Midori-kun stared at him as if he had completely lost his mind.
And, well, Konrad couldn't rule out that possibility. He couldn't see this helpless kid living on a pile of garbage as the terrifying Demon Lord either. He, destroying Kasserlane? Ridiculous.
Plus, he was out of mana, right?
Somehow, he felt pity for him, and since Kaede told him to sit down and talk—
Now, giving that a shot didn't seem like a terrible idea.
Except, this flat was too disgusting to take a breath of its air.
No, the longer he looked, the worse the hygienic situation seemed.
"Wait, are you serious? Actually serious?!" the kid asked, his eyes going wide when he started picking up the trash. "You come here to kill me, and—now you want to clean my house?"
"I did not—" Konrad groaned, a little too quick to deny it.
But how could he explain a fleeting feeling he didn't understand, either?
The best he could do was to disarm the boy's suspicion with hard logic.
"Look, I'm full of mana. You think if I wanted to kill you, I'd fiddle with a bottle of spice?"
"It's pepper spray," Midori-kun said, raising an eyebrow.
"That's what I said, too. Food stuff. Besides, it was your bottle to begin with."
"Not food, pepper spray," he repeated, holding the can in his face. "It's for self-defense."
His eyes flew over the small print on the bottle, and it was, in fact, a non-lethal weapon. Made of natural substances, completely biodegradable, and pocket-sized for convenience.
Wow. Did it already exist when he was still alive on Earth, or has science advanced this far since?
Good thing he didn't try to steal it and test it on his food.
That said—
"It says this causes mild inconvenience, and it's completely safe to use," he pointed out. "Even if it were mine, how am I supposed to murder you with something like this? Think, kid, think."
"I'm several times your age, fool," Midori-kun puffed his chest, but it made him look ridiculous.
Konrad waved him off without a second thought.
"I'm older than I look, too," he said, building a tower out of empty energy drink cans. Then it hit him. "Why did you even become so young?! Was it from fighting me?"
The definitely-not-a-kid let out a long sigh, dropping to the floor to help.
"It was because of the artifact from that corrupt angel," he told him as if it was no big deal. It was a huge deal. "I didn't expect that you'd be so powerful, though. Lucifer wasn't kidding."
"About me?" Konrad's hand froze mid-air, staring at him wide-eyed.
Why did he know his guardian angel in the first place?
No, as many questions as he had, he was better off letting him speak at his own pace. At least he seemed to be in the mood. The kid sighed, like some old man lecturing an idiot, which—
Wait.
"You have no idea why he actually reincarnated you, have you?"
The question caught Konrad off guard.
He kept it a secret even from his closest allies as long as he could, so how did he know?
Again, he forced his hand to move and his breathing to even out, trying to act all casual about this. If he seemed too eager to ask questions or make this look like an interrogation—
Steady wins the race.
"He said he did a terrible job as my guardian, which he did. And so he wanted to make up for it by giving me a second chance. Complete with fulfilling some wishes, which he didn't."
Such an offer should have raised a red flag already back then. But well.
He was on his deathbed, with a high fever, abandoned and broken.
Not ideal for thinking straight.
"But no, I have no idea," he admitted, and the kid looked at him like he was mentally handicapped. "Too many things happened too fast. I never had the time to think about it."
"That's fair, I guess," Midori-kun said, copying Konrad's tower-building. "And I fell for it, too."
"Wait, you also reincarnated?!" And with that, he almost knocked his cans over. Catching them reminded him of something, too. "Why did you have no idea about trash-collecting, then?!"
"It's my first time on Earth, okay?" the kid grunted. "What do we do with these, anyway?"
Right. Of course. There was no such rule that only earthlings could reincarnate.
No, the longer he spent around the angels, the less it seemed like there were any rules at all.
"Uh, you should have some plastic bags in your cupboard. We put them in those and haul them down to the designated collection point." At least his flat came with a few by default.
Not that he spent too much time in there so far.
"Let me check," the kid straightened himself with an elderly man's carefulness.
Konrad knew that feeling. Some habits die hard.
"So, what is the reason?" he asked, not wanting to let that topic go. "And why would you think he'd reincarnate me for the same reason as you?" Or did he never claim that?
He had gotten a bit ahead of himself.
"Because he was arrogant enough to tell me," Midori shrugged as he searched the cupboards.
He found a black trash bag, waving it as if it were a checkered flag.
Was he teasing him on purpose? He still didn't answer the main damned question. And Konrad was holding back as best as he could not to flood him with a bunch more.
"Anyway, since you know where the angels get their power from, you must have figured it out."
"What?" He didn't have the slightest idea. "Where do they get their power from?"
And how was he supposed to know anyway? Again, the kid gave him a look, sinking one can after the other into the black bag. As if he had any idea they existed a moment ago.
"From prayers. Isn't that obvious?" Midori-kun asked. "Or so that you'd understand—"
He wasn't an actual kid. Punching him in the face should have been fine, right?
"They feed on emotions," he said, and sure enough, that sounded simple. "Strong ones. Hope, joy, desperation. Whether their boss sends them, or they harvest it from humans themselves."
"Emotions," Konrad muttered, remembering half-sentences he had caught earlier.
They didn't make sense back then, but now—
"Both you and Stella said something about my negative emotions being, uh, special?" he asked, rather than saying it. What was the question to even ask here? Like, was he too gloomy?
"Oh, they are insane. Look at me. All it took was a tool to harvest it, and voila."
"A necromancer's staff," he mumbled. "And you got that from an angel."
From Lucifer, to be specific. But why?
If his emotions were strong enough to rejuvenate a two-hundred-year-old into a kid—
Then, the reason why Lucifer went through all the trouble with his soul, and stuff was—
"The motherfu—" Konrad slapped his mouth, eyes wide from the realisation. "He did it to feed on me? The literal reason he reincarnated me was to make me suffer my entire life?!"
The Demon Lord made a sour face, then gave him a thumbs-up.
"Welcome to the club, Konrad von Halstadt. In the Club of the Forever Damned."