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Recalling his first memory is a funny thing. It’s like there’s a wall in his mind. On one side, there is this vast, black unknown that he cannot reach with any tool or amount of effort. On the other side, his consciousness simply blinks into existence, his mind flickering into life like a struck match.
Douma didn’t have any memory of how he got into this room, but he knew why he was in it. The knowledge of who he was and what he was doing was just there , as much a part of him as his rainbow colored eyes.
In the room with him, kowtowing before his little podium, was a girl barely older than he was. She was crying softly, begging him to ask the gods to lessen her father’s rage, to show her how to make him love her.
Douma tried not to frown. He wasn’t supposed to frown, to judge, to give actual advice. He was meant to sit there, smile softly, and tell people that their prayers had been heard. But this little girl just wouldn’t stop crying (had he ever known her name?), so he climbed down from his place of honor and reverence, stumbling a little as he did so, to pat her on the head.
It always made him feel better to get head pats from Mother. He didn’t have a single memory of getting one, but it was just one of those things he knew to be true, just like how he knew he couldn’t actually talk to the gods. Ah, but he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone that.
The girl flinched under his touch, jumping up and away to stare at him with fearful eyes. This time he did frown, making the poor thing in front of him cry harder. She shook as she reluctantly dragged herself back to him, telling him she was sorry.
Douma broke the rules by telling her there was nothing to be sorry for-- by telling her something Father hadn’t approved first-- but it made her feel better, and he got to give her a head pat! The girl seemed to like it, even if her crying never stopped.
“I wish Father would touch me like this,” she’d whimpered miserably. “He only ever hits me when I make him mad… Please, Lord, tell me how to make him happy!”
“Give me time to ask the gods,” he said, finally back to his father’s script.
Douma, of course, couldn’t ask the gods for advice, but his parents might know what to do. They were very smart people, after all!
--
Father was annoyed with his questions. The girl’s dad was a respected pillar of their community. Father spent a long time talking about how this man was good and excellent and right, ranting about how terrible his wife was for raising an awful liar for a daughter.
When he was finally done, he sent for Mother, who made Douma memorize a speech about the sins of falsehoods for him to preach at Father’s side. This speech was supposed to have come to him in a dream, the words spoken to him by Buddha himself.
This was the first time Douma began to wonder if his parents were just a bit silly.
The girl died.
She choked to death on her morning rice.
Her mother was shunned by the whole cult for the negligence that led to the death of her own child.
The woman’s sister came to Douma to confess her fears not a week later. She had seen the bruises on both the girl and her mother, heard their cries at night, knew how the father stank of alcohol and other women more nights than not. She asked him if there was more she could have done to protect her niece.
Her parting words were, “At least she doesn’t have to suffer anymore.”
Douma tried, really tried to speak to the gods that night. He sat before his statues of the gods, burning incense from dusk until dawn, praying long and hard without sleeping for answers.
Had the girl choked to death? Did her father really hit her like she said? Could something have been done?
No one answered him.
A child was dead. Weren’t the gods supposed to care about this kind of thing?
Perhaps there was no one there to care.
How sad.
More people came to him, all saying the same things about the girl and her parents. All of them wondered if they could have done something different.
Douma didn’t have the answer. The gods, if they were there, didn’t have an answer, either.
Father had an easy answer; the girl had choked on her rice. That was the truth.
At least, that was his truth.
The girl’s mother came to him, begging for forgiveness, wailing about how she wasn’t strong enough to protect her daughter, and pleading to the gods for divine retribution against her husband for all his crimes.
Douma tried again, tried with all his might to do what he was supposedly born to do, but again, there was no answer.
The woman was found hanging from a tree a week after her visit to him.
Douma didn’t go looking for answers this time, for he knew there was no one to give them to him.
At least the poor woman wouldn’t have to live with her pain anymore. Death was peaceful, or so he was told by everyone who attended the funerals.
He remembered another woman quite vividly. Another lost soul seeking guidance, for in her belly was his father's child.
Douma had told her he would offer her prayers to the gods and gave her blessings of good health, as he was supposed to when pregnant women came to him.
But he was ultimately confused. How could she be with child if she wasn't married? How could she be carrying the baby of a man married to a different woman?
It made no sense.
Had she stolen his sibling from his mother?
Douma resolved to ask.
While he didn’t remember the conversation he had with Mother, he could easily recall the darkened look on her face as she left the room.
All of them were dead. The nameless woman and his would-be sibling, Mother and Father. All dead. Just like that.
Douma wanted to feel sad. He really did. But there was just so much blood. It was everywhere.
Even on the ceiling.
How was anyone ever supposed to clean it?
It was the only thing he could focus on.
He didn’t know what to do.
Normally he would have gone to Mother or Father, but they were right there, their blood…
He left to find the servants. He greeted the first one he saw as properly as he could and brought them to the scene of carnage, telling them the room was dirty.
There was a lot of screaming after that. So loud and annoying when all he wanted was to lie down.
No one bothered him for a few days.
The adults were stunned when he asked why no one had come to pray to him.
They tried to explain to him that they wanted him to rest after his loss, he was just a child, that his needs came first.
But Douma didn’t feel like he’d lost anything. His parents were dead, but lots of people died. All the time, too. And if they were dead, well, that meant they could never feel pain anymore.
Mother must have been in so much pain to do what she did. Poor thing.
But Douma still had a duty to perform. If he wasn’t there to keep the people happy, make them feel safe and heard, who else would?
Their leader was dead. The people would need guidance. Who knows what silly things they might do if he didn’t step in and help?
They might all go mad, just like Mother had.
Becoming a demon was an easy choice. Death might be the end of suffering, but it was also the end of one's existence.
And Douma, Douma never suffered. Life was good, if not terribly boring.
Becoming a demon might be just the thing to break up the mundanity of it all. If nothing else, immortality would be nice. Douma didn’t fear death like other humans did, but he also had no plans to die anytime soon.
The transformation hurt. It hurt like nothing he could have ever imagined.
It was like a trillion little ants had crawled into his veins to drink his blood from within. His skin didn't just feel like it was on fire, it popped and sizzled, boiling and bubbling as his body rewrote itself on the cellular level.
It was the closest he'd ever come to feeling some kind of emotion in the cavernous hole that sat eternally empty inside his chest.
He thought he would die
Muzan-sama told him he would almost certainly die, for Douma lacked the drive, that endless craving of want and desire that pushed humans to live even through the worst pain.
Douma respected his master, then and now, but the king of demons hadn't quite seen the young cult leader for all that he was; for all that he did want.
Douma wanted to feel something, anything, even if it was just for a fleeting moment.
So he chased the pain of his transformation, chased it in circles like a dog biting at its own tail until it finally slipped through his fingers like grains of sand.
In the end, he had lived. No worse for wear and no less empty than when he'd been human.
That hollowness ended up being his greatest strength.
His stomach, much like his heart, was a bottomless pit, home to a darkness so terrible that not even the light of the sun could penetrate its depths.
He ate a whole village once. In a single sitting. Down to the last suckling babe and pleading mother with a child in her belly.
Douma couldn’t even come close to calling his hunger sated.
He got pickier with his meals over time. He always felt more energized after eating women and they tended to taste better than the men. Their flesh was softer, fattier. It was easy to come to the conclusion that they were the superior meal.
Douma never abandoned his cult, even at his most bloodthirsty phase of demonhood. Someone had to look after the silly geese his parents had collected, and he didn’t trust anyone to do it but himself. Anyone else might have led them astray.
He didn’t feed on them, not in the beginning.
At least not until the first elder passed, his body put in the ground to rot.
It had seemed… so wasteful. All the man’s power and grace, his subtle beauty, all lost to age.
Then to maggots.
It was distasteful.
His poor, poor followers. They prayed and worshipped, living by all the rules his parents had set, all in the hopes of finding Paradise after they died. And what did they get in return for all their hard work?
A hole in the ground.
What a waste of time.
But Douma knew that if they didn’t have anything to believe in, they would lose their silly little minds. Who knew what kind of troublesome would get into? A few might even drop dead from the shock alone.
If only he could help them somehow. If only he could give them a way to live on after death, like they dreamed so fervently for.
The answer struck him like a bolt of lightning.
Eating was just transferring energy from one source to another! If he ate them, a part of them would live on within him!
It wasn’t perfect, Douma had to admit that. They’d still be dead at the end of the day. Everything that made them them would leave this mortal plain the second their hearts stopped. Even if he ate them alive, he wouldn’t be able to persevere their memories and personalities.
But it was better than nothing. He could end their pain, give them something real to hope for, and he’d never have to worry about going hungry.
Funerals became private affairs after that. There was a public ceremony for the family and cult at large, of course, but the final, most important part of the event was witnessed by only his most devote followers.
He learned how to absorb human bodies into his own specifically for the quiet spectacle it would make for his cultists. It was quick, free of blood, and could be done with a tearful embrace.
It never failed to move a crowd. They always broke down in tears, crying in sorrow and joy for the miracle they’d just witnessed.
Happiness and sadness.
What was it like to feel two conflicting emotions at once?
It must be terribly confusing and time consuming.
It was no wonder humans tended to be dumb, easily fooled by parlor tricks. They never had the time to learn better.
Douma had no idea how many years passed since he started eating his followers when another suicide happened.
A young girl who’d suffered a fate worse than death, according to the gossip of old crones.
Poor thing hadn’t been able to live with the pain.
No one knew she was gone until the smell became bothersome.
The decomposition process was too far along for Douma to take her into himself.
Such a shame.
She’d been so pretty.
Now she was bloated and gray and horribly ugly.
Douma hadn’t felt anything for her or her loss, but it kept him up during the day, the circumstances of her death. It was like an itch he couldn’t scratch, nagging at him night and day, plaguing his every thought until he was going around in circles like he did during his transformation, leaving him unable to think past that hollow sensation in the pit of his stomach.
Something had to be done.
Douma gathered his cultists one night and told them of “a vision the gods had given him”.
Suicide was a sinful act, utterly unforgivable in the eyes of the gods, for only the gods could decide who lived and who died. From now on, those who took their own lives would be unwelcomed at the Gates of Paradise.
He made it look like it was a hard speech to give. He shook and wept towards the end, begging his followers to come to him if they were in pain. He would talk them through it, help them find a way out.
And… if nothing could be done, if the pain is truly too much, he would speak to the gods on their behalf, ask them to allow them the mercy of seeing Paradise early.
Douma had to filter through a great many people who weren’t in any real pain and were merely impatient to see the reward they’d been promised all their lives.
His humans figured it out eventually, though. It only took a month to train them to know better than to ask for things they weren’t ready for.
The ones he culled were mostly elders whose bones and joints ached, their organs riddled with painful tumors. A quick flick of his wrist and their necks snapped, freeing them from the burden of living.
Sometimes he took young women as treat to himself, even when he had no justification for it. He just couldn’t help himself. But he wasn’t completely without control. He limited himself to one every ten years.
Foolish was the shepherd that slaughtered all his cows before they’d borne the calves needed to strengthen and maintain the herd.
A woman showed up to his cult recently, barefoot with a crying baby in her arms. It wasn’t that unusual of a sight for the Faith of Enteral Paradise. Many came to them seeking refuge from the horrors of their life.
Kotoha was far from unique in many aspects, but she had many qualities that made her his new favorite pet; she was exceptionally beautiful, with brilliant green eyes and indigo hair. She was perhaps the best singer to ever grace his compound, her voice carrying a vast range of pitch and strength. And she never pestered him when he was busy, a fault too many of his followers had acquired over the years.
She was a bit dumb, but that was to be expected of humans, preferred, even. Douma had only met a handful of smart humans throughout his unnaturally long life, and they only ever proved to be trouble. Always too perceptive, asking the right questions to get answers they quickly found they never truly wanted.
He kept Kotoha close, perhaps a bit closer than he should have, given the way people talked, but he couldn’t care less for rumors.
He’d found something that entertained him, and he wasn’t about to let it go anytime soon.
When Kotoha’s family came looking for her, all demands and undeserving fury, he killed them, leaving their bodies to fester and be taken apart by crows.
Kotoha would never know the truth and will be infinitely better off for it.
So would Inosuke.
Douma didn’t care for babies. They were stinky, messy, and not very good eating.
But he tolerated this one for its mother’s sake. Besides, maybe he’d be entertaining too, when he finally grew into something more useful.
Kotoha was almost always by his side when it wasn’t inappropriate, and as a result, Inosuke was a regular presence his life. This, of course, only made the whispering rumors worse. To the point it was actively annoying him.
Kotoha was not a slut, a whore, or his mistress. Inosuke, loud and bothersome at times, was no bastard. He was barely even a brat, and his mother was an honorable woman.
Yes, these rumors were most annoying… but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Finding the source would be nearly impossible. And it was likely they were started by multiple at one time. Culling those responsible would raise too many questions, even among his followers.
Kotoha herself never seemed bothered by the rumors. Perhaps she was just too simple to be bothered by such things. She was almost like a baby in that regard, never knowing what the adults around her were talking about. It just made her all the more… treasured to him.
Douma had a space in his room where he kept all the bits and bobbles that interested him or kept his attention for longer than a few moments, the items in that space changing with a greater frequency than the seasons. He would have liked to find a spot there for Kotoha. He liked to imagine she would keep her spot for a long time.
Douma had a wife once, a long time ago. He’d eaten her within the year. She had simply been so bothersome. Needy. Demanding.
His humans always got so clingy if he showed them too much affection, always asking for too much, never letting him know peace.
That was why he liked whores so much. A whore never expected anything from you but a paycheck and basic respect. They also had a lot to talk about, frequently possessing an insight into human nature that left Douma’s head spinning from the complexity of it all.
He liked talking to whores.
He liked talking to Kotoha. She wasn’t a whore, and certainly didn’t possess a whore’s insight, but she had a different way of looking at things that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Her perspective the world wasn’t innocent, but it wasn’t cynical or jaded, either.
Douma would have loved to pick her brain, but that would kill her. So he settled for talking with her about anything and everything.
The more he learned about her, the more he liked to think that she would be a good wife. This was an idea he kept closely guarded in his own mind. He quite enjoyed things the way they were, and he wanted nothing to change.
Marriage… marriage changed things, changed people. The biggest lesson Douma had learned from his first wife, and from a few whores, was that it was a lot harder to hide his unfeeling nature from people when intimacy of any form became involved.
He could have always tried it anyways, and just eaten Kotoha if she became too much, or saw what she wasn’t supposed to see, but… the idea of eating the young mother brought him no pleasure. Which was disturbingly odd. Feeding was one of the few things that broke up the mundanity of life. He looked forward to it.
There was a stark difference between choosing not to eat someone and simply not wanting to eat them.
Douma frequently chose not to eat his follows. He valued them more as living possessions than as an easy meal. There were also the people he refused to give the honor of living on as a part of him. Those who simply didn’t deserve it.
Then there were the people he had no desire to eat, mostly old, ugly men, whose meat was tough, chewy, and not very notorious.
He had originally put Kotoha into the very first category.
The more time he spent with her, however, the more she began to fall into the last category. Although, why of that was what alluded him. There was no reason for him to not want to eat her. He was usually tempted to eat even his most treasured followers from time to time, but with Kotoha, the urge to feast had died.
It was such a shame he never got the chance to understand this shift in his desires.
Douma had grown so comfortable with Kotoha that it bordered on negligent carelessness.
There was a woman, more vocal than all the others, who spoke unforgivable ills about Kotoha and Inosuke. Douma decided to remove her from the cult. Unfortunately, Kotoha saw.
She, predictably, lost her senses from the fright and ran. Ran like her life depended on it.
Douma sighed and gave chase. This wouldn’t do. He couldn’t have her escaping and spreading rumors of an immortal cult leader with an allergy to the sun that also ate human flesh.
His little sanctum would be crawling with demon slayers before the week was out. Imagine the chaos that would cause!
He cornered her at the edge of a cliff, the scent of her blood hung unappetizingly in the crisp night air.
Inosuke screamed his little lungs out as he was tossed over the edge with heartfelt cries for him to survive.
If Douma had a heart, it might have broken. Instead, he fought the urge to laugh at Kotoha’s foolishness.
Didn’t she realize she just killed her only child? A grown adult would have struggled to survive that fall. A baby would die on impact.
A tragedy, really, as Douma had no intentions of killing the boy. He had planned to dump him on another one of his followers and leave him in peace for at least a decade.
Mockery climbed up his throat and died on his tongue, withering like a salted slug. He thought, that perhaps, he didn’t need to kill her spirit, too.
Instead of insulting her, Douma complimented her, telling Kotoha that she did her best, and that he was certain Inosuke would live a long, healthy life.
The light in Kotoha’s eyes died long before he took her life.
Her meat had no flavor, and her blood choked him, creating a thick sickly feeling that clogged his airways.
He opted to absorb the rest of her.
He only searched half-heartedly for Inosuke, distracted by the tasteless blood in his mouth, on his hands, dripping down his face.
The sickly sensation in his throat only grew worse as the night wore on, and Douma briefly wonder if it was possible to be allergic to certain humans.
The babe was never found and Douma put him far out of his mind. It wasn’t important.
Losing Kotoha was a shame, but it couldn’t be helped.
He’d find a new pet to take her place.
He would.
Only, he had no desire to replace her. She’d been perfect.
And now she was gone.
That thought made his chest tighten uncomfortably.
It would take decades, maybe even a century, to find another woman half as beautiful and talented as Kotoha!
It was so unfair!
Why couldn’t she have just waited a few more minutes to seek him out? Why did he grow so careless with her? If he’d just kept a closer eye on her--
Douma choked on his next inhale, the sound almost akin to a sob. The sickly feeling in his throat was growing worse, the tightness in his chest was unbearable, and his eyes burned.
Why?
Why did he feel so awful right now? His body felt off and wrong, weak and tired in a way he’d never experienced before. He didn’t even know demons could get fatigued.
Kotoha’s body felt heavy in his stomach, making him nauseous. Another thing that he didn’t think could afflict demons.
Why did he feel this way? What could be doing this to him?
Maybe… Maybe--
No. That couldn’t be it. It simply couldn’t. Douma had never heard of emotions feeling like indigestion. It was a such ridiculous notion. He quickly dismissed it.
But his body still felt upset, and the feeling only seemed to grow worse the more distance he put between himself and the place of Kotoha’s death.
What if eating Kotoha had made him sick?
Maybe this is why he didn’t have the desire to eat her? Perhaps his body could tell that she was poisonous on a subconscious level?
That made the most sense. It was a case of demonic food poisoning. How interesting!
Food poisoning could be deadly, but Douma wasn’t worried about what might happen to him. He was Upper Moon Two, after all! His regeneration could hardly be beaten. He would be fine soon enough, of that he was certain.
Although, it wasn’t until he inevitably forgot Kotoha that the sickness in his body finally left him.