When the demon asked whether I had found myself needing to give it serious thought, I lifted my head, looked up at the demon’s horns, and said,
“Why me?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m wondering because I don’t think your appearance was mere coincidence. I doubt you simply grab any random person and make a contract with them.”
“Haha. You are more cautious than I expected. I showed you a ‘miracle’ right before your eyes—turning back time—and yet you ask about such a trifling reason for why I appeared?”
“Yes.”
The demon spoke to me in a tone that seemed to mock a fool, and I answered immediately, without the slightest hesitation.
I could feel it.
This exchange, perhaps, would become an important turning point.
However.
“Honored one, since this seems to be your first time meeting a demon, I will tell you this out of goodwill: asking a demon a question is a truly precious opportunity. I am answering your questions without any price because I happen to be interested in you, but normally, I would only confirm whether or not there is a contract. For any other questions, I would have to receive a ‘price.’”
Bringing up a price, the demon deliberately ignored my question.
Then, facing me as I silently stared at him, the demon explained with a kindly smile, like a kindergarten teacher giving children a safety lesson.
He said that even meeting a demon required a price to begin with, and even if one did meet a demon, if there was no price satisfactory to the demon, it would vanish at once regardless of any questions or answers.
For that reason, any being who wished to summon or meet a demon had to bring a price that would please it.
If one was unlucky, one might even become the target of a demon’s prank.
“Therefore, please think of the fact that I am answering your questions so obediently as purely my goodwill.”
A demon’s goodwill, huh.
Looks like getting the answer I want is out of the question.
“Was it not the culture of you noble ones to repay goodwill with goodwill?”
“So, you’re telling me not to ask boring questions, but to ask questions that will satisfy you?”
“Haha, I am not quite so ill-natured as that. However… yes. If I receive a ‘boring’ question, such as why I appeared before you or with what intention I revealed myself to you, I may play a little prank. For instance, turning you into livestock unable to speak for a month, or making someone with no connection to you resent you as though they wanted to kill you—small pranks like that.”
“...”
“Now then, as expected, you are different from those lowly ones, so it is nice that I need not say it twice. I will ask you once again. Will you make a contract with me, exalted one?”
At the demon’s question, I turned my head for a moment and looked around.
Just as when I had first entered, it was a peaceful space that gave off a warm feeling.
There was no sign that the mage who had left would return.
It was a moment that felt as though this encounter with the demon might continue for all eternity.
Under that silent pressure, my mouth opened before I knew it.
“…The price?”
Grin.
As if that were the correct answer, the demon smiled broadly across his entire face.
“The price is none other than your—”
Bang!!!
Hihihihing!!
“Jin!! Are you all right?!”
In that instant,
the mage, riding in on a white warhorse, cut off the demon’s words and charged inside.
Then she turned her head and immediately glared at the demon, who was wearing a troubled smile.
“…Goodness, the owner of the house has returned.”
“…Aviyan.”
“Haha, meeting an old acquaintance is enjoyable to a troublesome degree, is it not, Miss Bel?”
As though he had known the mage from before, the demon greeted her with a nickname containing her name.
“Be quiet. My mood has plummeted to the worst possible point because I met you. If you make one of your usual pointless jokes, I’ll have the heavenly horse chew your horns to pieces.”
Prrr!
As if agreeing with the mage’s words, the heavenly horse snorted loudly and glared at the demon.
It was a ferocious expression incomparable to the one it had worn when it first saw me.
So horses were animals capable of making expressions this vicious.
“Is this not too harsh a welcome for an old friend? I was not hoping for cheers, but I did at least expect a greeting saying you were glad to see me after so long.”
“You’re a high-ranking demon, and you descended to the material plane without any price. Do you think I have the presence of mind to greet you?”
“Haha, this is why mages are the way they are. I am not some automaton that moves according to set rules. I merely moved freely for amusement’s sake. Must you truly have such a fit over that?”
Shing.
At the demon’s teasing words, the mage, without further exchange, drew a white staff from her robes as though drawing a sword.
Then she threatened the demon without delay.
“Enough nonsense. Get back to Hell. If you run your mouth any more, I’ll forcibly evict you, so you’d better leave on your own two feet.”
“Oh? Is that a threat? Very well! It would be amusing to see how much your skills have improved!”
Crackle!
Between the mage and the demon, I could almost see an invisible current sparking and crackling.
A high-ranking demon who had arrived without warning, and the mage who was the owner of this space.
The demon gathered his fingers, and the mage was about to swing her staff downward.
At that moment.
“Please wait.”
As if cutting the taut tension between them with a knife, I held out my hand and intervened.
“…Aren’t both of you making the atmosphere too overheated? I haven’t even said that I’ll make the contract yet.”
“...”
“...”
Thanks to my intervention at the right timing, the demon and the mage stopped their movements just before casting something—probably magic—and turned to look at me.
Thankfully, both of them were listening to me.
I secretly let out a deep sigh inside and opened my mouth.
“If you just fight like this without talking, then regardless of who wins, today’s experience will remain an unpleasant one, and I don’t think I’ll ever speak to you again. What do you think, Mr. Aviyan?”
“…Mr. Aviyan?”
“Oh? Is that a threat? And yet… unlike the old acquaintance before me, it is not an unpleasant threat.”
At my words, the mage gaped as if dumbfounded by the way I addressed the demon, while the demon, like a dopamine addict who had found something interesting, relaxed the fingers he had been gathering and stepped toward me with a smile.
Click.
“However, did I not say just a moment ago? If you ask a boring question, I might play a prank.”
“You—!”
“…But right now, there is a means to oppose your threat. Ms. Bel doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would pretend not to notice if you played a prank on me.”
At the demon’s words, I held out my palm toward the mage, who was quickly growing agitated, as if telling her to calm down.
“Before Ms. Bel came, I had no means of resisting your threats, so I obediently listened to you. But hasn’t the situation changed now?”
“Oho! Though I explained so clearly that I would sooner die than make a contract by coercion, it seems there was some unseen coercion after all.”
“It’s an imbalance of information. I know absolutely nothing about demons or contracts, while you are at least an expert in this field. So when the imbalance of information is this severe, how can that be a ‘fair’ contract?”
“Hahaha.”
At my calm words, the demon opened his mouth wide and threw his head back, laughing heartily as if he found something terribly amusing.
As though he had heard an incredibly funny joke, he laughed with all his teeth showing.
“My, my… In nearly nine hundred years! This is the first time I have seen someone so peculiar! Are you a prince from some star kingdom, like in a fairy tale?”
“As you can see.”
“Indeed! Both your body and your soul are undoubtedly of this material plane, so how can you come up with such a peculiar idea? An imbalance of information! It is a concept I have never even heard among demons!”
It seemed that, as expected, social concepts were not developed in this world.
Well, in a world where nobles openly occupied the upper echelons of society, there was no way concepts like modified capitalism or social insurance would exist here.
In this place, it was only natural for information to be imbalanced.
From what I could infer from the mage’s words and the newspapers, even the capital seemed to be at the point where capitalism was just beginning to bloom.
I swallowed once and spoke to the laughing demon.
“So? Was my question interesting?”
“Splendid! With a concept that even I, who pride myself on having lived long, have never heard before, your question asserted your own unfairness! Today, you are writing a new chapter in the history of contracts with demons!”
Snap!
When the demon lightly snapped his fingers, the bookshelf behind him slid away like a mirage.
So naturally, as though it had never been there in the first place.
“Ah… Today is truly an uncommon day. I was delighted, thinking an old acquaintance had bitten a bait that bloomed through someone’s malice, and yet to think I would have the chance to see such a sparkling jewel I never expected.”
“What? What do you mean by that?”
“Haha, it will be more interesting if I do not reveal it to a violent person like you. In any case, it would be truly regrettable if I were to disappear like this, would it not?”
Float.
No sooner had the demon finished speaking than he lifted a finger and moved the pure white book lying on the floor, handing it to me.
Thud.
As the weight of the thick book settled into my arms, the demon smiled softly at me and said,
“When the day comes that you understand the knowledge written in that book, I will come find you once more. If that happens, you surely will not speak of things like an imbalance of information then.”
“...”
“…You’re giving him a grimoire that easily? What are you plotting?”
“Haha, to us demons, it has less value than a pebble rolling along the roadside, but to you, who have only just begun to encounter the mysteries, it should be valuable enough as a ‘gift,’ no? There are no curses in that book, so you may read it at ease. Then, hoping that an interesting person like you will have no contact with any demons other than myself, I shall disappear.”
Pop!
Like a magician performing a teleportation trick, the demon vanished in an instant along with the sound effect of something bursting.
The demon disappeared so abruptly that all of this felt like a dream, but the faint smell of sulfur remaining in this space and the thick book in my arms reminded me that it had not been one.