Welcome to the Demon’s Cabin - Chapter 7

It really felt like this life was over.

If he could, he wanted to scorch this useless tongue of his and turn back time.

Mother, I might really be coming to see you soon. Please, at least repent after you die.

“Ah……. My name, you say? A name, a name……. A name…….”

‘……?’

Contrary to the man’s expectation that she would kill him on the spot, the demon’s reaction was strange.

A dumbfounded look showed plainly on the man’s face; he had failed to fully hide his expression, and the woman who saw it burst into bright laughter, as if she found it amusing.

“Ahahaha! I’m sorry. It’s been so long since I’ve been asked that question. It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve spoken, too.”

Her voice, which had been fairly calm, gradually rose as she continued speaking. Her gentle face was brimming with joy and rapture she could not suppress.

She tried to regain her composure, her face stiffening, yet the corners of her mouth soon split again into a bright, almost protruding smile that, no matter how one looked at it, clearly showed she was too pleased to contain herself. Her oddly uplifted face, flushed with a faint blush, was spine-chilling. Filthily beautiful in a way befitting a demon, which only made her more alien and unsettling.

“My name is Irene. Please call me whatever is comfortable for you.”

“……Then, may I call you Ms. Irene?”

“Of course.”

‘Irene’ answered with an even brighter smile.

An overwhelming wave of relief washed over him. The tension drained from his tightly wound body.

Even he found it absurd……. yet he became convinced that treating this demon as if she were human was truly the correct answer.

Aside from her vivid red eyes, the demon looked, no matter how one saw her, like an ordinary woman from the Orihen Kingdom. From the distinctive embroidery to the blouse puffed just above the sleeves. Thinking it over carefully, even her intonation was unmistakably that of a typical Orihen native.

She was truly serious about playing human. That demon was insane beyond the ordinary sense of insanity.

“And what might your name be, Señor?”

Another great trial descended upon the man who had just begun to feel relieved. Regretting his past self for foolishly asking a demon’s name was already too late. It was a disaster he had brought upon himself.

‘It feels wrong to give my real name, but should I give an alias? No, if I do that and end up irritating her for no reason, I’ll obviously die.’

Damn it. There was no good answer.

It was common knowledge that names mattered in dealings with demons. Thinking about it, that was only natural. A name carried power as a word that designated a person, a being. To roughly boil down the complicated theories, it meant that the moment you gave your name, you were perfectly set up to be dragged to Hell after death.

That alone would be one thing, but the real problem was that if he was unlucky, his family could get dragged into it as well. The concept of a name offered to a demon was complicated enough that even he, a Holy Knight by title, could not be certain.

Was it that the moment you spoke part of a name, the full name became known? Or that family members who shared the surname got entangled……? Or was it that even the person who gave the name got dragged in? Or if you spoke someone else’s name, that person got caught as well?

Damn it. He should have studied harder back in his school days. Why had he lived his life skipping classes like that?

Unable to go this way or that, agonizing fiercely, he finally made a decision.

He could endure it himself, but he could not put his innocent younger siblings in danger.

“……My name is Idris. Please call me whatever is comfortable for you.”

“Idris, Idris. Idris, Idris, Idris……. Mm, then I’ll call you Mr. Idris as well.”

Irene laughed lightly as she repeated his name several times, as if chanting a spell. To be honest, it was scary enough to make curses spill out.

“You seem to be from the Crescent Empire, but that’s a very unusual name. Idris sounds like a name you’d only use in Varkan.”

“…….”

That…… was a Varkan-style name?

Right. Come to think of it, that bastard traitor had been half Varkan. Damn it. No wonder the name was strange.

Recalling a former comrade who was useless even in death, he ground his teeth inwardly.

His palms were damp with tension, but the water had already been spilled. He decided to brazen it out.

“I hear that a lot.”

“How interesting. The Empire doesn’t usually name people that way, does it? Or am I mistaken?”

Irene’s head tilted slightly to the right. Her complexion was still bright, but the smile that had been flawlessly radiant was largely crumbling.

The subtle lift at the corner of her lips somehow felt like it was mocking him.

He had a feeling this had truly gone wrong.

What kind of demon was more refined than a human like him?

“Ms. Irene is correct. It’s a name that’s hardly ever used.”

At this point, he didn’t know anymore. He would just push through.

“There’s an unusual story behind it, if you’d call it that……. When my mother first realized she was pregnant with me, she happened to be traveling in Varkan. I heard that she decided to name me after the place, hoping that the joy she felt in that moment would reach me.”

“Ah……. Really?”

Once he started lying, the words flowed out with surprising ease. Irene looked thoroughly unconvinced, but the man did not care.

He continued the story he had invented on the spot without changing his expression. From now on, this would be his life story. At least here, he would be ‘Idris.’

“She was a bit unusual, you see. Very free-spirited. I think she wanted to give me an interesting name as well.”

“How fascinating. She must have been a very delightful person.”

Irene chimed in with a gentle smile once more. That innocent smile he had barely managed to restore was so welcome it hurt.

Haah, that took ten years off my life. It looked like she was letting it slide.

“Yes, she was, in her own way. She had a lot of mischief in her.”

In a very cruel sense.

‘Ha. I should have just given some common name. To think this mess happened just because I gave that traitor’s name…….’

Why on earth did I do that when I was already in trouble myself? To commit such a fool’s act at the threshold of death, something I had never even done before. It was absurd.

Irene smiled sweetly again as she replied to Idris.

“A unique name is nice. Mine is rather common, so I have always been dissatisfied with it.”

It was an answer he could never have imagined. It was a level of shamelessness that even his own thick skin could not match.

‘Irene’ was absolutely not the kind of name a demon would have. How could she speak so shamelessly about an alias she must have made up herself? And she was a demon, no less?