~Scene Continues, Soutarou POV~
The crystal glowed softly…
Lavinia’s posture became still…
The energy was unmistakably sacred…
Not borrowed holiness…
Not a human magician reproducing the properties of light through a formula…
No, it came naturally and directly from Soutarou’s existence and Lavinia’s earlier concern eased slightly…
Perhaps the holy quality really did come from some blessing…
Perhaps Soutarou carried the blood of an exorcist, Saint, or some forgotten holy lineage.
Soutarou opened one eye and cautiously asked, “Is that good?”
Lavinia nodded and answered, “Very…
Hold it steady.”
The golden thread trembled, as Lavinia leaned closer and instructed, “Now stop directing it toward the crystal…
Keep the power outside your body and allow it to settle naturally around your hand.”
Soutarou withdrew the thread.
Golden light wrapped around his fingers.
For a moment, it remained warm and pure…
Then the light flickered before a thin black vein spread through the gold.
Lavinia’s smile disappeared.
As she watched…
The black radiance didn’t corrupt the holy power… Instead the two colors shifted into one another as naturally as sunlight moving beneath a passing shadow…
Gold became black and black became gold, but both remained holy.
Lavinia’s sapphire-blue eyes widened…
There were very few powers in the supernatural world capable of producing such a contradiction…
Only one lineage was infamous enough that the answer surfaced immediately…
Lavinia unknowingly whispered, “Valefor…”
Soutarou’s concentration broke…
The light vanished from his hand as he slowly turned toward Lavinia and repeated, “Valefor…?”
The name pulled against an old piece of memory…
A book he had skimmed or read about during his former life…
‘Valefor…
The Lesser Key of Solomon?
Right…
Ars Goetia…
One of the demon names listed there.’
He couldn’t remember its rank…
Its appearance…
Or even what the original text claimed it could do…
But the name was familiar enough for one fact to become obvious.
‘That is definitely a Devil name.’
Soutarou’s hazel-golden eyes tightened around the edges as he carefully asked, “Why did you call me that?”
Lavinia seemed to realize she had spoken aloud…
She hesitated.
Her gaze moved toward Mamako before returning to Soutarou.
Lavinia slowly explained, “Valefor is the name of an old Devil family…
One of the Pillar Houses.”
Soutarou’s expression sharpened as Lavinia continued carefully, choosing each word as though stepping across thin ice, “Their ancestors were once Angels…
But they rejected Heaven and chose to become Devils.
They carried or rather stole a portion of their holy authority with them, and their descendants inherited both demonic power and the ability to wield sacred light.”
Soutarou stared at her.
‘Former Angels who willingly turned themselves into Devils…?
And stole holy authority on the way out?
That’s so ridiculously overpowered it sounds like something a fanfiction author invented.’
Lavinia’s expression became uneasy as she softly added, “They were also…
Very disliked.”
Soutarou raised one eyebrow as Lavinia glanced aside before correcting herself, “Hated, actually…
By many…
Devils, Angels, and Fallen Angels…
You name it.”
Mamako’s arms tightened around Soutarou from behind as Soutarou calmly asked, “Where are they now?”
Lavinia became quiet and that silence answered more than her eventual words.
Lavinia lowered her eyes and gently said, “House Valefor disappeared a long time ago.”
‘Disappeared…’
Soutarou almost laughed…
A bloodline that could use holy and demonic power…
A family feared and hated by every side of the Biblical conflict…
And they had simply disappeared?
‘Sure…
And I’m a perfectly ordinary Japanese child.’
The warmth around him suddenly felt colder…
His mother had almost no records…
No photographs…
No relatives…
Nothing beyond a name and a death during childbirth…
A supposedly ordinary man who had somehow fathered the surviving child of an infamous Devil lineage.
‘Were they actually accidents…?’
The question surfaced quietly, but Soutarou pushed it down just as quickly…
He had no proof…
And allowing Mamako or Lavinia to hear that suspicion would only pull them toward whatever might have killed his parents…
He would investigate it himself when he possessed the strength to survive the answer.
For now…
Soutarou turned his head slightly and watched Mamako from the corner of his eye…
Her violet eyes remained fixed upon him…
She wasn’t recoiling…
She wasn’t afraid…
But she’d become strangely quiet.
The old fear inside Soutarou’s chest stirred as he forced a small smile and carefully said, “It doesn’t matter…
I have you guys.”
The words were sincere, but beneath them rested a quiet question he was too frightened to ask directly…
Mamako’s expression softened painfully.
Her hand rose and rested against his cheek.
Mamako hesitated before quietly asking, “So-kun…
If you really are part of such a powerful Devil family…”
She lowered her gaze and Mamako’s voice became smaller as she continued, “Would you still want an ordinary human like me?”
Soutarou froze…
Of every possible response…
That wasn’t one he had imagined.
Mamako nervously tightened her fingers around the fabric of her apron before trying to explain, “You might live much longer than me…
You might have another family somewhere…
People who understand your power better…
And I’m only…”
Her voice trailed away, but Soutarou stared at her…
Three years of fear rose into his throat all at once.
He tried to speak, but nothing came out.
Mamako looked at his expression, then at the way his small hands had clenched against his knees…
Realization slowly entered her violet eyes…
Mamako’s face crumbled as she softly whispered, “Oh…
So-kun…”
Soutarou looked away and his voice came out strained as he attempted, “I thought…
If I wasn’t human…
Maybe you…”
He couldn’t finish as Mamako moved before he could try.
She pulled Soutarou against her chest with enough force to lift him halfway from the cushion…
One arm wrapped around his back while the other cradled his head beneath her chin.
Mamako desperately denied, “Never.”
Her fingers trembled inside his hair as Mamako firmly repeated, “Never, So-kun.”
Soutarou remained stiff within her embrace…
Mamako’s voice broke as she continued, “You could be a Devil…
An Angel…
A dragon…
Or something nobody has ever heard of, and you would still be my So-kun.”
Her hold tightened and Mamako emotionally promised, “There is nothing you could become that would make me stop loving you.”
Soutarou’s forehead slowly lowered against her shoulder…
He swallowed before quietly answering, “And I don’t care if you’re human.”
Mamako’s eyes shimmered while Soutarou clutched the back of her apron and continued, “You were my family before I knew what I was…
You’re still my family now.”
Mamako released a broken little laugh before pressing several rapid kisses into his hair.
Before kissing his cheeks repeatedly and nibbling as though she wanted to eat him up before she slowly nuzzled her face against his…
Lavinia watched them from across the table with wet eyes which Mamako noticed immediately.
Without releasing Soutarou, Mamako stretched one arm toward her and emotionally called, “Nia-chan too!”
Lavinia blinked and then Mamako grabbed her wrist and pulled.
Lavinia fell forward with a surprised yelp and landed against the pair.
Mamako wrapped her free arm around Lavinia and declared, “Nobody is leaving this family because of something as small as being human or a Devil!”
Lavinia sniffled before softly correcting, “That usually isn’t considered a small difference, Mako-nee…”
Mamako tightened the hug as Lavinia immediately amended, “But I agree.”
Soutarou remained trapped between them…
His face pressed against Mamako’s shoulder while Lavinia’s blonde hair tickled his cheek.
‘Warm…’
The fear that had followed him since awakening in this world didn’t disappear completely…
But for the first time…
It felt considerably smaller.
~One Hour Later~
Lavinia suggested ending the lesson for the night, but Soutarou refused and as usual Mamako supported him immediately.
As such Lavinia lost the vote two to one.
And so after tea, several snacks, and Mamako checking Soutarou’s temperature twice because emotional revelations were somehow capable of causing fevers… and after Mamako’s maternal overdrive they once again returned to the living-room floor.
Lavinia drew a simple magical formula across a sheet of paper.
Several interlocking circles surrounded a collection of numbers, symbols, and directional marks that defined the intended phenomenon.
Lavinia placed the paper before Soutarou and explained, “We’ll begin with a basic illumination spell used by human magicians.
Soutarou studied the formula…
The structure made sense…
One section determined output…..
Another stabilized the shape…
Several symbols and sigils defined the absence of heat…
And the outer circle prevented the light from drawing more energy than intended.
Lavinia pointed toward the center and instructed, “Release a small amount of power here…
Follow the formula outward and complete each section in order.”
Soutarou placed one finger against the paper…
Golden energy gathered beneath it…
He followed the first path…
Then the second…
The formula responded, but something felt wrong.
Not incorrect…
Unnatural…
Like carefully writing instructions for something his body already understood how to do…
The light flickered and died.
Mamako immediately encouraged, “You almost had it, So-kun!”
Soutarou tried again…
He adjusted the amount of energy…
Corrected the angle…
Followed Lavinia’s instructions precisely…
The formula glowed halfway before collapsing.
Lavinia thoughtfully watched and explained, “Your energy keeps trying to move ahead of the calculation.”
Soutarou frowned and questioned, “How do I stop it?”
Lavinia considered the problem before uncertainly answering, “Tell it to wait.”
Mamako blinked, while Soutarou stared at Lavinia before she flusteredly defended, “It makes sense when you do it.”
Soutarou looked back toward the formula.
He attempted a third time.
The same resistance returned.
His energy didn’t want to crawl through predetermined lines.
It wanted an answer.
A result.
Something to become.
Soutarou’s irritation grew.
‘It’s just light.’
He stared at his empty palm.
‘A small ball of light.
No heat…
No explosion…
Just something bright enough to see.’
The formula beneath his hand stopped mattering as Soutarou simply pictured it.
Golden light burst into existence above his palm.
*Fwoom.*
A perfect sphere floated several inches above his skin…
Warm…
Stable…
And bright enough to illuminate the entire room…
Mamako gasped before happily clapping her hands.
Mamako proudly exclaimed, “You did it, So-kun!”
Soutarou stared at the sphere…
Black veins slowly crawled across its golden surface…
For one breath, the light became completely dark while somehow continuing to illuminate everything around it…
Then it shifted back to gold.
Lavinia didn’t celebrate, instead her sapphire-blue eyes moved from the untouched formula to the sphere above Soutarou’s hand.
Lavinia quietly said, “Sou-chan…
You didn’t complete the calculation.”
Soutarou looked down…
The formula had barely activated…
He slowly answered, “No…”
His gaze returned to the golden light…
Soutarou softly admitted, “I just imagined what I wanted.”
Lavinia’s expression became gentle and painfully certain as she quietly confirmed, “Then that was Devil magic.”
The final piece of Soutarou’s false hope shattered…
Touji’s holy power hadn’t proven he was human…
His lack of pain around sacred energy hadn’t proven he was human…
Even the golden light floating above his palm had never proven he was human.
He was simply something far stranger…
A Devil whose ancestors had stolen the right to stand inside the light…
Soutarou stared into the glowing sphere as black radiance briefly moved beneath its surface once more.
‘So…
I really am a Devil.’
Mamako moved behind him without saying a word…
Her arms wrapped around his small body…
Her cheek rested gently against the top of his head…
And beneath the golden light filling the room, Soutarou allowed himself to sink into her warmth.