Chapter Text
Ah, dying by electrocution really isn't as unpleasant as people make it out to be, he mused.
None of the undignified loss of bowel control that comes with hanging, nor the agonizing suffocation of drowning. He probably should have tried jumping from a high-rise, but that would have terribly inconvenienced the street sweepers of the mafia. And his greatest wish, after all, was to vanish without leaving a single trace behind. No body, no memory, no family. Not even a friend. No one would be saddened by his passing. It would be like he never existed. Just like a snowflake in spring.
The afterlife is truly so peaceful.
The young man let oblivion embrace him.
Except not.
He spoke too soon.
As he regained consciousness, he could see translucent figures drifting all around him. Someone was speaking a language he was absolutely certain wasn't English, French, Russian, or Japanese. It wasn't Italian, either.
Wait... Since when did he know how to speak Italian?
Ah. Right.
Why does he still possess a consciousness? Shouldn't everything be enveloped in complete, undisturbed silence so he wouldn't have to be bothered anymore?
Which absolute bastard interrupted his perfect suicide?
He would absolutely bankrupt them. The young mafia boss thought to himself as he closed his eyes, weighed down with sleep.
So what if he was surrounded by strangers? If they hadn't killed him yet, they probably weren't going to anytime soon.
And if they turned out to be organ traffickers, well, his cause of death would simply change from a lightning strike to passing away peacefully in his sleep. Honestly, a win-win.
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Most unfortunately for the young boss, it wasn't that he had failed to commit suicide. Rather, he had succeeded... only to be reincarnated into another world, shoved into the body of a seven-year-old boy with an older sister.
He hadn't known his family carried the bloodline of an Onmyoji.
Reincarnation, really? Who the hell performed the Taizan Fukun no Sai ritual?
Nico—since his name was currently Nico, according to his lovely older sister, Bianca—thought to himself as he casually took a bite of a cookie.
His new family situation seemed... rather complicated. According to what little Bianca had told him, their mother had been killed in a bombing. How did the Axis manage to bomb an American hotel, he had no idea. And have no interest in thinking further about it while he was still bedridden. Their father had promptly brought the two of them down to the Underworld to live. He had been caught within the blast radius but somehow managed to survive.
That's right. The Underworld.
Which specific "style" of Underworld this was, he had yet to figure out, but he was fairly certain he didn't want to be the son of Lucifer. According to Dante, Lucifer had committed incest with his own daughter.
Gross.
Not to mention, Lucifer was essentially Heaven's most wanted fugitive.
He really had no desire to pick a fight with God. Jesus would never let him commit suicide in peace.
A ghost maid brought him a glass of milk, and Nico offered her a bright, appreciative smile. Ghosts still possessed the capacity for thought, he soon found out, but death had severely dampened their emotions, making his expression of gratitude utterly meaningless. That should make them better servants, he supposed.
The creep would have loved this.
Oh well. Nico would thank her anyway. Both his rotten former family and, later on, that lolicon pervert had taught him how to flash the most sincere, heartwarming smile while actively calculating how to bankrupt someone and ruin their entire life. It had become as instinctual as eating or breathing.
Let's just hope his new father didn't belong to any specific pantheon, and was just some generic Western Grim Reaper.
Because he really wasn't sure if sleeping with one's own niece made Hades any better of a candidate for fatherhood.
Nico closed his eyes and sank deeper into the silk sheets, surrounded by complete silence. His thoughts drifted.
He used to be able to stay awake for a week straight, working continuously. But if he pulled that in this sapling of a body, he would definitely end up shorter than a certain slug. Enduring a thousand failed suicide attempts would still be preferable to suffering his mockery.
Although it wasn't as if that guy would be around to mock him anyway.
That slug was an idiot. A stupid, loyal, incurably generous fool. A beaten dog that still wagged its tail at its master.
A monster that desperately wanted to become human.
So unlike his past self.
In his past life, he had met a reincarnated onmyoji—someone who uncomfortably reminded him of a certain Russian rat, and of himself. That onmyoji had wanted to destroy the world. Or save it, depending on how you looked at it from his perspective.
But the world didn't need saving.
The ones who truly needed saving were those whose souls had been eaten by demons, like him and that man. He used to laugh at him. Someone who, even across a million different worlds, still failed. Burdened with hope for the world, only to want to smash it to pieces the moment he realized reality.
But in the end, he was no better.
How could he have thought that what he saw in the Book was reality and not just a sweet dream? Like the delusion of the little match girl. Disappearing without a trace, flickering out like a flame in a storm. A man deceiving himself and others, living a lie until the very bitter end.
But that person was still alive and writing books. That was enough.
At least in one out of a million worlds, there was one where that person got to be happy.
He had made his dream a reality.
And so, he had welcomed his perfect ending, brimming with happiness and hope for a future he would never get to see.
It would have been nice to read the book that person was writing, though.
He really should have found a serious editor for him. Procrastination was not a good trait for an author.
Alas, he had been too busy.
That slug had simply refused to leave in those final days. He had already sensed something was off.
*Tch.* Always sharp when it was absolutely unnecessary.
Because of him, he hadn't had the time to buy an entire publishing house for the other guy.
He should draw a spiral curse just to ensure that slug never grew past 1.6 meters.
He could curse people under this new identity, right?
Maybe that was what this was really about.
The son of some death god. Probably a demon.
A befitting new identity for him.
Not Bianca, though. He couldn't help but think about his new sister.
She had cried when he first woke up and couldn't quite recognize her. In this body's scattered memories, he saw her crying when their mother died. She had stayed with him all night, then wiped her tears clean the moment she thought he was awake again.
A normal human being.
Wouldn't it be poetic? For a pair of children born to Death and a mortal to be a demon and a little girl.
What would he be the demon of, though? Greed? Sounded about right. He was greedy beyond belief. Even the most perfect ending had felt inadequate to him. He had played with others' greed his entire life. Money, beauty, power and a sense of belonging. All had been used by him.
It was only fitting.
He should get a cute pair of horns.