~Soutarou Takashina POV~
Soutarou accepted another piece of candy from Irina.
Irina smiled brightly and asked, “Is it good?”
Soutarou nodded and calmly answered, “It’s good.”
Behind them, two heads protruded from opposite sides of a distant tree…
Soutarou didn’t turn, he really didn’t need to with how obvious those idiots were.
‘They do realize I noticed them ten minutes ago, right?’
Mamako’s chestnut-brown hair was clearly visible from one side.
Lavinia’s blonde hair practically glowed beneath the afternoon sunlight from the other.
Occasionally, the pair disappeared behind the trunk…
Only to emerge seconds later from slightly different positions.
‘Idiots…
The both of them.
Seriously…
Sometimes I genuinely feel like I’m the one raising those two.’
‘Three heads in the house, only one functioning brain…’
Irina leaned closer and called, “Soutarou?”
Soutarou hummed, “Hm?”
Irina puffed her cheeks and accused, “You weren’t listening!”
Soutarou calmly denied, “I was listening.”
Irina challenged, “Then what did I say?”
Soutarou paused as Irina crossed her arms and triumphantly declared with a huff, “See!”
Soutarou sighed before admitting, “I was just thinking.”
Irina curiously asked, “About what?”
Soutarou’s gaze moved toward the man standing near the park entrance…
Touji Shidou had arrived several minutes earlier to collect his daughter.
He was friendly…
Polite…
And far more observant than the average human.
The first time they met, Touji’s attention had lingered upon Soutarou for several seconds too long.
The man had most likely sensed something.
Probably the immense reservoir hidden inside his small body.
‘Ah crud…
We’ll we’re about to find out real fast whether or not I’m a devil or not.’
~Touji Shidou POV, Several Minutes Earlier~
Touji quietly watched his daughter laugh beside the brown-haired boy.
At first glance, Soutarou Takashina appeared entirely ordinary.
A little tall for his age perhaps…
Unusually calm…
And possessed of eyes that seemed far older than the rest of him.
Yet beneath that already impressive exterior rested power…
An immense amount of it.
Touji’s senses couldn’t fully measure the child’s reserve, but what he could perceive was extraordinary.
More importantly…
It carried light.
Not the pure holy power of a trained exorcist.
Not the blessing of an Angel.
But something grand and deeply rooted within the child’s existence…
A holy quality that wrapped around the rest of his existence.
Touji’s expression softened.
<What an extraordinary child…
Perhaps he was born beneath a divine blessing…
Or perhaps one of his ancestors carried the blood of a Saint.>
Whatever the answer, Touji felt no demonic corruption from him…
Only power…
Potential…
And a strange sacred warmth.
Touji smiled faintly.
<Irina truly found herself a remarkable friend.>
~Soutarou Takashina POV~
Touji carried a power of his own…
It was warmer than Lavinia-nee’s magic…
Sharper too…
Though nowhere near as deep as Lavinia-nee’s…
If Soutarou had describe Touji’s power…
It was like there was a faint purifying pressure within it that Soutarou instinctively associated with the Church.
‘Holy power?’
That was his current theory…
What interested him most was that standing near Touji caused him no discomfort…
No headache…
No instinctive aversion.
If Soutarou were a Devil, exposure to holy power should’ve caused some type of reaction.
Yet there was nothing.
Even stranger…
The energy inside his own body felt faintly similar.
Not identical…
But close enough for Soutarou to recognize a shared quality.
‘So I’m probably not a Devil…
A magician with a holy affinity?
A church bloodline?
Maybe my mother was an exorcist…’
The conclusion eased one of his oldest fears…
Mamako-nee wouldn’t awaken one morning to discover she’d unknowingly raised a Devil…
She wouldn’t look at him with hatred…
She wouldn’t recoil from him…
She wouldn’t abandon him.
Soutarou’s fingers tightened slightly around the candy wrapper…
He knew Mamako-nee better than that…
He knew she loved him…
But somewhere deep inside him remained the terrified three-year-old who’d awakened without a name, without a past, and without anyone in the world.
The possibility of losing Mamako…
Or Lavinia…
Or even Irina now…
Still frightened him far more than he wanted to admit…
Soutarou glanced at Irina.
In the original story, she’d been Issei Hyoudou’s childhood friend…
She’d leave Japan…
Return years later…
And be pulled into the chaos surrounding him.
Yet Irina had never met Issei.
She’d met Soutarou instead…
A small, selfish part of him felt relieved by that…
Another part felt something uglier…
Possessive…
Jealous of a relationship that hadn’t even formed…
Afraid that one day the story would correct itself and take her away from him.
‘She’s my friend.’
The thought came way too quickly…
Like wayyyy too quickly…
Soutarou’s eyes narrowed faintly.
‘No…
She’s a person…
Not a prize…
Not some heroine slot I stole from the original protagonist…
But that doesn’t mean I have to stand aside and let canon take her.’
Irina leaned closer before nervously fidgeting with the hem of her shirt…
Soutarou noticed the sudden change and asked, “What is it?”
Irina’s cheeks turned faintly pink…
She glanced toward her father near the entrance…
Then toward Soutarou…
Then down at her hands.
Irina hesitantly explained, “Papa said we might have to move someday because of his work.”
Soutarou’s expression dimmed a bit before Irina quickly added, “Not now!
He said not for a while…
But maybe later.”
Soutarou quietly repeated, “Move…
huh?”
A faint pressure tightened inside his chest…
There it was again…
The fear that people could simply disappear…
His old life had vanished…
His father had died…
His mother had never even been there.
Mamako and Lavinia had become his family almost by accident…
Now Irina was telling him that one day she might leave too…
Irina looked at his quiet expression before suddenly grabbing his hand.
Irina earnestly said, “But even if I leave, we’ll still be together!”
Soutarou glanced toward her…
Irina lifted her little finger and brightly proposed, “Let’s promise!”
Soutarou stared at the offered finger…
Irina continued with increasing enthusiasm, “We’ll always be together!
Even when we’re adults!” Find the original chapter at g.com.
Soutarou smiled a bit and his worries eased, before Soutarou’s attention drifted back toward Touji’s power…
Holy power…
The Church…
Heaven…
The system left behind after God’s death.
Sacred Gears still functioned…
Blessings still worked…
Angels still received power.
That meant the Heaven System remained active despite its creator’s absence…
An enormous divine machine running without its true administrator…
Maintained by Michael, who lacked complete control over it.
‘A system that large has to possess weaknesses…
Errors.
Old pathways that no one can properly monitor…
And if my power really is holy in nature…’
Irina shook their joined hands and impatiently called, “Soutarou!”
Soutarou absentmindedly answered, “Sure.”
Irina’s eyes brightened…
Soutarou continued thinking aloud, “We’ll stay together forever.”
Irina’s entire face turned bright red.
She hurriedly linked her little finger with his before happily declaring, “Then it’s a promise!
When we grow up, we’ll get married and stay together forever and ever!
We’re having at least 5 babies…!”
Soutarou nodded without fully processing the second half and calmly replied, “Right.”
From behind the distant tree came two muffled gasps.
*GASP!*
*GASP!*
Soutarou ignored them…
His mind had already moved elsewhere.
‘The Heaven System is probably my best chance…
I don’t have a teacher…
I don’t know what I am…
And I can’t exactly walk into a church and ask them to examine the suspicious supernatural child living in Kuoh.’
He glanced toward Touji again.
‘But if the system recognizes holy power…
Maybe I can trick it…
No…
Not trick it directly…
Send something inside…
A probe…
A message.’
‘Or…’
Soutarou’s hazel-golden eyes sharpened.
‘A virus.’
The concept was ridiculous…
Dangerous…
Possibly impossible…
But so was reincarnation…
So was meeting Mamako Takashina…
So was finding Lavinia Reni slumped over on a park bench…
And so was the immense reservoir of power currently sleeping inside his body…
Soutarou slowly smiled.
‘If I can find something connected to Heaven…
Something small enough to modify…
Something the system will naturally accept back inside…
Then maybe I can use it to have my own cheat just like those reincarnators from those novels…
And in this case I’ll have Heaven…
And maybe, just maybe I can learn what I am…’
‘And if I’m already inside…’
His smile became faintly devilish despite the holy warmth surrounding his power.
‘Why stop at looking?’
Irina continued happily swinging their linked hands, completely unaware that her childhood marriage promise had been accepted by a boy currently designing a hostile takeover of the remnants of God of the Bible.
Behind the tree, Mamako bit down upon her handkerchief with enough force to tear it…
Lavinia stared at their joined fingers with a darkening expression…
Touji watched his daughter’s new friend and cheered her on silently…
While Soutarou actively thought about committing sacrilege…
If Heaven possessed the answers he needed…
Then he would simply break in and take them…
And maybe along the way pilfer God of the Bible’s corpse while he was at it.