What the hell was that?!

Luan sits on the ground with his head buried in his hands, focusing hard on getting his heartbeat to calm down. 'WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK WAS THAT?!', Luan screams into his head, holding back from bashing his head into the wall. 'Why am I so worked up over a kiss?! It wasn't even a proper kiss - it was simply transferring my poison into him to make sure he stays asleep while I'm out. That's it! There's nothing more to it - so WHY THE FUCK won't my heart stop beating this fucking fast?!'

Leaves rustle and branches snap to Luan's right. Behind the inn is the forest, enveloped almost completely in darkness. The foliage is so thick, even the full moon cannot completely break through it. But Luan's excellent eyesight allowed him to catch a glimpse of a very tiny human figure. What the hell was a child doing out here in the middle of the night?

Leaving his mid-life crisis buried for the moment, Luan rises and silently follows the small silhouette through the dark forest. Careful not to make any sound, Luan steps gingerly over the tree roots and rocks littering the forest floor. This show of caution almost makes Luan fall far behind, but he always manages to catch up as this human figure walks in a dead-straight line.

After what felt like hours of walking, Luan finally arrived at the entrance to a cave, lit by a single lantern that lies on the floor. This lantern emits barely any light, but the figure Luan had been following finally lights up, their face becoming visible. Barely. But still visible. Large round eyes stick out from a chubby face, cheeks as rosy as they come. The child's hair is thin and dark, and the clothes on his body are ragged, torn, and in desperate need of a wash. He's an average-looking human child. No different from the others he has spotted over his years of entering the human realm.

But Luan finds himself holding his breath as his gaze trails to the right of the child. To the tiny human bodies strung up by their necks, dangling from the ground dripping crimson blood into a massive pool underneath them. There are three bodies, all of which are children. They all have their eyes gouged out, leaving six small pits of emptiness, their mouths hanging open in an eternal scream. But the part that makes Luan startle, is the fact that one of these children looks exactly like the figure he had been following to this exact place. Luan is left stumped for a brief moment before he remembers that he is not the only demon who can change their appearance.

The demon disguised as the dead human child crouches for a moment, shrouded by the darkness. After a few moments, a small flame flickers to life, before erupting into a small fire the size of a decent campfire. The demon rises and brushes the dirt from his knees, walking over to the hanging children with a happy skip in his step. He reaches up to the closest one before realizing he was still in the form of a tiny human child and changes into something Luan can only assume to be his true form. The demon is now much taller, but would only rise to Luan's shoulders. Their hair is cut short and slicked back by grease. His eyes glow a deep red and, even from his distance away, Luan can see the razor-sharp fangs jutting out from between his smiling lips.

The demon plucks one of the children down, removing the rope from around their neck, and draws out a long knife.

"Ya know, I don't have any intention of sharing my food," the demon shouts as he places the child onto the ground and starts hacking off their clothes. "And I also don't have any intention to share my territory with some random demon, so fuck off."

Luan steps out from his place in the darkness, waltzing into the firelight. He says nothing and keeps still.

"The fuck you doing?" The demon stands, motioning with his knife for Luan to move along. "I said scram, didn't ya hear me? What, stuck in the human realm for too long and ya don't even remember your own language? Let me say it again in the human tongue-" the demon changes the language which he speaks "-fuck. Off-"

As the word leaves his mouth, Luan flings a silent dagger at the demon. It lands straight in his throat and his hands move to his neck as he claws at it and gurgles as he tries to speak.

Luan takes a few steps forward, closing the gap between himself and the demon. "Be quiet. You're a nuisance to Nai ... and the rest of this town," he adds quickly. "You know, for some reason, my chest hurts when he said he hates demons. I wonder why that is. I mean, I haven't even known him for that long, yet my chest always aches whenever he does ... well, anything really. It hurts when he smiles, it hurts when he doesn't look after himself properly. It hurts when I ... uh, actually, you don't need to know about that part."

The demon, still clutching the knife in his throat, furrows his brows. 'You don't need to be telling me ANY of this, you fucker!' he struggles with the knife, trying to pull it out, but the pain is unbearable. 'The fuck is wrong with you?! Either kill me or don't, I don't care! Just keep your weird thoughts to yourself!'

Luan's inner thoughts tumbled out of his mouth with barely any filter. Guess keeping his thoughts and feelings buried inside him wasn't something he can keep at for a long period of time. And now that there was someone he was able to talk to without there ever being a reply, Luan couldn't keep the words from escaping his mouth. Instead, while he continued to speak his heart out - mostly about Nai and how strange he was making him feel - he yanked out the knife from the demon's throat, said a quick thanks for listening, and grasped the demon's head in his hands. With a light squeeze, the demon's head popped, exploding crimson blood and bits of brain matter and bone all over Luan. Luan sighed and thought about why he hadn't chosen a cleaner way of disposing of the demon.

The demon lord wipes blood from his face, then wipes his hand on the dead demon's clothes. He then gets ready to leave but groans as guilt tugs at his stomach. He glances at the dead children before hurriedly covering up the child on the ground. He then slings the child over his shoulder before moving to bring down the other two and doing the same.

Under the cover of darkness, Luan swiftly makes his way back to the center of the town, placing the children gently in the center of the main road. He covers their ghastly faces with a long piece of his robes he had cut off earlier and writes a small message in the dirt beside them before making his way back toward the forest.

After finding a small stream and cleansing himself of that demon's blood and brain matter, Luan waits for himself and his clothes to dry. Deciding he was cutting it close, as dawn was quickly arriving, Luan dressed and headed back to the inn ... Where his dreaded sleeping beauty waits for him.