Prologue 2: Opening Prep

Prologue 2:
Opening Prep

I remember it like it was just yesterday. The first time I ever visited the master’s restaurant, Western Cuisine Nekoya (known as the Restaurant to Another World to the other guests), was just as the seasons were changing and winter was coming to the capital. It was a frigid night.

I recall being holed up in some ruins just outside of the city, with nothing but a dirty, tattered cloth to cover my shivering body.

What am I gonna do?

I recall nearly succumbing to tears, thinking I was gonna die there. Even though tons of people lived in the bustling capital, finding a job was impossible. I didn’t have a single copper coin to my name. The only food left was the meager rations I had for the evening. At the rate I was going, I would be dead long before winter arrived.

Maybe I should’ve never come to the capital, I thought.

I recall shivering from the cold air, as I had no wood to start a fire. I gently massaged the hard horns I hid beneath the hat I had worn since leaving my hometown. Why couldn’t I have been born a human?

I’m a demon, and like all other members of my race, I received our dark lord’s blessing. This meant there was a part of me that was inhuman. This varied from demon to demon. For example, some of us had strange eyes that could see things humans could not, while others had horns or a tail. There were those who grew scales from their body and demons with poisonous blood or sweat. I had even heard of demons with slime-like appendages they could stretch out.

Even if one’s mother or father were human or half-elf, a member of the demon race would be born with the dark lord’s blessing. That was inescapable. In my village, there was a child whose father was a human from the empire. Despite having human blood running through them, they were born with an even stronger blessing than usual. They grew lizard scales and had fangs that secreted poison.

The only blessings I received from the dark lord were small, black goat horns. According to the wise priest in my hometown, who had four large horns, demons who were born with them had a stronger connection to the dark lord than all others, giving them the right to become priests or priestesses. Unfortunately, I was born with so little power that I couldn’t do the job. My own physical and magical strength was no better than your average human girl, so it wasn’t as if I could do things that humans couldn’t. As far as I was concerned, my demonic blessing was nothing more than a curse that brought me misfortune.

I was born and raised in a small town in the wastelands of the Kingdom. It was a poor place, with land that wasn’t fertile enough to grow wheat or any other kind of meaningful crops. Mercenaries who had left to earn money in the empire came back with cobbler’s tubers, the only thing we could grow in the barren fields. When I was a child, I don’t recall ever having eaten my fill.

After my parents died from a disease that went around, I decided to leave. My big brother and sister had long since left home, becoming mercenaries and getting married, so I couldn’t count on them for anything. I also knew that taking care of the tuber fields by myself was impossible, so I sold them to my neighbor and used the money to leave for the capital.

I think things went rather well at first. I managed to get a waitressing job at an inn at the capital, and I worked hard every day. Day-to-day life was a little tough at first, as I wasn’t used to that kind of work. But they gave me the leftover vegetables, soup, and hard bread at the end of the day. If I’m being perfectly honest, it wasn’t a life of luxury, but I made enough money to at least start saving.

Unfortunately, that life didn’t last for very long. One day, my hat fell off my head. As soon as my horns were visible for all to see, it was over.

…I was just a young demon girl who grew up in a small town. I don’t think I ever really understood what that meant to those of the outside world. I never understood how we were viewed by the humans in the Kingdom.

The night my horns were seen, I was chased out of the inn. They tossed all my belongings out as well. I was at a total loss.

Of course, I went searching for work as soon as I could. Unfortunately, my identity as a demon was already well known, so the only work I could find were day jobs for people with physical strength. There were times when even those ran dry.

I tried to be as frugal as possible, but my savings depleted faster than I expected. That’s when I found myself living in the ruins of the capital, a place that not even the poorest of the poor would choose to call home. I shivered from the cold.

“I suppose I should eat.”

The sun had long since set, meaning it was dangerous to walk around. I pulled out the last cobbler’s tuber I bought with my remaining money in the hopes of staving off my hunger. A few days earlier, I used some abandoned fire wood I found outside the city to boil the tuber. I figured it wouldn’t go bad for a while given the time of year.

Despite how hungry I was, the tuber was anything but delicious. It went without saying that it was cold, but it was also dry as sand. At one point, I half expected it to get caught in my throat. The only real flavor it had came from the dash of salt I sprinkled atop of it. I washed this all down with some lukewarm water.

Regardless of its flavor, the tuber at least helped fill my empty stomach. That alone was enough to put me comparatively at ease.

“I should go to bed.”

Once I was finished eating, I had nothing else to do. I curled my body into a ball to keep warm and closed my eyes, forcing myself to sleep.

I had no way of knowing how much my own fate would change the next time I woke…

At least, not yet.