Chapter Eighteen - It's father-daughter time
"Ew!" Alas- Ramus sticks her tongue out at her foster father at the exact moment he presses the shutter.
"Alas-chan," Maou sighs deeply, "please."
"'kaay," she chirps happily, and this time she holds still and smiles into the camera lens as she hugs her snowman, and the photo is taken.
"Very nice. Well done, Alas-chan," Maou praises her and looks at the photo on his smartphone screen. She really is a little princess in her pink snowsuit, her hair shining in the evening sun and her eyes sparkling like two amethysts.
"Ha!" he begins triumphantly, but then suddenly stops. Whatever he was about to say gets stuck in his throat. Suddenly, all cheerfulness is gone from his face; instead, he just stares sadly at the small display. It takes him maybe a second, but then he regains control of himself and his familiar smile appears on his face again.
"Are we going sledding, Alas-chan?"
"Ow yes!" the girl cheers and runs to the wooden sled that is parked against the wall of the house about ten feet away. She grabs the rope and starts pulling. But the sled is too heavy for her, so she just sits on it and waves excitedly to Maou.
"Papa! Pull me!"
"I'll get it," Chiho offers eagerly, taking the tug rope before Maou has even taken a step. She's been playing with Alas most of the day and now feels a faint pang of jealousy. She is an only child and Alas-Ramus now sees her as a big sister and she doesn't want to give that up so easily.
Alas-Ramus gladly accepts her offer to pull her along and cheers her on as Chiho trudges along the narrow path that leads up a slight hill behind the house. On the other side, the hill is completely bare for forty meters until the forest begins again. In the summer, this is a wildflower meadow, but now, in the winter, it is the perfect place for sledding.
They know the area, they have been playing here all day, but it never gets boring.
Maou and Emi follow them at a more leisurely pace and Emi takes the opportunity to talk to him uninterrupted for once.
"What did you want to say earlier?" she begins in a lurking tone, as if she already knows the answer.
He knows immediately what she means.
"Nothing," he answers gruffly.
Emi only raises her left eyebrow, but says nothing. Her silence is louder than any words and he quickly collapses. Sighing, he fumbles in his jacket pocket for his smartphone and quietly admits:
"I was just thinking that Lucifer will regret not coming when he sees the photo. And then I remembered..." He pauses, swallows hard and then, to Emi's surprise, rubs the wetness from the corners of his eyes.
"...That he can't see," she finishes his sentence dryly.
He nods uneasily.
"Tough enough." Emi brushes back a strand of her deep red hair and looks at Alas and Chiho. "To go blind like that from one moment to the next. Imagine not being able to see all this anymore..." her voice fades into Alas-Ramus' amused laughter, which the wind blows over to them.
Maou gives her a wry sideways glance.
"Do I hear compassion in that?" he teases her.
It's meant harmlessly, but she gets it in all the wrong places. With clenched hands, she spins around and glares at him.
"Compassion?" she roars. "With Lucifer? Never. Have you forgotten he burned my village to the ground?"
"How could I? I gave him the order." Though she makes this argument with nice regularity, it's the first time he ever states his own responsibility so clearly. And he has more to say. "There was nobody in the houses when he burned your village. He gave them a chance to escape. What use were dead farmers and merchants to us? We needed their fear and desperation."
"You weren't even there."
"Neither were you!"
She just gives him a venomous look.
"Never mind - I don't need to have been there to know that," he continues coolly. "He's my general. I know his war tactics. And your father was a victim of the Holy Church. We had nothing to do with his death."
She just snorts and averts her eyes. She will never admit it, but since her last conversation with Suzuno, her thoughts have been going in the same direction more and more often. Much to Emi's chagrin, the former assassin of the Holy Church has a growing influence on the way Emi sees the world.
"Your father was a farmer, wasn't he?- Suzuno asked her once, when she was once again upset about the deeds of a certain demon general in Ente Isla.
"And as such, he kept livestock, didn't he?" continued Suzuno, while Emi just stared at this change of subject. "And when you needed a feast, you slaughtered one or more, didn't you? And others, young or too old, you sold. You took them away from their families, because that's what they were for. And the Holy Church teaches us that animals have no soul and therefore no feelings. Therefore, killing them is not murder, exploiting them is not slavery, and taking children from their mothers is not a crime."
Emi's astonishment turned to growing perplexity. What was Suzuno getting at?
"From the animals' point of view, you were the oppressors, the evil ones, the demons."
"What does that have to do with Lucifer destroying my village and killing my father?"
"Everything," Suzuno smiled and shrugged at the same time. "Maybe nothing."
It was this conversation and others like it that slowly but surely changed Emi's mind. And there is not much she hates more. The world used to be all black and white, she lived well in it, she knew her place, but now everything is becoming gray and she just can't deal with this change very well.
She's going soft on Maou and the others, and she hates that. And because she doesn't want to think about it, she changes the subject.
"It's strange that you're so defensive about him all of a sudden," she says emphatically and calmly, giving him a lurking look. "And what's with all the cuddling and smooching? Is he your favorite now or what?"
Her sneering tone makes Maou feel a burning desire to beat her up, but he doesn't show it and just grins challengingly.
"Who knows?"
"Don't you dare mess with him in front of my daughter," she hisses sharply.
"Or what?" he asks slowly, challenging.
There's a dark glint in his eyes that she's never seen before, and it sends an icy shiver down her spine. And for the first time, she is truly afraid of him. Just for a moment and just a little bit and of course she doesn't let it show.
"You'll see!" she hisses.
"Well, I'm looking forward to it," he replies snappishly.
She opens her mouth to retort something snarky, but at that moment, Alas-Ramus turns to her, laughing and waving.
"Papa! Come on!"
"I'm on my way, Alas-chan!" Maou waves back and then, with a cocky grin, runs up the remaining meters to the top of the hill to her, where he first lifts her up and then spins her around in a circle before he puts his whooping and laughing daughter on the sled and himself behind it. At this moment, Emi also starts to run, but she is too late. By the time she reaches Chiho at the top of the hill, the sled is already hurtling down the slope, and Emi watches it go, then glances at Chiho beside her.
The teenager stands a little lost and also frozen in the snow, and her disappointed expression tells her that Chiho would like to sit on the sled with Maou as well - there's enough room for all three of them.
"Forget him, Chiho."
The high school student smiles wryly.
"Yes, I know. This is father-daughter time now. And that's fine too."
Emi suppresses a painful roll of the eyes, but says nothing, even though there's a lot on the tip of her tongue. She really should give up trying to talk Chiho out of her crush on the burger-roasting demon king. That Maou has no romantic interest in her is something she has to realize for herself.