Chapter 52
The noodle shop time point (Chapter 50) originally followed the world line you're imagining, but that version absolutely wouldn't pass censorship, so this segment branches into a new timeline.
Below is a condensed supplemental setting for the newly original character "Higashiyama Koharu":
Koharu's state is similar to Asa Mitaka and Yoru (War Devil), except what resides in her body is the Misfortune Devil.
The Misfortune Devil's currently shown ability is:
Attract "misfortune," then transfer that "misfortune" to other targets.
The more familiar (closer) the transfer target is to her, the higher the multiplication factor of the transferred misfortune!
After reading the summary, you can safely skip the tragic backstory below—it won't affect the main plot. Feel free to jump to the next chapter meow~
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"(675095979 words omitted) …I am her, she is me. This is our story~"
That long, bitter, tragic monologue made Denji's ears practically grow calluses.
After filtering out most of the emotional and psychological filler, Denji quickly ran through a simplified version of "Higashiyama Koharu's" past in his mind.
In short: it's the story of "two mutually repelling unlucky bastards forcibly fused into one person."
From a very young age, little Koharu had already been treated by her crowded family as the household's sole "defective product"—she looked too frail, suspected to be a sickly burden.
Her parents were both stupid and cruel. Unwilling to waste resources on a future invalid, they began "training" her from childhood: giving her less food, forcing her into labor far beyond what a child could bear,全方位 marginalizing her within the family…
Logically, any normal child treated this way by such trash parents would have been broken long ago!
But this child was both "frail" and "resilient" little Koharu.
Those trash parents were sick in the head. Probably finding the burden an eyesore, during one outing they simply abandoned her outside like garbage.
An eight-year-old child, my god.
As expected, little Koharu got lost. She was so small—how could she possibly tell east from west?
Especially in a completely unfamiliar place?!
[Perhaps because of similar childhood experiences, Denji felt a trace of empathy toward this "little Koharu" while organizing the story.]
Little Koharu nearly died. By then she was completely exhausted. She could only lie powerlessly on the cold ground, despairingly waiting for death.
But coincidence struck—she encountered another "unlucky bastard" on the verge of death: a severely wounded, incomplete "devil."
Perhaps because little Koharu's breathing was so faint and her mind possessed a special quality—"dissociative identity"—or perhaps because that "devil" was too broken to tell whether the person in front of it was dead or alive, it simply possessed her.
There may also have been other unknown factors we don't know yet, but those aren't important.
In short, the "devil" successfully possessed her—but at the same time, it failed.
Its power did fuse into little Koharu's body, but the soul it took over was the "second personality" that little Koharu had already "healed" away—essentially dead.
And so the "devil" fell into a completely suppressed symbiotic powerless state under host little Koharu.
Now they are fully fused—one cannot leave the other.
This "revival" was both a blessing and a curse.
Little Koharu came back to life. Her body became unprecedentedly healthy. Though she still looked frail on the outside, terrifying power lay dormant deep within her flesh. The "devil" naturally refused to just become clothing for a human.
After careful thought and study, it realized that in this state, to gain control of the body, it needed little Koharu's acknowledgment.
The more little Koharu acknowledged this personality, the higher its control permission over the body would become.
And right now, it had zero permission—because it occupied a dead personality.
After flipping through little Koharu's memories, it came up with a "shocking" brilliant plan.
"As the saying goes: an enmity of murder is irreconcilable!"
"If I can help little Koharu take revenge, wouldn't she immediately and willingly accept me as the main personality~!"
That's what it thought—and what it did.
It helped little Koharu find her way home, thinking it would soon take over the body and slaughter those human trash parents without mercy.
But it forgot the most important thing: little Koharu is sick. She has extremely severe mental problems—from certain perspectives, she's practically insane.
Even though she had long repaid the debt of birth and finished paying the debt of upbringing, after suffering such a murderous betrayal, this madwoman still yearned for "the warmth and love of home" from that hell.
So she never thought of revenge. She continued enduring her parents' disgust and her family's indifference, squeezing herself dry to support a home that didn't love her at all.
And as mentioned earlier, those trash parents were really both stupid and evil. The better little Koharu treated them, the more they felt a thorn in their hearts; the worse they felt, the more they hated little Koharu!
The "devil" was almost driven mad by this lunatic little Koharu.
It felt betrayed by her.
It hated her to the core, so it activated its ability—indiscriminately raining "misfortune curses" on everyone around little Koharu.
However, it forgot again: this body now belonged to little Koharu. Due to their special link, even though little Koharu couldn't fully sense or control this power, if it touched the dream she desperately craved in her heart, that extreme emotion could forcibly suppress the power.
At this point, the devil's name is almost obvious.
"Bad Luck Devil"?
More accurately—Misfortune Devil.
Of course, due to personality distortion and self-identification, it now also calls itself "Higashiyama Koharu."
Back to the main point: the true ability of the Misfortune Devil is—
Attract "misfortune," then transfer that "misfortune" to other targets.
The more familiar (closer) the transfer target is to it, the higher the multiplication factor of the transferred misfortune!
The Misfortune Devil truly hated little Koharu. It couldn't harm her family, and it didn't want to be affected by troublesome "misfortune" itself.
So it kept using "small misfortunes" to bully little Koharu, and whenever anyone got even slightly close to her, it would transfer as much misfortune as possible onto them—driving them away before they could even approach.
In this way, the conflict between little Koharu and the Misfortune Devil grew bigger and bigger. Little Koharu forever suffered the curse of "loneliness" and "misfortune," while the Misfortune Devil was suppressed deeper and deeper!
Until little Koharu was driven out of her home, and the dream she longed to realize drifted farther and farther away…
The story pauses here for now.
Denji had confirmed the "flavor"—there wasn't a single trace of lying. The information was true.
Moreover, it basically filled in the missing pieces perfectly.
But the current problem is—how to make the Misfortune Devil return the body to little Koharu?
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