Demons Are a Girl's Best Friend

9- A Day Out

"When's the last time you saw the human world?"

"Hmmm... About a century or two ago. I forgot."

"What do you even do in the demon world?" Sylvia licked her ice cream. She had picked her favorite flavors, strawberry and mint chocolate, and was enjoying its refreshing coldness on her tongue. It was a hot Saturday, and she and Mephistopheles were now taking a break at the beach.

"Demon stuff." Mephi shrugged, his eyes fixed on the clear sea ahead. Before stopping by the beach, the two had gone to see the main streets of the city. Although Mephistopheles seemed genuinely impressed at how the world had changed since he had last seen it, the amount of noise emitting from the mingling of crowds and traffic seemed to just as equally annoy him.

"Where do you guys even live? Like, in hell?"

"Kinda. It's more like an underworld than a hell. I guess humans would see it as hellish though." Sylvia noticed that he had appeared tense and alarmed, especially when people got a little too close to him while they walked. In fact, there was a particular instance that made her make this observation about him. A group of three teenage girls approached them and began flirting with him, asking for his number, name, and age. They seemed very excited and flustered, and walked up pretty closely to him. Knowing Mephistopheles' strangely friendly personality, Sylvia expected that he would react accordingly, and would either flirt back or say something haughty like "I am totally out of your league though." However, to her surprise, the demon was frozen in place. There was a faint threatening aura about him that rendered everyone uncomfortable.

Being met with nothing but a menacing silence from the man they were hitting on, the girls laughed in embarrassment and basically ran away. At that point, Sylvia wondered if she should have interfered because he looked pretty upset. Any normal person would most likely be upset if they were flirted with in such an upfront manner. Considering, however, that Mephi had only interacted with her since he came back to the human world, Sylvia thought he would perhaps have enjoyed the new contact and taken it lightly. Besides, he was a demon and clearly held different concepts of relationships and interactions. Seeing him tense up, though, Sylvia felt a little bad for not helping him and brushing those girls off. She admitted to herself that she was a little curious to see how he would react to other humans. Before she could word her apology, Mephistopheles took her by surprise with his usual smug expression. "What was that about?" He commented and resumed walking, leaving her torn between her guilt and confusion.

"What do you do there? Like, what kind of demon stuff?" Mephistopheles scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, not sure how to answer her. "I dunno how to explain. But it's like a hierarchy there and we just fulfill our roles according to our rank."

"Do you have a king there, then?" She liked how strawberry and mint mixed together. "A king of demons!" She added, contemplating the concept.

"No. I can't really go into details with humans, sorry." He glanced at her from behind his sunglasses then looked back at the quiet waves ahead. After the street incident, Sylvia decided that they should go to the beach to take a little break from walking. It was crowded, as she had expected, and was filled with people either swimming or sunbathing on the beach. She had picked the least crowded spot, though it was a little further from the sea than she had wanted it to be. But it was quiet and pleasant. The breeze tasted and sounded like the sea; it was refreshing.

"Is this one of your taboos? Same with taking lives and whatnot?" Her curls were swaying gently, and she had to repeatedly tuck them behind her ear so they wouldn't touch the ice cream. Meanwhile, even though his hair was considerably longer, Mephistopheles seemed unbothered, and allowed his stray strands to gracefully dance at the tune of the wind. It certainly bothered her, however, since it constantly blocked her view of his perfect profile. Unconsciously, she reached out her hand and moved some of his hair away from his face. Then, realizing it, she instantly drew her hand back and pretended nothing happened.

"You can say so. Ahh, the sea is as pretty as I remember it." Luckily, Mephistopheles didn't seem to pay heed to her little action and instead focused his attention on changing the topic. "It's a lot less quiet though. You humans reproduce too much. There's too many of you now."

Sylvia chewed on her cone pensively. She wondered what kind of past he was comparing this scenery to, and how he felt towards it. He talked with a hint of nostalgia in his tone, though it could have easily been contempt too; Sylvia could not tell. She came to realize that she did not know much about him, nor did he about her. But he didn't ask, she concluded, so she shouldn't either. She had always appreciated it when her boundaries were respected, so she had no intention of breaching his, as curious as she was. Taking one last bite of her ice cream, she took out a tissue to wipe the corners of her lips.

"Are you having fun?"

Tucking the tissue in her skirt's pocket, she noticed that Mephistopheles was looking at her with an observant expression. It strangely made her self-conscious and she took out her phone to double check if she had stained her face with ice cream. "Uh, yeah, kinda. What about you, Mephi?" She placed it back in her pocket and stood up. The demon followed suit; both of them dusted off their behinds to remove the beach sand.

"Where are we going next?" He asked, turning away from her.

"We're going to an amusement park." Sylvia had an eyebrow raised curiously. Why did he dodge her question just now? "Are you having fun so far? I am doing this for you after all." She asked a second time. Mephistopheles stretched his arms behind his head.

"Oh, thanks." He answered tersely then started walking in the direction they had come from.