BXBX NOVEL Chapter 272
The demon woman slightly blushed and averted her gaze. After hearing this question, she then pondered about her name, but the slave curse tattoo was still on her neck.
However, she didn’t want to give up and tried to brute force the recollection of her name. The demon woman grunted, and the black tattoo glowed purple for a moment before she stopped struggling.
“I remember now! My name is Sakura!” Sakura smiled for the first time, and it made Vincent’s heart flutter from this sight.
“Now that’s a beautiful smile Sakura, you should smile more, haha.” Vincent felt happy the demon who suffered so much finally had a smile on her face.
Sakura’s cheeks blushed, but she kept the don’t-come-closer air around her. She was still wary of Vincent since he was from the same race that humiliated and tortured her.
“Sakura, can you tell me your story? I can tell you mine as well. We have less than ten minutes in here before I ask the question to become my retainer, bear my mark, and be hunted or hated with us.” Vincent sat down because he felt he teased her a bit too much.
Wolfie happily went to sit on his lap while Freeries landed all over his body. Kazumi felt left out, so she perched on his head after one Freerie butterfly went on Wolfie’s head instead.
Sakura didn’t know what to say at the serene sight before her. Her heart relaxed as she looked at them. She felt as if all her worries could be shared with the human looking at her with an attentive gaze.
.....
Sakura looked around, but there was nothing to do other than to talk in the mysterious Soul Domain Bridge. She looked at Vincent, nodded, and sat on her knees like a shy delicate woman.
“Start first. I want to trust you, human. I want to know if I am signing a contract with the devil. You, humans, humiliated me enough...” Sakura stated.
[It feels weird hearing this coming from a demon.]
“Okay, let me tell you my story. But first, I want to let you know that I will treat you well while you are by my side. I will try to help you whenever you have a nightmare or give you moral support when you need a shoulder to lean on to.” Vincent said before he told Sakura about his life and what happened in this current world.
Sakura became curious about his world’s technology and even more about the smartphone he previously showed her. Furthermore, she became impressed with the difficulties he and the others had to overcome to reach this point.
However, all of this wouldn’t have made Sakura completely believe his story without Kazumi using Vision Projection and showing multiple images of his past from both worlds.
“You... Vincent... I am sorry for being mean to you. I didn’t think you have gone through so much... what I passed through is nothing compared to y...”
“Don’t say that, Sakura!” He interrupted.
“This is not a competition about who suffered the most. I know how hard it is for you to trust me, a human, wholeheartedly, but I hope you can one day let me and those around me help you overcome this horrible past.”
Vincent kept a distance in his approach to make Sakura open up to him. He brushed Wolfie’s crystal fur and warmly smiled at Sakura, hoping she could live a better life if she accepted the retainer bond.
“Thank you.” She thanked Vincent with a smile on her face.
Sakura made her mind up on what to do next. She looked at him with an unwavering gaze and began retelling her story.
Sakura mentioned how she lives or now lived in one of the many small hidden demon villages with her father and three elder brothers before they married. Her mother passed away a year after her birth from an accident.
The four of them would help their father in his work as a blacksmith, but her body started looking different from the regular petit demons as she got older because she was of the Oni kind.
Sakura mentioned how an Oni’s body grows a lot in strength and body size after the hormones that make them an adult trigger in their bodies. They call it an Oni’s growth spur, and it lasts depending on the potential of the Oni.
It means an Oni child is weak at first but later becomes stronger until the growth spur stops by itself, or the body is stressed so much that the growth spur abruptly stops. Doing little exercise also ends quickly from the lack of potential in their growth.
Sakura mentioned how female Oni’s barely do anything until their growth spur ends because they choose option three. However, she chose differently.
The second option was on Sakura’s choice to keep helping her father in the work she came to enjoy, but her growth spur lasted much longer than any Oni teenager. She never thought her female body would have more potential than her brothers.
Sakura trained with her father as a blacksmith in the day. Then she would secretly overtrain to exhaust all the energy in her body. But the hope for her growth spur to stop from not keeping up with the stress never happened.
In the end, her father was constantly worried about his only daughter’s future as he kept blaming himself after his daughter never found a partner. Even her friends stopped meeting with her.
Sakura mentioned how depressed she would feel whenever her father tried to set her up with clients and add a family discount with their order if they accepted.
Her father isn’t a bad father, but his own way of helping his only daughter didn’t work as it worked with his sons.
Sakura was enraged at how the first date she managed to have was all a scam. She discovered how her father made a losing deal just to see his daughter happy like any woman is. But to know how her father is suffering because of her made Sakura more resentful of her body.
“I gave that demon good slap and left him knocked out cold on the ground. Then from that day onwards, I always refused a date and worked on something as an excuse.” She angrily said.
Sakura finished speaking about the past and said how she thinks the problem started a year ago. It was on the day she Awakened into the Blacksmith class, to be more specific.
Sakura’s father and brothers were happy about the awakening and even made a large celebration. Each one of them was proud now that one of their family members had finally awakened the Blacksmith class. The father and brothers possessed different classes.
All was good with the family situation and work, but her oldest brother’s wife gave Sakura a job request not too long ago. Sakura couldn’t tell precisely when because suffering from humans felt like months to her every day in this mansion.
Sakura had to meet with the client directly, who was waiting at the border of demon village. Her oldest brother’s wife was a gentile and caring demon, so she decided to trust her.
That’s when Sakura entered a carriage and noticed too late that it was filled with humans holding weapons. Sakura quickly looked out of the window and saw her oldest brother’s wife with a disgusting smile. She was waving with one hand and the other holding a small heavy bag.
“That’s how I was sold. How I hate the humans who did this to me and how I don’t know who else was on this...” Sakura had a sad expression on her face. She sighed a lot as she retold her origin story.
“But those three little girls are different. Yes, they are humans, but they still helped me and didn’t look afraid of me. I have decided to protect their innocence even if I get hunted...”
“Well, humans already hunt demons...” Sakura revealed how she didn’t choose Vincent per se, but she wanted her body to heal and save the three little girls.
Sakura’s perseverance to protect the three little girls at all costs, even if she is hunted by all the world and possibly stopped being a pure-blooded demon, took Vincent and Kazumi by surprise.
[Are you planning to push everyone out of the fireball’s path even if you get hit?]
Sakura looked surprised. “How did you know? Can you read minds?” She asked.
Vincent got up and went in front of Sakura. “I deem you as a trusted woman in our team. Let’s shake on it and make you my retainer. Then you can do or become whatever you want in our little family bound by this dangerous secret.” He said with a warm smile with his hand extended for a handshake.
[Yeah, you can totally join our... ahem, his harem and become his sixth woman. I bet Vincent will like that.]
“Ahem, please don’t mind Kazumi. She likes to joke about harem this and harem that. I only want a person to trust before a person to love. You suffered a lot from men, but know that I will treat you like a how a woman should be treated. So rest your mind...” Vincent explained before Sakura hugged him with intensity and lifted him.
Vincent felt multiple sensations in this one hug. He felt softness, hardness, and his bones from by his soul-conscious begging to stop. It was more like a person doing a bear hug to kill someone rather than a delicate embrace.