TDKH 01

Chapter : 01

Prologue

When I was little, my family ran an inn.

From a young age, I helped my parents with the small chores around the place.

My friends worried, saying it must be hard, but in truth, I actually enjoyed helping out at the inn.

The first floor also served as a tavern, and from time to time adventurers would stop by for a mug of beer. As a child, I loved listening to their stories.

Of course, since our town wasn’t very big, it was extremely rare for adventurers whose names shook the continent to ever visit.

But just because they weren’t famous didn’t mean they lacked the gift of gab.

If anything, in my experience, the lower-ranked the adventurer, the more they tended to exaggerate and boast—and those exaggerations only made their tales more entertaining.

Even though I was young, I was smart enough to tell what was bluff and what was real.

But there was no need to point it out and spoil their mood.

So I’d nod along appropriately and enjoy their over-the-top stories.

Still, the bragging of the adventurer who showed up today was hard to humor.

“So you’re saying you’re the Demon King of Erosion?”

“Hahaha. That’s right.”

A middle-aged man with a potbelly and a nose red as a drunkard’s.

When I said I wanted to hear an adventure story, he suddenly declared that he himself was a Demon King.

Not just any demon king, but a named one—even seven-year-old me knew about him.

“But the Demon King of Erosion ranks first among all demon kings.”

“Hahaha. You sure know a lot for a brat.”

“And the Demon King of Erosion is one even the Empire can’t find no matter how hard they try. If you’re going to make something up, shouldn’t you pick a different one?”

“That’s their problem for being useless.”

“Fine then, let’s say you really are the Demon King of Erosion… what have you been up to lately?”

At that, he gulped down his drink.

Thud.

He set the mug down roughly on the table.

In that instant, I felt his presence change.

“I’ve been trampling the sprouts.”

“…What?”

“Come to think of it, you look like you’ve got some promise too.”

“……”

“It’d be a waste to just kill you. If you fall into corruption nicely, you’d make fine material.”

I froze.

Not because I understood the words—they made no sense to me—but because the eyes of the man who had just been a common drunk were now cold beyond belief.

While I stood there speechless—

“Dail! Carry this over here.”

My father’s voice came from the kitchen.

I jumped up and headed there as if running away.

From behind me, I thought I heard him say:

“I wonder what kind of curse would be good.”

A month after the strange man who called himself the Demon King of Erosion left—

One evening, when I returned to the inn after running an errand, my mother was gone.

It wasn’t that she had run away or anything like that.

What disappeared wasn’t my mother herself, but my mother’s appearance.

Those two mean very different things.

“Daaaiiil, you’re baaaack?”

“……”

“Whaaat are yooou doooing just staaanding theeeere?”

It was a fear I had never felt before.

That thing was standing in our kitchen.

The place where my mother should have been preparing dinner.

But my mother’s form was nowhere to be seen.

What stood there instead was a monster.

No—perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a single phenomenon.

If I had to describe what I saw:

It looked like countless tiny, opaque white squares piled on top of each other.

So many squares covered its entire body that it looked like some sort of creature.

“Aaah! Wh-what is this? Who are you?!”

“Whhaaat aaarre yooou taaalking aaabout, chiild?”

To make things worse, even its voice was distorted.

If a voice were something you could see and touch, it felt as if someone had grabbed it from both ends and stretched it out like taffy.

I couldn’t tell if the speaker was a man or a woman, what emotion it carried, or even what it was really saying.

At that young age, I froze completely.

Tap.

Someone touched my shoulder from behind.

“Dail? Why are you standing there like an idiot?”

It was my father.

I was genuinely relieved that he was safe.

Bursting into tears, I clung to his arm and said in a trembling voice,

“Waaah… D-Dad, over there! Over there!”

“Over there?”

“There’s a monster standing there! Can’t you see it?!”

“What? You little brat.”

Smack.

My father struck my head hard.

It wasn’t his usual playful flick—he looked truly angry.

“How dare you talk to your mother like that.”

That’s right.

That thing was my mother.

The same mother who just yesterday had put medicine on my scraped knee and blown on it to make it feel better.

From that day on, my mother’s appearance never returned.

My parents never spoke of my strange condition to anyone outside.

They acted, with all their might, as if nothing was wrong in our household—and forced me to act the same.

At the time, I believed the “monster” had swallowed my mother, so I struggled desperately against it.

“Dad, does this look like Mom to you? It’s a monster! A monster ate Mom!”

“You little—!”

“It’s true! I know who did it! Please listen to me, please!”

I told him about the so-called Demon King of Erosion who had visited our inn a month earlier.

About how he said he trampled those with promise.

And how he said he saw that promise in me, too.

“That’s why he cursed me. He said, ‘I wonder what kind of curse would be good.’”

“Dail, please…”

“That curse is this monster eating Mom! Please believe me, Dad. Please!”

My father answered only with a deep sigh.

And the monster, as if it truly were my mother, whimpered,

“Whaaayyyy dooo ouuur soooohn…?”

Our home grew darker and more depressing with each passing day.

Half by force, half by choice, I was kept shut inside my room, forbidden to go outside.

Looking back now, that wasn’t really confinement—it was protection.

Because who knew what would happen if the villagers started calling me a cursed child?

“Dear, don’t cry. Dail will get better soon.”

“Uuuuuhhh…”

“You know I have some connections at the church, right? I’ve asked them to have the Saintess come. Once she arrives, everything will be fine.”

“Pleeaaase… haaave her cooome soooon…”

My father said he’d called for a Saintess.

Thinking back, that too must have been a delusion soaked in hope.

It was true he worked with the church, but there was no way a small, remote-town chapel could summon a Saintess.

……

From the crack in my bedroom door, I bit my lip as I watched them.

The one my father should be holding and comforting was my mother.

Not that grotesque monster!

But with my father completely deceived by it, there was nothing I could do.

So I spent my days suppressing my emotions as much as possible.

Holding back the urge to run out of the house at any moment was incredibly hard for a child.

Time never stops.

Two months later, my father spoke to me with a grave expression.

“Your mother is very sick.”

“…!”

I brightened.

Seeing my face, my father clenched his teeth and continued,

“Don’t look so happy.”

“Dad…”

“Go take care of her. Hold her, too. She collapsed because of the shock you gave her.”

Of course, I didn’t.

I couldn’t even believe that monster could be sick in the first place.

To me, it still looked like the same opaque white squares, with that chilling, stretched voice.

Right.

I definitely didn’t go looking for the monster.

But it came to me every single day.

“Mmmmyyy soooohn…”

“Theee weeeaaather is niiice tooooodaaay…”

“Mooother’s maaaking stew, wooon’t yooou heeelp?”

See?

Being sick was a lie.

It was just a trick by my father, who’d been bewitched by the monster, to bring us closer.

That’s what I believed back then.

So whenever it came, I pushed it away, avoided it, and sometimes even insulted it.

And time continued to pass.

Half a year had gone by since my mother disappeared and the monster appeared.

That day, strangely enough, it didn’t come to see me.

Sometimes you need days like that to put your mind at ease.

Thinking so, I spent the whole day in my room.

Then late at night—around midnight, maybe—

Knock, knock.

I heard a knock.

I didn’t answer, but the door slowly and quietly opened.

Standing there was the familiar monster.

“Mmmmy soooohn, aaaare yooou aaawake?”

Its voice was still stretched and distorted, but compared to before, it wasn’t completely incomprehensible anymore.

It wasn’t that the monster had gotten better at speaking—it was that I’d grown used to understanding its speech.

Normally I would’ve ignored it, but for some reason that night, after a moment’s silence, I replied.

“I’m not asleep.”

“Caaaan weee taaaalk for a moooment?”

“What is it, you monster?”

“Dooon’t caaall mooother thaaat.”

“You’re not my mom. Give me my real mom back.”

The monster fell silent.

Its expression was hidden behind the mass of white squares.

No emotion could be felt in its voice.

So I couldn’t tell what it was thinking as it looked at me.

But somehow.

For some reason, I felt that the monster was sad.

“Tooodaaay mooother doesn’t feeeel so gooood.”

“……”

“Mooood feels straaange toooo.”

Today Mom doesn’t feel very well. My mood feels strange too.

That must have been what it said.

I replied coldly,

“So what? What do you want me to do about it?”

“My soooohn.”

It was strange.

The monster’s voice was gradually becoming clearer.

Objectively, it was still hard to understand.

But maybe because I was focusing so hard—

For the first time since my mother had been swallowed by the monster, I could hear its words clearly.

“If I’ve hurt you in any way, I’m sorry.”

“……”

“So, could we make up? That’s Mom’s wish.”

At least then.

Why didn’t I, at least then, throw myself into its arms and ask for forgiveness?

Instead, foolishly, I grabbed my pillow and threw it at it, shouting,

“Get out of my room right now!”

The monster caught my pillow and stood there in silence for a long time.

Now I know.

At that moment, it must have been crying.

But back then, I couldn’t see its tears.

“All right. But please listen to just one thing Mom says.”

“……”

“My son. Your condition doesn’t seem like it will be cured easily. So remember this: never tell anyone else about it.”

“……”

“The world is a very harsh and frightening place. If people find out you have… some kind of mental illness, they’ll reject you, curse you, and point fingers at you. Mom can’t bear to see that happen to you.”

That long speech.

Words I normally wouldn’t have understood.

Yet somehow, on that night alone, I understood every word.

I still couldn’t feel emotion in that voice.

It wasn’t a voice with enough rise and fall to convey feelings.

If anything, the more I listened, the more chilling it felt.

But the content of those words was clearly concern for me—and that, at the time, only made me angrier.

So without thinking, I screamed at the top of my lungs,

“Go away! Go away! Just die! Die already!”

“……”

The monster didn’t react for a long time.

Only after several minutes did it leave me with one last line.

“Mom loves you very much, my son.”

The monster stood up and left.

And the next day—

“Aaaah! Dear, please wake up! Please!”

I ran into the bedroom at my father’s scream.

“…!”

There I saw him, clutching a motionless body and sobbing.

And the body he held was not that of a monster.

“M-Mom.”

My mother.

My mother’s face.

But it wasn’t the face I remembered.

It was filled with far more wrinkles and sorrow than in my memories.

The bright blonde hair she’d been so proud of was now white like an old woman’s.

Her body was gaunt, her skin and lips dry, her back bent.

I opened my mouth and said,

“M-Mom?”

“…!”

My father whipped around to face me.

In his eyes were endless sorrow, despair—and a faint hatred toward me.

“So now you finally recognize your mother?”

“Dad… why does Mom look like this? Why is she so old?”

“Why do you think? Who do you think it’s because of?”

“……”

“Your mother couldn’t sleep properly for a single day because she worried about you! Every night she cried, wondering when her son would finally recognize her!”

“……”

“She was never that healthy to begin with, and then she got sick in the heart as well—so of course this is what happened.”

Stroking my mother’s face, my father continued,

“I know she went to your room last night. What did she say to you?”

“……”

“When she came back, she said she couldn’t go on anymore. That she just wanted to die…”

I clamped my hands over my mouth.

My stomach suddenly churned.

“Ugh.”

Unable to hold back the rising nausea, I ran outside.

I could hear my father shouting something behind me, but it was all a blur.

The world spun, dizzy.

“Bleeegh!”

I threw up violently under a tree beside our house.

After emptying my stomach, I slowly lifted my head.

Then I realized someone was standing in front of me.

“Heh heh.”

It was him!

The man who’d called himself the Demon King of Erosion, who said he cursed me.

He still had a potbelly and that bright red nose.

A filthy appearance with not a shred of dignity.

But his eyes were sunk deep and cold, sending a chill through me.

“You still haven’t fallen into corruption?”

“U-ugh…”

“Your will is pretty strong. You’re holding out better than I expected.”

“You… you. You did this…”

“Well then, I guess I’ll have to turn up the intensity a bit.”

Snap.

He flicked his fingers.

I reflexively closed and opened my eyes.

Nothing seemed to change at first.

The Demon King of Erosion who’d been right in front of me a second ago was gone.

I slowly let out the breath I’d been holding.

And then—

“Mmmmy soooohn, leeeet’s go baaaack iiinside.”

That stretched, pressed-down voice I’d grown sickeningly familiar with.

My whole body trembled as I turned around.

“I’m soooorry about your faaaather eaarlier.”

“Ugh…”

“We haaave to hooold mooother’s fuuuneral.”

I covered my face and burst into tears.

The form made of white squares.

Now even my father had turned into that.

“Aaaaah!”

Like a madman, I ran out into the village.

I hadn’t left the house in almost a year.

Seeing me after so long, the villagers called out in surprise.

“Is thaaat Daaail?”

“I heeard he waaass siiiick…”

“Why dooo you looook sooo scaaary?”

Of course, I couldn’t understand a single word they said.

Because of their pressed, distorted voices.

Because their bodies had turned into white squares.

From that day on, my world became filled with monsters.