Heavy rain beat against the glass wall of a luxurious apartment in Lincoln Park, Chicago, accompanied by the whistling sound of the east wind in the backdrop. Seated on the sofa with his legs crossed on the glass table, Damian stared at the stormy weather, which reflected the turmoil in his heart.
All his life, Damian had feared only one thing.
Not failure.
Not defeat.
Not even death.
What Damian feared was abandonment.
At the age of ten, his dad left to "buy some milk" and never came back, nor did he ever bother to text or call even once to explain the reason for abandoning them. Prior to this, Damian and his father had shared a deep bond, making the situation twice as painful.
For years, Damian watched his mother shuffle through abusive men like she was testing clothes in a boutique, until she finally found someone willing to settle with her. On Damian's 18th birthday, she abandoned him with a flimsy excuse about restarting on a clean slate and how her happiness mattered. She nonchalantly told him that the reason his dad abandoned them was because Damian was not his child, so he should not expect any help from him. After that, she handed him a hundred-dollar bill, wished him luck, and left without ever turning back.
Just like that, both his parents started new lives with new people, leaving him with no choice but to work three jobs just to survive.
Life after that was hell. With all the mental and emotional stress he endured, his physical appearance naturally suffered as well. As a result, his love life was riddled with rejections and brutal betrayals.
Somehow, he lived through all of that and graduated with a first-class degree in law, quickly landing a job at one of the top firms in America, currently known as the Black Sheep Firm. There, he distinguished himself and quickly rose to the position of Associate, eventually getting himself a hot paralegal girlfriend whom he loved deeply and provided for.
When Damian was still a rising star in the firm, she approached him, and for the first time, he felt wanted. Throughout their one-year relationship, Damian did his best to give her the best life he could afford, ranging from buying her designer items to moving into an upscale neighborhood in Lincoln Park, even though the rent consumed most of his paycheck and forced him deeper into debt.
Now, he was seated alone in his bedroom, a bottle of whiskey in hand, along with an engagement ring he had planned to use to propose at tomorrow night's Summer Associate Dinner. On the screen of his phone was a messaging app with the name Candice, flanked by a thousand love emojis. In their chat sat a brief breakup text explaining that she was leaving him for a senior associate at the firm, one who had publicly antagonized Damian on several occasions at work. She claimed they would be making their relationship public at the Summer Associate Dinner and asked him not to make a scene and to simply move on. She said this while conveniently ignoring the fact that most junior staff at the firm already knew about their relationship.
Damian was bound to become the guy who lost his girl to his boss. The embarrassment would fall solely on him, but it clearly did not matter to her.
One year of complete dedication shattered over a text, as though his sacrifices and investments meant nothing. The home she had pushed him to rent was abandoned as if it had never been theirs.
"All those years, and nothing has changed. I'm tired of it," Damian said, his voice empty.
He was dead inside.
After dedicating his life to becoming someone worthy of love and commitment, he was abandoned once again.
Huff!
Damian let out a defeated sigh before reaching for the gun beside his phone. It was a black 20-caliber pistol, still new, showing that it had never been used. Living in an upscale neighborhood, Damian had never found a reason to own a gun until today. For sixty seconds, he stared deeply at the weapon.
"I wonder if she will feel guilty when she hears the news…"
Damian scoffed at the thought as soon as the words escaped his lips. Candice was cold and selfish, and he had always known this. He had only hoped his love would eventually change her and win her commitment, and for a while, she had made him believe it did.
Gulp! Gulp!
Gulp! Gulp!
Alcohol poured down the corners of his lips as Damian kept drinking until he couldn't anymore. The bottle fell from his hand as he coughed loudly, spilling its contents all over him, but he didn't care. Even as the whiskey continued to pour onto the floor, he didn't care.
With bloodshot eyes, Damian shoved the gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. The sound was muffled under the deafening strike of lightning, its flash briefly revealing Damian's body covered in blood, his head thrown back over the sofa.
Damian was dead.
----
Damian's eyes fluttered open, and he found himself standing in front of a steel-black door bound with chains, an insignia of a fox embedded into it.
'Is this hell for lonely people or something?'
Damian couldn't help but feel that way due to the chained door and the red light cast by the chandeliers above. The scenery reminded him of 19th-century European architecture. Taking a brief glance around, he realized he was standing in a lonely corridor lined with seven doors.
'So why am I standing in front of this door?' he questioned with a thoughtful look.
He tried to move, but his body refused to listen. The most he could do was move his head to observe his surroundings.
Reluctantly, Damian tried to reach for the door in front of him, and his body surprisingly listened this time. The moment he touched it, his surroundings changed instantly to a vast grassland in the middle of nowhere under a bright moonlit sky.
In this new world, standing over a hundred meters tall, was a fox with clear white fur and purple patterns standing over a hundred meters tall and its head towered over the clouds. The moon itself reflected its figure, revealing nine furry tails dancing behind it.
It was a nine-tailed fox.
'What the hell is that?!'
Damian cried out in his heart, yet his body was petrified with fear, beads of sweat rolling down his face. This time, it wasn't the world holding him down, but fear rooting him to the spot. Meanwhile, Damian's presence did not go unnoticed as the nine-tailed fox slowly shifted its attention to his tiny figure.
"A human is my new successor? An interesting turn of events…"
Its voice was light and almost comical, yet it boomed like thunder, reaching the very edges of the world.
That was all.
The next moment, Damian found himself back in his room, the gun in his hand and liquor spilled across the floor.
How?
Damian looked at the bottle on the ground and then at the gun in his hands.
Bang!
Lightning struck, matching the exact moment he shot himself, and the flash revealed not just Damian this time, but the shadow of a nine-tailed fox demon standing over him.
"How am I still alive? I killed myself."
Damian was certain he had put a bullet in his mouth. He could still taste it. However, from the looks of it, after that strange encounter, he had returned just seconds before the tragedy.
But why?
Damian received an answer before he could voice his complaint.
[Congratulations, you have been chosen to be the bearer of the Sin of Lust]
[Rejoice, you have been chosen to become one of the seven potential successors of the Demon Lord!]
[Do you accept this responsibility?]
"What?!"
The gun slipped from Damian's hands as he stared at the strange light panels in front of him with apprehension. The words were written in a language he had never seen before, yet strangely, he could read them perfectly.
"Do I accept? I shouldn't even be here in the first place!"
After blurting out those words, he waited for some sort of response, but there was nothing. The messages on the light platform remained, as if patiently waiting for his answer.
After staring at it for another minute, the unexpected happened.
[Congratulations on accepting this extremely heavy responsibility.]
[Good luck. You will need it…]
"Wait… What?! I never agreed!"
Damian protested, but all he received was one final message.
[No takebacks!]
The system shamelessly replied.