I don't know how I ended up doing this. Me, big bad Demon King, Lord of Evil, Great Traitor of Heaven yaddayadda all that crap, you know? But I'm free of all that now, now that everything's over. Not that I was ever a good Demon King. "Good" is, I know a rather inappropriate word to use, but that doesn't really matter now, does it? After I spent a couple millennia shut up in the form and consciousness of a sword (they have about three words in their vocabulary, I've discovered; master, polish, and kill) and a couple more following my mistress around.

	And yes, I had a mistress, but that was had, okay? It's rather difficult for a sword, even a holy sword, to move about, or to see, or to hear, without a wielder. (Another bad sword joke, and I'll spear you all right.) If anything it's more wife than mistress now, anyway, no matter what she tells you.I get to be on top, most nights. So.. shut up, or something.

	I suppose I could tell you that it's all her fault, but she'd just look at you and tell you that everything really was /my/ fault, and you'd believe her, because she's the sort you wouldn't  (trust me) want to disbelieve, and, well- because it's true. In a way. Anything can be truth, if you look at it in the right way. Whose right? Not telling.

	Anyway. I'm still not sure how I ended up writing penny romance novels. Oh, I know how it all started, of course- never let it be said that beginnings aren't important. Me, what I was doing, I was trying to get a job, a white collar sit down at your desk and slog your life away and eventually die of overwork the day after they call you to retire and only give you some puny little plaque type of job. Shut up. I thought my dad would like it, you know? My human dad, not God, of whom the less is said, the better. Because my old man, he's in one of those jobs, been in it, as far as I can remember, for all his life. Hell, his work is his life. 

	Almost. Or I wouldn't be back home now, would I?

	So I was trying to get one of those jobs. Problem is, none of them really suited me. I've tried being a lawyer. Suited me just fine, until I got bored. It was too much like what I was supposed to be doing, until I got shut up in that sword. Then I tried.. being an accountant, a manager, a scientist- even a doctor, but it didn't work out. So.. I landed a job as an editor.

	Bi-ig mistake. I moved around trying to find a department I liked- sci-fi, serious, non-serious-masquerading-as-serious, self-help.. until I got to romance. In the other departments, I felt like a shark in tuna waters. In this one.. Alexiel laughed her head off and refused to come help until she found one of the writers whose work I was supposed to be editing in her bed- my bed, hers, who's counting?- wrapped up in little red ribbons. With a basket of things that disturbed even her, at the side of it. And what that particular writer said..

	Alex made me move to writing instead, immediately.

	"Write?" I told her. "Me?"

	"Yes."

	"What should I write, then?"

	"I don't know.. write whatever you want.. write occult thrillers, write penny romance novels, just.. get out of there."

	I suppose that particular writer had /really/ disturbed her. Quite an amazing feat, come to think of it, but I'd rather not. I might be the devil and all that, but there are some things even I don't descend to.

	So here I am, I guess. My books do pretty well, even though I'm not writing under my own name- in fact, my pen name, which is female, sounds rather dumb- but I don't think I'll put it here, thank you. Katou might get hold of this, and then where would I be? He knows I'm writing, most of the higher angels do, but he probably thinks I'm writing my memoirs, or something. (Wouldn't that be a wholesome childrens' book? I could call it, "Man in Black," or, "The Little Sword that Could", or something.) But not one of them, even Alexiel, knows what I'm writing.

	In fact, I think only my dad knows. (Somewhat to my surprise and.. something, I found out that he was an editor. At a place which does shoujo manga, the type of which has crossdressing in everything which runs.) He.. edits my stuff now, which I find vaguely wrong, but it brought us closer, so I suppose I shouldn't complain now, should I?

	As material, I draw inspiration from everybody except myself. My kohai and his sister; the princess of Gehenna and the Mad Hatter; hell, even my brother and.. I'm not sure yet what I want to call it, but it's definitely not "wife". I put lots of occult in them, too. After all, who's more qualified to write about the black mass and devil worship than I am? Apart from those who made it up, of course.

	..I think my brother would probably have a fit if he ever found out what his aniki was writing. I think I would have had a fit if I found out what I was writing. Secretly inside my heart I am having a thousand fits as I write each word. But you know something?

	Secretly I think I like it. And I get to. Because after all, I am the devil.

~End~

..man, /wrong/.