho follows her on the foot and Emi trots a little more leisurely behind.
"Papa! You found my Lucifer!" Alas-Ramus beams at him, but then she frowns and tilts her head questioningly. "Is Lucifer not well? "
"He will soon be better," he promises, hoping that this was not a lie.
Then he stares at the door, puzzled, he has no hand to open it. But Chiho is already approaching, notices his dilemma and hurries to open the door for him. He gives her a grateful smile, whereupon she blushes embarrassingly, but he no longer sees that, because he walks past her into the cabin.
Inside he hesitates briefly, but then he starts determined on the large, cozy couch.
He could also take Urushihara upstairs to the room, which he was supposed to share with him and Ashiya anyway - the king-size bed is huge - but Maou chooses the living room. Urushihara is never alone here, and it's also the warmest place in the cabin.
Alas-Ramus in her pink snowsuit follows him excitedly, but unlike her daddy, she takes the time to pull her shoes off her feet and even put its neatly against the wall. Then she runs the two steps from the small cloakroom over to the living room and watches Maou anxiously as he lets Lucifer gently slides from his back to the couch.
As he begins to peel Lucifer out of the parka, she takes off her gloves with a determined expression, sits down on the couch, grabs one of Urushihara's feet, and begins to finger the laces of his shoes.
„Papa," she seriously tells Maou, "you have to tell Lucifer what you're doing, otherwise he'll be frightened. Lucifer, I'm taking your shoes off now," she adds, giving Maou an encouraging look.
Affected, he flinches, but then he nods obediently.
He leans down a little and whispers a "hey, Lucifer" in his ear. He gently strokes the snow-wet hair from his face and bites his lips when he feels how cold Urushihara's skin is.
For a second, he panics that his general is already dead, that he has saved a corpse, and so he puts his hand on Urushihara's chest. Another anxious second follows, but then he feels a barely noticeable lifting and lowering of the chest. With a relieved hiss, he pushes out the air he didn't know he had stopped.
"You're safe now." He gently follows an elegantly curved eyebrow with his index finger.
The shadows around his eyes are almost as dark as his hair.
And his skin is so COLD!
"I'm taking your parka off now, okay?"
He slowly opens the zipper and Chiho rushes in.
"Alas-chan, wait, take off your clothes first, or you'll overheat."
Alas-chan. Maou flinches and turns his head in shock, having completely forgotten his little foster daughter and feeling guilty immediately.
"Thank you, Alas-chan", he gives her a loving smile. "Please listen to Chiho. Take off your snowsuit, then you can help me."
Alas-chan is pouting.
„Papa, you're also wearing your jacket," she grumbles, but then obeys, freeing herself from her lined snowsuit with Chiho's active support, while Maou sets out to continue Alas' work. In his mind, he reproaches himself for not having paid better attention to his foster daughter. She means well, but no one knows if Urushihara has any injuries to his feet and he would rather spare Alas this sight.
„Alas-chan is right: Heed your own advice," Emi's voice sounds behind them. "Ashiya will be anything but excited about the snow and dirt you brought in here."
"I'll clean it up later," he growls.
Emi watches the group for a while, then she gives a deep sigh and extends her hand to her foster daughter.
"Come with me, Alas-chan, let's get some blankets."
The little one nods eagerly, grabs her hand and then they go together towards the hallway to pick out the necessary from the local closet.
"Ashiya told me to put dry, warm clothes on him," Maou murmurs more to himself than to Chiho, as he carefully rolls a soaked sock from Urushihara's left foot.
"I get his bag," Chiho explains immediately and hurries away.
Maou only nods absent, he is busy examining Urushihara's foot for abnormalities.
In the demon world, there are also mountains, ice and snow, but nobody has to worry about cold damage because there is enough dark magic available to heal yourself immediately.
He has never cursed it more being on Earth and thus has only a fraction of his magical powers. He never felt so helpless.
Fortunately Urushihara's feet - both - show no signs of frostbite. The toes are a bit bluish and the rest of the skin is spooky pale, but that's all.
Maou releases a long sigh of relief and then another. Now that everyone else is gone, he allows himself a moment of weakness.
He literally sinks into himself. In a helpless gesture, he bends over his unconscious general and presses his forehead against the cold, pale of the other.
"Please, Lucifer, please," he whispers, unaware of it.
And suddenly he is back in the demon world and a messenger bursts into the middle of his meeting with his generals and advisors. The message he has to deliver to him is visibly unpleasant for him, as he initially presses around. But finally, it bursts out of him:
"My King, we have lost the West, General Lucifer has fallen! "
Maou did not let it show, he was not allowed to show what an uproar this news caused inside him, after all, they were at war. Part of him refused to believe that Lucifer had actually been killed - by a human being! - and another sank in a leaden state of shock.
He never had the time to complain about his loss - and months later, when Lucifer appeared in front of him, it was no longer necessary, but since that day when he caught sight of Lucifer it feels like there's an iron claps around his heart.
Chiho's return tears him back from his heavy thoughts. He hurriedly straightens up and finally peels Urushihara out of his parka.
Along with Chiho, Emi and Alas return, with Alas almost invisible under the three blankets she holds.
Smiling, Chiho places Urushihara's travel bag next to Maou, but quickly turns away embarrassed when she sees that Maou is clutching Urushihara's belt. Instead, she prefers to pull out her smartphone to research how to treat hypothermia.
Alas-Ramus smiles proudly as she approaches and lays the blankets on the couch. But before she can help her foster dad, Emi takes her hand and pulls her away.
„Alas-chan, this is not a sight for a young lady, leave Maou some space. What do you say if we cook you hot cocoa? You can help Maou again when he's ready."
At first, the little one resists, but when Maou nods in agreement and smiles, she gives in.
"See you soon, Lucifer", she chirps and waves. "I'll be right back."
Maou proudly watches her disappear with Emi towards the kitchen - the little one is really a sweetheart - and then turns back to his unconscious general.
It is not easy to peel him out of the jeans, the fabric is almost frozen and feels uncomfortably damp and where it came into contact with the snow, it is completely soaked.
When it is done, he throws the jeans carelessly to the remaining clothes on the floor. From the travel bag, he rummages out the warmest thing he can find: lined sweatpants, wool socks, a still almost new T-shirt and a hoodie. He hesitates, but then he grabs a new boxer short. Urushihara will certainly forgive him for violating his privacy because he certainly does not want to risk cystitis.
In addition, they regularly go to the onsen and therefore they know exactly how they look naked.
Even if Urushihara did not accompany them every time in the last weeks because of migraine or other ailments. Ashiya, of course, was happy about it, because they saved three hundred yen entry and Maou did not want to quarrel, so they both went alone.
And again something he can blame himself for.
Unwillingly, Maou shakes his head and pushes these thoughts far away from him.
Amazingly, it doesn't feel any different from dressing Alas-Ramus when she is still half asleep. It's like putting on a doll. An amazingly thin doll.
Has he lost weight?
Maou pauses briefly.
Sure, his general has always been small and petite, no comparison to himself and his impressive muscle packs or to Alciel, but now Urushihara appears to him only as a shadow of himself.
And where do all the bruises come from?
Maou is concerned about a particularly large spot on Urushihara's left knee. His general has more bruises than Alas-Ramus after a wild day on the adventure playground.
Are that marks all from last night?
Maou bites his lower lip and quickly puts on Urushihara's underpants, followed by a T-shirt.
Then he throws an uncertain look at Chiho, but she still stands with her back to him. He hears the quiet clack-clack-clack of her fingernails on the mobile phone display and he suddenly freezes.
Chiho senses that she is being watched and throws a shy look back over her shoulder.
"Uh, Maou-sama? Something's wrong?"
He stares at her for a moment, blinks hard and then focuses again on pulling the lined sweatpants over Urushihara's hips.
„I was just thinking..." he explains in a bitter tone, "if we had allowed him a smartphone, he could have called for help and then he wouldn't be lying here half death."
Chiho swallows hard, and since Urushihara is now almost again clad, she dares to step next to her secret crush. She reaches out her hand to put it on his shoulder but pulls it back at the last moment.
This tender gesture, with which he strokes Urushihara over the cheek, scares her off for unknown reasons.
Instead, she clears her throat shyly.
„I researched on the Internet what to do in case of hypothermia. We need to keep him warm and give his body time to get back to temperature."
She picks up one of the blankets and spreads it with him over Urushihara.
"When he regains consciousness, we can infuse him with hot drinks and give him a warm bath. But we have to be careful that it does not get too hot, otherwise, he will burn himself. Even if his body temperature is back to normal, he still needs a few days of bed rest."
She sighs once full of compassion.
"Poor Lucifer. That's certainly not how he has imagined this holiday."
Maou does not answer, his silence is almost even more suspicious than the depressed expression on his face with which he looks at Urushihara. And then he strokes Urushihara's face again, this time to put a strand of hair back behind his ear.
„I know he didn't want to go," she tries to comfort Maou. "But in the end he would have liked it. Who doesn't like to play with Alas-chan in the snow? " she jokingly adds in an effort to cheer him up.
Maou just shakes his head, finally slips out of his own jacket and boots and leaves everything where it fell.
„Chiho," he replies grievously as he sits down on the couch and pulls his lifeless general into his arms, then stuffs the blanket tighter around him. "It's not that simple anymore."
Chiho grabs a second blanket and patiently waits for his explanation as she spreads it over Urushihara and helps Maou to pin it down just like the other. And although she listens very carefully, she would have almost missed Maou's words, so unbelievably are they:
"I don't know when, I don't know how, but, Chiho - he's blind."
A loud clink can be heard from the kitchen, followed by Alas-Ramus accusing:
"Mama! My cup!"