Valentine’s Day (5)

For Hideto Tojo, the world had always been an indulgently easy place.

By the time he was old enough to understand things, he knew that his family was wealthy and that he lived in a privileged environment.

He learned that he was loved, that his selfish demands were indulged no matter what he said, and that the world would go easy on him—something that was probably entirely the result of his parents’ leniency and overprotectiveness.

To his parents, too, Hideto Tojo was their adorable and precious son.

As a result, although money possessed value in the abstract, to a child like Hideto Tojo it held little personal value or emotional weight, because he could obtain it without effort or hardship.

After all, whenever he wanted something, his parents would simply prepare it and give it to him.

The turning point in Tojo’s life came solely from being thrown into the communal environment known as school.

He was removed from the community of home and family, where parents gave him unconditional affection, and placed among children his own age who argued over trivial things and sometimes even got into fistfights.

But academic subjects could simply be learned from private tutors.

Teaching children through communal living might indeed have been an efficient system in bygone eras, but modern society increasingly functioned online, and if all one needed was education, staying at home was more than enough. In fact, Tojo had already learned everything he needed that way.

And yet, even over tiny things he personally considered meaningless, people admired him simply because “he was good at studying,” treated him with special regard because “his family was rich,” and loved him because he was reasonably good-looking as well.

To put it bluntly, Hideto Tojo realized that other people treated him as someone special, found pleasure in it, and began mistaking himself for a truly exceptional existence.

And so, school became nothing more than a place where he could satisfy his petty self-esteem and his sense of superiority over others.

When Tojo was still young, there was not much difference between the good and bad intentions of those who approached him.

As long as what came his way consisted only of small, intangible emotions like minor affection or mild malice, things remained harmless enough.

His misfortune was that unmistakable malice came close to him before he ever learned what good and evil truly meant.

“—Hey, Tojo, you’ve got money, so buy us something.”

To the person who said it, perhaps half of it had been a joke. The other half had probably been envy. I don’t have money, but you do, right?—that sort of resentment.

But Tojo was interested in the person who had spoken to him.

The boy had become what one would call a stereotypical delinquent, and because that brought him attention, Hideto Tojo found him to be an “interesting person.”

And so, Tojo happily accepted the request.

Apparently deciding that Tojo could be useful, the boy began hanging around him from then on, while Tojo in turn realized that he could control this interesting person—someone who was treated as special by those around him—with something as meaningless as money.

From there, everything proceeded smoothly.

Smoothly—

Downward.

Tojo was a man who possessed money yet had no real interest in it.

A man who wanted Tojo’s money began exploiting him, that man brought in more friends, and their circle expanded.

Like a snowball rolling down a mountain, it grew larger and larger as it descended.

And in that way, the man named Hideto Tojo became twisted.

What had begun as friendships with rough delinquents had already expanded into connections with semi-criminal groups and troublesome adults, and by handing over money—something he himself considered practically worthless—he learned to manipulate them as he pleased.

However, by about half a year after entering high school, even those relationships had started to bore him.

So this time, Tojo turned his attention toward women.

Just as he had once scattered money like bait and used his naturally good looks as a weapon, he wanted to see if he could manipulate beings different from himself—women.

But the community called school was small.

By the end of that year, people had already started calling him a sleazy pickup artist who went after one girl after another.

Then the new term began, and Tojo became intensely aware of Rinne for the first time.

Beautiful silver hair and golden eyes.

Many people were shocked when Rinne, who had always hidden a beauty so perfect it seemed artificial, suddenly appeared in public without trying to conceal it, and Tojo was no exception.

And so, Tojo tried to reach out toward Rinne.

He spoke to her, intending to make that “special” thing his own—

But a girl named Tomomi Tachibana interfered.

Tojo simply could not forgive that.

And so, Tojo decided on revenge.

He decided he would use the power he possessed to take revenge on her and break her.

It was an incredibly shortsighted way of thinking, driven by an utterly selfish reason.

That said, Tojo himself did not yet understand how he should wield his power when dealing with women.

So he relied on the companions he had now.

When he muttered that he wanted revenge on a girl, that he wanted to break her, the plan for this incident practically assembled itself before his eyes and was put into action.

Yet Tojo felt no confusion about that.

Rather, he became intoxicated with the realization that he possessed enough power to make such a thing happen.

—And at last, they acted.

Early that morning, his companions waited near Tomomi Tachibana’s home, overpowered her when she came out alone, and abducted her.

The plan was to threaten and terrify Tomomi Tachibana while simultaneously obtaining that “special” person.

Up to a certain point, everything went well.

His heart had soared with anticipation, convinced that the “special” one would also kneel before his power, crying and clinging to him.

—That was how it was supposed to happen.

“…Wh-What the hell… is that…?”

When Hideto Tojo regained consciousness, what he saw looked like a scene from a movie or television drama.

Large grown men swung punches at her, only for her to evade them effortlessly, silver hair floating lightly as she struck back and sent them flying almost comically far.

When someone came at her from behind with a weapon, she slipped aside as though she had seen it coming, caught his arm, and threw him.

One by one, more and more men became unable to stand.

The arms and legs of his “power” bent in unnatural directions as they collapsed groaning in pain.

—Impossible.

Everyone thought the same thing—not only Tojo, but even Tomomi Tachibana, the girl being rescued—yet their reasons were completely different.

For Tomomi Tachibana, it was sheer astonishment that a girl named Rinne possessed such overwhelming strength.

Rinne was merely a high-school girl, one whom she had never heard had any particular combat training and whom she assumed was not especially athletic, yet here she was putting on an extraordinary display against a group of men, so such disbelief was only natural.

But Tojo was different.

—My “power” is being destroyed? It doesn’t work? That’s impossible.

What had always been natural and absolute to Tojo was being shattered before his eyes, and that sight was far more unbelievable to him than Rinne’s strength itself.

“…D-Don’t screw with me… What the hell is that… What the hell is this…!? This is wrong. It’s wrong, right…?”

Muttering as though he had been confronted with an impossibly unfair reality, Tojo stared wide-eyed and darted his gaze around, seemingly unaware of his swollen cheek or the blood pouring from his nose.

His thoughts were in complete chaos, and all Tojo could do was search desperately for “whatever had caused this incomprehensible situation,” though there was of course nothing to find, leaving him looking utterly bewildered with his eyes stretched wide.

Then Tomomi Tachibana entered his field of vision.

—Ahh. It’s her fault.

If she had not gotten in my way, none of this would have happened in the first place.

If she had not been near my “special” one, my power would still have worked.

Overwriting and hardening his own perception in that way, stubbornly refusing to face reality, Tojo staggered toward Tomomi Tachibana.

He slipped a hand into his pocket and drew it back out holding a knife.

He shuffled forward like a wandering ghost, smiling as though delighted that the source of the problem was about to disappear.

Tomomi noticed him as well, and her eyes widened.

From Tojo’s obviously abnormal expression and the knife in his hand, it took almost no time at all for her to imagine being stabbed.

“Y-You… It’s your fault. Yeah, yours. Your fault! Yours, yourrrrr fault!”

“Hi—!”

Tojo broke into a run, while Tomomi sucked in a breath at the sight of him.

But suddenly, the “special” one who should have been fighting the men far away appeared directly in front of Tojo, silver hair swaying and crimson eyes blazing.

As Tojo’s eyes widened, that “special” one—

Rinne spoke with cold fury in her voice.

“—Even now, you still intend to lay a hand on Tomo? You truly are filth beyond redemption. Enough. I shall erase you, corpse and all.”

It was unmistakably a death sentence.

Without the slightest hesitation, Rinne—

The Demon Lord had decided to swing her fist.

Even while consciously trying to live as a human, the foundation of her being was still the power of a Demon Lord.

She had restrained herself and tried to stop, but Tojo’s act of continuing to target her friend even at this stage had enraged Rinne enough to destroy those emotional restraints.

Tomomi could not stop her.

There had been no time even to raise her voice, because it all happened in a single instant.

Naturally, Tojo had no time to come to his senses or dodge either, and there was no chance he could do anything about the fist rushing toward him.

And so, a blow that could have effortlessly erased a human head was driven straight toward Tojo’s face—

A tremendous impact rang out, and at the same moment, a shock seemed to burst outward through the surrounding area.

Tojo was blown away by the force, slammed into a wall, and lost consciousness, while Tomomi instinctively turned her face away as though buffeted by the shockwave and looked away from the scene.

Then, only moments later, once things had settled and Tomomi turned back around, she saw Rinne with her arm bent as though her punch had been stopped mid-swing, and a woman she had never seen before dressed in a pantsuit, one hand extended as she caught Rinne’s fist.

“—Please calm yourself. He is not an opponent upon whom you should unleash that fist, Your Majesty.”

The woman’s clear voice reached Tomomi’s ears, but she could not fully understand the meaning of those words.