Chapter 5

Draft

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At six in the morning, you go to the bathroom to look at 177. It woke up when you opened the bathroom door. You say "good morning" to it, but it still doesn't speak, watching you walk in and out alertly. After you wash up and say your morning prayers, you go to water the garden.

"Good morning, priest!" a passerby would say to you, "God, what's wrong with your face?"

"Good day, Mr/Miss" You will reply, "It's alright, just a nervous guest. "

They will nod solemnly, praise your golden heart, condemn irresponsible parents and owners, and declare that they would donate to the orphanage/shelter. Conversations that morning ended quickly, it was a working day and everyone was in a hurry.

After watering the garden, you start your morning exercise, and after your morning exercise, you go to the bathroom and take a shower. 177 stares at you from the bathtub, your residence doesn't have a second bathroom or shower curtain, it can only stare.

After finishing your shower, breakfast would be ready. You eat it quickly in just a few minutes. When you walk to the door it's exactly 7:30, this is the time you go to work every day.

Today is a Monday, a public holiday for all priests. You walk through a dilapidated garden, a half-covered abandoned residential area, and through a relatively lively street, walking into a nearby supermarket that sells canned devil. You go to the discount area to buy daily necessities that you didn't buy yesterday, you take them to the checkout with the canned devil.

The cashier greets you warmly, addressed the wound on your face, and beamed with joy when she learned that you weren't going to church today. "Are you resting today? Great!" She said, "You should have some private time!"

This small town isn't an important place. The priests here could actually rest three or four days a week. That's what the previous priest did, no one would complain. After you came, the residents of the town were amazed at your year-round dedication. Some of them, such as the woman in front of you, even worried about you. "You're so kind and selfless, you should leave yourself some time!" they would say.

You've never understood what this so-called lack of personal time was. There's only one priest of the church here, the church doesn't pay attention to this village, you only need to report once a year. No one orders and supervises you, haven't you been spending "private time" all this time? However, since they all say so, this must be some kind of conventional concept. You won't ask strange questions, you just smile, thank them for their concern, and tell them that everything is fine.

It's not that you will always work hard, you will occasionally stay at home when there are things in the house that needs to be taken care of urgently. You put the canned devil on the cashier counter, and the cashier babbles to you while scanning the can. The older woman is one of the conservatives who protested against canned demons a few years ago. She probably didn't pay attention to what you bought, or she did, but quickly came up with a reasonable explanation.

In short, you bought the canned food. You walk home with a bulging eco-bag, you walk into the bathroom and see 177 lying on the edge of the bathtub with a bored expression. You notice that there are new bruises on its body, they were marks left by tightening the shackles greatly. It seemed that when you left, it wasn't as idle as it was now. You think it's much more energetic compared to yesterday's dying look, which is very gratifying.

You walk out of the bathroom again, put the other things away, and open the canned demon in front of the kitchen window. As soon as the can was opened, you found what the "please open in a ventilated place" meant. How was the smell? At least the smell of this thing was the same as that of the slogan. It smells like a new corpse or an open wound that has begun to decompose. You feel a little nostalgic.

You pour the suspiciously coloured meat into the food bowl, add a little hot water according to the instructions, and stir it with a spoon. The meat showed the colour of very finely minced meat. You poked at it, absently thinking about how the factory restored the feeling of dead body elasticity. In the decades that passed since the full-scale war against hell, technology advanced rapidly in a strange direction. It soaks in the food bowl and looks as "fresh" as a freshly dug corpse. You take the food bowl into the bathroom and 177's head raises towards you.

177 doesn't look as calm as you, its brows were frowned, staring at the food bowl in your hand. You put the food bowl on the tile in front of the bathtub and step back to see if it can eat it or not.

It seems to have little interest.

Little interest is a conservative statement, you see apparent disgust on the face of the devil. It stared at the food bowl as a cat would stare at an orange peel. You're hesitant to leave; on one hand, not being watched may help it eat, on the other hand, you don't want it to knock over the food bowl and throw feed all over the bathroom. Smelly things easily stain the towels and are troublesome to wash.

"This is, what?" 177 asked.

And it talks, you think. Among mixed-bloods, those who can understand lingua franca and those who can't were half-half, those who can speak it were half of the half-half. Its voice is hoarse and slow, it doesn't sound like a beginner's jerky tongue, more like something picked up once more after a long time without speaking, or maybe its vocal cords just haven't recovered from yesterday's overload yet.

"Food." You answered.

177 stared at you, it's not the same as yesterday's glare. It used to be resentment and intimidation, but now it's some kind of... not good. It looked at the food bowl and the corners of its mouth twisted.

"Are you a priest?" It asked.

You don't understand why it needs to confirm this. You wear the standard robe, a cross and a rose rosary, you can use prayers, and others call you a priest. What else can you be if not a priest? But 177 squinted and seemed to be questioning something, so you answered patiently: "I am a priest."

It sneered, but there was no smile in its eyes. There was a sharp mockery in those dark red eyes—not surprisingly, the devil laughed at everything and hated everything— but there was more than just mocking. There was a flash of light in your mind, and you suddenly realized what this look was.

It was the look your father had when he found you eating candy, the look of the old lady at the grocery store when she looked at a teenager smoking marijuana. In the brief moment you looked at each other, the demon's face was almost stern. You look at 177 in surprise, as if you were seeing a ghoul walk into a chapel.

The next moment, 177 lowered its eyes, as if it had lost interest, or maybe it just didn't want to conflict with you. You wait for it to continue, it says nothing. After blankly waiting for a minute, you leave the bathroom.

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That morning, you went to the asylum and did volunteer work as usual. You declined the offer of lunch at the shelter and came back to look at 177. The food bowl was untouched. In the afternoon you did some miscellaneous things again. When you came back at dusk, you opened the bathroom door but saw a still untouched food bowl. Flies were hovering above it. You drove them away and felt that you should check the screens.

Sitting on the other side of the bathtub, 177 had burns on his elbow. It seems that it had already tried to attack the bathroom window. Its chain is relatively loose and can stretch around the bathroom and toilet, but it's also limited to this. Your residence is full of prayers carved by yourself. If this town falls, it'll be able to resist demon soldiers for at least three days— you know that the possibility of this happening is infinitely close to zero, but you still did it out of habit.

Bleeding wounds were no longer visible on the half-blood demon. Yesterday's large patches of bruising have almost completely subsided, but the burns on his elbows will continue to ache for the next few days. He had bought it upon himself. You clean up the food bowl, turn on the ventilating fan and headlights, put on rubber gloves, take off your shoes, and walk towards the bathtub. 177 retreated a little from you, and when you tried to break apart its legs, it tried to kick you.

You avoid and complete half of the prayer at the same time, just as a warning. 177's feet stopped as your skin glowed. Its two paws clung to both sides of the bathtub, no longer looking at you, just turning to look at the ceiling. You're very happy that it had learned to cooperate so no one needed to be injured.

You grab the bent knee of its left leg and lift that leg to expose its lower body to you. The laceration has healed, it looks only a little red and swollen. Through the thin medical rubber, you can feel that the sphincter is in much better condition than yesterday. 177's back slid down a bit when you put your finger inside it. You approached it and wanted to adjust its position so that it could be viewed more easily.

Your shadow is stretched by the light, covering it and blocking the light source. 177's pupils suddenly dilated in this shadow, its black pupils almost covered the entire eye, drowning the red iris. Between the electric light and flint, the knee that was lying on the palm of your hand suddenly lunged up, almost hitting your face.

The move could've squashed your nose, you dodge it, clicking your tongue at its vitality. It shouldn't have so much energy. It's quite energy-consuming to heal itself, and you don't think the shopkeeper or the soldiers remembered to feed. It's been hungry for at least two or three days. It's strange; sometimes it seems like it wants to live, sometimes it's desperately trying to die; sometimes it appears smart enough, and sometimes it doesn't remember lessons. Perhaps because you didn't speak clearly enough, or perhaps because the punishment was too light.

A binding prayer saves you from the next blow. You take off your gloves, grab it by the knees again, and silently recite the scriptures, letting your fingers burn it. 177 gritted its teeth and let out a low growl of frustration.

"Please don't attack me." You tell it, "It's not right."

"Fuck you." It said, "Go to hell."

You want it to stop swearing, but it probably won't listen. 177 still doesn't look at you, it looks at the ceiling. No, it looks at other things, things that don't exist here. Its eyeballs tremble slightly, staring at the ghosts of the past. Sweat beads on its figure, slowly sliding to the bottom of the bathtub. 177's curses are as soft as a whisper, it breathes desperately, as if it is about to drown. Its eyes are hollow and numb, just like the evening when you first saw it. A trace of emotion floats in them, like ink dripping into a deep well. In the blink of an eye, you can't see clearly anymore.

You let it go and back away.

There are some monsters in legend that will turn into stone from light. What's happening to the devil now is like a rewind of the legend. The light fell on 177's face again, it blinked and slowly changed from a stone statue to a living thing. Its eyes quickly swept across the bathroom, slid to you, and swept across the bathroom again, as if it had just realized where it was. It climbed up the bathtub, squeezed its jaw, and gritted its teeth. You saw the humiliation climb on its face.

You look away, for some reason, you feel that it isn't polite to stare at its face now. Your gaze turned to 177's leg. A bright red burn was left on the knee you held. It's in the same position as some of the blue-purple bruises yesterday, it was also in the shape of a finger. The burns of the Holy Prayer, under the murkiness of the shadows, looked no different from subcutaneous bleeding caused by pinching.

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PastTimer: I want to finish this before October but I don't think I can make it ahhh~