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Section 1
## Illustrations
## Chapter 1: The One Named Schwarz Richter
Scans: a certain Luo, seized by a great bout of laziness —Open the entryway, and Death appears. It happened on the morning of his seventeenth birthday. Not an age at which a cake could still make him happy, and not an age at which he still received presents from his parents. Even so, it was the one special day of the year. The weather was fine, the morning air was pleasant, and there was not the slightest sign that anything bad was about to happen—such a spring day. In a somewhat frivolous mood he was about to start getting ready for the morning when, through the frosted glass of the entryway, he saw the figure of a visitor. Before the doorbell could be pressed he slid the door open, and— Standing there was Death. "……" A pint-sized Death, small enough that Akira, who was not especially tall himself, still had room to look down. Death's little body, lingering somewhere under 150 centimeters, was covered by a pure-black cloak with the hood attached. From the worn hem of the cloak two slender legs stuck out and stood on the concrete. From above the cloak, the breadth of the shoulders could not be seen at all. A sickly thinness that went beyond what anyone would call slim. Maybe there was nothing under Death's cloak but bones—Akira thought so for a moment, then quickly dismissed it. Through a gap in the hood he could catch a slight glimpse of the bowed Death's chin. It was white and sharp, yet still some distance from a skeleton. Above that chin, white as Ding-kiln porcelain, he could just barely make out a little of the thin lips, which seemed altogether fitting for the announcing of death. A Western-style Death standing before the entryway of a purely Japanese house, forty years old and falling to ruin. Akira checked today's date…
## Chapter 2: Don't Call Me Lord Demon King
"……So much dust." The moment she was led up the creaking stairs and came to a stop in the corridor, Kaname said this, covering her mouth. "You're loud. Nobody uses this floor normally. Can't be helped." The second floor of the Shiina house, which had once been rented out. Along the right-hand side of the corridor that ran straight ahead were old aluminum window frames; along the left, a row of doors that screamed cheap plywood. There were five of them. Seeing the traces of stickers still left on the wall (No open flame. Smoking indoors may have been forbidden as well), Akira remembered the days when, as a child, he used to play with the older boys and girls who lived there as tenants. Along with that he also remembered sitting on the back of a motorcycle and falling off, and the bald patch the size of a ten-yen coin on the back of his head began to ache faintly. (Note: the current ten-yen coin is 23.5 millimeters in diameter.) (……Hey. Now is not the time to be dredging up the past.) Pulling himself together, he opened the door at hand. After Akira stepped through the doorway, Sakura and Kaname entered the room as well. "The light is… ugh, the cord got away… there." Sakura pulled the cord of the fluorescent light, and it came on. "A cord!?" Kaname let out a shocked cry. "You still have to pull a cord? Where's the remote?" "We don't have anything that fancy." The room was six tatami mats in size, with one window inside. Beside the door was a small closet. Under the window there were two outlets. There was no toilet, and no facilities that required running water. Back when it had been a rental, the rent was twenty-eight thousand yen. "How cramped is this…
## Chapter 3: The Cat, the Date, and the Four Heavenly Kings
The chirping of sparrows and the footsteps of a cat strolling across the roof woke Akira. "……Nn." Coming awake from a shallow sleep, Akira snapped his eyes open inside the futon. There was no intruder in the bedding. He pushed himself up. After looking all around and confirming that nothing was amiss in the room either, he let out a breath of relief. He shut off the alarm clock that happened to be ringing just then and left the covers. He opened the paper sliding door onto the corridor and peered ahead of it, toward the entryway. No suspicious visitor had come. From the kitchen came the thock-thock of a kitchen knife in use. Sakura preparing breakfast, no doubt. "……So peaceful." So peaceful it was almost moving. What had all that uproar yesterday, and the day before, even been? Still in his pajamas, Akira went to the washroom and washed his face. Morning sunlight poured down into the spacious garden, and green grass reached straight up toward the sky. Akira opened the washroom window. In an instant, spring air brimming with life came pouring in without end. He leaned out the window and drew a deep breath. "What a refreshing morning…" Just as he was savoring the clear air of morning, something suddenly brushed the tip of his nose. "—Whoa!" Akira jerked back on reflex. With a swish, something landed in the garden. A black cloak snapped smartly in the wind. "Schwarz!?" What had come down was a self-proclaimed demon wrapped in a black cloak. From her arms a small brown animal flew out. A cat. The only brown tabby anywhere around here. Gorōzaemon, kept half-wild by the old man out back. The black figure hit the ground and gave chase. The short blade held in a reverse grip came sweeping down with ferocious force, but the cat, with its back…
## Chapter 4: The Demon Race
Someone was hammering at a keyboard. "……Sen…pai?" No. It wasn't. The low sound of the keystrokes seemed somewhat familiar, and yet it was decisively different from the sound his eardrums knew so well. Too much force was being put into it. For some reason it gave off an air of arrogance. "You're awake." A voice from close by. He turned his head. Noriko, hands and feet bound, lay like a caterpillar on the concrete less than a centimeter from Akira. There were marks of a beating on her face. "Senpai! Who would do something so awful… ah!?" Akira tried to get up and rush to Noriko, only to realize that his own hands, like hers, were tied behind his back. "What is this. What on earth…" "……Sorry." Noriko. He had no idea what was going on. Wasn't Noriko home resting because of a cold? Why would she be in a place like this—and for that matter, where was this? Akira looked around. A building far larger than the school gymnasium. On the concrete floor, forklifts for hauling cargo stood in rows, and cardboard cases of soft drinks were stacked on them like pillars. By the look of it, a beverage company's warehouse. In the warehouse there remained an open space about the size of two tennis courts, left empty where goods had been carried out, and Akira and Noriko lay there. A little way off from the two of them were about ten men. Among them was a face he knew. Akira called out to him. "Mr. Namioka!" Noriaki did not answer. He was typing something into the laptop resting on his knees. "Mr. Namioka! What is going on here! Please untie these ropes!" "……Hm?" Noriaki raised his head. "Ah. Were you talking to me? …
## Epilogue: A Sunlit Spring Afternoon
"You're saying I'm not the Demon King!? What is going on?" "That's simply how it is. 'Shiina Akira is one hundred percent a genuine human being'… That's the result the examination produced. He isn't even of the demon race, so there is no way he could be the Demon King." The day after the battle with the Human Purification Alliance, Sakura came to find Akira, who was resting at home, and the very first thing out of her mouth was this. "Shiina-kun isn't the Demon King. Congratulations." "Then what about Schwarz? She drank the Demon King's blood, unlocked the true strength of the Four Heavenly Kings, and came back from the brink of death." If Akira was not the Demon King, then how was the resurrection of Schwarz Richter to be explained? "Who knows? Maybe it was a miracle brought about by her own wishful thinking?" "An explanation that careless…" This was not something to joke about. Akira had already accepted the reality that he himself was the Demon King. Of course he had not the slightest intention of making humanity his enemy, or of destroying the world. But he had already steeled himself for the fact that, from then on, he would never again be able to return to his old, ordinary human life. And yet the examination results were like this. "Then what about Schwarz? If I'm not, she probably isn't either." "Fifteen percent." "What?" "There is a fifteen percent chance that she is of the demon race." What even is this. A weather forecast. "I don't understand what you're saying. Can't this examination sort things out cleanly, one way or the other?" "I thought so too, but it seems that isn't the case. If you ask me about the technical side of it, I don't know how I'm supposed to answer." "…………