High School DxD: Fox of Ill Omen

Kusari

After school, the Occult Research Club felt too normal.

It was starting to become more routine.

That was the first thing I noticed.

Sunlight came in through the windows at an angle that made the dust in the air visible.

School bags had been dropped where they usually were.

Papers were stacked on Rias-Buchou’s desk.

Akeno was making tea like this was any other afternoon, a war that could end the world had not nearly started recently. 

I stood near one of the shelves and sorted the sealed forms for devil work without really needing to.

My hands wanted something precise and mindless to do.

That was useful. Familiar. Safe.

It had been a few days since Rias and I spoke alone in the club room.

I still replayed parts of the conversation in my head occasionally.

Across the room, Issei was complaining.

“I’m telling you, summer is finally starting to feel real,” he said, slumping dramatically in his chair before sitting back up with the kind of energy only he could manage. “The weather’s getting better, school’s calming down, and today on the way here I saw a magazine rack full of swimsuit specials. It’s like the world is personally encouraging me.”

“…It is not,” Koneko said flatly.

“It might be,” Akeno said, which made Issei light up for half a second before she continued, “if the world’s purpose was to test whether or not your lust can be contained for a summer.”

Xenovia seemed slightly confused.

“Why would the world send swimming outfits to Issei? Is this a part of Japanese tradition for high school boys?”

No one bothered to correct her misunderstanding.

Asia looked torn between embarrassment and concern. “I-Ise-san, summer starting does sound like a good thing, but maybe you should relax a bit.”

“It sounds like a fantastic thing how could I calm down?,” Issei said.

Akeno’s smile turned sweet in the way that meant she was about to bother someone. “Ara ara. So that is what you took from the beginning of summer, Ise-kun? Not the heat, not the break from classes, not the season changing. Swimsuit specials.”

“Of course it was swimsuit specials!” Issei threw up his hands. “Why would you even ask that like there was another answer!?”

Akeno decided to continue. After glancing at Rias.

“So that means you’ll help me pick one out for the season then right? I don’t mind if you take a very close look.”

Her smile grew as Issei started to blush and drool slightly as he stared at her body.

Rias’s voice came from across the room. “Ise…”

“S-sorry, Buchou!”

His reaction was immediate as he went back over to Asia and sat down away from Akeno.

Akeno chuckled.

“Aww Buchou, you’re ruining my fun.”

Rias only gave her a small glare.

Yuuto laughed softly.

It was quiet, controlled, almost delicate.

She had been doing that more lately since the fiasco with Excalibur ended.

Smiling a little more easily.

Letting her voice soften in ways that were easy to miss if you did not watch her closely.

I watched people closely.

“Ise-kun,” Yuuto said, “if your work takes you far again today, at least make sure your bicycle tires are properly filled first.”

He stared at her. “...That’s weirdly practical.”

“You only say that because you planned to leave without checking.”

“I checked them a few days ago.”

“A few?.”

Issei opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “Okay, but that’s not important.”

Yuuto’s mouth curved faintly. “Until you get stuck walking home.”

He pointed at her like he had been mortally wounded while trying to make another excuse not to do it.

Their antics got a few laughs from the others.

It was a light sound.

Easy. Ordinary.

The kind of thing that still startled me sometimes because it happened around me and did not require anything from me beyond being there.

That should have made it easier to breathe.

It did not.

I could feel Rias’s attention every few moments like a hand hovering just short of my skin.

I knew it wasn’t something bad, but I was used to expecting the worst from those above me.

Her attention wasn’t constant.

That would have been easier to dismiss.

It was intermittent, careful, controlled.

A glance when Akeno set my cup of  tea down. Another when Koneko stepped around me to pick up one of the work ledgers.

A third when I handed Xenovia the stamped envelope that contained her assigned location.

Too often.

Too deliberate.

Not enough for anyone else to call it out.

More than enough for me to notice.

Our conversation yesterday had ended. That much was true.

That did not mean it was over.

“Here,” Rias said, rising from her desk with the evening’s assignments in hand. “I’ll hand out the locations.”

Everyone gathered a little closer.

I stayed where I was until the others moved first, then stepped in with them.

It had become instinct long ago to move after everyone else had established where they wanted to stand.

Even now, with people who had long since stopped caring where I was in a room, the habit lingered.

Rias noticed that too.

I saw her glance at me when I waited to move with the group.

She started with the usual explanations, voice level and composed, like a [King] conducting business.

Locations. Time limits.

The quality of clients this evening.

Reminders about what counted as acceptable fulfillment and what did not.

Nothing strange.

Nothing on the surface.

I took my envelope when she held it out to me.

Her fingers brushed mine very lightly.

By accident. On purpose. I could not tell anymore with her.

I looked up.

Her expression did not change much.

That was one of the things people misunderstood about Rias Gremory.

They thought when she felt something, it had to show dramatically.

She often did not. Not immediately.

Not when she was paying attention.

Not when she was trying to do this carefully.

But her eyes were on me.

Not on the envelope. Not on my hand. On me.

A question she could not ask here sat quietly inside that look.

Are you all right?

Can we continue?

Will you let me?

I lowered my gaze first.

“Yes, Buchou,” I said, because she had technically just given me my assignment.

Her mouth softened almost imperceptibly. “Do your best, Kusari-chan.”

“Yes.”

Issei took his own envelope and groaned the second he read the address.

“No way. It’s another one that’s on the other side of town. This will take forever.”

“…figure out how to teleport…,” Koneko said.

“It is a personal tragedy, Koneko-chan. You people just vanish in magic circles like cool supernatural elites, and I have to pedal like some kind of doomed delivery boy.”

“You are a doomed delivery boy,” Xenovia said.

“Even you can teleport and you’re new! I’m supposed to have the powers of a legendary dragon!” 

“A dragon on a bicycle,” Akeno said, smiling.

Asia made a distressed little sound because she wanted to defend him but clearly found the teasing funny.

Yuuto leaned slightly toward him, glancing at his envelope. “You really should make sure you don’t get stuck walking.”

He turned to her with a deeply betrayed expression. “Why are you taking Koneko-chan’s side?”

Yuuto blinked. “I’m not taking a side. I just wanted to remind you so we don’t have to hear about it tomorrow.”

He puffed up, chest out, grin returning. “I’ll be fine. I’m sure my days of bicycling to my jobs will be in the past soon. Once my demonic power grows enough I’ll be teleporting in no time!”

Koneko decided to ruin it for him.

“…. Most Devil children can teleport…”

Issei slumped over the edge of the couch.

Buchou clapped her hands once, more to restore order than because we needed it. “All right. Go finish your jobs quickly and come back. Don’t linger unless the contract requires it.”

My ears twitched before I stopped them. I did not bother hiding them, but my habit of not showing reactions was more difficult with them present.

“I won’t be long,” I said.

Akeno hummed. “That sounds less like reassurance and more like a threat to your contractor.”

“Should I try to sound friendlier?”

“No,” she said cheerfully. “That might be frightening in an entirely new way.”

Issei laughed. “See? Akeno-san has been teasing you more recently. You’re fitting in more and more.”

“Ara, even if Kusari-chan is harder to get a reaction from, it’s worth it when I do.”

She smiled sweetly at me and winked.

We started to move to where we could teleport to our contracts.

I rolled my eyes at her ridiculousness.

But Issei’s words hit me a little strangely.

Fitting in.

Normally I might have answered. I might have said something to poked at him a bit, or at least tilted my head in acknowledgment.

Instead I looked toward Rias.

I remembered what I had told her before.

“I have never truly been treated as part of a peerage, until I was placed in yours.”

I realized she was already looking at me.

For one suspended second the room around us seemed to thin out.

Everyone else was still there—I could hear Issei still muttering complaints about the bicycle, Asia softly trying to reassure him, Xenovia asking Akeno if Issei could just fly to his contracts instead—but my attention narrowed anyway.

Rias gaze flicked to the magic circle beginning to form under my feet.

Then back to my face.

After you get back, that look said.

I gave the smallest nod I could manage without making it obvious.

Then the circle rose, and the clubroom fell away.

The client lived alone in a cramped apartment three train stops away from Kuoh Academy.

His name was Nishikawa Kenta.

He was in his 20s and called himself an “otaku” and a “neet”.

I should have asked what those meant exactly.

I arrived in his room and immediately understood why he wanted to sign a contract with a Devil.

There are levels of untidiness.

Then there are active environmental hazards.

I stood just inside the middle of the room and took in the scene in a single sweep.

Clothes in heaps.

Empty convenience store containers.

Crushed cans. 

Figure boxes stacked against the wall in towers with the kind of unstable confidence that suggested one breath too many in the wrong direction would bring them all down.

Manga everywhere.

Game cases.

Two cups containing unknown liquids of uncertain age.

Dust layered over everything that was not recent enough to still be sticky.

The air itself felt tired.

I spread my wings slightly as I turned to the sound of a gasp.

The client was waiting for me near the door of the room with the posture of someone who had imagined this moment very differently.

He wore glasses.

A shirt with an anime heroine whose clothes looked strained by her breasts on the front.

House slippers that had once been white.

His hair looked like he had run his hands through it every five minutes for the last hour.

When he saw me, he made a strangled sound.

I looked at him.

“My name is Kusari. I am a Devil of the Gremory peerage. I have come to fulfill your contract.”

He looked at me.

Then his entire face went red.

“Y-you’re—”

“A devil, yes” I said.

He swallowed. “You’re really...”

“…A devil?”

“A pretty girl.”

That was apparently more urgent to him than the large bat wings growing from my back.

I took a breath through my nose.

I immediately regretted doing so in this room. 

The air smelled of old trash, instant noodles, spilled drinks, and old loneliness.

“I am here to fulfill the terms of your contract,” I said, because I had found that sounding formal tended to make humans behave slightly better. “Your request was for “the aid of a pretty girl to clean your room”.”

I looked at the contract as I spoke to make sure his request was correct.

He nodded too fast. “Right. Yes. I mean—! Not like that! Well, maybe a little like that, but mostly because—”

He stopped because his own words had caught up to him.

That was sensible of them.

I glanced around again. “Mostly because you cannot find your floor.”

“I can find parts of my floor,” he muttered, sounding aggrieved.

“I can see perhaps two sections.”

He followed my gaze. “...Okay, that’s fair.”

I stepped farther inside

 One of the magazines by my foot shifted.

A tiny avalanche of trading card wrappers slid off a low table and onto the carpet.

The client made a noise of despair.

For a ridiculous second I almost laughed.

Certainly not kindly.

But the shape of it brushed against the inside of my mouth anyway as I forced myself not to show it.

I had expected something more annoying based off of the request.

More openly lecherous. More difficult.

Instead he seemed to be dying of embarrassment under the crushing realization that he had summoned a supernatural being to witness the exact state of his personal failure.

There was something almost noble in how complete his humiliation was.

“Why did you phrase the request that way?” I asked.

He blinked. “What?”

“‘A pretty girl to clean my room.’” I set my contract sheet on the one clear corner of a shelf. “Why not simply ask for help cleaning it?”

He rubbed the back of his neck.

He couldn’t  meet my eyes. “Because...”

I waited.

He looked at the floor. Or one of the spaces available to him beneath the layers of junk.

“Because if I’d just asked for help, then nothing would really change.”

“Your room would be clean.”

“No, that’s not really what I mean.”

“It would at least be a start.”

He gave me a wounded look over the top of his glasses. “I guess that’s true.”

I said nothing.

Perhaps because I did not mock him immediately, he kept talking.

“I just thought...” He exhaled. “I thought if a really pretty girl came in and looked at this place, I’d be too ashamed to keep living like this.”

That was not the answer I had expected.

He laughed once, weakly. “Pathetic, right?”

A little.

But not for the reason he thought.

I looked back over the room.

Asking for a single person to fix a life-shaped problem.

I don’t know if that was really a solution to a poor lifestyle.

The request could be seen as perverted and debasing, but it seems that the contractor wasn’t as bad as I had feared.

“Stand over there,” I said, pointing to the only relatively clear section near a wall. “And don’t touch anything unless I hand it to you.”

He straightened. “Right!”

“And if you say anything especially stupid, I will burn all of the manga on the floor instead of picking it up.”

His eyes widened. “There’s no need to be cruel.”

“I am a Devil. I have not yet started being cruel.”

He shut his mouth.

I rolled my sleeves up.

Cleaning the room manually would have taken hours.

I was capable of that if necessary.

I was also a Kitsune-Devil with access to magic and a deeply personal dislike of wasting time on avoidable inefficiency.

And a dislike of getting dirty with whatever was in the piles of junk in this room.

Veil Sight made the room sharpen unpleasantly all at once.

My contractors habits became visible in ways normal sight did not allow.

Dust trails.

Where items were purposely set or just forgotten.

The places he had sat, slept, eaten, stepped over, avoided.

I was able to separate categories in my sight for a moment—trash, clothes, dishes, books, fragile items, valuable items, unknown hazards.

The headache started almost immediately, a small pressure behind my eyes.

Manageable.

I moved my hand.

Demonic energy gathered forming into a wind spell.

Trash first.

A wave of wrappers, bottles, cans, and broken packaging lifted into neat bundles and floated toward the bags I had pulled from the kitchen corner.

The client stared with reverent terror.

“That’s incredible,” he whispered.

“It is a rather basic spell.”

“Nothing about this seems basic!”

“For me it is.”

I sent a stack of old magazines toward him. “Hold these.”

He fumbled and nearly dropped them. “Right!”

Laundry next.

I separated clean from dirty with a quick glance and a level of disgust that deepened with every shirt. 

The bathroom received a silent sentence of future violence.

Perhaps if it was burned it would count as completing the contract.

Books and manga stacked themselves.

Game cases clicked into piles.

Figures were righted, dusted, and arranged in a way that made it obvious he did actually care about them when his life was not actively swallowing him whole.

I slowly felt the strain of concentration and the dip in my energy reserves.

It was not a complicated use of demonic energy but it was precise.

Slowly, very slowly, the room began to reappear from under the accumulated collapse.

The more ordered the space became, the quieter my contractor became.

That interested me more than his earlier flustered babbling had.

Usually humans became more talkative when they relaxed.

He was doing the opposite.

As if every cleared surface was removing one more excuse for not looking directly at himself.

I put a box of unopened mail into his arms. “These too.”

He held it carefully. “...Thanks.”

I paused.

The thanks was genuine.

Awkward, but not exaggerated.

He looked up then, glasses catching the light. “I know this was a dumb request.”

“It was.”

He winced. “Yeah.”

I resumed sorting a shelf. “It was not the worst request I’ve heard.”

That seemed to comfort him, though perhaps it should not have.

He shifted his weight. “I just... I kept thinking, if somebody that I would want to impress saw the state of my room then I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t a problem anymore.”

Something about his words made me pause.

It made me think about the conversation Rias and I had. 

I knew that it was getting harder to avoid or ignore the obvious questions that she and the rest of the peerage surely had.

They knew that I had been in multiple peerages before.

They were told I had attacked some of my [Kings] and peerage members before.

They had seen how I reacted differently to certain situations and how I was after Issei’s dress break hit me.

But they were waiting for me to open up to them about it, and I wasn’t sure how much I was willing to share.

The other day, Rias had looked at me after I told her I had never really been treated as part of a peerage until hers.

She had looked at me like she did not know whether to be furious, heartbroken, or comforting.

Probably all three.

I had answered her questions.

Not enough.

Too much.

Both.

I should not have said as much as I did about the older peerages.

About defending myself.

About what I had meant to do against Kokabiel.

About what could have and most likely would have happened if Albion didn’t intervene.

Maybe I should have kept it cleaner. More manageable.

Something she could file away as ugly history but only that.

Something simple and easy that could be understood and then forgotten.

Instead I had looked at her and said something true.

I had watched it wound her.

A small stack of plastic containers floated into place with a little too much force.

The client flinched.

I adjusted the next movement more carefully.

Rias’s face had stayed controlled through most of that conversation.

That had not made it easier to bear.

It had made it worse.

If she had cried, I would have known what to do with it.

If she had shouted, I could have taken that too.

But careful attention?

A hurt silence?

Not turning away and trusting me even when she did not like what she was hearing?

That was harder.

Because that felt too close to giving me a choice in the matter.

And choices had always been dangerous.

“Um,” the client said cautiously, holding a stack of folded posters now because I had run out of safer things to occupy his hands with, “did I say something weird?”

“No,” I said.

He looked relieved.

“I just remembered something unpleasant.”

“Oh.”

I banished the last of the obvious dust from the shelves with a pulse of magic and pressed a hand briefly against my temple.

The ache behind my eyes throbbed once and settled.

The room looked entirely different now.

Still cramped.

Still clearly lived in by someone obsessed with buying plastic trinkets.

The room was hopelessly decorated with figures of anime girls in impossible poses and stacks of manga and video game cases.

There were a few manga that the client quickly hid and I had no interest in looking at. 

The room now looked liveable.

The floor existed.

The desk no longer had moutains of plates and cups on it.

The bed had corners again.

The client looked around with the stunned expression of a man witnessing a miracle.

“I...” He laughed weakly. “Wow.”

I gathered the last bag of trash and tied it shut. “Take those out tonight. Do not leave them until morning.”

“I won’t.”

“Wash your bedding.”

“I will.”

“Open the window for an hour after I leave.”

“Right.”

“Clean the bathroom yourself.”

He made a face like I had stabbed him. “You’re harsh.”

“You specifically requested “a pretty girl to clean your room”,” I said. “The bathroom is not this room.”

He stared at me.

Then, unexpectedly, laughed.

Not nervously this time.

Not because he was trying to be polite. An actual laugh.

“I guess I shouldn’t argue about details with a Devil,” he said. “That’s fair.”

I did not smile.

But I think something in my eyes softened, because his shoulders dropped a little further.

“Thank you,” he said again, more quietly this time. “Really.”

There was no fantasy in it now. No dazed excitement.

Just gratitude and embarrassment and the kind of tired honesty people sometimes stumbled into when they had been seen at their worst and had survived it.

I inclined my head.

“Nishikawa Kenta the contract is complete. Please provide an appropriate payment.”

I held a hand out and he stared at it for a moment.

“O-oh, yeah! One second.”

He suddenly remembered that he had to pay the Devil he had summoned and jerked to the side before running over to one of the shelves.

He came back with two figurines still in their original boxes.

They were both scantily dressed girls in different poses from some anime or game he must have liked.

“I know it’s not a gold or a sacrifice or whatever Devils want, but they’re both rare finds! Each of them only had under 200 made!” 

I took both boxes from him and checked the contract to see if it determined that they were sufficient payment.

“The payment has been received.” I said while nodding.

I placed the boxes into a bag that he had grabbed as well.

As the magic circle began to rise around me, he blurted, “Wait—!”

I looked at him.

He rubbed the back of his neck again, face red but voice steadier than before. “If I ask for help again sometime... can I just ask for help?”

There were a dozen cruel answers available to me.

For reasons I did not particularly care to examine, I chose none of them.

Instead I simply answered:

“Yes.”

Then the apartment vanished.

The return circle formed in one of the old school building’s side corridors instead of directly inside the clubroom..

It gave me a few extra seconds to breathe before I had to open the door to the clubroom.

I stood there in the dim hallway, the evening light weak through the far windows, and let the quiet settle around me.

Another contract completed.

Another human want shaped into something small enough to sell.

A room cleaned because a person could not bring themselves to say what they really meant until they had wrapped it in a prettier lie.

I’ll fight long enough for everyone to get to safety, then I’ll join you.

I had said what I knew would get Rias to agree with my plan.

I also knew that Rias was aware I was lying.

The same way I knew, with the same awful certainty, that Rias would ask questions I didn’t know if I could answer again.

And that I would have to decide how much more truth to give her.

Through the clubroom door I could sense magic I knew intimately by now.

Rias.

Most of the others were already back.

But her presence stood out to me.

Waiting.

For a moment I closed my eyes.

Then I opened them, lifted my hand, and opened the door.

Everyone but Yuuto was already back.

Asia was fussing over an injury on Issei’s hand.

Issei was accepting her help but still complaining.

Xenovia-san was awkwardly standing to the side of the room.

Akeno sat in a chair, holding a teacup while smiling at Issei’s complaints.

Koneko was already looking at me when I entered the room. She went back to eating a snack after seeing my return.

Rias was still there.

Her head turned toward me immediately.

And just like that, the ache under my ribs sharpened into something deeper.

Tomorrow, perhaps, I might have called it fear.

Tonight I only knew that she had waited to talk again.

And that I had come back.

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