018. The Devil Girl Lilith
“This is my victory, you brats.”
“How cowardly! How can a grown-up fight with all his might against children like us!!”
“Do you have no blood or tears!”
“You conscienceless trash!”
“You’re making quite interesting noises. I admire how you sincerely beat up a weaker child than you. I just dueled with all my sincerity too. If you don’t like it, why don’t you duel with that kid and win.”
“But that guy doesn’t even have a deck!”
“If he doesn’t have a deck, you shouldn’t hit him even more! Why do you hit a poor kid who can’t even duel?”
I grabbed the heads of the rat-like kids one by one, and they groaned in pain as I held their heads.
I hit them to teach them that violence is bad, but did my intention get across well?
“Ao, what’s so pitiful about him? Mom said he’s different from us, a wicked devil! We should stay away from him and shun him, the devil b*tch!!”
“How can you discriminate so well against an adult and a child? Let me try that discrimination too, you bastard!”
I still hadn’t come to my senses, and I grabbed the heads of the kids who took discrimination for granted.
The kids who got hit in the head repeatedly soon started to run away, spitting out vulgar curses at me.
How did they educate the kids to make them like that?
I thought about following them to see their parents’ faces, but they weren’t important to me.
“Are you okay?”
I turned around and reached out to the girl who had been hit by the kids.
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I approached her as if I didn’t care, because if I was too friendly from the start, she might be suspicious.
But.
“I won’t go outside anymore!! I’ll live quietly without being noticed!! I’m sorry…! I’m sorry…! I’m really sorry…!!”
Lilith, who was clinging tightly to the trash can, was trembling with her body curled up.
The girl who was begging for forgiveness as if she had committed a heinous crime.
Seeing her like that, I realized the seriousness of the situation.
Even without being a psychologist, I could tell that her mental state was pushed to the extreme.
The cause must have been the discrimination that the kids in the slums showed earlier.
“This is serious.”
I should have approached her with caution from the first time I saw her.
A frail body that seemed to break with a little force, a dirty appearance that had not been washed for a long time, and countless scars and bruises on her skin.
I did not see it myself, but the cruel acts that had been inflicted on this little girl were beyond the limit.
“It’s a pity, but it seems that her mind is already broken.”
“It’s hard enough to live in a place like this, but she also has to endure the discrimination from the slum people. It’s strange that she’s sane.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“First of all, I have to calm her down if I want to have a conversation.”
Lilith in the card.
That is, the mature Lilith had a charming appearance that shook the hearts of many duelists.
A devilish smirk, a seductive beauty and figure that stimulated the male heart, and a decadent outfit.
She was a monster that could be called a walking male heart bomber.
But the Lilith I saw now was very different from the image I knew.
A thin and precarious state like a withered willow.
The girl who had to drive men crazy in the distant future was broken like a madman.
I couldn’t just pass by.
“Calm down. We’re not trying to hurt you.”
“Hiik…!!”
I tried to reassure her with a gentle tone as I approached, but Riris only shrank back more in fear.
A light and casual approach only had the opposite effect.
I had no choice but to act firmly.
I hugged her body before she could react.
“Wait a moment! If you do that, your clothes will…!”
Phineas tried to stop me, worried that I would get dirty too, but I raised one hand to silence her.
At this point, this was the only way I could calm Riris down.
The bitter past.
I remembered the hand that was extended to me in my lonely past, and I whispered softly in Riris’s ear as I held her tightly.
“You were in so much pain and loneliness that you wanted to die, right? You didn’t know why you had to go through such hardships and you cursed the world countless times.”
“…….Uh.”
“But it’s okay. Right now, there’s no one who can hurt you or ignore you. I’m right in front of you and I won’t leave you alone.”
“Huuk…!”
“So you can cry as much as you want.”
Squeeze-!
Riris grabbed my clothes with her small and delicate hands.
She buried her face in my chest and said nothing. A quiet silence came over us.
As I was worried about what problem she might have, I realized that my clothes were gradually getting damp.
She was crying silently, even though I told her to cry her heart out.
What on earth made this girl unable to cry freely?
A bitter smile appeared on my face at the harsh reality.
I wanted to sigh deeply while looking up at the sky as it was.
But I couldn’t do that, thinking of the girl crying in my arms.
I just kept my mouth shut and gently patted Liris’s back.
The world of Dual was not always hopeful.
***
Liris, who finally calmed down with my comfort.
After that, she brought me and Phineas to her house without saying a word.
It was a shabby hut that was hardly a proper house, but I was grateful that there was enough space for the three of us.
It was more uncomfortable than the house to sit face to face with Liris and not say anything.
“Um, shall we introduce ourselves first?”
I knew Liris, but she didn’t know me.
It would be better to introduce ourselves to each other for a smooth conversation.
So I suggested that, but Liris was fidgeting with her fingers and hesitating.
“Is it awkward to talk to someone you don’t know?”
“I’m sorry. It’s been a long time since I had a conversation with someone like this…”
“Well, that can happen. But do you not talk to your parents often?”
“`
“They both passed away a long time ago……”
“I…I’m sorry.”
I said that because the picture on the wall looked recent, but I ended up ruining the mood.
I tried to somehow lighten up the tense atmosphere, but I only made it worse.
Should I bang my head against the wall?
“It’s okay. It’s my fault for hanging a family picture in a place like that.”
I only glanced at the picture very briefly without being noticed, but he caught on.
I felt like I was caught off guard in an unexpected place.
“What’s wrong with hanging a picture of your loved ones? It looks nice, doesn’t it?”
“…Is that so?”
“Yes. This time, it’s my fault for guessing without any clue just by looking at the picture. So don’t blame yourself.”
“Okay….”
The conversation died again and the atmosphere became stiff.
The atmosphere would be more flexible if there was some back and forth dialogue.
I wondered if there was any topic that would make the conversation flow easily.
“When was that picture taken?”
“Hey…you’re so rude!!”
I brought up a topic that might be a painful memory for Liris.
It was enough to make a mistake of being rude just before, but I made another one.
Sure enough, Liris was trembling his lips and opening and closing his mouth repeatedly.
“`
It meant a difficult topic to talk about.
I had to somehow change the subject.
“…This is a family photo I took when I was very young.”
“A photo from when you were young? You look pretty much the same as now, don’t you?”
“Demons have a strange trait that when they are photographed, they appear not as they were at the time, but as they are now. So in the photo, I am manifested as I am currently. When I took that photo, my mom was there too.”
But in the photo, there was only a man who looked like his father and Lilith.
Lilith’s mother was a demon, and she had left the world, so she disappeared from the photo.
It was a very bitter trait of their race.
Demons who could not leave memories with photos.
They had to face death without any traces. It was heartbreaking in many ways.
“Seeing that your father is fully in the photo, you are a half-demon, aren’t you?”
“Yes….”
“Are half-breeds rare?”
“The probability of a child being born between different races is very slim. If the couple’s dual muscles are not well developed, they can’t even mate.”
What is the connection between pregnancy and dual muscles?
No, wait, does that mean they can’t get pregnant if they can’t dual?
‘You have to draw a good card to get a good child.’ Is that it?
I thought I was getting used to it, but it was still a dizzying world.
“My dad was one of the apostles of justice, and my mom was a demon who renounced evil and fled to this village.”
“Your father was an apostle of justice?”
“Is it rare to see a half-blood like me?”
“Of course it is rare! The Apostles of Justice are those who pursue justice as their virtue and reject evil. They are a group that shudders at the sight of demons, who are known as the source of evil.”
“So one of the Apostles of Justice fell in love with a demon and even had a child with them?”
“You are exactly right. It is something that is more impossible than a half-blood.”
Isn’t it a common story to see enemies fall in love with each other in fairy tales?
They say that love can overcome anything.
I wondered if my common sense was wrong as I was puzzled.
“As you said, my father and mother were executed by the Apostles of Justice for loving each other and giving birth to me.”
“What…?”
I was shocked to the point of doubting my ears at the shocking statement that came out of Lilith’s mouth.
They destroyed a happy family for the reason of love, and pushed a frail girl’s life into the abyss of despair.
It was an unbelievable story, so I asked Lilith to tell me more details without shame.
Lilith nodded her head without saying anything.
That’s how the cruel story that befell the demon girl began.
Demon girl who took away cards? Who? Iblee?