Rias
The rain came down hard enough to blur the school grounds into streaks of grey.
It suited my mood.
Yuuto stood in front of me with rainwater on her hair, on her lashes, on the collar of her uniform, and still somehow managed to wear that practiced smile of hers as if nothing had happened.
As if she had not drifted through the tournament half-awake.
As if I had not watched her fail to stand with the rest of us again and again.
As if the smile alone could make me ignore it.
My hand still stung from the slap.
Let it.
“How is it?” I asked. “Did that wake you up?”
Yuuto slowly turned her face back toward me.
The mark on her cheek was already fading.
Devil bodies were efficient like that.
It did nothing for the look in her eyes.
No outrage.
No apology.
Only distance.
Then the smile returned.
“Are you done now?” she asked lightly. “The tournament is over. We won, didn’t we? If so, I’d like to rest. I’m tired.”
The rain struck the shelter roof harder.
Behind me, nobody spoke.
Not Issei. Not Asia. Not Akeno. Not Koneko. Not Kusari.
I could feel them there anyway. Their silence, their attention, their uncertainty.
Yuuto was wrong if she thought I would let her hide in a smile and a tidy excuse.
“Yuuto,” I said, and I let all softness leave my voice, “don’t insult me.”
Her eyes flickered.
Only slightly.
“That expression,” I continued. “That voice. That little act. Don’t use it on me.”
Akeno shifted at my side, not enough to interrupt, just enough to make her presence known if Yuuto tried to bolt.
Koneko stood still as stone.
Asia looked stricken.
Issei looked angry in that straightforward way of his, but he was restraining himself. If he barged in now, Yuuto would only harden.
Kusari had flinched.
It happened so quickly most people would have missed it.
The instant my hand met Yuuto’s face, her shoulders had tightened and she had stepped back half a pace without thinking, putting a little more distance between us.
She had not moved farther after that. She had caught herself.
Even so, I had seen it.
Pain pricked through my anger.
Not enough to stop me.
Enough to remember later.
Yuuto let out a slow breath.
“What do you want me to say?”
“The truth.”
The smile on her face sharpened.
“What if it has nothing to do with you, Buchou?”
“Then I’ll decide that after I hear it.”
For one second, the rain seemed louder than all of us.
Then Issei took one step forward.
“Yuuto-san,” he said, and his voice was rough with frustration, “We are all worried about you.”
Yuuto’s eyes shifted to him.
To my reckless, loud, cute, Ise, who always blundered into the center of things and, by doing so, forced them to move.
“Worried?” Yuuto repeated softly. “Who worries about who?”
Her smile finally cracked.
Not by much.
She looked away from all of us and into the rain beyond the shelter.
“Ise-kun,” she said, “you’re always burning brightly with everything you do.”
Issei straightened.
Yuuto laughed once, but there was no ease in it.
“Lately,” she said, “I started remembering something simple.”
“Simple?” Issei asked.
Yuuto’s hand curled at her side.
“The reason I fight.”
A bad feeling moved through the shelter.
Not surprise.
Recognition.
Some truths arrive before they are spoken.
“I thought it was for Buchou,” Issei said.
Yuuto turned back to us.
Back to me.
“No,” she said.
The word was quiet.
“I’m alive,” she said, “so I can have my revenge.”
Nobody moved.
Yuuto’s eyes had gone colder than the rain outside.
“Holy Sword Excalibur,” she said. “Destroying it is the reason I’m living.”
The words landed between us like something heavy enough to crack stone.
Asia made a small, worried sound.
Issei stared.
Akeno’s smile vanished entirely.
Koneko’s gaze sharpened.
Kusari went very still.
The kind of stillness that came when something had struck close enough to old wounds that the body remembered before the mind had time to soften it.
Her eyes held a pained understanding
Yuuto looked at none of us now.
She looked somewhere far away.
“This school,” she said. “This life. You. The club. The ordinary days. They were all… good.”
The way she said it made the word sound almost guilty.
“But I forgot myself.” Her mouth twisted. “I forgot what I was supposed to do.”
“Yuuto,” I said.
She cut me off.
“No.”
The force in that single syllable stopped even me for a breath.
Then she lowered her voice again.
“You saved me. You gave me a name. A place. A life.” She smiled without warmth. “I know that. I’m grateful for it.”
That hurt more than if she had shouted.
Because gratitude was distance. Gratitude was what someone offered when they were already halfway gone.
“But this,” she said, and now her eyes flashed with something raw, “I won’t give up.”
The rain roared.
“Yuuto—” I started.
She stepped back.
“Please don’t stop me tonight, Buchou.”
Please.
Not a demand. Not rebellion dressed as pride.
A request from someone already leaving.
My throat tightened.
Akeno moved first. “Yuuto-chan.”
Yuuto looked at her, then at Koneko, at Asia, at Issei, and—finally—at Kusari.
Whatever she saw in Kusari’s face made her expression soften for the briefest instant.
Then it was gone.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
And before any of us could close the distance, she turned and walked out into the rain.
“Yuuto-san!”
She didn’t look back.
Issei lunged forward.
I caught his arm.
He looked at me in disbelief.
“Buchou!”
“Not like that.”
I hated how calm my voice sounded.
Hated it because calm was all I had left that resembled control.
Akeno took one step toward the edge of the shelter, then stopped when I shook my head.
Koneko clicked her tongue softly.
Asia clasped both hands to her chest.
And Kusari watched the place where Yuuto had vanished into rain as if she could still see her there.
I let go of Issei slowly.
“She needs a little distance,” I said.
“That’s insane,” he snapped. “She just said—”
“I heard what she said, Ise-kun.”
He bit his tongue immediately, frustration burning in his face.
He was pound and brash but not always stupid.
Akeno came closer, voice low. “What do we do?”
I looked into the rain.
“We let her breathe for tonight,” I said. “And then we make sure she doesn’t go through this alone.”
Kusari’s eyes shifted to me then, and I knew she had heard the second meaning in it at once.
Not just this.
Not just Excalibur.
Not just revenge.
The kind of past that turns someone's future into that of a weapon.
I saw the question in her face.
Not spoken.
Waiting.
I closed my eyes for one moment.
When I opened them again, I said, “Issei-kun. Asia. Kusari. Come with me.”
None of them asked why.
They already knew.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yuuto
The rain was cold.
I wanted it cold.
I wanted it on my face and in my eyes and soaking through my clothes until the whole comfortable, suffocating warmth of school and club activity and ordinary days was washed off me.
I had failed today.
Not at dodgeball.
At being Yuuto Kiba.
At smiling in the right places.
At standing where I was supposed to stand.
At pretending long enough that the old hatred would stay buried under tea, lessons, friendship, and voices that had started to feel like home.
That was my mistake.
I had allowed myself too much peace.
Water broke beneath my shoe as I crossed the road.
My cheek still carried the memory of Rias-Buchou’s hand.
I did not resent her for it.
I had deserved worse.
“I’m alive so I can have my revenge.”
Saying it aloud had made it clearer.
Simpler, hopefully.
I had never forgotten Excalibur.
Not truly.
I had only gotten senile from happiness.
Comrades. A room in the club. Shared food. Shared fights. Shared victories. Shared irritation at Issei’s idiocy. Koneko’s flat little insults. Asia’s kindness. Akeno’s teasing. Rias’s strength. Kusari slowly opening up to us.
A life.
I had allowed myself a life.
And in doing so, I had betrayed the dead.
The rain ran down my face.
Ahead, in the dark of the street, I saw movement.
A man in priest’s clothing stumbled into view.
Blood stained the front of his clothes.
He coughed once and collapsed.
I stopped.
The rain did not.
My demonic power rose at once, reflex faster than thought.
Then I felt it.
Killing intent.
Sharp. Familiar. Wrong.
A spark flashed through the rain.
Steel.
I moved and created a demonic sword in the same motion.
A figure came at me with a long blade and a smile disgusting enough that recognition hit before the voice did.
“Yahoooo. It’s been too long knight-chan.”
A man with white hair, wearing a cross, and eyes full of madness.
Freed Sellzen.
My grip tightened.
He had the same revolting grin as before.
Worse, perhaps.
And then the sword in his hand gleamed with a holy aura that made my whole body remember things I had spent years surviving.
Excalibur.
My breath stopped.
Freed laughed.
“Sadly you’re still in town. I thought you ran off after we defeated Raynare in the church. What do you want?”
I angrily questioned him as I pointed my sword at him.
“This is great! I just finished a hunt and now a familiar Devil-chan is here to keep me company. I would think you missed me with how good your timing is.”
He ignored my question as he stared up and down my body with his creepy gaze.
It seems he always makes it easier to hate him more.
He adjusted his grin on the sword and it began to glow with a holy light.
“That sword…”
“I was getting bored of priest hunting, so this is wonderful timing! Very good! Nice timing indeed!” He raised the blade. “My Excalibur and your demonic sword—let’s see which is stronger!”
The rain slid down the edge of the holy sword.
My hatred rose to meet it.
There you are.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Issei
By the time we got back to my house, the rain had thinned into a steady whisper outside.
Mom had already accepted that Buchou might appear in my room at almost any hour and that Asia would probably be with her. The only thing mildly less normal was Kusari-san coming too.
Mom took that in stride as well.
I really did have the strongest mother on earth.
“You’re all soaked,” she said when we came in. “Take towels upstairs before anyone catches a cold.”
“Yes,” Buchou said with that smooth, graceful smile of hers that somehow made listening sound like a privilege. “Thank you very much.”
Asia bowed.
Kusari-san murmured a polite thanks.
I, naturally, got shoved into carrying the towels.
By the time we made it to my room, I was dry enough not to drip on the floor and still not even remotely calm.
Yuuto-san’s face in the rain would not leave my head.
Neither would what she said.
Destroying Excalibur.
That’s the reason I’m living.
Buchou sat on the bed.
Asia sat beside her.
Kusari-san chose the chair near the desk at first, as if she could turn the whole conversation into something more controlled by staying a little outside it.
Buchou looked at all three of us in turn.
Then she said, “Kiba Yuuto is a survivor of the Holy Sword Project.”
The room changed instantly.
Asia blinked. “Holy Sword Project?”
Kusari-san’s posture sharpened, though she said nothing.
I frowned. “What exactly is that?”
Buchou folded her hands in her lap.
Even sitting in my room, in the warm light of an ordinary house, she carried herself like nobility.
Beautiful. Controlled. Slightly dangerous.
“It was a project several years ago within the Church,” she said, “created to produce those who could wield the sword Excalibur.”
Asia looked stunned. “I’ve never heard of that.”
“I would be surprised if you had,” Buchou said more gently. “A secret project like that would not have been told to someone in your position.”
Asia lowered her eyes.
Buchou continued.
“A holy sword is the perfect weapon against Devils. If we touch one, we burn. If we are deeply cut by one, we can be erased completely. Of all such weapons, Excalibur is one of the most famous. Not just because of legend, but because it truly is one of the strongest holy swords.”
I tried to take it in.
A sword that could erase Devils.
A project to create people who could wield it.
Yuuto-san, somehow, caught in the middle of that.
“Yuuto received artificial treatment to adapt to Excalibur,” Buchou said.
The words were neat.
The look in her eyes was not.
Asia raised both hands to her mouth.
I stared. “Artificial treatment?”
Buchou nodded once.
“They gathered children who showed compatibility. Experimented on them. Modified them. Pushed them until their bodies broke or adapted.”
Kusari-san did not move.
She looked deep in thought at what Buchou had said.
She looked distant as if she was lost in thought or remembering something.
Buchou’s gaze shifted briefly in her direction too. She noticed.
Of course she did.
“Yuuto couldn’t adapt to use a holy sword, and the others who received the same treatment couldn’t as well. Yuuto survived,” Buchou said. “Barely. She was the only one who did.”
The room was very quiet.
I swallowed. “And the Church just… did that?”
“The Church as a whole and the people involved in the project are not the same thing,” Buchou said. “But yes. It was done in the name of creating holy sword wielders.”
“That’s horrible,” Asia whispered.
Kusari-san’s fingers tightened once on the arm of the chair.
I heard the wood creak.
“Did they kill them afterward?” she asked.
Her voice was quiet.
Too quiet.
Buchou looked at her directly. “Many were disposed of when they ceased to be useful.”
Disposed of.
The word sat between all of us like something rotten.
Kusari-san’s face did not change.
But the chair creaked again beneath her hand.
And then I understood another reason she had come.
Not because she liked hearing bad news.
Not because she was nosy.
Because Yuuto-san mattered enough that whatever had shaped her mattered too.
Buchou exhaled softly.
“I found Yuuto after that,” she said. “Or, more accurately, I found what remained. I wanted to save her. To give her a place where she didn’t have to live only for the holy swords.”
“And she couldn’t let it go,” Kusari-san said.
Buchou’s eyes lowered.
“No.she couldn’t forget what was done to the others who didn’t survive.”
I thought of Yuuto-san’s face under the rain. Of the look she wore when she said Excalibur was the reason she was alive.
My chest felt hot.
Not in the stupid, horny, Issei way.
The other one.
The one that wanted to punch something until it stopped being true.
“I’ll help her,” I said.
Asia looked at me immediately. “Ise-san…”
Buchou’s mouth curved just slightly. Fond. Tired. Possessive in a way that always hit me somewhere deep.
“I know you will, Ise-kun.”
The way she said my name did bad things to me even in the middle of a serious conversation.
Kusari-san noticed.
Her eyes flicked from Buchou to me and away again.
Then Buchou looked back to the photograph I had placed on the desk earlier—the one from my childhood that had started all this in the first place.
“That sword in the background was real,” she said. “One of the holy swords. That means someone connected to the Church, and likely to the current Excalibur issue, was here in this town years ago. It explains why my predecessor in this territory disappeared.”
I scratched my cheek. “There was a Church kid in the neighborhood that I used to play with when I was small.”
Asia glanced up.
Kusari-san’s attention sharpened again.
Buchou nodded slowly. “That makes sense why Yuuto reacted after seeing the photo.”
That was a very Buchou way of saying this is awful.
She sat in thought for a few moments after that, red eyes distant, putting things together faster than I could follow.
Then, with the terrifying ease only she possessed, she said, “Let’s go to sleep.”
I blinked.
Asia blinked.
Kusari-san stood up to leave at once.
Reasonable.
Probably planning to leave before something strange could happen.
It was a good move all things considered.
And then Buchou started taking off her clothes.
“B-Buchou!?”
Asia squeaked.
Kusari-san, who had gotten all the way to the door, stopped with one hand on the handle and very slowly looked back over her shoulder.
Buchou slipped her blazer off first, then reached for her blouse with complete calm.
“Why are you surprised?” she asked me. “You know I can’t sleep with anything on, Ise.”
“No, I remember that! But that’s not the point!” I yelped. “Why are you undressing in my room!?”
Because I was me, my eyes absolutely betrayed me and dropped where they should not.
Buchou noticed.
Instead of covering herself, she smiled.
That smile was affectionate and shameless and just possessive enough to make my heart do something suicidal.
“Because,” she said, unfastening another button, “I’m sleeping with you tonight.”
My nose bled immediately.
It was not my proudest moment.
Asia made a sound somewhere between shock and heartbreak.
“Th-Then,” she said, face red to the ears, “then I’m sleeping here too! I’m also going to sleep with Ise-san!”
She began to quickly take off her clothes.
That snapped me out of Buchou-induced death just long enough to panic about a different disaster.
“Asia! You can’t just—”
Buchou looked at her with open amusement.
Then commandingly she said, “Asia, hand Ise over for tonight.”
“I don’t want to,” Asia shot back, eyes wet but stubborn. “I want to be spoiled by Ise-san too.”
That made my brain stop.
Kusari-san had opened the door most of the way by then.
Sensibly.
Slowly.
Quietly.
She would have escaped too.
If Buchou had not noticed.
“Kusari-chan.”
She froze.
Then looked back.
Buchou, mostly naked and maddeningly composed about it, gestured with one hand.
Asia, flushed in embarrassment but still struggling to get clothes off.
“Don’t leave yet.”
Kusari-san’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “This appears to be a good moment to leave.”
Asia turned toward her immediately, desperate enough to recruit new allies.
“No, please stay!”
“That is a worrying request, and no, I am not taking off my clothes too.” Kusari-san said.
Asia’s face burned red at her comment.
I would have enjoyed the mental image if I weren’t busy dying from both Asia and Buchou being mostly naked in my room.
I was still enjoying this though. Whatever this was.
Buchou slid her bra strap down one shoulder and looked entirely too pleased with the room’s suffering.
“You don’t need to do that. Since Issei-kun is useless in situations like this,” she said, “you can help decide.”
“Absolutely not,” Kusari-san said at once.
Asia stepped closer, clasping both hands in front of her chest. “Please, Kusari-san! That’s only fair!”
“How is that fair?”
“You’re impartial, plus you’re the only one here to ask.”
“I am trying to leave.”
Buchou laughed, low and delighted.
“But you haven’t yet,” she said. “Come now, Kusari-chan. You’ve seen enough of our household chaos already.”
“I was trying to stop seeing it.”
I pressed a hand to my nose. “I support her right to leave.”
“No,” Buchou and Asia said together.
Well I tried to help.
Kusari-san’s gaze moved from Buchou to Asia to me and then toward the door again, clearly calculating odds.
There were none.
Not with Buchou looking like that and Asia looking half-ready to cry.
She let go of the handle.
She’d given up.
“Fine,” she said. “My decision is that I should go.”
Buchou shook her head. “Rejected.”
“That is the only decision I want.”
“Come up with a better one.”
Asia nodded with upsetting seriousness. “Please.”
Kusari-san looked at me then, and there was something almost accusing in it, as if this entire room had somehow become my fault.
I had nothing to do with this!
Mostly.
“Ise-san,” Asia said, turning back to me with those impossible eyes of hers, “you’ll sleep with me, right?”
Buchou’s green eyes settled on me a second later.
They said the same thing without words.
Choose me.
My soul tried to leave my body for a second time that night.
Kusari-san closed her eyes once, clearly in prayer for patience.
Then she said, with the same dry calm she used for lines that hit too accurately, “You could all avoid this by taking turns, or just share.”
“Kusari-san, I don’t know if I will survive that.”
“That,” she said, “is your problem.”
Buchou, utterly unwilling to let the moment go, stepped closer and hooked one finger beneath my chin.
“Then perhaps,” she murmured, “Kusari should decide the order, if we were to take turns.”
I made a sound no self-respecting man should make in front of beautiful women.
Asia’s face was red enough to combust.
Kusari-san looked as if the room itself had betrayed her.
And somehow, impossibly, after the rain, after Yuuto-san, after the holy sword explanation and the weight of it, the absurdity of this domestic chaos actually made breathing easier again.
Kusari-san straightened with great effort. “My new decision is that you all can decide who gets to have sex with him tonight after I leave.”
Buchou, Asia, and I all froze and stared at Kusari-san.
Buchou’s mouth moved as she failed to reply as her face blushed.
Asia made an embarrassed squeak as she buried her burning face in her hands.
I shook my head in confusion and tried not to blush.
“Wh-What are you saying!?”
She tilted her head slightly in confusion and looked at each of us.
“Why are you embarrassed all of a sudden? You were the ones who wanted me to pick the order a moment ago.”
“We just meant sleeping in the same bed!”
“Y-Yeah! Not s-s-se… that!”
Buchou and Asia shout in reply.
“Oh… Then just all sleep in the same bed.”
Kusari-san seemed confused for a moment and then over the discussion.
“Not that I don’t want to, but why would you think that we were going to do that!?”
I asked loudly still reeling from the mental image Kusari-san’s misunderstanding created in my head.
“Buchou and Asia-san both were getting naked and fighting over spending the night with you. I just assumed that’s what was happening.”
“Asia is too pure for that and Buchou is Buchou! Things aren’t like that between us yet!”
Kusari-san glanced at Buchou and Asia before looking back to me as if I was an idiot.
“Right... So just sleep together. Buchou and Asia-san can just share.”
I looked from one beautiful girl to another and put both hands over my face.
“This house is trying to kill me.”
“It’s fine Ise” Buchou said fondly.
Asia nodded, still flustered. “Maybe a little.”
Kusari turned toward the door again, this time more successfully.
She paused before leaving and looked back once.
Not at me.
At Buchou and Asia.
Then she said, “Do try not to fight too loudly. Issei-san is loud enough on his own.”
And she escaped before either of them could drag her farther in.
The door clicked shut behind her.
Buchou sighed.
“She’s getting bolder.”
Asia smiled despite herself. “She seems more comfortable.”
I lowered my hands and looked at the two of them.
At Buchou, almost naked and impossible.
At Asia, blushing and stubborn.
At the bed behind them, which had become a battlefield.
And I understood, all at once, that my night was not going to get any simpler from here.
Not even a little.
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