Claus and the departure.

"Good morning, Mao-kun and I wish you a Merry Christmas." The overly polite girl at the doorstep was a black-haired cutiebun. Dressed up in a dress with those frill things.

"Merry Christmas to you too, Luha!" I greeted her back while dragging her into the hall.

Like last year, the family decided not to hold a Christmas ball this year as well so that they could spend more time with us before we left for the school year.

Was cancelling the biggest social gathering of the year unreasonable? Perhaps.

Will this continue to happen for the coming 18 years or so? Probably.

"Luha is here!" I announced and left her alone for the others to greet. She was now a common existence within our home. Especially after Yuuno had left the year before.

Luha just naturally became the youngest daughter of the house.

I was planning to spend a little more time with her but I could do that a little later. Currently, I had a more special task in mind.

Today was the morning of Christmas. But more importantly, it was the day I got something special.

"Did Santa drop by last night?" I asked Mom.

Apparently, in the modern world, there was an existence called Santa Claus. He resided in the Antarctic continent and would go around the world dropping presents off to every child who behaved.

From what I could tell it was a charity event. One that I could totally get behind.

It was nice to know that aside from the residents of the demon-human alliance, there was a foreign being who didn't discriminate against races and spread happiness to all.

I would love to meet him someday if I could. Our discussion might be fruitful for the races or engaging to me at the very least. We had similar outlooks on life after all. But our encounter seemed rather unlikely.

Apparently, he uses magic to mask his movement at night so it is a little hard to come across him by chance. I'll try to reach out to him sometime in the future.

On the other side, Mom decided to answer my question.

"He did drop by. He left your presents next to the tree that you decorated." She answered while packing the fancy kitchenware in. By that, I meant the buckets we used for yesterday's chicken.

I couldn't tell if she was bad at house chores and unironically putting those cardboard boxes in the rack or if the buckets really were reusable.

Anyhow, I couldn't be bothered about that. I had some presents to open.

I was quite looking forward to this year's presents. I tried to behave a little better than the last year. From what I have heard, Santa firmly believed in a meritocratic compensation system. He would reward people who behaved and shun those who didn't.

Which made sense, right? Giving the same gifts out to the ones who don't deserve it as the ones who do is pretty sad.

I also presumed that if you were better behaved throughout the year, you would get better presents than those who behaved somewhat nicely. As in the value of the presents depended on the degree of how nice you were.

'I wonder how good this year's present is...' I went over to the Christmas tree that was almost half the height of the entire hall.

There were presents scattered across the bottom end of the bark... and my present, in particular, stood out the most as the bright red one.

'The same as last year, huh?' At the very least Santa was consistent.

I grabbed the decently sized package and inspected it to make sure it was mine, and it was. The next step would be to open it.

Another pet peeve of mine that I have developed while living with these people is their disregard for packaging. They would open presents up like beasts, ripping off the packaging in the most disorderly manner possible.

But I wasn't like them.

The elves back there in Santa's workshop clearly put a lot of work into it, and the packaging itself was a reusable resource.

Step one of opening the present is rattling it around to guess what's inside. And so I did. Heavy, thumpy, and somewhat boxy.

I shall take my shot.

.

.

.

'It's a washing machine!'

After hopefully successfully guessing, I sat down and carefully took the packaging apart sellotape by sellotape and a blue and white body started to present itself to me.

"Aw shucks. It's a Playing Station 7. Well, close enough!" I hyped myself up and put the present securely down.

"Watcha doin' there?" Yuu-chan came up from behind me.

"Just unwrapping my present. Are you done unpacking your stuff?" I asked. She was going to be here until the New Year and then we had to leave for school together. Although not a lot, she did bring some luggage, mostly food that her guesthouse owners had sent home.

"Yeah, although it took a while... So what do you have there?"

"Santa gave me a Play Station this year."

"??" Yuuno didn't reply.

I turned around.

"What?" I asked after looking at her puzzled face.

"Who's Santa?" She asked.

Talk about uncultured! How has she lived 8 years and still not heard of Santa Claus? That's pretty pathetic.

"You know, Santa Claus. The guy who lives in the Antarctic with his elves and hands presents out every year." I explained.

"You are kidding, right? Don't you mean your parents?"

"Of course not. Why would they give a present to me? It was Santa."

Her eyes slowly started to droop almost as if she was looking at me with pity. That was a problem with uncultured people!

They really needed to learn how to take new knowledge in without prejudice. You wouldn't get anything out of doubting something you know little about.

Yuuno finally opened her mouth.

"You know that Santa is fake, right?" Everyone moving around, stopped.

See, I knew that she wouldn't believe me!

"Oh, dear. That's what happens when someone knows way too little. Luha! Tell her that Santa's real." I looked at the girl in Dad's arms.

"But he's fake." Wait, Luha too? She was pretty smart, but at the end you can only be so smart at age 7.

I sighed.

"Alez-nii Santa's real, right?"

"R-right."

Ooof. That was the least powerful approval I've heard. They almost got me to doubt myself there.

"He is fake." Yuuno stood her ground.

"W-what are you on about why would he be fake. He's just a nice non-discriminatory man who wants to make the world a better place!" I started to get a little heated.

"Of course he's fake! He doesn't even seem real!!" She got a little louder too.

"SO YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT IN A WORLD OF MAGIC AND BLOOD-SUCKING LOSER DEMONS LIKE YOU, SANTA IS THE ONE WHO'S FAKE?!"

"we're vampire's too-"

""SHUT UP HIME-NEE! THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU!"" At least we agreed on that.

"AND HE IS NOT REAL!"

"HE IS TOO!"

"How do you think he delivers all the presents in a single night?! Does that make any sense to you?! Where does he get the money? How does he pay the elves?"

"Obviously it makes sense to me. Suppose he delivers from 10 to 2 at night. That would mean 24 different 10 to 2s around the globe. Which makes 96 hours to distribute the presents! As for money, I guess it'd be from personal charities."

"THAT'S NOT HOW TIMEZONES WORK!"

"OH, THEN YOU TELL ME HOW HE DOES IT!"

"TIME... TI- YOU KNOW WHAT? IT DOESN'T MATTER! HE DOESN'T DO IT! HE DOESN'T EVEN EXIST! Your parents are the ones who wrap them up and keep them under the tree when you fall asleep!" That doesn't sound too unrealistic. They were out last night too.

I turned to look at them and the both of them averted their eyes.

"Are you really telling me Santa is fake?" I fall back.

"He is Mao! HE IS!"

This had to be a lie.

"Are you saying that my parents are the ones who planted the presents at night?"

"They were!"

"Are you telling me that I got riled up and excited over a being that didn't even exist?!"

"Well, you do that pretty often, with all those waifus of yo-"

"Haa... haa... HAHAHAHA! This is exactly why we can't have nice things. Everything good is an illusion pain is the only reality." I laughed maniacally.

Don't get me wrong. I was not convinced, deep down I had a feeling that Santa existed.

The problem was that I felt lied to. Betrayed. If I were to turn around there would be daggers buried in my back.

"So the only benign existence left who is all accepting is the Tooth Fairy, huh?" I chuckled.

"Oi, who's gonna tell him?"

###

I had plans. Plans to play around in the snow. Plan to visit malls with my family... but now, all I felt was lethargy.

My body wouldn't listen to me.

Two betrayals one after another.

Telling me that Santa was fake and then taking the existence of Tooth Fairies away too. My whole life was a lie.

Christmas passed by and so did the New Year. All I did was laze around watching fantasy shows to get over the pain of reality.

And finally, it was time. Time to leave this nest of liars. To go out into the world as a man anew. As an elementary schooler.

###

"Mao-kun!!! You don't have to go!! Can't you just stay?" Mom cried. Dad sniffled in the background.

"We already went over this multiple times now." I grabbed my backpack.

"But-"

"I'll come back every year."

"But-"

"Not going is not a choice anymore."

"At least leave Clinatarou behinndddd!!!"

"Are you going to take care of him every day?"

"We will hire someone." That statement had no love.

"Yeah, then no. Think of this as your punishment for taking me as a fool." I replied while handing the dog off to the pet section of the bus.

"NOOOOO!!!" Her pain from our departure probably opened a new hole through her larynx.

"Wahhh~~~! I'm gonna miss you two so much!" Mom hugged me and crushed me to the point that my entire shoulder was covered with bruises or snot. Unable to hold back Pops came in too.

The farewell while abrupt, lasted a while before Pops had to draw Mom away.

"I'll see you soon!" I shouted while getting onto a large fortified bus. I was what many would call forgiving. Sure I hadn't gotten over their betrayal but I- at the very least, was willing to give them a chance.

I decided to see them off with a smile instead of my pained look borne from depression.

Wounds needed time to heal, and even loved ones needed to be separated for understanding your individuality.

"BYEEEE!" I waved at the joint family. They waved back.

Farewells aside, it was the beginning of a new adventure.