He was born into a family living on the outskirts of the village. A place filled only with the bubbling murmur of hot springs and the relentless, icy snowfall that day and night seemed to swallow their ramshackle home whole. Masaru lived with his grandmother. His parents had been forced to flee with Masaru's younger sister, crushed under the unbearable weight of the village's contempt and ostracism toward their family. All because he had been born different. All because he was one of the last remaining descendants of the "Toyotomi" clan. A once-glorious lineage. Until their catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Tokugawa clan, aided by the Kuroda clan. The family had been annihilated, meeting a ruinous end at the Siege of Osaka during the Warring States period.
That event was not merely a clan's defeat. It was a genetic inheritance, a curse that, day by day, year by year, generation by generation, gnawed and corroded within their bloodline. In a place where conformity was revered, the prejudice and ideology of this society—this thing they called "Normal"—meant that anything different, anything divergent, or marked by past failure, became an unforgivable sin. A thing beyond tolerance. Something that deserved to be cast into hell by the demonic biases and bigotry of this insular, conservative community.
But.
Despite his abnormalities. Despite his personality and the features that set him apart from ordinary people, from his peers. There was one person. That grandmother. His grandmother still cared for him, still loved him tenderly. Regardless of what he was. Despite the fact that she, too, was hated, isolated, and stigmatized by the villagers. She was still there. His grandmother was always waiting for him to return from those days of hellish schooling. Yet to him, it was as ordinary and comforting as the steaming bowl of rice porridge she always made for him.
Just that one simple thing was enough to give Masaru a peace that settled his heart.
"How was school today, Masaru?"
"Did you have fun?"
His grandmother sat simmering the porridge over the smoking wood stove. Her eyes were narrowed, wrinkled with age.
She did not ask if he had been bullied. She only asked, "Did you have fun today?"—a question to which they both knew the answer. But she still asked. Because it was the only way she could say: "I'm still here. I'm waiting for you."
That question. Almost every single day when he came home from school, she would ask him the very same thing in that same warm tone. Even though she knew. His grandmother knew. She knew very well. But that was all she knew to do. All she knew was to make him porridge every day. To encourage him. To cheer him up a little. Or simply to speak to him with that gentle concern.
Whenever she asked those simple things, his grandmother wept silently, without a sob. The tears just rolled down her weathered cheeks, reflecting the flickering firelight behind her thin, hunched back.
"Yes... it was... it was normal..." Masaru said timidly. A forced smile. A twisted, deformed grimace, which, combined with those blazing red eyes, only amplified his grotesqueness.
Masaru was lying. He was clearly lying. And he didn't know how many times he had lied to her. He didn't know how many times he had lied to himself. Every time he answered that question, his heart just clenched. His eyes stung with shame and humiliation. He didn't dare speak. He didn't dare tell the truth, just to set her mind at ease.
Even though his grandmother surely understood what her grandchild was going through. A child. Born to be crushed by the world, hated, unconditionally turned against. Even though Masaru had done nothing wrong. He hadn't even had awareness back then. It was a quiet, simmering ostracism, the absolute extreme of contempt.
A child bullied and shoved by his peers from the moment he started kindergarten all through elementary school. Every day he came home from school, there would be at least ten new bruises on his body, if not more. Sometimes worse. Much worse. Not only was the situation never resolved, but he also received even more looks of disdain. Even the teachers tacitly condoned the bullying of Toyotomi Masaru. And now, even as a high school student, it continued.
Though the shoving and outright physical violence had mostly stopped. They didn't hit him anymore. They just talked. Those words were softer than a fist, but they cut deeper, so deep that he began to believe he truly was the worthless piece of trash they called him. This caused his grades not only to plummet to the bottom of the class, but also turned him into someone invisible yet watched more than anyone. Watched with the most scrutinizing, disgusted eyes.
On his way home from school, he was not allowed to look up. More accurately, he couldn't. Because if he did, he would be met with those revolted stares. Those gazes like the barrels of black guns, ready to purge and annihilate a hideous monster like him. So he walked with his face bowed to the ground, his heart trembling with the fear of a small child, a boy, a young man who had died inside a long, long time ago.
"Ah!... Oh my goodness... Your eyes are so beautiful!" A bright, clear voice rang out, piercing straight into Masaru's heart.
"Cool... that's so freaking cool! How did you get your hair that awesome brown color? Did you use wax, or gel? And those red eyes... Woah... they're blazing red! You're so handsome, what the heck!"
A girl with pale blonde hair reaching her waist was chattering away in that characteristic Kansai lilt right in front of him on the road home. She looked about his age. Big, round eyes. A full, bright face. She had appeared right before Masaru.
On instinct, Masaru looked up. But he immediately dropped his gaze back down. He was afraid of being ridiculed again. Afraid of facing those looks. Afraid of hearing those curses again. But... something felt strange in Masaru's heart. He felt as if a chain around his soul had suddenly been unlatched. All the horrible things that had ever happened. Upon hearing that voice. Upon glimpsing a face he dared not look at. Standing before a girl he had never met, a girl who, by all logic, should have treated him with the same contempt as every other girl in the village.
He didn't dare look up, but this time it wasn't from fear. This time, he was afraid that if he looked up, that ray of light would flicker out just like every other time before. But she stayed there. And for the first time in so many years, Masaru felt warmth radiating from someone other than his grandmother.
A situation Masaru could never have anticipated. One that would forever alter the destiny of the one cursed by the entire world.
It was the very first time someone had seen "Masaru"—and not seen a "Demon."