High School DxD: Fox of Ill Omen

Kusari

I woke before the room did.

For one second, I did not understand why I felt sick to my stomach, as if something had gone horribly wrong.

Then memory returned.

Rias above me.

The floor.

My own hands trying to finish what the spell had started.

My own voice asking permission to continue as if humiliation were an instruction that only needed confirming.

I did not let myself lie there with it long.

That would have been worse.

The private room remained exactly as it had been when I lost consciousness into something close enough to sleep: blanket folded too carefully, water at the table, one robe left draped over a chair, morning still barely thinning the dark beyond the screens.

Rias sat by the wall where she had been when I first opened my eyes.

She had not slept properly.

I knew that before I looked fully at her.

When I did, she was already watching me.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning.”

My voice held.

That surprised me.

Rias stood and crossed the room, not hurried, not hesitant. She picked up the water and handed it to me.

I sat up and took it. “Thank you.”

“You can remain here this morning,” she said.

“No.”

The answer came before the water had fully touched my mouth.

Rias-san went still.

“Kusari-chan.”

I lowered the cup. “Training continues.”

“That is not the point.”

“It is exactly the point.”

That brought her full attention onto me in a way that made the room feel smaller.

I refused to back away from it. 

“If everything changes because of what happened,” I said, “then we will not be prepared for the rating game.”

Rias-san said nothing.

So I continued before I could lose momentum.

“It was an accident. Ugly. Wrong.” I swallowed once. “But if everyone starts moving around me like I might break every time someone breathes too close, then the rest of the camp becomes about it. I do not want that.”

Her expression tightened.

“You don’t get to decide alone what the rest of the camp becomes about.”

“No,” I said. “But I get to say that I don’t want training to stop because of me.”

The room went quiet.

Then Rias-san folded one arm over the other and looked at me the way she did when she was deciding whether she was listening as a king, a girl, or something more private and dangerous in between.

“You’re insisting too quickly,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You haven’t had enough time.”

“There is no enough time,” I said. “The Rating Game still exists.”

That, at least, was true enough that she could not dismiss it.

I set the cup down and forced my hands to remain in my lap where she could see them still.

“I am not asking for nothing to change,” I said more quietly. “I am asking for it not to become… theatrical.”

Rias-san’s eyes softened in concern and sharpened at my dismissal once.

The silence stretched.

Then she said, “He will not use that spell near you until I believe he controls it.”

That was reasonable.

More than reasonable.

It still pulled something tense and ugly tight under my ribs.

“Then he should learn to control it,” I said.

Rias blinked.

“As an apology,” I clarified. “He should gain full control of it.”

That did something strange to her face. Not amusement. Not approval exactly. Something closer to surprise that I had taken the shape of the damage and made it into an instruction.

Perhaps that was very like me.

At last she nodded once.

“All right.”

That should have ended it.

It did not.

Because there was still the other truth waiting.

I looked at the folded clothes on the chair, then back to her.

“I want breakfast with the others.”

Rias’s mouth thinned.

“You’re insistent this morning.”

“Yes.”

“Stubborn.”

“That as well.”

This time she did almost smile.

Then the expression vanished again and she gestured toward the clothes. “Wash. Dress. We go together.”

That was enough.

I rose.

The water in the basin was cold enough to sting.

I wanted it to sting.

Clothing went on in proper layers. Sleeves straightened. Tail brished. Nothing dramatic happened. My body moved as my body always had.

That, too, was disturbing.

When I was ready, Rias-buchou opened the door and let me step out first.

We walked to breakfast together.

The room had gone quiet before we reached the table.

Akeno-san stood by the tea.

Asia-san sat with both hands around a cup she was no longer drinking from.

Yuuto-san was already there, posture composed, gaze a little too alert.

Koneko-chan sat nearest the space I would have taken if yesterday had not happened at all.

And Issei—

Issei-san was already there.

He was not late.

He was not hiding.

He looked worse for both.

The guilt sat on him so openly that I almost wished he would try to cover it. His shoulders were wrong. His eyes kept lifting toward me and dropping away before they fully arrived. His mouth had settled into the kind of tight line people wore when they had rehearsed too many apologies and trusted none of them.

At least he understood how deeply it affected me.

Rias-buchou took her place at the head of the table.

I sat.

Koneko-chan shifted once and, without a word, moved her own bowl and cup a little closer so that when I settled, she was already beside me.

Not touching.

Near.

That was obvious enough to everyone that pretending otherwise would have been insulting.

I put my hands in my lap and waited.

No one else spoke first.

Of course not.

The room had been built around this moment the second I insisted on coming in.

At last Issei-san looked up.

“Kusari-san,” he said.

His voice was rough enough to make the words sound unfamiliar.

I met his eyes.

He held the look for exactly one second before shame dragged it lower again.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

No excuse.

No frantic justification.

No I didn’t mean to before the apology itself.

That was better than some men three times his age managed.

I let the words sit.

I felt one of my ears twitch.

Then I said, “Yes, I understand.”

He flinched.

Not because I had rejected it.

Because I had not made it easier.

I went on before he could collapse into worse guilt than was useful.

“It was an accident.”

His gaze lifted again, startled this time.

“You did not know what it would do to me,” I said. “If you had known, you would not have cast it near me.”

The room stayed very still.

Across from me, Asia-san’s hands tightened once around her cup.

Yuuto-san did not move at all.

Akeno-san had gone so quiet it was almost frightening.

Issei-san swallowed hard. “No. I wouldn’t have.”

“I know.”

Then I gave him the condition.

“If you want that apology to matter,” I said, “gain full control of the spell.”

He stared.

I kept going.

“Do not use it casually. Do not use it broadly. Do not cast what you cannot direct.” My hands remained very still in my lap. “Master it. That is a better apology than repeating that you are sorry.”

For a second no one said anything.

Then, beside me, Koneko-chan spoke.

“…Kusari-senpai is right.”

The support came so easily that I looked at her before I meant to.

She did not look back.

She looked at Issei-san.

“If you can’t control it,” she said, “you shouldn’t get to use it.”

Issei-san nodded once, too fast, too hard. “Right. Yeah. Then I will.”

Koneko-chan’s  shoulder remained near mine.

Still not touching.

But present all the same.

Rias-buchou was the next to speak.

“Training continues,” she said.

That shifted everyone’s attention back to the head of the table.

“It does not continue unchanged,” she added. “But it continues.”

That was close enough.

I let out one breath I had not realized I was holding.

Rias-buchou’s gaze came to me for one brief second and stayed there long enough to make it clear that she understood exactly what I had been demanding and exactly how much she was not fully giving it to me.

Akeno-san set tea by my cup without asking.

Asia-san looked relieved enough to be almost transparent.

Yuuto-san finally reached for her chopsticks.

Breakfast resumed.

Not normally.

Not smoothly.

But resumed.

That was enough for one morning.

Rias

Kusari was asking for normal and knew she would not get it.

What she really wanted was for the house not to become a shrine to what had happened.

That, I could give more easily.

The camp moved after breakfast in altered lines rather than broken ones.

I changed the day’s structure but not its fact.

Training blocks remained.

Meals remained.

Study remained.

What shifted was supervision.

Yuuto and Koneko took Issei together for the first part of the morning, which wasn’t unusual, and I did not miss how Koneko volunteered herself for that with unusual speed. She was angry enough to be useful and controlled enough not to ruin him.

Akeno took Asia.

I kept Kusari with me for the first drills.

She did not argue with that. Another sign of how badly yesterday still sat under the skin.

We worked Stillmark.

Not because I thought magic would distract her.

Because structure would.

“Again,” I said.

The sigil formed low and flat against the dirt.

Cleaner than yesterday.

Cleaner than the day before.

A wrongness you could step through without knowing until the angle after it betrayed you.

Useful.

Controlled.

Cruel in a quiet way.

The cold backlash showed itself the same way it always had: a brief flattening of her breath, fingers touching once beneath the collarbone before she forced the hand down.

“Enough,” I said.

She started to set another mark anyway.

“Kusari-chan.”

That stopped her.

She looked back.

“Stop before it worsens,” I said.

For a second I thought she might tell me it was manageable.

Instead she lowered her hand.

“Yes, Buchou.”

Better.

Across the yard, Issei was learning what remorse looked like when fed into discipline. Yuuto’s instruction had gone from mild to exact. Koneko’s additions were faster and meaner than usual. Every time he lost focus, she punished it. Every time he tried to rush, Yuuto corrected the line and then made him do it again.

He did not complain much.

Yuuto knew that he felt that he needed to repent for what he did and made his training more demanding. Koneko simply seemed upset. 

When Akeno called him over later for magical control work, he went without trying to complain.  Asia was already there, and when he joined them he kept a very visible distance from anything that might have looked too light or too careless.

By lunch, the house had begun to settle into the new rhythm 

Koneko remained near Kusari whenever there was space to allow it.

Asia kept bringing small things and pretending she had not made a point of doing so.

Yuuto adjusted the formation drills without announcing that she was doing it.

Akeno avoided every kind of teasing that might even faintly resemble yesterday’s events.

Issei watched all of this and understood more than he did before.

That was clear.

He was not stupid.

Only disastrously driven by instinct when not checked.

The afternoon break gave me the first quiet moment I’d had since morning.

I took it in the corridor outside the veranda and found Akeno already there, arms folded, expression calm enough that anyone who did not know her would have thought she was merely resting.

“She asked for normal,” Akeno said.

No greeting.

“She asked to move forward,” I corrected.

Akeno gave me a sidelong glance. “And you agreed.”

“In part.”

“She’ll know the difference.”

“Yes.”

Akeno’s mouth thinned. “Of course she would.”

That made me look at her properly.

She met the look with no softness in her at all.

“She doesn't want pity around her,” she said.

I let out one breath.

“Do you think I hadn’t noticed?”

“No, I know you did. But is it what’s best for her?”

The answer was immediate.

Then she unfolded one arm and touched the veranda frame lightly with her fingertips, gaze drifting out to the yard below.

She didn't wait for a response. 

“Koneko-chan understands the shape of it,” she said.

“I know.”

“Yuuto and Asia do too.”

“Yes.”

“And Issei-kun?”

There it was.

I closed my eyes once before answering.

“He understands that he hurt her,” I said. “He does not understand the depth beneath the reaction. Not yet.”

Akeno nodded.

“That may be for the best,” she said.

I wasn’t sure it was.

But I understood what she meant.

He was a kind person. 

Too much understanding, too quickly, might break him in ways we did not have time to indulge. Too little, and he might treat the whole thing as one terrible accident instead of a door into a truth he had never imagined.

Neither was acceptable.

So the camp continued.

The mountain house breathed around us.

And every person in it learned where not to step.

Koneko

Day six was bad.

Day seven was quieter.

That didn’t make it lighter.

Kusari-senpai asked for normal.

That was stupid.

Also correct.

If the whole house started treating her like glass, she would leave us behind in her head and we would deserve it.

So I stayed close instead.

At breakfast, when Issei-senpai apologized, I watched her before I watched him.

Her expression was calm, but her fox ears betrayed how tense she was. 

She didn’t make it easy for him.

He didn’t deserve easy.

But she also didn’t push him away.

That was more important. 

When she told him to master the spell as an apology, I believed her immediately.

That was the right answer.

Make the thing less dangerous.

Make it controlled.

Make sure it can’t happen like that again.

Better than “sorry.”

More useful.

More real.

So I said so.

He listened.

Later, when we were between drills and the house had gone quiet enough that people thought no one was watching, I found Kusari-senpai standing by the side path with a cup of tea in each of my hands. 

I stood beside her.

She looked at me. “Toujou-san.”

I held out the second cup.

She took it.

We stood like that a while.

Then she said, “You do not need to keep doing this.”

“…Yes, I do...”

She looked ahead at the trees. “It is inconvenient.”

“Then be inconvenienced.”

That almost made her smile again.

Her tail flicked behind her. 

It was better than yesterday.

When Issei-senpai came by later and apologized a second time while  looking miserable, I almost sent him away.

Didn’t need to.

Kusari-senpai handled it.

He left after.

I moved closer once he was gone and leaned lightly into her shoulder.

She froze for a moment, before she leaned back.

Only a little.

That was all.

Sometimes that’s enough.

Kusari

The camp did continue.

Not normally.

Not unchanged.

But it moved.

Day seven bled into drills and food and watchfulness.

Day eight into the same.

Stillmark held.

The cold from the chest spread and faded.

Veil Sight hurt less if I used it only where necessary.

The mountain air remained calming.

The house remained too full of people who had learned too much.

Koneko-chan stayed near without demanding explanation.

Asia-san kept finding reasons to place useful things within reach.

Yuuto-san corrected moments before they grew dangerous.

Akeno-san watched everyone and left some kinds of humor untouched.

Rias-buchou noticed all of it.

And Issei-san tried.

That was perhaps the most irritating part.

He tried in ways that made guilt visible but not performative. He listened faster when corrected. He kept his distance where distance was useful. He trained harder whenever the spell came up, not because anyone had ordered shame into him, but because I had given him a way to make apology practical.

That had been the correct decision.

I hated that I knew it.

I could have what happened as a way to put a wall between myself and the rest of the peerage.

Instead I gave Issei a way to atone and let the others move closer again.

I had given up on trying to keep the distance in my head by only thinking of them as Hyoudou, Argento, Kiba, Buchou, Himejima, and Toujou.

On the night of the eighth day, I stood again at the basin in my room and looked at my own reflection as if it had answers I could threaten out of it.

The problem had not lessened.

It had changed shape.

The people in the house who now knew the worst reaction buried in me had not retreated.

They had drawn closer.

More careful.

More specific.

Koneko-chan beside me at breakfast and on paths and in pauses.

Asia-san’s soft worry.

Yuuto-san’s calm concern.

Akeno-san still teasing, but watching more closely.

Rias-buchou watching every room as if control itself were a shield she could hold up fast enough to matter.

Issei-san carrying guilt openly and trying to become more through it.

They should have been easier to keep at a distance after that.

They were not.

That was the truth of it.

And because it was the truth, when I turned away from the basin and sat at the edge of the bed, another one rose behind it uninvited:

Asking them to keep training had not restored normal.

It had only kept me a part of the house instead of outside it.

Which was, perhaps, what I had really wanted.

That realization was worse than the others.

I knew that I was setting myself up for another heart break. 

More people turning their backs on me.

But I couldn’t help it. 

So I did what I had done every night since arriving here.

I lay down.

I closed my eyes.

And I pretended that trying to fall asleep was a safer thing than thinking I was becoming attached.

.

.

.

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It was not.

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