「…I’m going to sleep for a little while.」
I agreed in response to the voice filled with tears. I did not know whether he would truly sleep… but if even I felt this conflicted, how much worse must it be for Faust, who had experienced it all?
“Wait….”
But something had occurred to me that I wanted to ask the demon, not the child. After asking Daniel and Meister to excuse me, I closed my eyes. Darkness overturned, and white spread outward. Only then did I lift my eyelids.
Upon the empty land, I saw one boy curled into himself and one demon bound in chains.
“What was the reason?”
[It is difficult to answer when you ask like that.]
“Why did you hide the cabin?”
[It was simply out of goodwill—]
“Tell me something even you would believe.”
At my words, Wrath closed her mouth for a moment. The red orbs floating over the mask radiated the grotesque atmosphere peculiar to their horizontal pupils.
[…At the time, that bat bastard’s errand runner was nearby.]
“Bat bastard? Errand runner?”
[By “bat bastard,” I mean Pride. Being called a bat is the one thing that infuriates him.]
“So why is Pride suddenly relevant?”
Did that make Pride one of the Great Demons? But why did the word bat infuriate him? Wondering whether Pride had some sort of complex, I pressed Wrath for an answer. For some reason, she appeared to be deliberating.
[Hmm… Well, I would have had to tell you someday, so I suppose it does not matter.]
After a long while, Wrath broke free of her hesitation. Perhaps it was better this way. That approximate sense of relief emerged from her voice—the emotion of someone whose displeasure had loosened after much deliberation.
[First, you need to understand the chain of cause and effect, so I shall explain from there.]
Clink. She lightly waved an arm wrapped in chains. Something resembling a boulder rose from the…