Issei
By the time I left the pool, I felt like my soul had been squeezed dry and hung up to bake in the sun.
This had started as paradise.
A holiday.
A pool.
Swimsuits.
Beautiful girls in swimsuits.
Then it became teaching Koneko-chan how to swim.
Asia being cute enough to kill me.
Buchou and Akeno-san nearly blowing up by the pool in a fight over me.
Kusari-san somehow turning Akeno-san into the flustered one for once,
Xenovia dragging me into the equipment room to discuss having my children.
And finally Asia wondering aloud if Kusari-san could have children with another girl and then Kusari-san reluctantly confirmed it after we all stared at her.
It had been too much.
Far too much.
My body was tired in the ordinary way from the cleaning and the heat.
My head was tired in the way that only happened after my life crossed the line from “amazing” into “I have no idea how I’m supposed to process any of this today.”
I walked out from the poolside with my bag over one shoulder and the afternoon sun slanting gold across the campus.
The girls would take longer to get ready so I was heading out on my own.
The school felt strangely quiet compared to the chaos we had left behind.
The sports clubs in the distance still made noise, and somewhere across the grounds I could hear a whistle and someone shouting, but around the gate side of campus it had thinned out enough that every footstep sounded a little too clear.
It should have been peaceful.
Instead my head kept replaying everything.
Buchou’s red bikini.
Akeno-san’s smile.
Asia blushing so hard she looked like she might stop breathing.
Yuuto-san in that swimsuit and the way she’d smiled and thanked me when I gave her a lame compliment.
Kusari-san leaning in over Akeno-san with that cold smile and those hands—
No.
No, I had to stop there or I was to start bleeding again.
Then Xenovia’s face intruded into the memory right after it, completely serious while asking me to make a baby with her.
I groaned and dragged a hand down my face.
“Ahh...”
She was defiantly attractive
This was definitely the strangest summer opening of my life.
I made it out of the building and toward the school gate, still turning over the whole insane day in my head.
Honestly, when I really thought about it, I should have felt happier than anything.
Compared to my old life, before Rias-Buchou, before Asia, before everything, today should have felt like proof I had entered heaven alive.
And yet my exhaustion kept getting worse.
Maybe because every time I replayed the good parts, the bad parts followed right behind them.
Buchou splashing me for upsetting Asia.
Xenovia cornering me in the equipment room.
The look on everyone’s faces after Asia accidentally implied something huge about kitsune shapeshifting and children.
Kusari-san’s flat stare after that.
That part in particular had left the whole group feeling weird.
And just when I thought my brain couldn’t take one more thing, a flash of silver caught my eye by the gate.
I stopped walking.
For a second, I genuinely thought I was looking at a scene from a movie.
A silver-haired boy stood near the school gate, gazing up at the school building as if it were something worth remembering.
He looked around my age.
Maybe a little older. Maybe not.
It was hard to tell.
His hair was denser and darker than Grayfia-san’s, with a metallic sheen that still caught the light in a way that made him stand out sharply from everything around him.
But more than that he looked wrong.
Wrong in the same way powerful supernatural beings always did when they stood too easily inside an ordinary human world.
He noticed me looking.
Then his blue eyes turned toward me.
Clear.
Almost transparent.
And when he smiled, it was so clean and beautiful that it felt unreal.
“Hey,” he said as he walked toward me. “This is a pretty nice school.”
I swallowed.
“Uh... yeah. More or less.”
What was I supposed to say to that?
He looked like some foreign transfer student out of a magazine.
If he was just a transfer student, then I had to make the school sound decent.
If he wasn’t—
Well.
Then I was already in trouble.
As if hearing the exact line of my thoughts and deciding it was time to ruin my day properly, he said:
“You can call me Vali. I’m the current Hakuryuukou. The Vanishing Dragon.”
Everything in me stopped.
My left hand burned.
Like something inside it had awakened so sharply that my whole arm recognized the presence before my brain did.
[Partner.]
Ddraig’s voice came from inside me, low and immediate.
[That’s him.]
My mouth went dry.
He smiled a little wider.
“I figured we would be able to meet here again. I wanted to see the current Welsh Dragon while I wasn’t busy with a mission. So nice to meet you, Sekiryuutei Hyoudou Issei.”
My heart slammed against my ribs.
This was him.
This was really him.
The one who is supposed to be my rival.
The one who had cut down Kokabiel’s wing, humiliated him completely, and then vanished with him like the whole thing had been a game.
Vali kept walking toward me.
Slowly. Casually.
That was worse than if he’d come at me like an enemy.
I could feel Ddraig inside me reacting harder now.
Not anger or simple hatred.
Something closer to battle hunger.
Something old.
Something that didn’t belong only to me.
[Our rival.]
Ddraig’s voice had gone rougher.
[Divine Dividing.]
That made everything colder.
My hand twitched.
My whole body wanted to move and didn’t know whether that meant run or fight.
During the fight with Kokabiel, when I’d first seen him, I hadn’t properly felt it through the shock and the exhaustion and everything else going on. But now—
Now it was there.
The sense that if the two of us really clashed here, something huge and ugly and final would begin.
And I was not ready.
Not for that. Not now.
Not before I’d slept with Buchou.
I hadn’t gotten the chance to do enough ecchi things!
Vali tilted his head slightly.
“That’s right,” he said, almost like he was confirming something to himself. “If I decided to do something to Hyoudou Issei here—”
He raised a hand.
That alone was enough to make my whole body lock.
Then two blades flashed in from either side.
The sound cut through the air so sharply it made me flinch.
Yuuto-san and Xenovia appeared between us in a blur of speed.
Yuuto-san’s Holy Demonic Sword stopped near Vali’s neck.
Xenovia’s Durandal gleamed on the other side, both of them close enough that a less absurd person would have frozen immediately.
Vali didn’t.
Not even a little.
Yuuto’s eyes had gone hard in a way they almost never did outside battle.
“I don’t know what you intended,” she said, voice low and sharp, “but do you really think you should do this with the summit so near?”
Xenovia’s grip on Durandal tightened. “I can’t allow you to begin your rivalry with the Sekiryuutei here, Hakuryuukou.”
Vali looked from one blade to the other.
Then back at me.
“It would be better if you stopped that,” he said mildly. “Your hands are shaking.”
Xenovia’s jaw tightened.
Yuuto-san did not move.
Neither of them had backed off but they were stiff.
They were trembling, their knuckles white while they held their blades.
Not out of misplaced fear.
It was the effort of pointing swords at someone whose level they understood too well.
Vali ignored them and looked at me.
“Between the two of us there is an obvious difference in power. You wouldn’t have been able to defeat Kokabiel and you have no chance at contending with me.”
“Did you come here just to tell me that?”
“I want you to understand just how large the world is and how little power you currently have. You may think I’m strong, but I’m nothing compared to the real monsters out there.”
Then footsteps came behind me.
A pressure in the air I recognized instantly.
Buchou.
Vali’s gaze moved past me, and I turned with him.
Rias-Buchou stood there with Asia, Akeno-san, Koneko-chan, and Kusari behind her.
Asia looked frightened and worried at the same time.
Akeno-san’s smile was gone.
Koneko-chan looked ready to throw herself into a fight.
Kusari-san was watching us carefully, her hands slightly tensed at her sides as if she was readying to launch a spell.
Buchou’s expression was the worst of all.
It was furious enough to chill the air.
“Hakuryuukou,” she said. “What is the meaning of your presence here. You are with the Fallen Angels, if you think you can simply approach my peerage in my territor—”
He cut her off.
“The Two Heavenly Dragons,” he said, “the ones close to them never led easy lives. I wonder what that means for you?”
Buchou stopped.
Her eyes widened just a little.
The words sank into me too.
Not because I believed in fate that easily.
Because Ddraig did.
The weight I felt in my left hand had not faded.
Vali’s gaze stayed on me for one more second.
Then he said, “I’m not here to fight today. I simply wanted to see the school Sekiryuuti attends. I’ve been bored after acting as Azazel’s escort since coming to Japan. I have work to do, so I won’t be able to fight you now anyways.”
Then he turned.
Just like that.
And walked away.
No rush. No concern.
No doubt in his own safety.
Yuuto-san and Xenovia held their positions for a moment longer before finally lowering their swords and breathing.
Nobody relaxed.
Asia came to my side first.
She didn’t say anything.
She just took my hand in both of hers.
The tremor running through me eased a little.
Not completely.
Akeno-san looked in the direction Vali had gone, expression sharpened in a way that was almost frightening.
Koneko-chan had her eyes narrowed.
Kusari-san was watching the empty gate too, not saying anything, but there was something almost dark in how still she’d become.
Buchou turned to me.
Her face softened immediately.
“Ise.”
I wanted to tell her I was fine.
I wasn’t.
Not really.
So all I managed was, “...Yeah.”
And somehow she understood enough from that.
By the time I got back to my room, I felt wrung out.
Not just physically.
The heat, the pool, all the chaos from earlier, Xenovia dragging me into the equipment room, Asia accidentally saying something insane, Kusari-san somehow destroying Akeno-san with oil and sheer menace, and then, after all that, Vali waiting near the gate like some kind of silver-haired omen.
It was too much for one day.
I dropped onto the floor with my back against the bed and stared up into the dim room, one arm draped over my knee.
The image of Vali standing there wouldn’t leave me.
The way he smiled.
The way Ddraig had reacted inside me.
The way Yuuto-san and Xenovia had moved in front of me with their blades out before I even finished thinking.
And the words—
The Two Heavenly Dragons, the ones close to them never led easy lives.
It sounded like something out of a horrible legend.
Which was exactly the problem.
Because I didn’t want a legend.
I wanted a normal amount of trouble.
Maybe a little more than normal, sure.
A harem-sized amount of trouble.
Problems cause by ecchi moments and staring at girls.
Not “rival dragon destined to collide with me and drag me into an ancient fight” trouble.
I rubbed at my left arm.
It still felt strange.
Not burning now, exactly. Just... not settled.
[Partner.]
Ddraig’s voice rolled through me again.
[You’re still thinking too hard.]
“You noticed?”
[I am inside your body. It would be difficult not to.]
I let out a weak laugh.
“Then you know why.”
[Vali was not weak.]
“Yeah. Thanks. I got that.”
[And neither are you.]
I snorted.
“That’s a nice thing to say after I spent half the day almost dying from swimsuits and the other half getting stared at by the Hakuryuukou.”
[You lived.]
“That’s a low standard.”
[It means that you’ll have to face it again eventually.]
I dropped my head back against the bed.
Maybe it was.
But it didn’t change the fact that I felt small after seeing Vali.
Not in the pathetic sense.
In the sense that the world had gotten bigger again.
More dangerous.
Again.
And if I wasn’t strong enough, then one day one of those bigger, more dangerous things was going to come down on Buchou or Asia or the others, and I’d still be standing there trying to catch up.
The room was quiet for a while.
Then I heard the door slide open.
I looked up.
Buchou stood there in casual clothes now, her hair loose again, one hand still on the frame as she watched me.
Softer than she’d looked at the gate.
Not untroubled. Just gentler.
“I had a feeling you’d still be awake,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She came inside and closed the door behind her.
Then, after a second, she sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at me.
“I believe in you,” she said.
The words were simple.
That made them hit harder.
“Even if the Hakuryuukou appears in your path again,” she continued quietly, “I believe you can win one day.”
I looked away because my face was definitely getting hot.
“Buchou...”
She smiled faintly.
Then she patted her thighs.
“Come here.”
There are moments when life becomes very clear.
This was one of them.
I moved instantly and rested my head in her lap.
It was perfect.
The greatest place on earth.
Buchou sighed in a way that was half fond and half resigned, then began running her fingers through my hair.
The tension in me eased before I even meant it to.
It always happened like that with her.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a little while. “I wanted the day to be fun for you.”
“It was fun!”
She looked down at me.
I corrected myself.
“It was also a disaster. But it was fun.”
That made her laugh softly.
“I can’t decide if that is reassuring or not.”
“It’s me, Buchou. You should lower your standards a little.”
“I already did when I chose you.”
“Buchou!”
She smiled more openly then, and the room finally started to feel normal again.
Not everything.
There was still too much happening out there
But in this room it was calm.
And after the day I’d had, that was enough.
For a while, neither of us said anything.
Then, because my brain hated peace, I said, “Buchou.”
“Yes?”
“What Kusari did with Akeno-san earlier...”
Her fingers paused in my hair.
Like she hadn’t expected me to go there or hoped I wouldn’t bring t up.
Then they started moving again.
“What about it?” she asked.
I stared up at the ceiling for a second.
How was I supposed to phrase this?
Because “that was insane” sounded too simple.
“That was... a lot,” I said finally.
Buchou exhaled through her nose.
“Yes,” she said. “It was.”
“You weren’t exactly calm about it either.”
She gave me a look.
“Ise.”
“I’m just saying!”
“You’re imagining something. You were too distracted watching the two of them.”
“I don’t know Buchou...”
“Ise, let’s agree that it was all a part of your overactive imagination. Alright?.”
She smiled at me and I knew that I should just agree.
“You’re right, Buchou!”
That was unfair, but I’m not dumb enough to go against her.
I shifted slightly in her lap. “Akeno-san started it, but she’s always liked teasing Kusari-san more than the others.”
“I know.”
“And Kusari-san kind of...” I searched for the right words. “Why do you think she acted that way?”
Buchou’s gaze drifted, not toward the wall or the door but somewhere inward.
She smiled a bit.
“I don’t know exactly but it might be a good thing in some ways.” Rias said quietly.
“Uhhh… what do you mean Buchou?”
I was lost.
She continued to run her fingers through my hair while sighing.
“Kusari…. I think that she struggles with any kind of intimacy or closeness. I don’t know everything but it’s obvious she’s had a hard life and that she avoids others.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“So, I think that even though what happened with Akeno was a little much, her being willing to be that close to her and touch her body that way means that she is comfortable with us. At least enough that she wouldn’t lock up in that situation.” Buchou paused for a moment. “Though she definitely got caught up in turning it around on Akeno.”
I nodded in her lap.
“Yeah she seemed a little out of it and panicked when she finished. But Akeno-san seemed to calm her down.”
Buchou paused her hand’s movements again.
“That’s true as well. Hmmm….. Akeno wanted to use Kusari to help bother me and to tease you.”
“Well…yeah” I said, confused where Buchou was going with this.
“Yes,” Buchou murmured. “And once she realized she had been dragged into it, Kusari decided to turn it around on Akeno and make it even more of a spectacle.”
Still, there was something in Buchou’s voice that made me look up at her.
She was thinking too much.
“What?” I asked.
Her fingers started moving in my hair again but slower than before.
“At first,” she said carefully, “I thought she was only turning Akeno’s teasing back on her. That she simply wanted to embarrass Akeno for pulling her into our argument.”
I frowned. “At first?”
Buchou was quiet for a second.
Then she admitted, “Now that we are talking about it more, I'm rethinking if that’s all that it was.”
I watched Buchou’s face as the gears turned in her head.
“She knew you were watching,” Rias said. “She knew I was watching. She knew exactly what she looked like.”
A very bad, very hot memory immediately resurfaced.
Oiled hands on Akeno’s body.
Two oiled bodies pressed together.
I closed my eyes.
“Buchou,” I said weakly, “please don’t make me picture it more clearly than I already am.”
“That is very much your own fault.”
“Yes, Buchou.”
I was indeed a pervert and enjoyed every moment of watching them, but Buchou was the one talking about it now.
Buchou knew it too, because she continued anyway.
“She wasn’t flustered until afterward,” Rias said. “During it, she was in complete control. Deliberate. Precise.” Her expression tightened slightly. “And that means she may have intended more than simply punishing Akeno.”
I stared up at her.
“What? You think she took Akeno-san’s advice to tease me?”
Buchou didn’t answer immediately.
Finally, she said, “I think it is possible that Kusari understood she could turn that entire scene into a lesson for Akeno... while also making certain you noticed her.”
That made my heart jump in a way I really didn’t want to examine.
I was quiet for a second.
Then I made the mistake of smiling.
Buchou noticed instantly.
“What?” she asked.
“You’re jealous.”
“I am not.”
That was way too fast.
I grinned harder.
“It’s fine Buchou your oppai are still my favorite!”
Her cheeks went pink.
“Ise.”
“Buchou, they are!”
She pinched my cheeks.
“You are impossible.”
“Em hownust.” I said through pulled cheeks.
“You use that word as a shield much too often.”
Buchou stopped pinching and rubbed my cheeks.
“Because it works.”
“It does not.”
But she was flustered enough now that I knew I’d hit the mark.
And maybe that should have been enough to leave alone.
But there was something heavier under it, and both of us knew it.
So after a moment, I said more quietly, “What happened between you and Kusari-san?”
This time her hand stopped completely.
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