Shia - Under the apple tree

紫亜
The kanji in Shia's given name mean "purple" and "rank next; sub-; Asia"

Shia enters Kotarou's life as a mysterious, threatening girl. He immediately realizes that something's not normal about her - both he and Misha gets enormous headaches around her, and later, Kotarou's cousin Shino also picks up the strange power that this girl radiates. But after almost killing Kotarou when trying to find out something about him, Misha steps in and showers them both with her angelic power. Shia seems so alone, and Misha can't stand it - so she invites her to live with her. Most of the time, Shia seems perfectly innocent. But as it is, Shia turns out to be a demon, and her story goes way back in time. After straying into the human world after an accident in the demon world, she lost all her memories and started living as a regular human, named Shima. But something wasn't right.. accidents were always happening to those around her, and more or less knowingly she was sucking the life power out of small animals. And she wasn't aging normally either. Still, there was someone who loved her with all his heart, a young man named Taro. They got married and had two children, and for a while Shima was truly happy. But being a demon is something you can't deny, and eventually, Shima let Nyaa take her back to the demon world, erasing all her memories - otherwise, she would have ended up devouring the life powers of her own children.

Demons cannot stay healthy in the human world, and they need other people's life power to stay alive. I don't know where Shia got her human heart - maybe she's always been so soft-spoken, kind and sensitive, or maybe she got that way during her life as Shima. She's very motherly, towards Kotarou and everyone else - patting them on the head, giving them wise words of advice, always saying the right thing, and cooking them old-fashioned food. But despite her kindness and warmth and seeming innocence - her true, demonic nature cannot be denied. It's almost scary to see how she changes, when her demonic self takes over. She, like every living creature, has a natural wish to stay alive - and for that, she almost kills Kotarou, who turns out to be her great-grandson. The struggle between her human heart and her demonic instinct is ever present, but in the end it seems that her human heart wins. Shia could never be at peace after she'd left Taro and her children. She always had the feeling she was missing something, that she'd lost something important. When she finally, after a long, long search, finds it, and realizes Kotarou is all that's left of her beloved family, she is crushed, but decides to become his mother. To the very end she's planning their happy future together. She is now in complete denial of the fact that demons cannot live in the human world. She will not do anything to hurt Kotarou now. She's a dreamer, she's been through so much sorrow and pain and now she will not have any more of it, not think about it. She dies happily after all, until her last breath thinking happy thoughts of the days to come.

Nyaa, in the end, changes his opinion of Shia. He has always seen her as an incompetent demon, but now.. He sees how Kotarou is desperately trying to get her back, how he's hurting - and realizes that she was a real demon after all: sneaking into the emptiness in people's hearts, and then, leaving them with a scar, and bringing unhappiness.. It might have been Shia's demonic instincts that made her promise to stay with first Tarou and then Kotarou, denying her failing health, but it might also simply have been her human heart - the natural, human need to love and be loved.

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