Laws and morals were different, but only those in power could truly proclaim that fact. As a general principle, laws were to be determined by morals, but those very laws were supported by immoral violence.

That fact hit home with Kurahashi Kento as he witnessed an action that opposed the law.

That understanding may have been due to his mind working at several times the rate of a normal person’s. Someone else would likely have been petrified at the sight.

No blood had been shed and no change had come over her appearance, but she had certainly lost her life.

Her beauty remained, but her eyes were opened wide and all light had vanished from her pupils. The loss of strength from her muscles left her jaw hanging loose and her limbs dangling limply. She hung down near the ceiling like a hanged corpse, but there was no rope around her slender neck. She floated in the air and an invisible power held her there.

A single girl stood below that corpse.

She wore a white dress and looked up at the corpse with a bright smile.

She stared up at what had been her stepsister.

“I just got rid of her a bit. She was in the way. She was ignoring me and trying to have fun on her own. How could I allow that?”

—Trying to have fun?

Kento contemplated what the girl had said while turning back toward him.

The dead…no, murdered girl was named Katayama Madoka. She had been his lover and that was undoubtedly what this girl meant by “trying to have fun”. Was she disgusted by the s.e.xual pleasure so commonly seen during p.u.b.erty? Whether that was the case or not, her words were likely based in jealousy.

—Jealousy?

However, Kento knew that could not be the case. He was one of the few people who knew this “girl” was actually a boy who anyone would think looked like a girl.

His name was Sakura Kei.

After his parents had died, Madoka had taken him in and raised him as her younger brother. Of course, she had done so out of more than pure good will.

Kei had abnormal talent in magic.

Mana reacted to the state of one’s mind, but that mana was nothing more than nanomachines that were made to mechanically react to brainwaves. The effect the brain waves produced in the mana depended on the image in the individual’s head. Some visual images and some special combinations of words functioned as triggers, but a lot about magic was still unexplained. For that reason, magical talent was essentially an inborn trait.

Madoka and Kento had been a pair of top cla.s.s researchers in the field of magic, but that barrier had prevented their research from progressing past that point. Once they had thoroughly investigated their own inborn talent, they could only search out a new talented individual.

Kei’s parents had died when he was young and he had been left with an orphanage. That orphanage had contacted Kento’s laboratory via a church to report that Kei had used magic when he was still too young to even speak.

When Madoka and Kento had arrived to investigate, they had been told no one had taught Kei how to use magic. Their investigation had confirmed that he had indeed controlled mana to throw a toy at a friend’s head.

Neither Madoka nor Kento knew at whose ear the demon had whispered, but it had not even taken a week for the two of them to pull some strings, have Madoka legally adopt him, and begin to raise him as her younger brother.

Kei had quickly displayed how unique he was. He had created many different original pieces of magic. Even when they had the same effects as traditional magic, the details were always changed in some way. This was to be expected, though. In the few years since he had come to the lab, no one had been allowed to provide him any education, magical or otherwise. He had been raised with an emphasis on individuality.

However, his uniqueness had shown itself in all parts of his life. He had behaved however he liked and Madoka and Kento had been forced to allow it because his value had lain in his mental state. However, his wild side had exceeded simple open-mindedness and his behavior had grown highly abnormal. Once he had developed a powerful healing magic, he had made a “game” of injuring Madoka and healing her. That was but one of many examples.

It had all been for the sake of developing unique magic, but the sacrifices had been great. They had later taught him not to do to others what he would not want done to himself, but it had been too late. That had simply made him prove he was able to sever his own arm without batting an eye.

His magic had eventually reached the point of modifying his own body. Essentially, he had performed cosmetic surgery on himself. As he had grown, he had grown more beautiful. During p.u.b.erty, he had become a mixture of the feminine and the masculine. His beauty had been enough to mesmerize any who saw him. Even Kento and Madoka who had been used to seeing him would find themselves captivated by his appearance.

At the time, they should have realized he would only be growing more beautiful if he intended to use that beauty for his own convenience.

He had gradually gained more freedom. In the beginning, they had planned to slowly educate him and return him to a normal lifestyle, but the pace of that normalization had been much faster than Kento had expected. In fact, he had a feeling Kei himself was putting together the research schedule.

Nevertheless, Kei had been obedient around Kento, so it had taken him several years to grasp the situation. He did not learn what had been happening behind the scenes until Madoka had died and he heard it directly from Kei.

“You and my sister never caught on until the end, but why didn’t you when I was doing this specifically so you would notice?”

Kei’s words contradicted themselves.

“What…did you do?” asked Kento.

Kei laughed.

“I f.u.c.ked everyone on the research staff.”

“f.u.c.ked…? Wait. You mean…”

“I had s.e.x with them. I could use magic just a bit better than any of you expected. I would need to read and control their minds to do that.”

Kei sounded perfectly calm, but Kento was completely shaken.

He had realized the staff was being influenced by Kei’s attraction, but he had never even considered it had developed that far. This was partially due to his own distance from that type of thing, but the large number of men on the staff was an even larger reason.

“You can’t mean…”

“I do. You can’t think about me like a normal purpose. That’s the entire point.”

“Then…”

“When it comes to beauty, the differences between male and female are meaningless. In fact, it’s completely natural for a beautiful boy to love both men and women. I’ve been studying history, and the moral standard that only a man and women can have s.e.x was a later addition.”

Kei gave a bewitching smile.

“Surely you can make a counterargument against this being my skill in magic. I think the only thing I used mana for was to make myself beautiful. Reading and controlling their minds was done with a more traditional kind of magic. Instead of using mana, I read their minds from their actions and words and I seduced them. It’s an old way of saying it, but they used to call that the magic of love.”

Kento was left utterly speechless and Kei wrapped his arms around Kento’s neck.

“You’re the only one it didn’t work on, but that’s exactly why I want to work hard and win you over. Do you know what I mean?”

Kento trembled as he felt terror wash over him for the first time in his life.

—I’ve created a monster!

But that was not what scared him.

The fear came from that monster turning interest and good will toward him.

—I might be able to control this monster. No, only I can control him.

“I can’t believe I didn’t notice how you felt.”

Kento took Kei’s hand.

If someone had ever actually made a deal with the devil, it had to have happened much like this.