"You, exactly as you are now... you're the most perfect being in my heart!"
Only today did Doma finally understand the way those cultists had thought.
Back then his parents had used his unusual appearance to package him as a "divine child," and on that foundation they'd built the Eternal Paradise Faith, with Doma as its founder. The name was grand, but in truth it was only something his parents used to rake in dirty money.
It was rather funny, actually. The reason his parents killed each other was that his mother discovered his father was carrying on with a young female follower, and in the grip of extreme, jealous hatred she'd brought about the tragedy.
Perhaps this was the thing humans called supreme, exalted "faith."
Money, life, or women. Humans were creatures that had to believe in something to go on living, and demons were no different. Kibutsuji Muzan might have been cruel and merciless, yet he had once been the faith in many a demon's heart, the guarantee that let them sleep in peace, like an insurmountable mountain wedged along the boundary between human and demon. As long as he lived, the Demon Slayer Corps could never triumph over demonkind.
—Though this mountain did, now and then, set off a landslide or a flood that hurt his own side.
So it turned out. I too am nothing more than an ordinary person, an ordinary demon.
He'd been born a hollow man, because he lacked the ordinary range of human feeling—the joy and anger and sorrow a normal person knows—a being closer to demon than to man. And now, this hollowness that had lasted more than two hundred years, this meaningless soul, had at last, in this very moment, reclaimed the thing that should always have been his.
"I love you, Lady Inori! I love you! I love you more deeply than anyone else in all the world!"
He laughed in a frenzy even as tears poured down, his expression wildly overblown.
"So you're just this kind of pervert after all."
Inori stared at him and couldn't hold back a cold sneer.
"Then I don't have any guilt weighing on me either."
"Will you... will you kill me? Just because I committed this one small mistake?"
Doma's voice choked as he asked, his face so full of grief and grievance it was hard not to feel a stir of pity.
If not for the fact that he'd interfere with Kocho Kanae's fate, she'd probably have given him a lecture and let it slide, just this once. But she knew the ending Kanae met in the original work, and there was no way she'd let a creature this profoundly twisted go on living.
—Not to mention he'd crossed another line entirely.
The most disgusting thing in the world was being confessed to by someone you didn't like.
The rule that "the desperate simp must die" wasn't only because the way they throw away their dignity was revolting. It was because such people tended to act without using their heads at all. Tamadate Souta was the cautionary example.
That fellow had nearly gotten Menjou Hare killed, so Inori had put him down.
No matter how gloriously he dressed up his original intentions, Inori would never tolerate a fool like that operating anywhere near her.
Doma was different from him. He had the strength, but lacked the reason. Yet the result was the same. To protect the companions she valued, she would move to snuff out this unstable factor, even if the other party bore her no ill will whatsoever.
—Sorry, Doma. It's genuine, I'll grant you that, but your place in my heart can't compare to Kanae's in the slightest.
"You've crossed my line."
"I'm not the perfect being you imagine me to be, and I could never stand wholly on the demons' side and harm humans."
Inori pressed her fingers to her forehead, explaining calmly.
"It's a shame. You had the wrong person."
He'd surely be furious.
Just like Tamadate Souta back then. The moment she'd openly broken with him, he'd started hurling abuse at her every which way, calling her a murderer and the like.
Doma would probably see this as a betrayal too. She'd agreed to become the Demon King, yet here she was, moving to kill the sitting Upper Rank Two for the sake of a mere Demon Slayer Corps Hashira.
She expected to watch that handsome face of his twist and contort with extreme rage.
"I... I see... then there's nothing to be done. It seems you already have your answer in your heart."
But he was Doma. He wasn't anyone Inori had ever known.
To him, even watching his own parents die before his eyes had stirred not the slightest grief. A few words from Inori couldn't possibly shake his emotions.
—Why isn't he angry even now? Could this be love so deep that even my wanting to take your life feels to you like a blessing?
Since he was ending things so placidly, Inori didn't want to waste any more breath.
"I've made myself quite clear. I'll try to make your death painless."
The girl let out a helpless sigh, but still raised her hand without hesitation, ready to summon King Crimson's blood form and send her most loyal subordinate on his way before sunrise.
"No... please don't kill me."
The sky had brightened fully; only the sun itself had yet to show. This was the last lingering moment of the night before dawn. Doma stopped his tears and forced out a bitter smile.
"That's not possible."
Inori shook her head.
—If I don't kill him, fate has a ninety percent chance of pushing Kanae back onto her original ending. I have no choice.
"Lady Inori, I'm truly grateful I got to meet you."
Doma understood perfectly well that what awaited him next was the thing called "death," yet his heart held not the least worry over it.
"The joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness a person is supposed to have simply by being born into this world, or emotions powerful enough to make one tremble... I have none of them. I'm a demon with no heart, a being hollower than a demon. It's an awful thing to say, but the truth is that my living holds no value at all."
"I see."
Inori nodded.
That explained all his strangeness up to now.
He lacked feeling, but fortunately he was a clever man, one who knew to cover his defect with lies and performance. Even so, he couldn't be perfect at it; there was always some detail he failed to play out, some tell that gave him away.
So this was why he could accept death so calmly. With no feeling, there was no fear, no anger, no sorrow.
"But that was the old me."
"After you appeared, I tasted for the first time the emotion called 'love.' That a heartless creature like me could be granted such a gift... it truly is an honor beyond my station! The days spent with you were the happiest of my whole life. On that one point alone, I'm not lying, nor am I fishing for sympathy. Please don't misunderstand me."
"...I understand."
Doma's very existence was a tragedy. A congenital defect left him unable to feel any empathy toward humans, and after becoming a demon he'd gone on to brutally torture and kill women, without a shred of mercy. One could only say it had all fit together too well; every condition had aligned to make him the heartless demon he was.
"I would have loved to go on living alongside my beloved Lady Inori, to taste more feelings, but you chose that woman... and there's nothing I can do about it, because you're far, far stronger than me."
"I could never be your match. I can only accept your choice."
A normal person in this situation would surely have gone berserk with jealousy, but he had no such emotion, and didn't know how to handle it, so all he could do was accept it with an even, peaceful heart.
"I don't want to be killed by you."
His tears fell once more, because by his own reckoning, in the face of death one ought to look somewhat sorrowful.
"Even if only for an instant... let me stand with you beneath the same sun. I want to see whether Lady Inori, bathed in that light, might be even more beautiful than I imagined."
This was his final wish, not for Inori to do it by her own hand, but to be burned to ash by the sunlight.
"All right."
The girl nodded and granted it.