It had been a whole month since Mugyiwara Shotaro was born, and though the household had settled—somewhat—into the rhythm of infant care, there was an unspoken truth circling every room like a ghost no one dared name aloud:
This baby… was sentient.
Not in the way all babies are, with their grasping fingers and curious eyes. No, Shotaro was aware. Not just of things—of people, moods, and intentions—but of himself. It was there in the way he'd stare at you just a second too long, like he was waiting for you to finish your sentence so he could judge it. It was in the way he chose to cry, like an actor waiting for his cue, rather than doing so instinctively. And it was definitely in the way he reacted to being told "no"—not with frustration, but with vengeance.
Satsuya, the eldest sister, had tried to bottle-feed him once after Himawari finally went down for a nap. The bottle wasn't warm enough, apparently, because Shotaro took one sip, stared her directly in the eye like a disappointed noble, and proceeded to projectile-spit the entire thing over her blouse before clapping and giggling as if he'd just executed a masterstroke.
"He's doing this on purpose," she had hissed through clenched teeth, drenched in formula, while Nishoku coolly recorded the moment from the other end of the room.
"Well, his motor skills have developed beyond the standard deviation," Nishoku noted as she adjusted her glasses and jotted something into her observation journal. "But more concerning is the emotional manipulativeness. That's not a motor. That's intent."
"He bit me on purpose," Miyoko whined another day, holding her cheek as Shotaro sat like a gremlin on top of a velvet footstool, chewing a corner of the family grimoire. "He even smirked after!"
Satsuya, arms crossed, stared at the infant like he'd just been caught dealing black market relics. "I swear to God, if this baby wasn't so small—"
"You'd what?" Nishoku deadpanned, not even looking up.
"I'd win."
But Shotaro wasn't just smart. He was mean. Petty, even. If someone scolded him, he would knock over their water glass later while pretending to play. If he didn't like the music in the room, he'd scream until someone changed it. Once, he saw Alucard adjusting a family portrait on the wall—and waited until the exact moment it was perfectly leveled before farting so loud it startled him into dropping it.
"You little monster," Alucard had murmured, though not without pride, as he crouched down to pick the frame up. Shotaro just grinned and clapped.
Hashirama, ever the optimist, tried to look at the bright side. "He's… spirited."
"Hitler was spirited," Satsuya muttered.
"You know," Nishoku said one night, seated beside the crib with her journal open across her knees, "if I didn't know better, I'd say he understands language. Not just tones, but semantics. Watch this—Shotaro."
The baby blinked up at her, thumb in mouth, innocent as the moon.
"Do you want to destroy capitalism?"
Shotaro's thumb popped free. A slow, wicked smile crept across his face. Then, very deliberately, he nodded.
"You're feeding him this stuff," Hashirama sighed from the hallway, arms full of laundry.
"No," Nishoku said, completely serious. "He came pre-installed."
Sometimes, they'd find him alone in the library—yes, alone, after somehow managing to escape his playpen—flipping through picture books or watching the news with eerie attention. Not Baby Shark or lullabies, but actual news.
And he seemed... disappointed.
Disappointed in them.
In everything.
It wasn't that Shotaro was evil exactly. It was that he knew what evil was. And more frightening than that—he seemed to find it amusing.
At night, when everyone slept, he would lie in his crib with eyes wide open, red and glowing faintly in the dark, staring at the ceiling like he was calculating the orbital patterns of satellites or composing a vendetta.
And in the morning, he'd eat mud again. Or chew on his own sock. Or try to climb inside the fridge.
"Is this hell?" Satsuya whispered once, watching him try to jam a spoon into a power outlet while laughing hysterically.
"No," Himawari replied from her wheelchair, sipping tea. "This is your brother."
And no one disagrees.
....
Shotaro's laugh didn't match his size, nor his age, nor any known pattern of baby behavior. It came in sudden, chaotic bursts—wrong in every register. Like something laughing through a baby, not as one. A raspy, unhinged little cackle that danced on the edge of villainy and cartoon absurdity.Something between a gremlin and a mad scientist.
Like that laugh in old cartoons—the kind that made you pause, then rewind to ask yourself, "Did that really come out of a child?"
And yes. Yes, it did.
It had been only a month since his miraculous birth, but already, the Mugyiwara estate had ceased to operate on normal terms. The household staff had adjusted not to the presence of a baby but to the arrival of something far more complicated—a sentient, manipulative, deeply petty infant who, by all accounts, understood everything around him and chose chaos every single day.
Shotaro didn't coo like other babies. He schemed. He didn't toddle aimlessly—he executed missions. Sometimes those missions involved stealing Miyoko's juice box and drinking it in front of her while maintaining intense eye contact. Sometimes it meant hiding in the laundry basket for three hours just so he could scream and bite Satsuya's ankle at the exact moment she folded the whites.
He was barely two feet tall. He had no teeth. He couldn't say more than five words. And yet… somehow, he was winning.
The laughter was the worst part. It wasn't baby laughter. It was supervillain laughter compressed into a baby's frame. That high-pitched, malicious giggle—"Huhuhuhuhuhuhuh!!"—that erupted when he did something particularly heinous, like tearing up Nishoku's research paper with deliberate glee or tossing Miyoko's favorite doll into the koi pond after making her beg for mercy.
It came when he successfully evaded a diaper change, crawling under the couch with the dexterity of a trained assassin.
It came when he smacked Alucard, lord of the night himself, across the nose with a raw carrot he had sharpened into a tiny stake.
It came when he crab-walked backward up the stairs while maintaining unnervingly steady eye contact with the horrified maid.
It always came when he was winning.
Hashirama once heard that demonic giggle echo from the second floor while unloading groceries and nearly dropped a carton of eggs. "That's not just a baby," he muttered, dazed. "He's really... evil."
Nishoku, meanwhile, didn't even blink. She adjusted her lab coat and noted another entry into her ever-growing documentation:
Subject: Mugyiwara ShotaroLaughter Pattern: Deviant. Intentional. Possibly possessed.Notes: Shows signs of strategic malevolence. Enjoys domination over emotionally unstable toddlers.
Because yes—he bullied other babies at daycare.
Not out of curiosity. Not in the way babies bonk each other on the head and forget about it two seconds later. No, Shotaro studied his targets. He waited. He knew which ones were weakest, which ones cried easily, and which ones had separation anxiety—and then he moved in for the emotional kill.
He stole toys and gave them back only when bribed. He pointed at nothing, screamed, and got everyone else in trouble when they panicked. He tripped kids with blocks and pretended to be asleep. He once held another baby's hand just to yank it into a bowl of mashed peas.
The teachers at daycare didn't know what to do. "He's… charming?" one of them offered with a trembling smile. "But also deeply… calculating."
At home, no one was spared. Not even Alucard.
Shotaro now sat with all the regality of a pint-sized tyrant in his self-made nest of velvet pillows in the Mugyiwara estate's grand living room. The room itself was tastefully decorated—an architectural symphony of soft whites, rich golds, and floral marbles—but none of that refinement could survive the presence of this infant.
He looked like some spoiled little warlord who had just raided a noble caravan of snacks and art supplies. His cherubic cheeks were streaked with jam so thick it shone like war paint. His tiny fingers, still clutching the mangled corpse of a grape, were so sticky they left prints on everything he touched: the polished wood of the table, the edges of the drapes, even Alucard's cape once. Someone had clearly handed him crayons, and he had taken to them not as tools of creativity—but of destruction. They'd found spirals on the walls, tribal markings on the back of the dog, and a crude depiction of a very anatomically incorrect Hashirama on the hallway mirror.
And now he sat. Not playing. Not chewing a toy or humming a tune.
Just sitting. Cross-legged in his pillow throne. Head slightly tilted. Crimson eyes locked onto the family like he was waiting for them to move.
There was a weight to his stare. Not childish curiosity. Not that dopey baby wonder you expected from infants. No—Shotaro stared the way an apex predator watches prey.
There was no warmth in those eyes. Only calculation.
Then, from deep in his belly, it came.Slow at first—bubbling up like a secret.And then spilling out through his mouth in that now-infamous, shrill squeal of glee:
"Huhuhuhuhuhuhuh!!"
A mad little cackle.High-pitched.Triumphant.And so deeply, deeply aware.
Nishoku nearly dropped her clipboard.Satsuya physically recoiled.Hashirama slowly set down his teacup and whispered, "He's doing it again."Even Alucard—a being who once decapitated six demons in a single motion—looked mildly unnerved.
This wasn't the laughter of innocence.This was the laughter of a chessmaster.A courtroom villain.A cult leader in a onesie.
Miyoko was the only one who tried to keep it light. She waddled up, arms crossed, puffed up like a tiny stormcloud. "He's just weird," she insisted. "Like... maybe he's an alien baby or something."
"No," Nishoku said flatly, adjusting her glasses as she scribbled down observations. "He knows exactly what he's doing. Look at the smugness. The selective responses. He understands language. Emotions. Commands. And he chooses to ignore them."
"He smacked me yesterday with a wooden spoon," Satsuya muttered, still rubbing the faint mark on her arm. "Then looked me dead in the eye and threw it in the fireplace."
"He locked me in the pantry for two hours," added Hashirama, deadpan. "I had to climb out through the dumbwaiter."
"That was his third fake nap of the day," Alucard murmured, watching as Shotaro kicked one leg up in leisure. "I've known gods who didn't fake sleep that convincingly."
Because that was the truth that clung like smoke to the edges of every room he was in—he did everything by choice.
He chose to ignore.He chose to pretend.He chose chaos.
He wasn't just unusually smart.
He was unrepentant.
There was no guilt. No confusion. No apologetic coos or toddler tantrums. When he broke something, he smiled. When he was caught, he clapped. When he got away with something, he celebrated.
And above all, he didn't look at the people around him like they were people.
He watched them like they were furniture. Tools. Amusing insects with limited intelligence and predictable emotional responses. Playthings.
"He doesn't bond," Nishoku observed quietly one evening. "He doesn't reach for hugs. He doesn't seek warmth. He only cries when he wants attention. And he only smiles when someone else is upset."
Miyoko shivered.
"Are we sure he's a baby?" she asked.
No one answered.
In his pillow-throne, the little monster let out another victorious giggle, now gnawing on a rogue remote control he'd hidden behind him like a dagger. One sock on, one sock missing. Face sticky with plum jam and sin.
Mugyiwara Shotaro was a scumbag.
Not just in the way all babies were—a little selfish, a little loud.No.He was deliberate.Cunning.
....
One day, under a late afternoon sky the color of bruised lilacs, the house was oddly quiet.
It was a rare moment—no crash, no "POUYO," no mysterious giggle slithering down the hallways. Just silence. Thick, almost syrupy silence, the kind that pressed against the ribs, too still to be comforting.
Himawari was the first to notice.
She'd been wheeled into the parlor by Hashirama and left alone with a book and her thoughts. She didn't like being alone anymore. The silence reminded her of her hip, of the ache that came and went. But more than that, silence in this house meant that he was up to something.
She called softly—"Shotaro?"—but no answer came.
Instead, she heard a soft sound. Something she hadn't heard in months.
Crying.
Not human crying.
Animal.
It was Yuki, the white cat that had lived on the estate far before any of the Mugiywaras. Yuki rarely made a sound, even when the baby had yanked her tail. Even when the children tried to put hats on her. But now she was wailing. A low, guttural sound like mourning—raw and old and ancient.
And that sound came from the basement.
A coldness settled in her chest as she wheeled toward the door. Slowly. Carefully. The wheels creaked against the marble, then thumped as she reached the wooden floor of the corridor. The air got colder as she descended—just a little. Enough to sting the skin. Enough to whisper that something had gone very, very wrong.
The furnace was still on.
It hadn't been for days.
And there, curled beside the open metal belly of the furnace, was Yuki. Her fur blackened at the edges, her body curled around something small and still. Four somethings. Tiny, stiff, and ashen.
Himawari stopped breathing.
She stared.
There was no misunderstanding it. No rationalizing.
Yuki's kittens were in the furnace.
Their charred shapes—so heartbreakingly small—lay just beyond the grating, twisted and crisped and no longer real. Yuki mewled again, pushing at one with her paw as if it might come back to her. As if love could resuscitate ash.
Himawari's hands trembled violently on her wheels.
And she knew.
Somewhere in the marrow of her bones, she knew.
"Hashirama!" she called, her voice strangled, "Hashira—!"
But she didn't get to finish.
From behind, on the steps, came a soft thump.
Tiny.
Rhythmic.
And then, standing at the top of the stairs like a prince in shadow, was Shotaro.
He stood there on stubby legs, jam-stained shirt half-buttoned, looking down at her.
His red eyes glowed faintly in the dim, like embers tucked behind glass.
Expressionless.
Unapologetic.
Himawari looked up at him, horrified. "You…"
He blinked. Once. Then tilted his head the other way, as if confused she hadn't yet figured it out.
Then—
A smile.
That same terrible, knowing smile. The kind only he could make. A smile too old for skin that soft. Too sharp for a mouth with so few teeth.
"Huhuhuhuhuhuh."
It came out like a chime from hell.
He didn't run. Didn't laugh and flee like with the carrots, the spoon, the mop.
He just turned around. Calmly. Like someone who had crossed something off a to-do list.
And walked away.
Himawari was still staring when Hashirama arrived, when Alucard knelt beside the furnace, when the rest of the family slowly gathered in a growing silence.
She didn't cry.
Not then.
But her voice, when it came, was brittle.
"He burned them," she said. "He burned the kittens alive."
"No," Satsuya gasped, bringing a hand to her mouth.
Nishoku's expression was unreadable. Her lips tight. Her clipboard still for the first time in weeks.
Alucard didn't speak. He just looked toward the staircase, then back to the cold metal of the furnace.
And Yuki wouldn't leave them. She kept mewling. Soft and broken and endless.
"He chose to do it," Himawari whispered, voice cracking at last. "He… enjoyed it."
Because this wasn't just another baby prank. Not another tantrum. Not even that wild little spark of cruel mischief.
This…
This was evil.
This was a child with no empathy. No guilt. No regret.
Just intelligence.
And choice.
Shotaro Mugyiwara, at barely a month old, had done something unspeakable. Not because he didn't know better—but because he did.
Because he looked at life not as something precious… but as something fragile. Breakable. Replaceable.
....
The air in the Mugyiwara estate had changed.
It wasn't the storm outside or the thunderclouds brewing over the horizon—it was quieter than that. A kind of silence that pressed against the windows, that made the walls hold their breath. The sort of silence that came just before someone realized they'd left the door unlocked in a stranger's city.
Himawari had been recovering well. Miraculously well. Walking again, even dancing a little when she thought no one was watching, grateful to feel like a woman again and not a ruin of childbirth. There had been peace, or the illusion of it, for nearly a week. Shotaro hadn't broken anything. Hadn't set anything on fire. No spontaneous laser eyes or crushed maids.
He'd even offered her a drink.
A sweet gesture.
That's what she'd thought.
There was a glass of vintage vine—foreign, expensive, something only stored for anniversaries—waiting on the dining table. The bottle was uncorked, elegantly placed beside it. Not a drop spilled. And beside it sat the infant, cross-legged like a little Buddha, staring at her.
Not smiling.
Just… watching.
"You brought this for me?" Himawari had asked softly, slowly approaching, still in a faint limp from muscle memory.
Shotaro didn't answer.
Didn't nod. Didn't coo. Just tilted his head slightly, the way a bird might before pecking out an eye.
She reached for the glass. Her fingers grazed the stem. Then paused.
She saw it.
That look.
The faintest shimmer in his crimson eyes.
Not curiosity.
Not joy.
Anticipation.
And something... darker.
Cold spilled into her stomach—not from the wine, but from the dawning, creeping understanding.
He wanted her to drink it.
Not in the way children want their mothers to enjoy their clumsy attempts at baking. Not in the proud way of a son presenting something. But in the way a predator waits. In the way a god tests.
"Shotaro…" she whispered, retracting her hand.
Still, he said nothing.
But the eyes glinted again. Like coals shifting beneath ash.
She picked up the glass anyway, but this time held it in the light of the chandelier.
And there it was.
Something swirling.
Slightly off.
She tilted the liquid. It moved slower than wine should. A faint iridescence. And there, barely visible at the bottom—a sediment. Pale blue. Crystalline.
Poison.
Her heart stopped. Only for a moment. But enough.
She turned to him, slowly, as though looking at something ancient and foul in a child's skin.
"You… you tried to poison me," she said. It wasn't a question.
Shotaro blinked. Slowly. His head didn't move. His shoulders didn't twitch.
But there was something in the corner of his mouth.
Not a smile.
A smirk.
A sick little twitch of satisfaction.
She backed away from the glass, stomach tight. Not with fear. Not yet. With grief.
"You're my son," she said, her voice breaking.
This time he cooed. "Mama…"
It sounded sweet.
A perfect imitation.
But she could see it now. In the tilt of his neck. The too-controlled expression. The mimicry. He was learning. Watching. Measuring reactions.
Like a scientist studying insects. Not family.
Himawari stumbled back a step. Her legs, still healing, buckled a little, and she caught herself on the chair.
From across the hall, Alucard entered. He stopped mid-step when he saw the look on her face.
"Lady Himawari?" he asked, gentle.
She held up the glass, not taking her eyes off Shotaro.
"He tried to kill me."
There was no drama in her voice. Just a deep, exhausted certainty.
Alucard turned to the baby.
Shotaro was now chewing on the tablecloth.
Innocent. Dumb. Adorable.
But the illusion had cracked.
The tyrant was learning restraint.
Poison, not fire.
A glance, not a tantrum.
Shotaro Mugyiwara had made his first attempt on someone's life.
And no one—not even his mother—was safe anymore.
....
The park that afternoon was soft with late spring, the breeze rustling through the leaves in gentle hushes, the kind that make even concrete feel forgiving. Birds chirped without a care. The distant buzz of a lawn mower droned under the laughter of children, couples lounging beneath tall trees, and the subtle movement of stroller wheels across paved paths.
And Shotaro Mugiywara waddled through it.
Alone.
Unattended.
Small, waddling, and silent, he moved not with the unsteady, bumbling energy of other babies, but with the deliberate gait of a man who knew exactly what he was looking for. A conqueror in a onesie. A general with sticky fingers. His crimson eyes scanned the park like a hawk's, even if his hands were smeared in apple sauce and the back of his shirt bore a dirt stain in the shape of a cat paw.
Around him, mothers smiled as he passed.
"Aww, look at him—so independent!" one whispered.
"He must be someone's genius baby," said another.
Shotaro ignored them.
He was searching.
Then—he paused.
He had found them.
Two teenage girls, no older than sixteen, seated under the wide shadow of a cherry blossom tree near the lake. One had dyed green hair pulled up in a messy bun, the other with soft features and an oversized sweater draped over her shoulder. Their heads were close, hands entangled. Their lips met in a soft kiss, tentative and quiet.
Shotaro stopped in his tracks.
His eyes twitched.
His nostrils flared.
He tilted his head, slowly, like a confused, wounded god gazing upon some new blasphemy carved into the side of his temple. His jam-covered fingers curled into fists, and he released a noise—a strange, clipped grunt—somewhere between a snarl and a declaration of war.
"Gwah!!" he cried, charging like a furious duck.
The girls broke their kiss, startled, and looked down.
"Oh my god," the one in the sweater gasped, laughing. "Where did he come from?"
"Is he okay?" asked the other, concerned. "Aw, come here, buddy—are you lost?"
Shotaro rammed himself into the green-haired girl's shin with all the force a 20-pound infant could muster. She yelped, instinctively pulling her leg back, and he fell flat on his back with a loud thump, momentarily stunned.
He lay there a second, staring up at the blue sky like it had betrayed him.
Then, slowly… the expression returned.
That awful, knowing baby scowl.
His lips curled into a tiny, hateful sneer."Huhuhuhuhuhuhuh..."
The laugh rose from his throat like a curse reborn.
The girls exchanged glances.
"Is he… laughing?" one asked.
"He's—he's kind of creepy…"
"He's just a baby," said the other, but even she sounded unsure.
What they didn't know—what no one in that park knew—was that this baby had, in his short month of life, committed acts so far removed from the realm of human decency they bordered on myth. He had burned a litter of newborn kittens alive. He had tried to poison his own mother. He had discovered malice before he'd learned to walk.
And now he had found a new, unfamiliar offense: public affection between two girls.
He didn't understand it. He didn't want to.
He only knew one thing: he didn't like it.
He rolled back to his feet with surprising ease, patting dust off his pants like a man recovering from a bar fight. Then, slowly, still staring, he picked up a nearby stick. Not too big. Not too small.
Just the right size.
"Gwah."
The two girls rose to their feet now, laughing nervously, backing away from the infant with wide eyes and half-choked giggles.
"Okay, buddy, you do not need to be holding that—"
He took one threatening step forward.
"Let's just go," one whispered, grabbing the other's hand.
And they did.
They left.
Fast.
He watched them go, eyes narrowed, the stick still clutched in his hand like a judge's gavel.
He didn't even swing it.
He didn't have to.
Because this was how Mugiywara Shotaro moved through the world: with judgment. With wrath. With arbitrary, ancient spite.
A god trapped in soft skin.An emperor in a stroller's body.And now, apparently, a tiny, unapologetic bigot.
The breeze returned.
The birds chirped again.
Shotaro, pleased with himself, dropped the stick and sat down in the dirt.
....
He picked up a bug. A simple thing—soft-shelled, slow, the kind that meandered across stone without much awareness of the world's cruelty. It had made the mistake of crawling too near him, underestimating what he was.
He pinched its leg, small fingers moving with surgical precision, and plucked it off as casually as one might snap a blade of grass. The insect twitched once in his palm. Its frantic legs spasmed.
He stared at it.
Then—laughed.
A stuttering, high-pitched staccato, bubbling up from his throat like it had nowhere else to go, bursting out of him in gleeful spurts."Huhuhuhuhuhuhuh…"
Not playful. Not curious.
Triumphant.
The wind rustled through the trees above as if recoiling. Sunlight, once soft and warm over the park, seemed to dim by a shade—thinner somehow. Like even the sky wanted to inch a little farther away from the creature sitting in the dirt.
He dropped the bug.
Wiped his hands on his shirt like it was chalk dust.
Then he waddled on.
There was no one with him. No siblings. No nursemaid. No leash. No stroller. He'd slipped away again, and the Mugyiwaras wouldn't notice until the next broken thing screamed back at them through the news.
Shotaro's destination revealed itself a few minutes later—a clearing by the pond, cordoned off slightly from the footpath. The kind of place someone might walk past and not look twice. Quiet, gentle, still. There, beside a bed of reeds and nestled into the tall grass, sat a swan's nest. Shallow, made from reeds and twigs and patient motherhood. The mother swan stood close, regal in her stillness, her body shielding a single ivory egg beneath the soft curve of her belly.
Shotaro saw her.
And he paused.
He stared, long and silent, head tilted just slightly. He blinked, as if processing a math problem. The swan didn't move. She only watched, neck arched in gentle defiance, as the child came closer—barely a foot tall, caked in mud and sugar and things far less natural.
His little hand closed around a rock.
Not large. Not sharp.
Just enough.
He took another step forward.
The swan flinched—lifted her head, hissed—but she didn't leave. Her wings tensed. Her body lowered, further shielding the egg. Nature told her to protect.
But nature had never planned for Shotaro.
With one sudden movement, he threw the stone—not at her—but at the edge of the nest. A distraction. It cracked against the mud. She startled, turned, instinct taking the reins.
And that was all he needed.
Shotaro lunged forward—not with toddler clumsiness, but with a sickeningly efficient crawl, hands low, eyes sharp. He reached in past the flaring wings, past her hiss, past her fury, and his hand curled around the egg.
And crushed it.
It shattered in his palm with a soft, wet sound, warmth seeping between his fingers.
The swan screamed.
She lunged too late. He was already falling backward onto the grass, arms outstretched like a man on a cross, covered in yolk and shell and tiny blood.
He lay there laughing.Giddy.Ecstatic.Drunk on the power of ending.
The mother swan flapped her wings, distraught, circling the ruined nest, pushing the fragments with her beak like a grieving mother rearranging a corpse. The tall grass swayed, indifferent.
Shotaro simply stared up at the blue sky, speckled with sunlight and drifting clouds, his grin wide and stupid.
To any passerby, it might have looked like a baby playing in mud.
But the sky knew. The grass knew. The wind, even now, blowing cold where it had been warm, knew.
He was barely a foot tall.
And he had destroyed something ancient and innocent like it was a game.
The swan shrieked again, a broken, primal sound. Shotaro rolled onto his stomach, smeared his face in the dirt, and laughed once more.
"Huhuhuhuhuhuhuh..."
And the chapter ended, not with revelation, not with justice, not with peace—
But with the quiet crunch of a shattered egg beneath a baby's heel.