Reflection
Kirio spends time reflecting on everything.
Warning manga spoilers!! Anime fans tread carefully.
Trigger warning for brief mentions of suicide.
--
Kirio is a failure of a demon.
Oh, it doesn’t bother him though! He long since accepted that he’s a failure and a disgrace to his own family. No matter how you slice it, a child with no magic born into a powerful bloodline is a failure. He wouldn’t want to accept a kid like that either, much less acknowledge them.
(Ah, that gives him a passing thought. When did he last talk to his mother? His father? His older brother? It’s been at least a decade, hasn’t it? Strange, to think that the people closest to him won’t even hold a conversation with him.
And they all live in the same house.)
But being a failure is okay! Even if he is despised by his relatives, even if other demons only see him as target practice, he still has something to live for. Something that can never be taken away from him. Something that isn’t as worldly as an earring or as trivial as friendship. No, he has something more concrete and unerasable. He has despair.
There is nothing that could ever top the rush of emotions he gets when someone looks at him with pure, unadulterated despair. It fills him with such ecstasy that nothing will ever hold a candle to. It’s as if the world is temporarily dyed into color. As if everything he has endured up to that point is worth it because he gets to see someone else in their most vulnerable state. The state of having nothing left to live for. The state of pleading for death.
It’s beautiful.
He can survive on that alone.
Or - well, he could.
In all honesty, Kirio’s days of living for despair are over. That was made quite clear with his encounter of Suzuki Iruma. Yes, at the tail end of the Battler Challenge, everything he worked toward was lost in the blink of an eye. In a way, that alone is exhilarating. His own face of despair in that moment -- it was just as enticing and he hopes that Iruma thinks the same. However, there is clearly one thing to take away from the entire debacle.
His reason for living is null. Despair, apparently, isn’t a strong enough emotion to be a constant. Iruma was easily able to overcome despair and outright refused to indulge in it. The worst part is that Iruma is a very influential person. In the short time they knew each other, it was clear how many people the boy seemed to have around his finger. With such immense power, both socially and physically, there’s little to no chance of Kirio ever throwing Babyls into despair.
(If only we were alike, Kirio thinks, and his heart sinks. Initially, he did think the two of them were alike. Iruma’s mannerisms are so similar to his own, it’s like looking into a mirror. However, he missed a key detail. Iruma isn’t a failure like he is.)
So Kirio’s one ambition and reason to live has been squashed.
Which only leaves one question -- why is he still alive?
Currently, Kirio is sitting in jail with multiple ways to commit suicide. He can overexert his body with magic and cause organ failure. Or, he could invoke the other inmates into killing him. There’s probably a way to use a plastic prison fork to commit suicide. There’s always his bed sheets; making a noose isn’t too hard, he knows that already.
But, no matter how much he entertains the thought of dying, he doesn’t actually want to die. And not long ago, he realized why.
Even after losing his initial ambition, Kirio never once felt empty. He never once, from the moment he was taken into custody to the time he is spending now in jail, felt as if he lost something important. It intrigued him at first. It reminded him of the time when he was still a child, discovering what he was living for. But this time, it didn’t take a crying girl for him to realize the truth. It came to him one night while laying in bed. He has a new reason to live.
Iruma.
That’s not to say he’s like Asmodeus Alice. Kirio doesn’t exactly want to act as a loyal dog for Iruma. He’ll gladly make another large-scale elaborate plan, if only to see Iruma destroy it again. His ambitions relating to the boy are more along the lines of a rivalry. Iruma challenged his way of living, and of course Kirio wants to challenge him back.
(Rivalry is the only term he can think of, and yet, he feels as if he doesn’t want to win against the other student. He is more than content to have Iruma bask in the light of foiled plans.)
It’s strange, really, to have a person to live for instead of an emotion. He hasn’t had a comfort like this since he was in elementary. Back then, his relationship was destroyed due to his own shortcomings. However, this time he near committed an atrocity and felt nothing but a stronger tie to his rival.
Surely it’s the same for Iruma
(Hopefully it’s the same for Iruma.)
But this revelation only made things more difficult. Seeing as, well, he’s in jail and Iruma is still going to school. It feels as if the Demon King himself is working against him. He’s found yet another reason to live, but he can’t indulge freely.
Kirio thinks back to his sentence. What was it...a year? It’s honestly short enough that it’s concerning. He did try to murder around 664 people. However, the fact that no one died must have helped his sentence. And the fact that he was still a young student himself.
Which means he only has to endure a year on his own. That isn’t hard, really. He spent years of his life alone before. It’s like returning to the “good ol’ days” so to speak. But even so..
He thinks about the smiles Iruma gave him and his heart beats faster. He thinks about the boy’s cheerful voice, his optimism, his magnetic personality, and Kirio’s face starts to feel warm.
...maybe he can leave soon on good behavior.
