Kotori was curled underneath the sheets as she silently watched the Demon Lord.

He seemed to be lost in his thoughts, focused on his paperwork. His brow was deeply furrowed, and stray bangs of black hair drooped in front of his eyes. Periodically, he would put the documents down in his lap and brush his hair back. Kotori realized somewhat belatedly that the Demon Lord only had one arm. There was a neat stump on the other side of Mephistos's torso, and the disability impaired his ability to work efficiently.

Although most of his injuries were healed, the arm had not grown back.

The sheep girl stared blankly at the stump.

The Demon Lord wasn't invincible. She suddenly had a flashback — the blood splattering in her face and a spurting head decapitated right in front of her. She remembered the frightening glint in the Hero's eyes and his ravenous wide-toothed grin. Tears welled up uncontrollably in Kotori's eyes. It was almost as if the plug on her feelings had suddenly been unleashed.

She had no idea why she was abruptly emotional out of the blue.

The entire episode had been a dissociative experience for Kotori. She had gotten herself through the crisis by detaching herself from her feelings. However, now that everything had calmed down, her emotions rebounded like a brick wall. The gravity of the experience slammed her like a truck.

She wiped her damp eyes and curled into a smaller ball.

(D-Demon Lord?)

She verbalized several words hesitantly in her head.

However, there was no response. 

The Demon Lord was absorbed in his work, and he appeared not to hear anything. Presumably, he had stopped eavesdropping into her thoughts. The man was thinking carefully about something, and he seemed to ignore Kotori's existence entirely. He chewed on his lip slightly as he leaned back against the headboard. A firm pillow provided support for his bare torso.

Kotori rubbed her eyes further and exhaled. 

She was fine with this. It made her feel comfortable, actually. Clearly, Kotori was not a priority in the Demon Lord's thoughts, and she didn't sense any predatory thirst or danger from him. It was better if she was a background character in his mind. Both of them were naked, but the sheep girl felt strangely safe. In fact, the atmosphere was remarkably nostalgic. 

She wondered what the Demon Lord was so focused on.

She pushed herself up to her knees, while pulling the blankets around her like a shawl. Kotori inched closer to Mephistos's side and peered over his shoulder at the papers he was reading. She wasn't sure how he would react to her intrusive prying, but Kotori pushed her luck. The Demon Lord glanced at her once, but he seemed indifferent to her presence. He didn't stop Kotori from reading along.

She tried her best to decipher the runes on the documents, but it was a slow and laborious process. Despite the fact that she had spent nine months in a bottle trying to memorize words off of book covers and accounting ledgers, it was not an optimal learning environment. Kotori had a limited vocabulary, and she was nowhere close to literate. She could recognize perhaps 60% of the runes on the page, but she had to guess extensively to fill in the blanks.

The Demon Lord quickly noticed Kotori's difficulty with reading.

"You're not fluent," he remarked factually.

Kotori looked up.

"It is very strange. No ordinary person can read the Demon script. However, it is rare for an educated person in my country to leave their studies incomplete. You do not come from a respectable family."

Kotori emptied her mind.

She did not wish for the Demon Lord to peer into her thoughts right now.

Mephistos shook his head disapprovingly as he looked back down at his documents.

"You are quite a mystery, Miss Not-Witch," he said simply.

Meanwhile, he reached out with his hand, and a small book from a nearby bookshelf came flying through the air. It was only as thick as a children's novel, and the leather-bound cover was soft and flexible. There was an illustration on the cover with a spider and a fish. He caught the book deftly and passed it to Kotori.

"Try reading this instead."

The sheep girl blinked a few times in confusion.

However, Mephistos went back to his paperwork, and Kotori was left fumbling with a small red book in her hands. 

She paused for a moment, looking at him.

Then she opened the cover of the story.

+ + +

Kotori gradually loss track of time. She distracted her anxious thoughts with a fable about a golden carp that was most terrified of water spiders. Frankly, she couldn't help herself. As a little girl, she had practically devoured her entire small-town library, and books were a form of constant nourishment. Her favorite thing about moving to Tokyo for school was that there was a large bookstore in Shibuya a block away from campus, and she spent many of her afternoons camped out among the shelves.

However, Kotori's reading reverie was interrupted with a knock on the door.

"Come in," Mephistos said.

The bedroom door opened a slight crack.

"My Lord, you would like to have your meeting here?" A raspy voice asked hesitantly.

"Yes, I am still recovering my strength. I will hear your reports from my bed."

Three monstrous-looking individuals filed into the room.

Kotori closed her book and shrank underneath the covers. Somehow, the new visitors suddenly made her feel self-conscious. It was easy to forget about any sense of embarrassment or shame when the Demon Lord hardly batted an eye at her, but these demons unanimously stared at Kotori with scrutinizing looks of intrigue. Clearly, they were not used to her presence.

"Your new homunculus appears to be quite happy," a bull-looking demon remarked casually.

"Indeed," Mephistos nodded as he moved his stack of paperwork to the side.

Kotori flushed all of a sudden.

Happy? Her?

Surely they must be misunderstanding something?

However, they did not touch the topic any further, and proceeded onto other business.

"Is this all of you? Where is Ran, Plefka, Malboge, and the others?"

The three demons looked hesitantly amongst each other. There was a dark and grim look on their faces.

The harpy was the one to speak. Her talons were clenched, and she looked away as if trying to stop herself from lashing out emotionally. Kotori realized at that her eyes were puffy and red.

"They are dead." Her voice was hollow.

"Ah."

"The situation is not good. Our losses were astronomical."

"That seems to be the case."

"The barrier is still broken. We cannot withstand another direct assault by the human armies once they regroup." 

"That is a... realistic... assessment," Mephistos remarked slowly.

"I think we need to surrender the surface, and evacuate our people underground."

∎

ohko

Sorry for this super delayed chapter. I debated for a very long time how I wanted the next arc of the story to go, and I just couldn't decide. I spent a lot of time playing go this past week, and next week I will start going back to work (no more quarantine! >.<). In either case, I think a little bit more of the Kingdom Building aspects of the story will probably start to arise in the next couple chapters. I think we'll be able to see a little bit more of the world, and I hope people don't find this direction of the story too dull! Writing music for this chapter.