【The Rise of the Ugly Monster】 The Girl's Name, His Name

* * *

Crack, crack, crack... the sound of something small bursting.

A sound he hasn't heard in this life, but feels nostalgic.

That was the first element of the outside world recognized by him as his consciousness faintly awakened.

"N'eh..."

Next, slowly opening his eyelids, what lay before his eyes was a wavering, dancing orange flame.

In other words, a campfire.

The surroundings were completely night.

Only the very narrow range illuminated by the campfire was the world he could recognize.

"N'eeeee..."

He sluggishly approached the campfire and pondered vaguely while warming his body with its heat.

What he remembered while still half-asleep were memories of his early childhood... from his previous life.

Memories from right around when he first entered elementary school, perhaps.

Back then, he got along well with his family too... and they used to often go camping together during summer vacation.

Just like this, under the night sky, watching the merrily dancing flames while roasting marshmallows.

...It was fun.

Back then, every day was fun.

"...You're awake."

"N'eh!?"

His half-asleep brain... was completely awakened by that single word called out from behind him.

Startled by the sudden voice, he jumped and looked back, and what sluggishly emerged from the darkness was the girl he had seen during the day.

The girl's face, illuminated by the glistening moving orange light, was unchanged from before, so beautiful there was no room to find a flaw.

If one wasn't careful... they would be so mesmerized they'd forget to breathe.

That's how beautiful she was.

That is exactly why it was terrifying.

In his mind, the scene from the daytime... the memory of that time when this girl turned into a tentacle monster, flashed back.

"N-N'eh..."

Trembling violently and making beads of poisonous liquid float up on his body surface, he somehow managed to stand up using his thin legs, and while staring intently at the beautiful monster... slowly backed away.

As usual, it was a thoughtless action.

What was behind him at this time.

Was, the campfire.

Overcome with fear, forgetting even the heat of the flames bathing his back, he staggered backwards and approached the campfire...

"N'eh?"

He tripped over a pebble and fell.

At that moment, unfortunately, the branches serving as fuel for the campfire collapsed, and a fragment of it... to him, a giant mass of flames, popped and flew towards him!

"N'......!?"

He tried to scream, but... he couldn't.

Because in the next moment, his body was grabbed by something cold and hard, and from his perspective, he was swung around with tremendous force.

"Eh...?"

As for what that something was, it was the girl's tentacle.

Unlike the tentacles he saw during the day, there was no mouth-like organ at the tip... instead, a single claw-like thing was growing from it.

It was such a dark black tentacle.

That tentacle lightly wrapped around his body and distanced him from the campfire's flames.

"Are you okay? Dokugegon."

The girl picked him up by the scruff of the neck, not caring about touching the poisonous liquid as he still stiffened his body in fear, and checked that there were no burns while swinging him danglingly.

And then, gently... she set him down on the ground.

Naturally, having been treated like this, he understood too.

This girl had no intention of being hostile towards him.

In the first place, she was a girl who easily slaughtered that giant monster.

If she had that intention, he wouldn't be alive right now.

...Even touching his poisonous liquid didn't seem to have any particular effect on the girl.

Even now, she was casually wiping the poisonous liquid on her hands with nearby fallen leaves... but as for her treatment of the poisonous liquid, that was it.

Even though that was all she did, she was completely unaffected.

To her, he was nothing more than a small, harmless creature.

However.

Even if he understood that this girl was not an enemy, a question remained.

One of those questions was why the girl had saved him.

And the other was.

(What is... 'Dokugegon'?)

Such a question.

"Are you hungry? Want to eat? Dokugegon."

To him tilting his head, the girl asked that expressionlessly, and took something out of her pocket.

It was a fruit with a red and yellow mottled pattern, about 3 centimeters in diameter.

(It's a mock cherry!)

Coincidentally, it was the very fruit he had been considering gathering just before leaving his temporary home!

A passing-grade food with guaranteed decent taste and quantity!

"N-N'eh! N'eh!"

He crawled towards the mock cherry rolling on the offered palm while raising cheers, and pecked at it in a trance.

"Is it delicious? Dokugegon."

While watching that sight expressionlessly, the girl murmured that in a cold voice with no emotion, but clearly with a gentle tone.

"N'eh..."

Glancing up at the girl's face, he ventured a guess.

(Could it be, this girl... is trying to make me, like, a pet...?)

Why she would think of making a shabby, poison-covered him into a pet... he honestly couldn't understand that sense.

Considering her actions, he thought that this guess was probably not wrong.

And.

If that's the case.

The word sounding like 'Dokugegon' that she had been repeating since earlier.

Could that possibly be...

The name... she gave him...?

(No, seriously, that's way too lame!?)

He held his head in his mind.

(No, it must be a verbal tic! This girl must be the kind of character who just adds 'Dokugegon' to the end of her sentences! Surely 'Dokugegon' is a dialect like 'zura' or 'dabe'! It must be, without a doubt!)

And, wanting so badly not to acknowledge that tasteless naming, he tried to stabilize his mind by assigning a rather forced mental setting to the girl!

"I am a traveler. Emi Rune."

To him, the girl... quietly began to introduce herself.

"I'm thinking of trying to keep you. You don't look... delicious, anyway."

And simply, she presented the answer to his first question.

(Why would you get the idea of 'I'll keep him because he doesn't look delicious'!?)

He greatly tilted his head on her palm.

However, that question would soon be pushed out of his head.

Because...

"From today, your name is 'Dokugegon'... nice to meet you, Dokugegon."

(Uwaaaaaaaah!?)

The very first name he had ever been given in this life...

It was...

...now officially, irrevocably—"Dokugegon."