TBR CH55

“One evening—”

Tarksius spoke while reminiscing. At first, it was difficult—those blurred lights and shadows existed in memories so distant they were almost nonexistent, buried alongside the death of the name “Tal.”  

Then, the dark god remembered the evening from a thousand years ago. The sky back then was actually no different from now, both tinged with a gloomy rose-red hue.  

The demon had just escaped a pursuit. He covered his striking ruby-red eyes with a hat and ordered a large mug of mead from the owner of the Reindeer Tavern, the drink foaming with snowy-white bubbles.  

He had liked that back then.  

Tarksius recalled whatever came to mind and shared it with Edwin. The bishop wanted to know everything, and so the demon began his tale from some unclear, indistinct night. A brief swirl of gray confusion flickered in Edwin’s pupils:  

Mead.

He made a note of the term. It was obvious—having grown up under the strictures of the Church, Edwin had never tasted anything other than expensive red wine, nor had he ever set foot in such a rowdy, mixed-crowd tavern.  

But the bishop thought it sounded sweet, perfectly suited to the demon before him.  

As if the tip of his tongue had suddenly tasted a long-sealed drop of sweetness, Tal froze slightly. The things he was remembering. The words had hovered in an ambiguous state before escaping his lips, shaking off the dust of time, faint yet vivid shadows of recollection—things he had believed long forgotten.  

After he became a god.  

After countless days and nights trapped in the bottle.  

Yet, just before the words left his tongue, those abandoned memories suddenly pulsed to life. He wasn’t Tal—so who was Tal? A being who had once truly, undeniably existed, though no one in the world remembered him now.  

And a thousand years ago, on that evening, there really had been a red-eyed demon who walked into a tavern and ordered a mug of mead.  

“Do you really want to know?”  

Tal asked Edwin again, “About my past. But dear bishop, it won’t help you in any way. There’s no need for you to understand me.”  

The demon’s eyes reflected the faint twilight filtering through the window.  

The bishop, however, seemed to be listening intently. This wasn’t a solemn occasion, yet Edwin appeared more genuine now than during any grand ritual, more sincere than when he listened to divine words.  

“I want to know,”  

Edwin said, “But… I can’t explain why.”  

It was the truth.  

So the god let the memories continue. Those crystalline fragments of the past glittered before him like shattered gemstones. He picked up every piece, even if they cut his fingers, and painstakingly pieced them back together.  

*  

Tal had always been on the run.  

But “running” didn’t define his life. If forced to choose a single word, the young demon would have unhesitatingly declared it to be “freedom.” His life was colorful, constantly meeting new people, walking new paths, a chaotic symphony of notes that was, in its own way, perfectly beautiful.  

To live freely.  

He was clever and cunning—nothing in the world could trap him. He had mastered a thousand and one disguises, always slipping away at the last moment. He could do almost anything, from mixing drinks to playing the seven-stringed lyre. He never slept in the same place twice, yet his footsteps had touched every place he had ever wished to see.  

At first, the words came haltingly.  

Getting a demon to lay bare his soul was, after all, the hardest thing. Edwin understood that.  

But what he didn’t know was that the god was slowly, from the depths of ten thousand years of waiting, reconstructing the faint outline of Tal’s shadow.  

“I like red.”  

The devil before him said, predictably:

“Rose-scented things? I’m not sure, but I think I always have. Hey, Edwin, have you ever had rose candy? It’s sweet too. I suppose I must have a sweet tooth—”  

Then, starting from some demon-experienced twilight, everything Tal said suddenly took on color. From a single point, vibrant threads spread out, weaving together his story.  

Mead. Tal spoke of it, then of the seven-stringed lyre in his memories, its strings like molten silver. Then came the escapes—watching dawn break from the canopy of an elven tree, navigating the ruins of a monster-infested arena after a disguise had unraveled.  

Though he was only recalling his own past, for the first time, Edwin saw a deeply buried bewilderment in the demon’s bright pomegranate-red eyes—a bewilderment that had accumulated over the years, endless and unresolved.  

As if, even as he spoke, the demon doubted whether these were truly his own experiences.  

Gathering fireflies under an ancient elven tree, the wind scattering them around Tal like golden rain;  

Lighting a blazing fire in a cavern along the vast Dragon’s Ridge, the scent of animal fat filling a solitary night, the flames once illuminating the face of a weary traveler.  

In the depths of a black lake within a cave, he had once dredged up a corpse’s finger bone, polished it into a ring, and sold it at a high price to a haunted merchant. That had added another line to his list of crimes.  

The ghost market teemed with strange travelers, and Tal had once wandered through the chilly air, arms crossed, searching for someone long dead to strike a bargain best left unmade.  

All of it felt like another’s story.  

All of it was his own lived truth.  

Over ten thousand distorted years in the bottle, Tarksius had chewed over these memories, time and again. He had once been so free, so happy, filled with absurd hopes for life—foolish to an unbearable degree.  

At first, those memories had given him hope.  

But as the relentless passage of time revealed its cruelty, the bottled demon could no longer bear to think of the world outside. He coldly realized there would never be freedom again, nor should he cling to the past. In the end, he could no longer tell whether the void of the bottle was reality, or if the vivid life outside had been the real one.  

And so, he forgot.  

Tarksius was the new name the demon gave himself, for the day he shattered the bottle was the day he shattered his past self.  

Every time he killed a powerful enemy thrown into the bottle by the Church, he secretly kept a sliver of their bones—no easy feat, avoiding the detection of holy light, requiring utmost care. Yet, over an unimaginable span of time, he succeeded.  

The bones were painstakingly sharpened into a blade with his own flesh and blood, and that blade was plunged into the heart of the demon named Tal.  

The bottle shattered. It could no longer hold him.  

Tarksius felt no longing for freedom. He gained a divine name, and the world trembled at the descent of a new god. There was nothing he could not do, nothing that could trap him, nothing he could not obtain.  

And then?  

The story began with a young demon ordering mead in a tavern and ended abruptly somewhere in the world. Tal had accidentally said too much. Watching the dazed bishop, he smiled faintly.  

Recounting the tale of a demon from a thousand years ago to Edwin gave him a strange feeling.  

For instance, that soul he had declared dead was now slowly reviving in the gray pupils of the human before him. Tal had not existed in this world—but now he did, because there was once again someone who knew him. This was not the kind of bond the god had anticipated.  

Observing interesting things was one of the few remaining hobbies of the divine.  

But that didn’t mean he was willing to linger for anything in this world. The God of Darkness had no interest in destroying a person. He didn’t mind helping Edwin, didn’t mind accompanying him, didn’t mind offering a hand to rest on when needed. But that was all. He could walk away at any time, because “Tal” was just a borrowed name.  

And so, the current situation left even the god surprised.

The bishop wants to understand him. Is this not right? The other’s soul is constantly burning, craving power and fame, willing to climb by any means necessary. In this life, he has never tried to get close to any other being. In his vision, there is no need to try. But Edwin asked three times.

Even if Edwin asked a third time, the dark god could choose not to answer.

But he answered anyway.

This was not the bond the dark god had envisioned.

He had given humans too intimate a distance and too much leniency. The bishop’s black curls blurred as night fell, and he unconsciously drew closer, often holding tightly.

Ah, that embrace, the demon thought, was not part of the plan.

*

Then, Edwin slowly blinked.

Tal had said far more than he expected. The bishop had never tried to understand another person like this before. He began to feel grateful for his excellent memory, firmly imprinting every detail the demon loved in his mind.

This was a method to tame a demon.

But the gray mist in his eyes deepened as he listened, then gradually melted away, thinning. Hearing Tal’s stories was like listening to one strange dream after another. Everything existed in this world alongside him, yet as the bishop of the Holy Church, he could never witness the experiences the demon had lived through.

Above the bishop was the pope, who wielded supreme divine authority, and Edwin would reach further toward the royal family.

In the best-case scenario, he would become the highest-ranking human.

But in turn, he would remain at the heart of the continent, spending the rest of his life in the Church. The Church was not a suitable environment for keeping a demon. For the first time, Edwin thought this way—though he knew he shouldn’t.

Tal must stay. He is not allowed to leave.

“I’m glad—” Edwin said, “I’m glad you’re willing to tell me all this. I will remember it.”

His demon only now seemed to realize he had said too much, eyeing him with a strange gaze, as if scrutinizing an object, sharp and wary like a beast.

The bishop hesitated.

“I want…”

Edwin would never choose to evade. Besides, now it was he who wanted the other to stay. He tried to make it sound serious and credible.

“Tal, I want you to stay. Name your price. I don’t mean now, or when the contract ends. I mean forever, until my death as a human. I know demons live long lives.”

The final addition was hardly a bargaining chip—more like a cheap trick. But the bishop didn’t care.

The room was almost devoid of light, and neither of them intended to light a candle. In the darkness, the demon’s outline took on a soft, mysterious beauty, his edges blurred into something ethereal.

“Should I ask ‘why,’ or should I remind you that if you want to keep me, it doesn’t have to be so troublesome?”

Tal was referring to the contract. It was how he had forced Edwin to accept his presence in the Church, under his protection. But the contract the demon had exploited could just as easily be turned against him.

“I don’t want to use that method.”

Edwin raised his eyes. Even through the veil of darkness, the demon could see the bishop’s gaze.

“I want you to stay willingly, Tal. You hate having your freedom restrained, so I won’t do what you despise. Everything you love, I can give you—except freedom, but only for a hundred years or so.”

“…That sounds like a good deal.”

In the dark, Edwin couldn’t see the demon’s expression clearly, only hearing Tal’s soft laugh.

He seemed to lean closer.

“But what if I refuse? Dear bishop, do you think everything in the world can be obtained through exchange like this?”

A dangerous tension hummed in the air.

Yet the demon wasn’t entirely teasing. There was genuine skepticism in his probing.

This… was the worst-case scenario.

Edwin thought, Fine. Time to discard the pretense. No method was off the table.

The thought flickered only for a moment before the bishop’s pupils constricted sharply. The demon, like some feline creature, wrapped his arms around him, nuzzling his neck, leaving a trail of warmth.

Whenever Tal was in the room, the scent of roses lingered. But only when the demon pressed close enough for skin-to-skin contact did the fragrance become real, as if Edwin were cradling a bouquet.

The contrast between the sharp words and the tender touch was stark. Tal’s black hair spilled over Edwin’s shoulders like a spider’s web, marking its prey.

“Edwin,” he murmured, “tell me what it is you truly want now.”

—This was the first time the bishop revised his answer. He knew his desires had grown too vast to hide.

“You already know,” Edwin replied without hesitation, gently stroking Tal’s cascading hair. “Those haven’t changed. But now, I also want… you.”

“Me?”

The demon’s lips curled. Even in the dim light, Edwin could see Tal’s striking red eyes—translucent, almost gemlike, shimmering faintly in the dark.

“Every contract requires a name,” the devil whispered, coaxing. “So say it again. What is it you want?”

“…Tal. I want Tal.”

Edwin realized he was utterly at the other’s mercy. Even if the shadow looming over him was just a low-ranking demon he could control, he had no intention of breaking free.

Their breaths mingled. Some part of the bishop’s mind warned him this line of questioning mattered.

But soon, he had no energy left to dwell on it.

Because the next moment, pressed against his neck was unmistakably a kiss. The demon’s sharp teeth grazed the pulse beneath his skin, trailing upward. Edwin’s fingers clenched, only for Tal to pry them open.

Even without considering the incubus bloodline, this was too much…

Edwin hazily felt as though he were standing in a burning rose garden, the heat around him overwhelming. The words he had just spoken lingered in his mouth, echoing in his heart.

I want Tal.

The demon gently separated Edwin’s fingers to keep him from hurting himself. But he forgot that Edwin was stubborn when it came to what he desired. So Tal didn’t manage to stop Edwin from lifting his hand.

“Tal…”

He called the demon’s name, then brushed his fingers through the silken strands of his hair, coaxing him to lift his head from the crook of his neck. The demon looked puzzled, but the mood between them was unmistakable, so he allowed it.

This was so obedient.

So Edwin leaned in and kissed him—properly, on the lips, where the demon’s sweet rose scent was strongest.

The bishop was pleased to see Tal’s expression finally flicker with surprise. He swallowed the vow along with the kiss, and the demon didn’t resist.

Now this—

This was a real kiss.