High School DxD: Fox of Ill Omen

Chapter 11 — The Mark That Stays

Kusari

The knock came again.

Three soft taps.

Not Buchou. Not Himejima-senpai. Not Toujou-san. The rhythm was too hesitant for one, too light for another, too careful for the last.

I opened the door.

Argento-san stood outside holding a tray with both hands.

Steam rose from the cup set at one edge. Beside it lay a folded cloth and a small jar I recognized by smell before sight—cooling salve, the kind used for headaches, strained eyes, and bruises not worth proper healing.

For a second I only looked at the tray.

Then at her.

“Argento-san.”

She smiled, but only a little. “I thought you might still be awake.”

“That appears to be true.”

A tiny laugh escaped her before she could stop it.

The sound was quiet enough to miss if one did not already know how often she tried to take up less space than she deserved.

“I brought tea,” she said. “And… this.” She lifted the cloth slightly with one finger. “Koneko-chan said it helped yesterday. So I thought maybe if your eyes still hurt…”

She trailed off there, not because she doubted herself, but because the sentence had already done what it needed to do.

She had noticed.

Of course she had.

I stepped back and let her in.

“Thank you.”

She entered carefully, tray first, as if the room still belonged more to danger than to me. The mountain house had given me a larger room than the old school building had. It had not given me more presence in it. My things still occupied almost no space. My bag remained mostly packed. The bed remained too neatly made on the untouched half. The room itself still looked like something I had been loaned rather than given.

Asia-san set the tray down on the low table by the window.

For a moment neither of us spoke.

Then she picked up the cloth and held it out to me. “You kept pressing here,” she said, touching lightly beneath one eye on her own face to explain what she meant. “Earlier. And during dinner.”

I took the cloth.

Cool.

Freely given.

That last part was still the strangest.

“It is not severe,” I said.

Argento-san gave me a look I was beginning to understand from her.

Gentle disagreement.

“That doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”

Annoying.

She was becoming annoyingly difficult to dismiss.

I pressed the cloth beneath my right eye and felt the immediate, clean relief of cold against lingering strain. Veil Sight had behaved badly all day. Not enough to blind. Not enough to fail me. Enough to punish.

Argento-san remained standing for another second before asking, “May I sit?”

That pulled my attention up at once.

Not because sitting required permission.

Because she had asked.

“You do not need to ask.”

Her expression shifted a little at that.

Then she sat across from me and folded her hands in her lap.

The house beyond us had quieted further while we spoke. Footsteps had passed the room twice already and faded. Someone—Hyoudou-san, most likely—had raised his voice downstairs once, only to have it cut off quickly by what sounded like Himejima-senpai saying something sweet and threatening. The estate was settling.

Argento-san looked toward the window and then back to me.

“Are you going out again?”

I did not answer immediately.

That was answer enough.

She lowered her eyes. “You don’t have to tell me.”

Another useful thing about her: she understood distance faster than most.

I set the cloth down and picked up the tea instead. Warm. Slightly floral. Not something I would have chosen for myself. Something I would not have known to choose for myself.

“It helps more when no one is watching,” I said.

Her gaze rose again, mild surprise softening into understanding.

“The experimenting?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

Then, carefully, “Because it’s easier to fail?”

That was close enough to truth to deserve one in return.

“Yes.”

Asia-san nodded slowly.

“I understand that a little.”

I doubted she understood it in the same shape I did. Still, the answer was honest enough to let stand.

She hesitated once more, then said, “You looked close today.”

I met her eyes.

“You were watching.”

“Yes.”

No apology.

That was unusual.

Before I could decide whether to comment, she added, “Not to pry. Just because…” Her fingers tightened together, then loosened. “I wanted to know if it got worse.”

The sentence settled somewhere awkwardly under my ribs.

Not because it was dramatic.

Because it was not.

Because it carried no demand, no transaction, no expectation of equivalent disclosure in return.

I drank the tea rather than answer too quickly.

“It did not get worse,” I said at last. “It did not become better enough.”

That earned me the smallest, tired smile.

“That sounds frustrating.”

“It is.”

The smile deepened by almost nothing.

Then Argento-san stood, perhaps sensing that this was as far as the conversation would go without becoming something more dangerous than either of us wanted.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said.

I rose too, because not rising when someone left felt stranger in the mountain house than it ever had in the old school building.

At the door, she paused and glanced back. “Kusari-san?”

“Yes?”

“If it works… I hope it hurts less.”

She left before I could decide what the correct answer to that should have been.

The room went quiet again.

I stood there for another moment with the cooling cloth in one hand and the tea still warm in the other.

Then I set both down, tied my hair back again, and left by the side corridor instead of the main hall.

The practice clearing looked different at night.

Smaller.

More exact.

The trees held the dark close. The house behind me glowed at the edges through paper screens and old wood and distance. The ground where we had trained all day still bore the evidence of it: scuffed dirt, shallow grooves, footprints, the ghost of repeated movement.

I stepped into the open space and exhaled slowly.

The headache had retreated to something manageable after the cloth and the tea. My hand still held a line of ache down into the wrist if I flexed too hard. My shoulder complained only when I forgot it.

Good enough.

I lifted one hand.

Dark-violet light threaded thinly between my fingers.

Baleful Bolt was simple in its own way. Cruel. Direct. It asked what I wanted hurt and how badly, then punished me according to both the answer and the seals’ opinion of my ambition.

What Buchou had asked for was not smaller cruelty.

It was a different shape entirely.

I tried again.

The first attempt failed before it fully formed.

The second held a little longer: a narrow, crescent-like sigil hanging in the air at eye level, delicate and ugly and wrong. Then it cracked down the middle and vanished.

The third I placed against the surface of a training post.

The mark settled.

Almost.

Then the whole thing smeared sideways and melted into the grain of the wood uselessly.

I stood very still.

Then tried again.

The failure was not in power.

That was the problem.

Baleful Bolt had taught my instincts the wrong lesson: power wanted to strike. To answer directly. To make the wound and accept the cost.

This needed to do something else.

Mark. Linger. Distort. Prepare.

A curse did not need to injure immediately to make the world worse for what it touched.

The thought changed something.

I turned and crouched, fingers brushing over the dirt where Kiba-san had cut the line of the clearing earlier that afternoon. My eyes narrowed as Veil Sight stirred again—not deep enough to bite hard, just enough to let the remaining traces of movement and intent show themselves faintly in the night.

There.

Not where a person stood.

Where a person committed.

I lifted my hand and shaped the curse toward that instead.

This time the sigil came smaller, flatter, less eager to become an attack. A stain rather than a spearhead. A quiet wrongness instead of a strike.

It adhered to the ground and held.

I stared at it.

Then, because I needed proof, I pulled a small splinter of power into my other hand and flicked it toward the marked patch.

The splinter curved.

Only slightly.

Only enough to matter.

It landed cleaner than it should have, as if the marked point had become easier for violence to find.

I felt my tail shift in response to my joy at my success. 

Then I felt something cold spread under my breastbone.

Not pain.

Numbness.

A thin spreading chill that moved outward from the center of my chest like frost working beneath skin.

I stopped breathing for one second.

Smaller than Baleful Bolt.

Noticeably smaller.

Still there.

My mouth moved before I fully chose the name.

“Stillmark.”

The word sounded correct in the dark.

The sigil faded a few seconds later, but not before I understood the logic fully enough to know it would come back when called.

Not a weaker bolt.

A different curse.

Lighter.

Quieter.

Persistent.

Cruel in a more patient way.

I was still staring at the spot where it had been when a voice behind me said, “So that is what you were reaching for.”

I turned.

Rias stood at the edge of the clearing.

No announcement.

No demand.

Just her, wrapped in a lighter robe than the one she had worn at dinner, crimson hair loose, expression tired enough that the queen in it showed only when she looked directly at something.

For a moment I said nothing.

Then, automatically, “Buchou.”

Her mouth curved slightly. “I suspected you’d still be awake.”

“I was.”

“Yes.” She glanced toward the place on the ground where the mark had been. “I can see that.”

I lowered my hand slowly, the cold in my chest still spreading in a shallow ring beneath the skin before fading.

“It is not as costly,” I said.

Buchou stepped closer, not into my space, only near enough to see the cleared ground properly.

“What is the drawback?”

Interesting.

Not does it work.

Not what does it do.

What is the drawback.

I answered just as directly. “Coldness. Numbness. Beginning in the chest. Small and manageable."

“That’s good.”

The quiet approval in her voice landed more strangely than the earlier order had.

I should have said thank you.

I did not.

Instead I said, “It is lighter because it does not apply the affect directly.”

She looked at me then, and for one second her exhaustion sharpened into interest.

“Explain.”

So I did.

Not the whole mechanics. Not in a formal report. Just the truth of it.

“It marks a point or a target for later harm. It makes later attacks cleaner. Timing worse. Movement less true.” I paused. “A wrong place.”

She listened without interrupting.

When I finished, she gave one small nod. “That suits you.”

I was not sure whether that was praise.

It felt different from the praise I normally received..

Buchou looked past me then, out toward the line of trees below the clearing. The mountain night held itself very still around us.

“When I asked you to find something lighter,” she said, “I wasn’t sure whether you would solve the problem by restraint or by invention.”

I should have recognized the opening for what it was.

I did not until too late.

“I do not think restraint was the real problem.”

Buchou’s eyes closed for one breath.

“No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”

The air changed.

She looked like she wanted to say something.

To get something off her chest.

“I tried to sleep with Issei,” she said.

There was no lead-in.

No attempt to dress the statement in softer language.

Perhaps that was why it landed with so little distortion.

I looked at her.

She did not look back immediately.

“I guessed,” I said.

That made her laugh once—quietly, bitterly, without any joy in it.

“Of course you do.”

I stayed silent.

It seemed the wiser choice.

After a moment, she continued, gaze still fixed somewhere past the clearing. “Not the details, perhaps. But the shape of it.”

That I had understood.

She folded one arm loosely across herself, not quite holding, not quite defensive. “I told myself I was taking control of something. That if I chose one thing freely before the engagement swallowed the rest of my choices, then…” She stopped and shook her head once. “No. That isn’t honest enough. I told myself that if I gave myself to someone else first, it would make what they wanted from me impossible.”

The mountain air seemed colder after that.

Because the sentence had no ornament left on it.

I understood too quickly.

Too well.

The pause between us stretched.

Then I said, “You were trying to choose one thing that was still yours.”

Rias looked at me sharply.

Not because I had surprised her.

Because I had named it too cleanly.

“Yes,” she said at last. Her voice was lower now. “And I failed even at that. I frightened him. I shamed myself. And in the morning the engagement still existed.”

She exhaled once through her nose and looked away again.

I thought of the clubroom.

Of Riser taking her arm.

Of Grayfia speaking with perfect form while the future narrowed around Buchou’s throat.

Of useful words making ugly things sound respectable.

“You did not fail,” I said.

That made her actually turn back to me.

I continued before caution could stop me.

“You were desperate. Those are not the same thing. You are not married yet.”

For a moment I thought she might be angry.

Instead she looked… tired in a way that had no pride left to stand behind.

“That sounds almost kind,” she said.

“It is not intended to be.”

One side of her mouth lifted.

“A little cruel, then.”

“That would be more accurate.”

This time the tiredness in her face softened instead of hardening.

“That too.”

We stood there in the dark clearing with the unfinished traces of training underfoot and the mountain breathing around us like it had all the time in the world.

Buchou was the next to speak.

“Do you hate him?” she asked.

I knew who she meant.

“No.”

The answer came easily.

“He is loud,” I said. “And indiscreet. And his self-control is horribly weak.”

She snorted.

Then covered it with one hand far too late to undo it.

I had not expected that.

The corner of her mouth twitched when she caught my expression.

“But?” she prompted.

I looked toward the house for a second. Light bled softly from the screens. Voices did not.

“But he was the only one who called it ugly before anyone finished pretending it was formal.”

Rias went still.

Then, very slowly, she nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “He was.”

The silence after that was no longer strained.

Only dangerous in a different direction.

Buchou looked once more at the ground where Stillmark had faded.

“You solved the problem quickly.”

“I solved one version of it.”

“That’s enough for tonight.”

The coldness in my chest had almost fully receded by then. I flexed my fingers once, feeling the afterimage of the new spell settle somewhere in memory and instinct rather than pain.

She glanced sideways at me.

“Use it carefully.”

“Yes, Buchou.”

There it was again.

The fast answer.

But this time she only shook her head faintly, not in rebuke, more in recognition.

When we turned back toward the house, we walked in the same direction without speaking further.

At the corridor split, she stopped.

“Kusari.”

I paused.

“Thank you,” she said.

I did not know what portion of the night she meant:

the spell,

the listening,

the refusal to sentimentalize,

or merely not looking at her as if she had become less for having said the truth aloud.

Possibly all of them.

So I chose the simplest answer.

“Yes.”

The wrong answer, I knew it at once.

Buchou did too.

But instead of correcting me, she smiled—small, rueful, and much too tired to be called amused.

Then she left for her room.

I returned to mine.

The room was unchanged. Bag. Bed. Basin. Folded things. Loaned space.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed two fingers lightly against the center of my chest where the cold numbness had spread from.

Almost gone.

Useful.

Smaller than Baleful Bolt.

Sharper than it looked.

Meaner in a quieter way.

Stillmark.

The name settled more firmly this time.

I should have slept after that.

Instead I sat in the dark for too long, thinking of the mark on the ground, of Rias’s voice in the clearing, of the way she had said I failed even at that, and of the fact that my answer to her had come too quickly to be only strategy.

When I finally lay down, the mountain house had gone fully still.

Somewhere in the space between closing my eyes and sleep refusing me, I realized something.

I had stopped thinking of her as only Buchou. 

I opened my eyes at once.

Rias.

Not Buchou.

Not Rias-Buchou.

Just Rias.

The name had come cleanly.

Easily.

Without force.

That made it worse.

She was my [King], my owner.

I shouldn’t allow myself to become complacent just because she and her peerage were making it too easy to relax.

Even with Sirzechs orders in place, I should still try and keep my distance from them.

I stared at the ceiling and felt something tighten under my ribs that had nothing to do with curse backlash.

Then, because there was nothing else to do with that realization, I turned onto my side and tried very hard not to think it again.

That did not help.

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