Chapter Eleven - It is going to get worse before it gets better
Maou has just made himself comfortable on the couch with Urushihara in his arms, and Chiho has joined him as well, when Alas comes running. She hands Maou a lip balm pen:
"Mama told me to give it to you for Lucifer's lips."
and then snuggles up to Urushihara.
"Thank you, Emi! " he shouts, straightening up a bit to carefully apply the balm to Urushihara's chapped lips. It is, as he notices, a completely unused balm pen.
"I don't want it back," it echoes from the kitchen, "not with his germs on it!"
Maou just rolls his eyes. Gently lathering Urushihara's lips, he is pleased to see that they are chapped, but not as blue as before.
Alas-Ramus puts a stuffed animal on Urushihara's chest. It is her favorite companion: a colorful, homemade octopus. The stitches are uneven in places, and when Urushihara gave this little monster to Alas-Ramus, they all made fun of it. But now that Maou has found out why the plush looks so crooked, he is deeply ashamed of the way he reacted to it back then.
Alas doesn't care what the thing looks like. She loves it hot and intimate.
She usually guards it very jealously and the fact that she wants to share it with Urushihara touches not only Maou deeply.
"Oh, Alas," Chiho praises, "that's very nice of you."
With a serious expression, the little one moves the toy.
"Lucifer said Okto has eight arms and he loves me with all of them, and now Okto loves Lucifer eight times."
She looks up at Maou questioningly.
"Do you love Lucifer again, Papa? "
Maou jerks so hard that he almost drops the lip balm. Hastily, he puts the pencil aside and involuntarily wraps his arms around his unconscious general.
"Alas-chan," he says, "I always loved him."
She looks at him critically.
"You were so mean to him," she says then without any mercy.
"Alas-chan," he sighs and reaches out his free hand to stroke her head. Under her still very reproachful look, he feels like the last scoundrel in the world.
"That was wrong and I promise you it will never happen again."
She looks at him seriously for a moment. Then she giggles because his hand tickles her neck.
Satisfied, she snuggles up to both Maou and Urushihara, causing the toy to fall over and quickly putting it back upright.
"Okto is really cool," Chiho explains, helping her to better support the animal with its eight arms to keep it balanced.
"I chose the colors," Alas says proudly.
Maou nods, lost in thought, because he still remembers this afternoon very well.
"This is blue," Alas-Ramus took Urushihara's hand seriously and led it to the ball of wool on the table in front of them, and after he touched the wool briefly, she put his hand on the ball next to it.
"And here's the green."
She showed him all four colors.
"Pink. Violet."
Each wool was actually multi-colored, either mottled or with a very pretty gradient, but when Maou grabbed one of the balls to take a closer look, Alas protested loudly.
"Papa! Don't mess it up! "
Back then, he did not understand.
Maou involuntarily tightened his grip on Urushihara as he remembered the two days his general had spent sitting in the corner by the window, using knitting needles, wool and pure sheep's wool as stuffing. And when the octopus was finished, and he and Ashiya and everyone else mocked how ugly and crooked it was, Alas-Ramus just shouted that it was beautiful and hugged Urushihara enthusiastically.
"Don't get used to it," Emi told her foster daughter. "This thing is terribly ugly and a case for the dumpster."
And Alas-Ramus... threw a tantrum.
"Okto is mine! You can't take it from me! You're not my Mama! "
As he later learned from Emi, it was not the first time Alas-Ramus had made that threat, although it was the first time he had heard it that day. And if he was honest, he was secretly happy about it, because Emi's possessive nature towards her foster daughter really bothered him. That's why he didn't interfere with Emi that day, but just leaned back and enjoyed the little show. Emi got angrier and angrier, but she swallowed her feelings because she had no other choice.
Chiho looks at her crush thoughtfully, and when that little smile twitches around the corner of his mouth as he plucks at one of Okto's woolly threads, which is supposed to be something like a hairstyle, she feels a certain queasiness in her stomach that she can't quite explain.
"Considering that Lucifer couldn't see what he was knitting, it turned out really well. Even for not knitting for ages..." he says thoughtfully.
Behind them, in the open kitchen, Emi listens, turns the stove to the lowest setting so that the lunch will continue to cook slowly, and comes closer, curious.
"When I was a kid, he used to knit or sew me sweaters and jackets," Maou continues, lost in thought and with a slight laugh in his voice.
"The wool was not as fine as this, of course. It was somehow much, much more uneven, but also more fluffy. When I was a little goblin, I used to run around in my pants. I was injured, so I had a bandage on my torso and a tattered half-cape. That's why he knitted me sweaters and jackets, because he wanted me to be properly dressed as a future king."
"Knitting and sewing is a woman's business," Emi observes from the back of the room.
"Yes?" he replies laughing, looking tenderly at Urushihara and stroking his hair. "It doesn't matter, because half of my court has been running around in his creations for decades. They were the first to laugh about it, by the way."
Suddenly he stops, remembering something, and a shadow flickers across his face.
"Until Camio brought a skilled tailor from one of the trading cities to my palace. He was supposed to make me something more elegant, something suitable for royalty. His shirts were made of a completely new fabric, a bit thin and airy, but they shimmered beautifully. I liked them right away and didn't want to wear anything else, so Lucifer never knitted anything for me again."
Emi is looking at him very closely and it seems to be almost as reproachful as Alas-Ramus' look.
"Yeah," she says. "As much as I hate to admit it, I can understand the little plague."
Maou cannot disagree with her.
All of a sudden, Urushihara starts to whimper and gets restless.
Alas is horrified and Chiho and Emi are attentive as well.
"Lucifer..." Frightened and increasingly helpless, Maou strokes his hair. "What is it? "
But Urushihara is just whimpering a little bit louder and is writhing back and forth in his embrace.
"Lucifer," Alas also strokes his hair in fear. "Lucifer, you're safe, everything's fine."
But Urushihara gasps loudly for air, whimpers even more heartily, presses his hands to his chest and literally curls up.
"Lucifer!"
Panicked, Maou tries to straighten him up a bit, wrapping an arm around his waist to support him while placing his free hand on his cheek, trying to read his distorted expression.
"Lucifer, what is it? Tell me what's wrong, please."
The whimper turns into a choppy sob that pierces Maou's heart.
Urushihara's eyelids open a slit, revealing a part of his purple iris, clouded with pain. A long drawn out "awww" comes from his throat, and he presses his clawed hands even harder against his chest, while he digs his heels into the pillow.
At this sight, Chiho has a flash of memory of what she has read.
"His hands and feet are defrosting! That is a good sign," she explains, trying to calm down Maou and Alas.
"Poor Lucifer," Alas caresses his shoulders in a comforting way, but it is clear that he is so caught up in his pain that he is no longer aware of anything else around him.
It is unbearable for Maou to see him like this, so he does the only thing he can think of. Although he has no way to use effective magic, this ability was placed in his cradle, it belongs to him like his arms and legs and he can use it even as a weak human.
"I'm sorry." With these words, he places the index and middle fingers of his right hand on Urushihara's forehead.
"I know I promised never to do this to you."
He takes a deep breath.
"Go to sleep," he orders, putting as much power as possible into his voice.
Urushihara freezes, his eyes rolling back until only the white can be seen and then he collapses.
Maou catches him and pulls him back into his arms.