Exchanges Between Master And Servant

Mom had accepted everything without much fuss and showered me with her welcome affection.

Yuzu-neesan, being Mom’s younger sister, had instead raised a whole series of practical concerns, asking whether Reinerrude was really trustworthy and checking the details of the confidentiality agreement.

Somehow, Mom and Yuzu-neesan balanced each other out nicely.

Like a mother and father, maybe? Not that I knew what fathers were supposed to be like.

Thanks to that, I had the next day off from school.

I spent most of the time from morning until evening running around taking care of various things.

“…All right, I guess now I just have to wait for Yuzu-neesan to check it.”

I sent over the file so Yuzu-neesan could give it a look as well.

She had said yesterday that she would come over, but apparently that had been impossible since she was busy with Gem Pro’s official Valentine’s Day project.

Since today was her day off, she had said she would come over first thing in the morning, but I turned her down.

After all, the official stream had gone on until late at night, so there was no doubt she was sleep-deprived.

Mom still had nearly ten days before she came home, and I appreciated that Yuzu-neesan was trying to look after me in Mom’s place and properly fulfill the role of my guardian—or rather, the responsible adult in my life—but I wanted her to rest before she collapsed from overwork.

I threatened—no, persuaded—her by saying I’d have Mom order her to stay home and rest, and she gave in surprisingly easily, so in the end she arranged to come over in the evening instead.

“Here you are, my lady.”

“Thanks… Wow, this is good… What is this? Did you buy better tea leaves or something?”

“No. I merely adjusted the brewing method slightly. The tea leaves of this world differ in everything from storage methods onward, so I have made minor adjustments to the brewing process to suit each variety.”

“That’s amazing… As expected of you, Reine.”

Her all-purpose maid skills were as absurd as ever.

I had always been fairly particular about tea myself, but even so, Reine’s was clearly better.

Not that I had any intention of competing with her. Since the opponent was Reine, there was no point trying to compete with her over things like this. With the Demon Lord’s enhancement abilities, learning the techniques themselves wouldn’t be difficult, but I simply didn’t have the same level of dedication to them.

“Come to think of it, Reine.”

“Lady Yuzuriha’s meal has already been prepared, so there are no issues on that front. The laundry and cleaning have also been completed, and the bath and bedroom are ready as well.”

“…You really do an absurd amount all by yourself.”

“Compared to the Demon Lord’s Castle, this building is considerably smaller, so the magical power consumption required for teleportation magic has also been greatly reduced. There are household appliances as well, so I would actually say things have become easier.”

“Right. I forgot the comparison itself was ridiculous.”

Looking back on it now, the Demon Lord’s Castle had been stupidly huge…

In modern terms, it was probably the size of several major domed stadiums put together, and since there had also been plenty of large-bodied races living there, each individual room had naturally ended up enormous as well.

And Reine had handled all of my meals and every household task related to me by herself in a castle like that. I supposed this really could feel much easier than her previous life.

Still, compared to the Demon Lord’s Castle or not, our house was definitely what you’d call a mansion.

Mom was a major actress, after all, so the place looked like one of those mansions owned by some overseas celebrity.

We just didn’t have a swimming pool in the yard.

“…You seem to be in a good mood.”

“…In the past, I rarely had opportunities to spend leisurely time like this with Your Majesty.”

“Ahh, yeah. Now that you mention it, I guess that was true.”

In my previous life, I had always had plenty to do, and Reine had been the head maid overseeing the Demon Lord’s Castle, so there had been times when we barely had any opportunities to see each other.

…Hmm.

An idea occurred to me, so I shifted over in my chair to make room and patted the spot where I had been sitting.

“Reine, come here.”

“Huh…?”

“Come on, over here.”

“Y-Yes… If you’ll excuse me…”

The moment she sat down beside me as instructed, I immediately grabbed her head firmly with both hands, ignored her bewildered expression, and half-forcibly lowered her head onto my lap.

A lap pillow.

Once Reine finally realized what was happening, her usual stone-faced expression rapidly fell apart and her face turned bright red, but I ignored that and stroked her hair, unable to stop my own expression from softening with amusement.

“I used to let you sleep like this back then too, didn’t I?”

“U-Um, ah, th-that is, Y-Your Majesty…? Ah, no, m-my lady…?”

“Yes, yes, just calm down. I’m doing this because I want to, so behave and accept it.”

“U-Uuu… y-yes…”

It wasn’t as though there was anything in particular I wanted to talk about.

Nor was I trying to tease Reine.

It was just that after I became the Demon Lord and came to rule the Demon Realm, I had been so busy for so long that I no longer had the time to do things like this for her.

And at some point, even when we occasionally had free time, our relationship as master and servant had simply become the norm.

Maybe I was only realizing that now.

We had gone to the trouble of being reborn into a world far more peaceful than our previous one.

So I thought there was nothing wrong with making our relationship more casual again.

That was all.

Though I did feel a little bad for Reine, considering how bright red and embarrassed she looked.

“…Your Majesty.”

“Hmm? What is it?”

“…Why did Your Majesty agree to the demands of those unreasonable gods?”

“Just like I told you back then, Reine. I believed it would be the final step of the era I had built, and at the same time, the first step toward the arrival of the next era.”

“…I… didn’t care about the future of the Demon Realm, the Human Realm, or the Divine Realm. As long as I could remain by your side, that alone would have been enough.”

“…Yeah. You told me that before too.”

“Yes. I simply could not accept it. I could not forgive them, nor was there any possibility that I could ever tolerate what they demanded.”

Having said that much, Reine reached up toward my face and gently placed a hand against my cheek.

“…But…”

“Hmm?”

“…If this gentle atmosphere and expression you have now, and this peaceful time that lets us remain together like this, only exist because of that choice… then I almost feel that perhaps accepting it was not entirely wrong.”

“See? I didn’t regret accepting it back then, and I don’t regret it now either. I reincarnated into this world, though it took me quite a long time to recover my memories. …Actually, maybe it was better that I didn’t remember them while I was still a nursing baby. There’s no way I could have acted like a normal infant or child.”

“That is… certainly true…”

The current me had been formed through the years I spent being born and raised in this world, and then that version of “me” had regained the memories of my previous life.

But if I had possessed those memories from infancy, I probably would have been a baby while still fully retaining the “royal we” persona of my Demon Lord days.

—I am Verchera Merisis. The one and only Demon Lord who reigns over the Demon Realm. By: an infant.

…I was genuinely glad I hadn’t remembered back then.

“You regained your memories right after you were born, didn’t you, Reine? Did you ever act like a baby?”

“…………Um, well…”

As Reine’s gaze slowly slid away from mine, sadistic amusement—or maybe just plain mischief—welled up inside me, and the corners of my mouth curled upward.

…Heh.

I held Reine’s face in place and turned her gaze back toward me, then smiled sweetly.

“Hey, Reine? Tell me.”

“N-No…! That is my dark history! Even if it’s Your Majesty, that is the one thing I refuse to…!”

“Aww, why not? I want to know more about you, Reine.”

“You absolutely intend to tease me about it, don’t you!?”

“I would never… do that?”

“You’re smiling! Nngh, Y-Your Majesty, I’m getting up now! Your finger! Please stop pressing your finger against my forehead…!”

“Nope. Come on, come on. Tell me and I’ll let you go.”

“I-In that case, I’ll teleport—wait, the entire area is already under your control…!? Just how serious are you about this!?”

Magic was essentially a game of territorial control.

If someone completely dominated the surrounding area like I was doing now, anyone with less magical power than them would struggle to use even a single spell properly.

Of course, even in the Demon Realm, I had probably been the only one capable of establishing a domain powerful enough to completely suppress someone as skilled as Reine.

Reine looked up at me with slightly teary eyes, and she was adorable.

Normally she carried herself with such cool composure, and the demons who hadn’t known what Reine was like when she was younger had called her stone-faced and all sorts of other things, but to me, expressions like this were actually far more memorable.

“Heh… Reine. It seems you are unaware of one immutable rule of this world…”

“W-What would that be…?”

“—You cannot escape from the Demon Lord.”

“Please don’t say that with such an unnecessarily cool expression!”

——Incidentally, this exchange continued until Yuzu-neesan rang the intercom several minutes later to announce her arrival.

Unfortunately, Reine never cracked, but someday I intended to make her confess what she had been like as a baby.