Episode 13
Midnight.
Lying alone in bed, my eyes were wide awake and I couldn’t sleep at all.
No matter how I looked at it, I was still in a state of excitement.
Once things get like this, no amount of wanting to sleep actually makes sleep come, and yet sitting up now would mean giving up on sleep entirely for the night.
All I could really do was stay lying down like this with my eyes closed.
I understood that much, and yet.
“Ugh.”
Being in this excited state made it genuinely painful just to lie still with my eyes closed quietly on the bed.
So I kept tossing and turning restlessly, and even so my eyes stayed wide open and alert.
Wasn’t I being loud right now?
If I were really unlucky, maybe Teresia in the next room would come pounding on the wall — no, surely that wouldn’t actually happen.
“Teresia…”
What was she doing right now, I wondered?
Was she unable to sleep too?
The urge to leave my room just to check on that welled up in me, but doing something like that would be a nuisance whether she was awake or asleep, so I held myself back.
“……”
Even counting sheep didn’t help me sleep.
But I couldn’t just give up on sleeping either.
Because right now, I — strange as it feels to say about myself — was in a fairly dangerous position.
I’m not the demon lord, but I do hold the demon lord’s power.
That’s probably the essential truth of it, but would other people actually accept that as “the truth”?
If I were an outsider looking in, I don’t think it would make a difference.
In other words, I suspect that as things stand, I’d be judged no different from the demon lord itself.
Because depending purely on my own will, the demon lord’s power could bare its fangs at the world again.
So.
“So.”
…Hmm, my thoughts keep drifting toward the negative.
There’s nothing good that comes from dwelling on this, and yet I can’t help thinking dark thoughts anyway.
Realistically speaking, what’s going to happen to me from here on?
Will I actually be able to keep living together with Teresia?
If so, I’d be genuinely happy — but in the worst case, I might have to give that up too.
“Teresia, probably—”
I think she’d tell me she wants me to live.
Even if it’s just my own conceit, I wanted her to say that, at least.
And when I chose to live for her sake—
At that time, hypothetically.
If it came to a point where I had to live apart from Teresia—
Would I be able to choose that?
“…I can’t sleep.”
It’s precisely because I can’t sleep that I keep thinking things like this, so I should just hurry up and sleep.
Thinking that, I pulled myself up and poured water from the pitcher on the desk into a cup.
Drinking it down in one go left me feeling somewhat calmer.
Back in bed, I lay down again and closed my eyes.
I wanted a dreamless sleep.
And when tomorrow came, I wanted to spend it together with Teresia again.
Thinking that as I tried to sleep, I ended up continuing these dark thoughts for another hour or so regardless.
…And even after I finally did fall asleep, I felt like I had some kind of dark dream — but by the time I woke, I could no longer remember what it had been about.