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Chapter 169: Daki Isn't a Good Girl, But Ume Is
"Be my pet, Daki." Suyan began pulling the heavy gold hairpins and elaborate floral ornaments out of her hair, tossing them casually onto the table. He then reached up and began stroking her sleek, black hair, treating her exactly like a cat.
The moment the words left his mouth, a dead silence fell over the room. Even the terrified chicken, En, poked her head out of Suyan's jacket to stare at him in utter disbelief. She was so thoroughly flabbergasted by the sheer audacity of his demand that she entirely forgot her plan to fly away and call for backup.
"Are you out of your mind!? You want me to be a pet to a human pig!?" Daki completely snapped, her hair practically standing on end like a furious, cornered cat.
If washing off her makeup was an assault on her dignity, asking her to be a pet was an absolute desecration of her pride. She was an Upper Rank demon! Humans were nothing more than livestock to her. If she had to draw a comparison, the insult was just as profound as the Black Emperor demanding to take a peerless prodigy as his human pet in Shrouding the Heavens. The physical damage was zero, but the humiliation was absolute.
Whoosh!
A massive bundle of fabric violently shattered the room's paper doors from the outside, shooting straight into Daki's back. It was the segmented sash she had previously sent out to hunt and gather food. The moment the separated power re-entered her body, Daki's hair instantly shifted from pitch black to bone white. Her fingernails elongated into razor-sharp talons, thick veins bulged across her forehead, and her flawless skin fractured into a terrifying web of cracks, looking like shattered porcelain.
Daki had instantly recalled her full power.
"I'll kill you! I swear to God I'll kill you! I'm going to rip you into a thousand pieces!!" Daki roared, surging with murderous intent.
In her absolute fury, she managed to... well, she managed to be furious.
"Too ugly. Change back," Suyan said, clicking his tongue in disapproval at her demonic transformation. He raised a hand and brought it down hard.
Smack!
His palm collided heavily with Daki's firm, plump rear. Even through the thick fabric of her inner garments, the impact sent a visible ripple across her curves.
"You... you... you..." Daki froze entirely. Her eyes, marked with the kanji for Upper Rank Six, widened to comical proportions. A furious, deeply embarrassed flush exploded across her face, turning her skin the color of a ripe tomato.
"Not bad. Great texture," Suyan praised shamelessly.
Hearing this, Daki's face grew even redder. She lowered her head, her entire body trembling uncontrollably. Just when Suyan assumed she was about to launch another tirade of curses or try to claw his eyes out, her reaction completely subverted his expectations.
"Waaah! You're bullying me~!" Daki collapsed weakly against Suyan's chest, fat tears spilling from her eyes. She tilted her head back and screamed at the ceiling at the top of her lungs, "ONII-CHAN!!!"
She obviously wasn't calling Suyan her brother, nor was she submitting to him. She was calling for the demon slumbering deep within her own flesh—the true core of Upper Rank Six, her older brother Gyutaro.
The moment her scream echoed through the room, a cloud of blood mist surged from her shoulder. The mist swirled rapidly in the air, solidifying into a grotesque, humanoid shape directly in front of them.
It was a man with messy green hair, wielding a pair of vicious, jagged blood sickles. His body was so profoundly emaciated he looked like a walking skeleton. His pupils were so tiny that one had to squint to even see the kanji denoting his Upper Rank Six status. This was Gyutaro, Daki's fiercely protective older brother.
"Ume, don't cry. Your big brother is here..." Seeing his sister weeping in a stranger's arms, Gyutaro awkwardly scratched his head. He reached out with a stiff, unnatural motion, trying to wipe the tears from her face.
"Shut up!" Daki slapped Gyutaro's hand away, throwing a full-blown tantrum. "I told you not to call me Ume! I'm Daki! Upper Rank Six, Daki!"
Her behavior perfectly highlighted the truth: at her core, Daki was nothing more than an incredibly spoiled, bratty child. And when it came to enabling that behavior, Gyutaro was undoubtedly the most devoted, overly indulgent older brother in the entire world.
When they were transformed into demons, they were granted the unique property of symbiosis. They could only be killed if both their heads were severed simultaneously. Beyond that, Gyutaro spent the vast majority of the last century asleep inside his sister's body, only ever emerging as a specialized attack dog whenever Daki encountered an enemy she couldn't beat or whenever someone made her cry.
If Gyutaro hadn't been perpetually held back by the need to protect and babysit his sister, Muzan believed his combat potential could have carried him far beyond the rank of Upper Rank Six. But Gyutaro's devotion went far deeper than simply fighting for her. He willingly shouldered every single sin and atrocity Daki ever committed. In the original timeline, when the siblings were finally killed, Gyutaro dragged himself to hell to pay for their crimes, while urging Daki to walk into the light and ascend to heaven.
"S-Sorry..." Gyutaro looked completely lost as his sister slapped his hand away. He lowered his head apologetically, then slowly turned his terrifying gaze toward Suyan.
It didn't take a genius to assess the situation. There was only one man, one bird, and his sister in the room. This human was clearly the one bullying her. Gyutaro tightened his grip on his blood sickles. "Let go of my sister!"
"Hmm," Suyan hummed, ignoring the threat entirely. Gyutaro was a good brother, sure, but that meant he had absolutely zero say in this negotiation. When it came to this duo, Daki called the shots. Gyutaro was just the muscle.
Suyan raised his free hand, conjuring a length of gleaming silver chain that instantly slithered toward Gyutaro like a striking viper.
Gyutaro might have looked slow and dim-witted, but his combat instincts were phenomenal. Without a word, he swung his sickle, aiming to slice the chain in half.
Clang!
Sparks flew as the blood sickle collided heavily with the silver chain, but to Gyutaro's utter shock, the metal didn't even dent. His limited intelligence couldn't comprehend why his Blood Demon Art failed to cut a simple chain, but his instincts immediately provided the next best solution. Ignoring the chains swirling around him like octopus tentacles, Gyutaro lunged forward, swinging his sickle directly at Suyan's neck, fully intending to cleave him in half.
A split second later, the deadly blade ground to an absolute halt, caught effortlessly between two of Suyan's fingers.
"What!?" Gyutaro's tiny pupils shrank to pinpricks. He immediately raised his second sickle, ready to sever the fingers holding his weapon.
Just then, Daki—still firmly locked in Suyan's embrace—wailed dramatically. "Brother! What are you doing!? Hurry up and kill him and save me!!"
The sudden, piercing scream caused Gyutaro to flinch, freezing him in place for a crucial fraction of a second. Suyan didn't miss the opening. With a flick of his wrist, the silver chains snaked up the blade of the sickle, rapidly coiling around Gyutaro's arms and torso. By the time Gyutaro realized what was happening, he was thoroughly trussed up, completely immobilized by the unbreakable Nen chains.
Suyan looked down at Daki, shaking his head in amusement. What a phenomenally unhelpful sister. While Gyutaro was never going to win this fight, restraining him while he was fully resisting would have taken slightly more effort if Daki hadn't perfectly sabotaged him.
Suyan patted Daki on the shoulder. "Alright, Daki. Got any other tricks up your sleeve?"
"Brother!!" Daki looked up in horror, staring at Gyutaro, who was currently bound tighter than a mummy. For centuries, she had relied entirely on screaming for her brother whenever things got tough. But this time, her brother couldn't answer the call. Gyutaro gritted his teeth and strained with all his demonic might to break the silver chains, but the metal refused to yield.
"Ume... I'm sorry... I..." Gyutaro hung his head in shame, apologizing weakly to his sister.
"Shut up! I told you to stop calling me Ume!" Daki shrieked in frustration.
"I'm sorry..."
Instead of reflecting on the fact that she had just actively caused his defeat, Daki began berating him. "What good is saying sorry!? You're completely useless!!"
Hearing this, Gyutaro's head dropped even lower, utterly crushed by her words.
Suyan simply watched the exchange. He had no intention of killing them, nor did he care about Daki's incredibly toxic, bratty attitude. Because this wasn't the real Daki. She was just putting up a front. All bark and no bite.
Before becoming a demon, the girl named Ume had been pure and kindhearted. After enduring unimaginable cruelty and nearly burning to death, her personality violently inverted, becoming arrogant, cruel, and short-tempered. But all of that was just a twisted defense mechanism designed to protect herself from ever being hurt again. Deep down, the core of her soul was still Ume. Suyan knew that in the original timeline, she ultimately chose to follow her brother into the fires of hell rather than abandon him for heaven. It was because he had witnessed that brilliant, gemstone-like purity of her soul that Suyan even considered making her his pet. If she was truly rotten to the core, he would have just killed them and traded their abilities for Nen.
Daki might not be a good girl, but Ume was.
"Now," Suyan said, looking down at Daki, "can we finally have a proper chat?"
Seeing her invincible older brother defeated completely shattered Daki's sense of security. She didn't want to die, but the thought of serving a human as a pet still repulsed her. "I will never be your pet!" she spat.
"Now, now, don't be so quick to refuse," Suyan replied casually, twirling a strand of her silver-white hair around his finger. "Don't you want to walk under the sun again? Don't you want to feel the warmth of daylight like a normal person? Don't you want to taste all the delicious human foods you've been missing for the last century?"
Truth be told, the biology of the demons in this world felt incredibly similar to the Ghouls from Tokyo Ghoul. But aside from their biological immortality, they were actually worse off in almost every way.
"Walk in the sun? Eat human food?" Daki's eyes widened, a flash of intense yearning crossing her face.
How could she not want that? Conquering the sun was the ultimate dream of every single demon in existence. But even the Demon King, Muzan, hadn't achieved it in over a thousand years. Why should she believe this human could?
As for human food, her craving for it eclipsed even her desire for the sun. She was a hedonist. She wanted to be adored, pampered, and enjoy every single luxury life had to offer. That was the entire reason she lived in the red-light district. She had grown deeply sick of eating human flesh—even the finest delicacies become nauseating if you eat them every day for a century. She found the act of devouring humans so grotesque and ugly that she exclusively used her sashes to feed, entirely to avoid sullying her beauty with the physical act of chewing meat.
Suyan's offer struck her absolute weakest point. As for loyalty to Muzan? A spoiled child cared nothing for loyalty. If Suyan could actually deliver on his promises, she would betray Muzan in a heartbeat without a second thought.
"That's..." Daki wiped the tears from her eyes and shook her head in disbelief. "That's impossible! How could you possibly do that!?"
"I don't need to convince you," Suyan replied, raising an index finger and wagging it in front of her face. "Because you, and your greatest trump card over there, are completely at my mercy. It's still daytime outside. I don't even need a Nichirin sword to decapitate you. All I have to do is drag you both out the front door and let the sun burn you to ashes."
He leaned in close, his voice dropping into a dark whisper. "Just imagine it. The most beautiful Oiran in the Entertainment District, exposed as a hideous, screaming monster, burning away into ugly black ash in front of a massive crowd. So, what's it going to be? Do I drag you outside and watch you burn, or do you become my pet and enjoy a beautiful, sunlit future?"
Daki shuddered violently. That was way too cruel. She valued her beauty above all else. The thought of dying as a hideous, burning monster in front of her adoring fans terrified her to her core. For a brief second, she legitimately wondered which of them was the real demon.
"Brother?" she whimpered.
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