DxD: Crimson Fate

Chapter 5: They grow up so fast.

One year later.

 

In the past year, I have made great strides in graduating from being a baby. Learning to speak better, walk, and even run. I also started eating regular food instead of being breastfed.

Oh, I have also seen myself in the mirror. Turns out I am an Anime character.

How else can I explain what I saw when my mother showed me myself in the mirror for the first time.

I had dirty blonde hair, unlike my mother, who had pitch-black hair. My face was cute and round, with a small button nose and baby fat filling my cheeks, making them very pinchable. No wonder mom always did so.

I was also tall for my age, as I could easily pass for someone a year older.

And for the most startling things I saw, which were, ironically, the things I saw with. My eyes.

I had golden-colored eyes. God, damn, anime style, golden eyes!

Other than that, no more significant revelations happened during that year.

.

.

.

One Year, Five months later.

 

Mom and I were sitting in our kitchen. The kitchen was nearly dark, only lit by a trio of small candles atop the cake Mom had made for my birthday. I was three years old as of now.

"Happy birthday to you~"

"Happy birthday to you~"

My mother sang softly as she looked at me with adoring eyes.

"Happy birthday~ Happy birthday~"

"Happy birthday to Milo." She finished with a small clap of her hands, and I blew out the candles, and Mom quickly turned on the lights from her side.

As we ate the cake, Mom decided to break some news to me.

"Baby, I have a surprise for you. Next week, you will start going to preschool!" My mother said with a sweet smile.

.

.

.

One year later.

 

Sitting at the small table in the daycare center, I ignored the sounds of kids screaming and crying as I worked on the coloring book before me.

I was in the 'study' room, where the caretakers would give us lessons for an hour every day.

It was empty most of the day except for this hour, so I spent most of my day here, where I could find peace and quiet. However, that was extremely hard when there were over fifty children, two rooms over, playing, screaming, and shouting.

At first, although I dreaded coming here because I knew I would be stuck with kids all day, I was also a little excited as I could finally break the cycle of being nearly perpetually stuck at home. My mother rarely took me outside, only sometimes taking me to the grocery store nearby to pick up some necessities for the house, but nothing else.

And honestly, it was fun... for the first few days. And then the screaming and shouting started getting on my nerves, and the biting, oh god, the biting.

I've always loved children and liked to play with them.

But playing with children as an adult is WAY different from playing with them as a kid.

You were a prey among predators.

They scratched, bit, clawed, pushed, bit, hit, slapped, bit, bit, and fucking bit each other every time they played.

I nearly lost a finger when one of the kids saw me holding a piece of chocolate and decided to eat it right out of my hand. My finger included.

Since then, I have taken to sitting alone and coloring books.

It was very therapeutic, in a sense, as I filled a world of gray and white with colors.

I picked the brown crayon and started coloring the bear's fur in the image.

It was also a fantastic exercise for fine motor skills, as I tried my hardest to never go over the edges and color as perfectly as possible.

Hearing the end-of-the-day bell ring, I gathered my stuff, put them in my little backpack, and went outside to wait for Mom to pick me up.

I could go home by myself, as I knew the way there, and it was only It was a five mintues walk, even even with my short legs. But I liked walking with my mom since her Job ended at the same time, and she worked very close by.

Apparently, my mother worked at a nearby restaurant as a pastry chef.

No wonder she was so good at making sweets!

.

.

.

My life has become a routine these past few months.

My day starts with me waking up very early, an hour before Mom. Doing exercises for 45 minutes and then going to bed to pretend to sleep until Mom woke up.

Even someone as oblivious to how kids work as she would notice how bizarre it is for her kid to train for 45 minutes every day, so I always did it when she was asleep.

From her perspective, I was a child who sweat buckets every time he slept.

So, she has been letting me take baths every day before taking me to the daycare.

I was grateful for her false assumption because I couldn't explain why I sweat so much otherwise. And I didn't like being sticky with sweat all day.

After my shower, I would have breakfast, get dressed, and then Mom would take me to the daycare center.

I would then go through whatever mandatory lessons we had while pretending to learn and then spend the next few hours coloring.

Thankfully, the daycare had a large stock of coloring books, so I never ran out.

Some shy and quiet kids noticed me sitting and drawing by myself and decided to join me. I didn't mind them much since they didn't make much noise, so I would spend some time teaching them how to color inside the lines and which colors to choose, or how to mix colors to get new ones, and so on.

After spending a few hours like this, during which I ate the lunch and snacks my mom made me, I would go outside to the playground for the last two hours; once all the other children had spent all their energy and were now sitting inside.

I would then play on the monkey bars, the climbing pole, or any other physically taxing equipment as a form of exercise.

After that, my mom would pick me up, and I would spend the rest of my day doing my homework and learning magic.

Yes. You heard me right. Magic.

I had always dreaded and contemplated how to ask my mother about the subject.

Although I knew magic existed, I also noticed that it wasn't something known to the public.

I have never seen anything about it on TV, neither in kids' shows nor in the news. And I didn't see any sign of it during the year and a half I have been going to school. Nor has my mother performed any of it in front of me.

But there were clues to its existence, the first clue being the hovering nursery mobile I had above my crib when I was an infant, and then the waaay more obvious one, the books I found in our house library detailing magical spells and how to use them.

 

When I found the books, I didn't know how to approach my mother regarding them.

I tried reading them myself and learning on my own, but sadly, the books I found were far too advanced and explained none of the basics for me to start learning. So, I had no other option but to confront my mother about them and ask her to teach me. But I was afraid she would take the books once she saw that I found them, hide them somewhere, and refuse to teach me anything.

 

After contemplating for nearly a month, my curiosity and thirst to learn magic trumped my fear, and I asked her about them.

Turns out, I need not have feared.

"Hmm, these books? Oh, they are from my college days. I studied Mysticim for two years before I got bored because I was bad at it and switched to Culinary Arts." My jaw dropped as Mom casually told me this.

Juri took my look of astonishment as one of incomprehension as she processed to explain what Mysticism and Culinary Arts meant.

"In Culinary Arts, we learn how to make the sweets that I always make you and how to cook all kinds of yummy foods." She explained, "As for Mysticism, we learn about the magical arts and how to perform spells. This for example," And then my eyes bulged as Mom opened her palm, and out of thin air, a ball of soft green light materialized. "Is a light spell!"

After this fiasco, I started asking my mother more about the subject.

Apparently, my mother never did anything with magic because she was not very good at it. She knew the theory but was terrible regarding execution, as even this 'Light Spell' was almost at her limit.

When I asked her to teach me, she refused at first, saying she didn't want someone to see me doing it and kidnapping, and even sternly warned me to not even talk about what I saw her do.

After days of nagging and begging, with many promises of absolute secrecy, she hesitantly agreed.

And thus, I began to learn magic.