Daikoku, the god of happiness, for the first time in his entire life, found himself in a country where people were unhappy and happy to suffer in their lifetime, hoping to get what they wanted after death. This was very strange to Daikoku. In his native Japan, people knew that they were not entitled to happiness, but they also knew that some people did get it. Yet Daikoku himself was always walking around frowning disgruntled and miserable. No one should know how much happiness all people have now. After all, there is no more expensive item, and everyone will want to take it. And everyone will want more. And then he would need so many resources that he never possessed… That is why the god of happiness was known as the greediest of all gods.

But in the bag of magic rice he carried on his shoulders there was an old and wise rat, the main symbol of wealth. And it was this rat that gnawed holes in the bag of rice. And the rice fell to the ground, bringing people happiness they thought they didn't deserve. And no one but the rat and Daikoku himself knew that not a single hole had been chewed by accident, and not a single rice had accidentally fallen – all the people who received the magic rice had been chosen in advance and very carefully. And not because of how much happiness they deserved, but because of how much they were ready to preserve that happiness.

And among Krakozhia's people, Daikoku saw very few people who wanted to be happy, and even fewer who were willing to cherish their happiness. But what surprised him most of all was that the tiny fraction that had happiness was soon to lose it as well. Such things Daikoku knew in advance of all the gods. Because he had seen how much happiness people would lose. Because happiness was easier to lose than anything else.

Gustav was almost a thousand and fifteen hundred years old, and in all his life he had never seen the likes of him living so long, and living off the misery of others.

He was born in Ireland, where the local people were once called Celts and worshipped the goddess Danu, the ancestor of the gods who ruled the island. He did not like the religion, where the people who believed in it did not believe in love as something omnipotent, but rather just considered it one of the manifestations of human feelings.

At first, Gustav killed more out of necessity than out of pleasure, and did not even feel that there was anything special about it. But centuries passed, and Christianity appeared, and then its offshoots, in the form of Lutheranism, and, most importantly, Calvinism, a branch of Protestantism in which God's main purpose was to glorify him. In Calvinism, God was not good and was not going to save everyone from the hyena of fire, He initially determined who is chosen and deserves the right to rule, and who is insignificant and must suffer misfortune and humiliation, and everything that happens, it is only then to glorify His great Will and Might. The chosen ones fulfill this Will.

Gustavus considered himself such a chosen one, following Calvin's tenets while exterminating anyone he could deem worthless.

When this movement was still in its infancy, Gustav traveled to Switzerland, took part in the trials of "heretics" (and who is a heretic, defined no longer the Catholic Church, but Jean Calvin), who were still burned at the stake, but for the exact opposite thoughts.

Gustav did not like to burn, but to talk to the condemned, to give them hope, even if it did not matter what it was – maybe understanding or sympathy, that life had not been in vain – and then to take away that hope by secretly reproaching them and making them feel guilty, thus draining them of life even before their death agony in the smoke from the fire. He likedthis game of good and truthful much better than the simple accusations of dissent and spiritual error, the purpose of which was simply to consolidate the new anti-papal power and the new power's self-consciousness of its success in a single country.

Gustav thought that even these new inquisitors did not fully understand the significance of their position. They only wanted to accuse someone and condemn him, thus showing their power, not realizing that the man, while dying, realized that he was right and pure before everyone and, above all, before himself. But to squeeze all the juices out of him, to confuse him and force him to die in despair from the hopelessness and emptiness of his life – this is what Gustav wanted, and this is what he achieved.

Soon, disillusioned with Calvin himself, he only became more convinced of his ideas, supplementing and reinforcing them. "Children are filth," Calvin said; the vampire disagreed: "Children are not filth, they are a gift. They are one of the sweetest gifts that can be given to a man along with indescribable joy, only to be taken away and given to the same man to cause him even more indescribable and impossible suffering and to drive him mad with his own newfound emptiness.

Gustav had an appointment with a new acquaintance today. Her name was Catherine. Her father was a French diplomat, so she had spent her entire childhood in a semi-closed boarding school where half the children didn't speak Russian. As an adult, Catherine began writing, and now several magazines in the capital published her articles about family, children and dogs. The latter was her favorite, and she loved dogs of all kinds, and, above all, for their real and sincere love for their master. So far she had raised only one short-haired dachshund, but in the future she wanted several more. She didn't know whether it was fear of responsibility for another living creature or indecision in choosing a second breed – there were many reasons, but in fact she just didn't dare to do it. This trait was very strong in her character – she was always afraid of making mistakes, and, apparently, because there were few mistakes in her life; there was no place to make them in vain. Her father was always there to make sure that her life was always full of the right choices.

This Saturday she was invited to lunch by a new acquaintance who had given her a wonderful interview the week before last on the subject of raising and training Labradors. She liked Gustav not only for his distinctive Western European appearance and courteous manner, but also for his amazing knowledge of dogs in general and Labradors in particular. She had never heard so many new and interesting things in one conversation, and the editor-in-chief had already decided to put the article in the center column of the next issue. In addition to all this, Kathryn was fascinated by Gustav's lively and radiant attitude to life, which she thought he was beginning to imbue her with.

She was the first to arrive. She sat down at the end table and ordered a glass of water. Right now she was most worried about her shoes. All week she had been thinking about what she would wear for this meeting: a long, tight light blue dress with a small neckline and covered shoulders, the silk so thin and tight that the patterns on her bra could be seen from the cleavage, and sheer stockings that made her look stunning. She had done her hair in the morning so that she could look at the curls of her long black hair before she went out. Everything was flawless, but the shoes, turquoise high-heeled shoes, perfect in this case, slightly in need of repair. Catherine rarely wore them because of the very thin stilettos, and the last time she'd walked into a crack in the sidewalk, which had caused her to fall into a crack in her shoes.