Awakening Moment/Milk

## Lord of Demons

File:Sprite-Moment of Awakening Milk.png

Today is spring cleaning day at Satan's Coffee House.

Without even realizing it, it's already been a long, long time since Coffee and I came to live in this forest.

At the start, it was just the two of us, but later, there came many friends.

As the number of people in Satan's Coffee House grew, all kinds of objects also piled up in the coffee house over the days and months.

So we decided to use today to do a thorough cleaning.

"...Is this your dress?"

As she was helping me straighten up the room, Black Tea suddenly asked this question. I turned and saw she had fished out a long, black dress from among my clothes.

"Could be."

I thought it looked a little familiar, but it definitely didn't look like a style or cut that I would have chosen.

Then, Black Tea bent over and dragged out a much heavier object from the same place she had found that dress.

"...Is this yours too?"

She was referring to a giant black battle axe in her hand, with a complex look in her eye that said, "Do I even know you?".

Seeing that finally jogged my memory.

To tell the story of that outfit, one would have to go back to a time long, long ago.

--At that time, there wasn't even a "Satan's Coffee House".

At that time, me and Coffee, and our Attendant, were living in a town together. Up until a great fire burned Attendant to death and turned our house into a complete ruin.

In order realize our Attendant's dream from when he was still alive, we opened the first coffee house in the town. With Tiramisu's help, it did pretty decent business.

But not long after that, Tiramisu came to find me in secret and told me the truth.

All of the thriving and prospering that we were experiencing was just the work of Tiramisu, making it seem that way to us in accordance with our Attendant's wishes, which had been entrusted to Tiramisu before the his death.

The humans never truly accepted this new coffee drink. They were only screwing up their courage and coming to our shop to drink some because Tiramisu made it worth their while.

Moreover, Tiramisu said, the death of our Attendant was no accident. It was a hit job by activists who opposed equality between Food Souls and humans.

I asked Tiramisu why she was only telling me about this.

She said, after the Attendant passed, I seemed more even-keeled than Coffee, and so she guessed I'd be able to more readily absorb the blow of this truth.

She said she was really worried about Coffee. She knew she'd have to tell him sooner or later, but seeing how passionately he through himself into his work at the coffee house, she hesitated a long time. In the end, she decided to tell the truth to me first, then let me decided what should be done.

"You tell him. He'll make up his own mind."

That was my answer to Tiramisu.

The next day, the shop was extremely busy, and I was performing my normal duties.

Even though I knew the people who came in were probably forcing smiles and holding back fear, and that they probably furtively dumped out their coffees soon after I diligently packaged and handed it to them, I still didn't let on that anything was out of the ordinary.

We were just partners in a transaction. No matter what their reasons were for coming, once money exchanged hands, all I needed to do was provide the service.

And then, Tiramisu arrived.

As expected, she called Coffee to come away in private.

That day, up until the coffee house closed shop, Coffee still hadn't returned.

After finishing up with cleaning, I finally found him on the rooftop, all alone.

He was looking off into the distance. Tiramisu must have snuck off at some point.

Coffee clearly already knew everything. He looked at me, and I waited for his decision.

He fell silent a moment, then finally spoke.

"Let's leave this place and go live somewhere that's not easy for humans to find."

I had already prepared myself for any decision he might have made, but hearing him really say it out loud, I still needed a long time before I could compose myself and make a reply.

"Got it." That's what I said.

After that day, we spent some time getting our things in order, including shutting down our short-lived coffee house business.

Coffee was in a constant funk, but he never said a word about it to me.

He had always set the tone of our relationship, so when he wasn't talking, I didn't know what to say either.

All the way until the day before we were going to set out.

I packed up my bag and came out to see Coffee sitting in the coffee shop, a ring of keys sitting on the empty table before him.

-- They were the keys to our Attendant's house, which was also our former home. But the door had been burned up in the fire. The keys were now useless.

I rarely try to guess what's on other people's minds. Too bothersome.

But this day, I suddenly really wanted to do something for Coffee, so I asked him, "Do you want to go check out the old place?"

Ever since the fire, we had never been back.

Coffee had said he didn't want to stir up old feelings; and I simply thought, now that Attendant wasn't there anymore, it didn't matter what the house was like, so I never went back either.

"Coffee, I don't like to ask twice."

"...No, let's not go. We're leaving here tomorrow. I don't want to get angry and impulsive and do something I can't take back."

"You go get some rest. I'm going out for a walk."

Coffee stood up. As he passed by me, he patted my head, seemingly to console me, but I thought that at that moment he seemed to need consoling more than me.

I looked at that key on the coffee table, then walked over and picked it up.

Attendant's house had been turned into a ruin in the fire.

I didn't know what emotion Coffee could still be harboring toward this pile of rubble, but I decided to come here for him, thinking maybe it would cheer him up somehow.

But when I got here and set foot on the black ash, for a moment I didn't even know where to look to say a final goodbye to our Attendant.

Everything was completely changed.

I looked all around, and finally noticed at the doorway a milk crate fallen on the ground.

It had been charred black, already completely different from how I remembered it.

But when I recognized it, I still felt a wave of emotion.

The reason why was because one of the tasks Attendant gave me was to get the milk from the milk crate every morning.

It was a boring task, and I protested with Attendant many times, but he remained stubborn about it.

"Although it may seem like repetitive work, actually every day the crate is in a different place. And the milk you get is different every day. The temperature isn't the same either, and the little flowers and grasses in the garden change every day, and..."

He would go on and on like that, until I lost my patience and walked off.

Until later when Coffee came, and he told me in secret that actually Attendant did this on purpose. He thought I was usually too emotionally detached, and it seemed like only by making me do repetitive work that I'd become a little more "lively".

In other words, he was making me angry on purpose.

Such perverse fascinations these humans have.

I had indeed long yearned for the day I wouldn't have to do these repetitive tasks.

But after Attendant had gone and this yearning could become reality, I found that I wasn't actually much happier.

At that thought, I decided to open this crate one last time. My intention was to put the keys to the house in it, which seemed to me like a fitting goodbye.

But I never expected that the crate wasn't empty. There was a letter inside.

Because it was placed in this milk crate far away from where the fire started, it had escaped all the devastation. This was quite possibly our Attendant's sole thing still left on this earth.

I opened it.

In a bit of a surprise, the letter was written by the Attendant to none other than myself and Coffee.

That day disaster fell, he had a premonition about it, and that's why he sent me and Coffee out, staying back by himself in the house. Then he hastily wrote this letter, and not long after, he was attacked by the opposing faction and engulfed in a sea of flames.

The letter was really too long-- long-winded just like the Attendant himself.

There were a few main points.

The Attendant believed Food Souls were a heaven-sent gift to this world, so he always strove to get obstinate people to accept the existence of Food Souls. But he also guessed that if he sacrificed himself on this battlefield, then me and Coffee would most probably keep our distance from humans and never come back.

So all he could do was leave this letter. He said that humans in this world need the help of Food Souls for many things, and he hoped we would continue helping humanity. But this was his own private hope. He wouldn't force us to do it, which is why he placed this letter inside the milk crate.

-- "In light of how much you despise this crate, Milk, after I'm gone, you very likely will never open it again. So, whether this letter is ever seen by you two is a matter I'm leaving up to fate."

-- "Of course, if there's a one in ten thousand chance that you, Milk, voluntarily open this crate, see the letter inside, and read it, then I just have to say: See? Even after doing the same thing over and over again ten thousand times, there are still unexpected benefits to be had, are there not? So in the end, you have to admit that I win this argument."

...Such an obstinate human.

I took the letter back to the coffee house and told everything to Coffee.

After reading the letter, Coffee fell into a long silence.

Our luggage was all packed, and the carriage was readied for our departure the following day. The coffee house had already been sold off to another merchant.

But I knew none of that was important. The important thing was what he was thinking.

To help humans? Or to keep away from them?

"Get to bed. We have an early start tomorrow."

Finally, Coffee said that.

After me and Coffee left the town, all around Gloriville, overnight there appeared a large number of mysterious black letter boxes.

The people felt both astonishment and fear. No one knew who had put them there.

This was Coffee's idea.

In the end, he decided after all to give humanity one chance.

In the words of our Attendant, writing a letter or receiving a letter at a letter box like this only had a one-in-ten-thousand chance of working. And that was as much of a chance as he was willing to give them.

Since humans saw Food Souls as frightening creatures, then why not let the equally-feared Satan become our codename.

Coffee wanted to see under what circumstances humans would surrender to their desires and make a devil's bargain, no matter the cost.

For a long time, the letter boxes remained empty.

Until the first letter appeared.

But the contents of this letter were far removed from what we were expecting.

The author of the letter was a child. In puerile language, he related how his village had been attacked by Fallen Angels, and that he wanted to pay his soul to the devil to get back his parents.

With no hesitation, we decided to go to the location written on the letter to check it out.

To our surprise, in that village we saw our old friend Tiramisu.

She was helping the villagers heal the wounded and handle post-disaster affairs, and looking extremely proficient at it.

Upon seeing us, Tiramisu's eyes lit up, and she put us to work without much standing on ceremony.

We worked till nightfall, but everything was finally settled.

"I'm glad you both came. It made everything go so smoothly. Thank you guys." Tiramisu had worked all day, but still had that smile on her face.

And the gratefulness and warmth of the villagers around us made Coffee and me feel even more awkward.

We got out of there pretty fast.

On our way back, Coffee suddenly told me that he kind of understood what Attendant meant in that letter.

Humans weren't born despising Food Souls. They were just too weak, so they feared anything powerful or unknown.

Their weakness was the reason why they had to exclude those different from them.

I agreed with his realization.

After returning, me and Coffee wrote a reply letter to that child in the voice of his parents.

We told him that his parents were doing well now, living in a place called Satan's Coffee House, and that although they weren't by his side, they would always protect and watch over him.

Later, after being "forced" by Coffee, I bought a black dress and delivered the letter to the child's house, pretending to be a real demon.

The child read the letter and held it to his chest like a precious gem, then looked timidly at me.

"Are you going to take away my soul?"

I told him, "Yes, but your soul is too small right now, so we decided to leave it with you for the time being, for a period of one hundred years."

And that's the story of this outfit.

The story of me and Coffee, and everything that happened with Satan's Coffee House after that, all officially started from there.