High School DxD: Fox of Ill Omen

Koneko

Buchou’s answers should have helped.

They didn’t.

Not enough.

Maybe they helped Asia-senpai.

Maybe they helped Xenovia-senpai, because Xenovia liked direct answers and people saying what they meant with clear declarations.

They even helped Yuuto-senpai a little, I think, because Yuuto-senpai could hear the honesty in Buchou’s voice and knew how much it cost her to admit weakness that plainly.

They did not help me.

Not really.

Because Kusari-senpai still looked more like she did when she first joined the peerage. 

Because I could hear in every answer Buchou gave that she meant it now, and all I could think was that now was not the same as then.

And there was something else in the way they were talking that was wrong.

Wrong like a conversation with parts missing.

Everything they had mentioned was about Gasper-kun’s room.

None of it touched on whatever had happened after the fight with Kokabiel.

Kusari-senpai looked tired.

She looked calm enough, but I could see that she was drained by that conversation.

Like every answer she got from Buchou mattered and still failed to quiet the same fear.

Buchou looked worse.

Not because she had lost control of the conversation.

If anything, she was trying harder than usual to stay measured.

It was because she was hearing, in real time, exactly how little security her promises had when someone decided to keep questioning them.

That should have been enough for one conversation.

It wasn’t.

Kusari-senpai said, “You can say now that you have learned and that you won’t hurt me, or any of us again. But it’s after the fact, after it has already happened, after you have had time to decide what kind of person you would rather be.”

The words were quiet.

Too quiet.

“Buchou wouldn’t do that to one of us now. It wasn’t just Buchou that let Gasper-kun be sealed away. None of us thought that it was the wrong thing to do.” Yuuto-senpai added.

“A-And I think we should believe her. She promised that she wouldn’t let it happen again and I believe her.” Asia-senpai spoke up too.

They both looked like they just wanted to help defuse the situation

Kusari-senpai’s eyes moved to the two of them “That is not the same thing as knowing what she would do when it matters.”

Buchou’s jaw tightened.

“I know that.”

“No,” Kusari-senpai said. “You know what you want to believe about yourself when it is not the moment anymore.”

Asia-senpai looked down into her lap.

Yuuto-senpai had gone very still beside the tea set, watching both of them.

She looked like she wanted to try and argue but stopped herself.

Xenovia-senpai stayed silent.

That told me she knew this had gone beyond something she could cut apart with blunt logic alone.

Buchou said, “Then what do you want from me?”

Kusari-senpai did not answer immediately.

“I want,” she said at last, “for what happened to Gasper-kun to be something I can’t imagine happening to me. I want to believe that after telling you some of what I went through, that you meant it when you told me that I could trust you. That you wouldn’t let me be wrong again.”

No one spoke for a moment.

Kusari-san and Buchou had talked about her past then.

She had opened up more to Buchou and after doing that she then saw something that made her question or even regret doing so.

She had gone from believing that this peerage would be different to imagining that it could be the same as the ones that hurt her.

Buchou’s face changed.

Hurt flashed across her face openly for a moment before she schooled her expression.

“It won’t ,” she said.

Kusari-senpai looked at her with that terrible, careful calm.

“You don’t know that.”

Buchou took a step forward.

“You’re right,” she said. “I don’t know what every future moment will ask of me. But I know what I am saying to you now, and I know I mean it.”

Kusari-senpai’s mouth moved in something too small to be called a smile.

“That sounds very similar to what you told me before.”

I paid closer attention to her words.

I saw the others do the same.

Kusari-senpai must have realized that a second later, because the cold in her expression faltered just slightly.

I said, “Are you going to tell us what the two of you spoke about alone?”

No one answered.

I looked from one of them to the other.

Then again.

“I understand if it was private, but if there was something you think we should know, you can tell us, Kusari-senpai.” I continued.

Kusari-senpai and Buchou shared a quick glance.

And suddenly the missing shape I had been feeling since this conversation began became much sharper.

There had been something else.

Something worse.

Something from before Gasper’s room.

Yuuto-senpai broke the silence.

“From when Buchou asked Kusari-san to stay after our Devil work?”

Buchou closed her eyes for one second.

Kusari-senpai looked away first.

Asia looked up, concerned. “Why won’t you tell us?”

Xenovia frowned. “This sounds as though it was more than just a personal conversation.”

Buchou opened her eyes and looked at Kusari-senpai.

Not asking permission exactly.

More like saying that they needed to tell us whatever they were hiding. 

Kusari-senpai saw it and went still again.

Then she said, very quietly, “You don’t need to explain that.”

That made something in my gut feel wrong.

Because people only said things like that when they had something to hide or didn’t know how to say.

“What happened?” I asked again.

This time my voice came out colder than I meant it to.

Everyone noticed.

Buchou answered first.

“During the battle with Kokabiel—”

Kusari-senpai cut across her.

“Buchou,” she said.

And in that interruption, I understood two things at once.

First: she had not wanted Buchou to be the one to say it.

Second: whatever had happened had been why Buchou and Kusari had been acting off after the fight with Kokabiel.

Yuuto-senpai’s expression sharpened immediately.

Asia-senpai’s eyes went wide with concern.

Xenovia-senpai stared between them.

I felt my hands tightening in my sleeves at the memory of the fight before I noticed.

Kusari-senpai continued, voice still level and somehow even worse because of it.

“When we were losing,” she said, “I asked Buchou to let me stay behind.”

The room disappeared.

That’s what it felt like.

The tea.

The desks.

The windows.

Everything vanished for a second and all I could see was the school grounds, Kokabiel above us, the barrier, a broken holy sword, each of us failing to actually wound him.

And Kusari-senpai, asking to be left.

As if it were the obvious thing to do.

Asia-senpai made a tiny noise that sounded close to tears.

Yuuto-senpai’s hand had gone white around the edge of the table.

Xenovia’s stare sharpened into understanding.

I think someone said her name.

Maybe me.

I’m not sure.

Kusari-senpai looked at me then.

“You were going to let us leave you there,” I said.

The words came out flatter than I wanted them to.

I felt too much to be able to say it any other way.

“I thought it was the best option.”

I hated that sentence.

I hated how calm she sounded saying it.

I hated how much it sounded like her.

“That’s not the point,” I said.

My voice shook once.

I stopped it.

“You would have died.”

It was what we were all imagining.

Her dead as we ran away.

And she had decided it without us.

Kusari-senpai’s expression softened by a degree.

“Most likely, yes.” she said.

Asia-senpai pressed both hands over her mouth.

Yuuto-senpai looked like she wanted to interrupt but didn’t know how.

Xenovia-senpai finally said, “I understand why you would think that. Would you actually have allowed that, Buchou?”

I cut in before she could answer.

“No, wait. What do you mean you understand?! It’s not something that anyone should have thought of.”

My voice raised slightly before I regained control of it.

Xenovia-senpai didn’t look bothered by my anger.

“I’m not saying that she should have been sacrificed for others. I’m saying that Irina and I went into our mission understanding that we may not come back. After she was unable to continue I still went to face Kokabiel and Valper. I went into that fight ready to die for my mission. Kusari went into that fight ready to die for all of you.”

I quickly turned to Kusari-senpai.

She was watching Xenovia-senpai and gave a small nod when she looked back. 

I could only watch her as she quietly confirmed what Xenovia-senpai had said.

I couldn’t speak for a moment.

“So, would you have allowed it, Buchou?” Xenovia-senpai repeated her question.

We all turned to Rias.

Buchou looked stricken with guilt.

She looked smaller for a moment before she answered. 

“I don’t know,” she said.

She was telling the truth, and somehow that made it hurt more.

Because it meant Kusari-senpai had gotten close enough that even now Buchou could not promise she wouldn’t have agreed to her plan.

That made me feel sick.

Kusari-senpai looked down for the first time since the reveal began.

Only for a second.

Then she lifted her head again.

“We argued over it,” she said. “And I might have convinced her, but then the Hakuryuukou arrived.”

That was the moment I realized I was angry at both of them.

At Kusari-senpai for deciding she was the obvious one to leave behind.

At Buchou for not knowing immediately and completely that the answer should have been no.

Even if it had been a logical choice to come to or that we didn’t have another option.

It wasn’t acceptable

And the fact that they had carried this between them while the rest of us kept smiling and sitting in the same room like idiots made it worse.

I stood up before I fully meant to.

The chair legs scraped hard against the floor.

“Koneko...” Asia-senpai said softly.

I ignored her.

I looked at Kusari-senpai first.

“You didn’t tell us.”

She held my gaze.

“No.”

“That is not something that you get to keep from us.”

“I know.”

Those two words made it worse again.

She didn’t even try to deny it.

“Then why didn’t you say something?”

She opened her mouth to respond but I kept going.

“You decided,” I said, “that if someone had to be left behind, it would be you.”

Kusari-senpai didn’t answer.

Buchou did.

“She thought it was the only way to buy enough time,” Rias said.

I turned on her immediately.

“And you nearly let her.”

Buchou flinched slightly at the hard tone in my voice.

Yuuto finally stood too, not to interrupt, but to be ready if she needed to be.

I looked back at Kusari-senpai.

All the small, quiet ways she had become important to me over the last months kept colliding with the image of her deciding, all by herself, that she was the right person to leave behind.

I wanted to yell.

Instead what came out was smaller and uglier.

“You were just going to disappear.”

Kusari-senpai’s face changed.

That hurt her.

I hated that I wanted it to.

“No,” she said quietly. “I was going to try to buy time. You needed to escape.”

“Stop pretending that it’s any different!"

She looked to the floor.

Her silence was her admission that I was right.

Asia-senpai’s voice trembled when she finally spoke. “Kusari-san... why didn’t you trust us with that?”

Kusari-senpai looked at Asia-senpai, and for the first time since the reveal, she seemed to be at a loss of words for a second.

Then she said, “Because I had already decided what the correct choice was. And there was no reason to discuss it after the fact.”

I laughed once.

“Of course.”

She had made the decision, carried the burden, and arranged her own death in a way that would make her useful.

I hated how much that sounded like her.

I hated more that it now sounded like something she would do again

Buchou saw that thought pass through me.

I knew she did, because her expression went tight with a different kind of alarm.

“Koneko,” she said softly.

If she used that tone right now, I was going to get angrier.

“Don’t.”

She stopped.

I looked at Kusari-senpai.

“You don’t get to decide that for everyone else.”

Her eyes narrowed just slightly.

“I was making a decision for myself.”

Yuuto-senpai finally spoke.

It was a good thing she did because another second and I really might have said something crueler than I meant.

“It sounds,” she said carefully, “like both of you were making decisions from the same place.”

We looked at her.

She met the room’s attention without flinching.

“Buchou from fear that she was going to lose all of us,” Yuuto-senpai said, “and Kusari-san from certainty that she was the one who should pay the cost if someone had to.”

She laid out exactly where the decision that had almost taken Kusari-senpai away from us came from. 

And hearing it put that way somehow made the whole thing even more unbearable.

_________________________________________

Xenovia

The room smelled faintly of tea gone cold.

That was a strange detail to notice in the middle of a conversation like this.

But I did.

Perhaps because it made the contrast sharper.

Ordinary things remained ordinary even while people argued over things that they couldn’t accept.

Koneko was standing now.

The air around her had changed entirely.

Less restrained than usual.

Not loud, not wild, but on edge enough that even I could tell she had been hit harder than anyone else by the revelation.

Asia looked on the verge of crying and trying very hard not to.

Yuuto had stepped into the conversation in the way she often did when people needed something carefully placed in the middle.

If she hadn’t things that could not be taken back may have been said

Rias looked as though she had expected pain and still been surprised by how much there was.

Kusari looked like she knew that it would hurt and was ready to take the verbal beating without showing any pain.

I understood the logic of the conflict.

I understood that some people did not understand that some things were worth laying a life down for.

I also understood that the people in this peerage were far too close to accept the idea. 

What I did not understand was why it seemed to wound all of them so personally in slightly different directions at once.

Koneko stared at Kusari.

“That means if it happens again, you’ll do it again.”

Her voice was quiet.

The accusation in it was not.

Rias looked at her. “No.”

Koneko did not move.

“You also said before that you didn’t know if you would have let it happen if Vali hadn’t come.” She replied.

That was an excellent point.

And judging by the way Rias’s expression tightened, she knew it too.

“I said I didn’t know what I would have done then,” Rias answered. “That is not the same as what I would do now.”

Kusari’s gaze shifted to her.

I could see in her eyes that she would still do it even if Rias told her not to.

I said, because no one else seemed willing to say it plainly enough, “Both this and Kusari’s issue with Gasper’s room share the same core. What is stopping it from happening again?”

No one in the room seemed to enjoy hearing that.

Rias looked at me and, to her credit, did not snap.

“Yes, and I will repeat my promise that I will not let it happen as many times as I need to. I will not lose any of you.” 

Her voice filled with a strength that was missing before.

I nodded to her. 

Kusari watched her closely.

I had thought earlier that this issue was about whether Rias cared enough.

That had been too simple.

The problem was not only affection.

It was what happened when affection collided with fear, power, hierarchy, and the sort of battlefield where one wrong decision could erase a whole peerage.

And now Koneko was staring at both of them like she wanted to cut through every excuse until only the ugliest truth remained.

“You were both going to allow it,” she said.

Her voice was quiet.

Rias looked pained at her words.

Kusari did not.

But something in the set of her shoulders changed.

Koneko kept going.

“You,” she said to Rias, “were close enough to letting it happen that even now you can’t say for certain you wouldn’t have.”

Then she looked at Kusari.

“And you decided on your own that dying for us made sense.”

No one spoke.

Asia looked as if she wanted to interrupt and had no idea where her kindness would fit without making the wound worse.

Yuuto’s expression had gone very still again, she looked tense as she watched them.

I kept silent, because there was no clean way to interrupt again.

Kusari’s gaze lowered slightly.

Then she said, “That part if it is mine.”

Rias turned toward her at once. “Kusari-chan—”

“No.”

The way she said it was final.

Kusari looked at Koneko instead.

“That was my decision,” she said. “It was mine before it became Buchou’s burden to reject or accept. If you want to be angry at someone for that, then be angry at me.”

That was a mistake.

Koneko’s expression did not ease.

If anything, it sharpened further.

“That doesn’t help,” she said.

Kusari went still.

Koneko stepped closer.

“You’re trying to take all of it onto yourself,” Koneko said. “That’s part of the problem.”

Kusari was quiet for a moment.

Then, instead of denying it, she said, “I made the decision because it was the correct one.”

Koneko’s hands tightened into fists.

“There was no way it was.”

The challenge in her words was obvious.

An insistence that if Kusari had chosen that path, she had to drag the logic into the light where the rest of us could look at it too.

For a second I thought Kusari would refuse.

Instead she gave a small nod.

“All right.”

The word was calm.

Too calm.

She stood straighter and her expression became completely composed.

She let out a small sigh before she began.

“Asia wasn’t in a state to fight properly,” she said. “Not after what Kokabiel revealed to us.”

Asia’s face went white with shame and pain both, but Kusari did not say it cruelly.

She said it calmly as if she was moving pieces on a chess board.

“Yuuto, Xenovia are strong,” she continued, “but none of them could damage Kokabiel in a way that would matter quickly enough.”

Yuuto’s jaw tightened.

I looked at the floor.

She was right. 

Even with Durandal and Excalibur Destruction I hadn’t been able to do anything of value. 

“Akeno-senpai had already unleashed a full attack on him,” Kusari said. “It failed.”

Akeno was not here to hear that. Even so, the absence of her laughter or teasing made the room feel thinner for a second.

“Buchou was the [King],” Kusari went on. “No one else would have left if she stayed. If she fought the peerage would have fought with her

Rias closed her eyes briefly.

Kusari did not stop.

“Issei’s power was unpredictable. Useful, yes. Strong, yes. But not reliable enough to build the entire retreat around.” Her gaze flicked once toward the empty seat where Issei would have been. “And both Buchou and Asia were almost guaranteed to refuse to leave him if he was the one staying behind.”

Asia let out a sniffle as she tried to hold back tears.

Rias opened her eyes but didn’t deny Kusari.

Kusari turned back to Koneko.

“And you Koneko, your attack against Kokabiel nearly got you cut to pieces. You’re strong and good at a close quarters fight, but Kokabiel was too much.”

Koneko’s knuckles whitened as she clenched her fists.

The logic was merciless.

It wasn’t wrong.

“We still needed time before the Maou’s forces arrived,” Kusari said. “And we were losing. It was only a question of when Kokabiel got bored of playing with us.” She looked from one face to another. “People were going to start dying.”

The room stayed still around that.

Koneko did not look away.

I understood her logic and why she made the decision.

I probably would have come to a similar conclusion in her shoes.

That didn’t make it easier for anyone to hear. 

Kusari continued.

“If Buchou removed as many seals as possible, it would have given me enough strength to distract Kokabiel. Not defeat him. Not win. Distract him. Long enough for the rest of you to escape.”

Her voice did not shake.

Not once.

And somehow that was the most unsettling part of all.

Because she sounded like she had recited the exact reasoning in her head over and over. 

Not like someone explaining why she had almost chosen to die.

“I thought through the alternatives,” she finished. “That was the one that left the highest chance of the most people surviving.”

No one answered immediately.

Asia’s eyes were full now, but she still was not crying.

Yuuto looked grim in a way I did not often see from her.

Rias looked resigned.

Koneko was still angry.

Kusari’s logic didn’t make it any less wrong.

“That’s unacceptable,” Koneko said.

Kusari finally blinked.

“As strategy?” she asked.

“As a choice,” Koneko said.

Kusari looked at her for a long moment.

Then something in her expression changed.

Not softer.

Tired.

“At that moment,” she said quietly, “the possible results were the peerage wiped out or much smaller... or one member lost.”

The words sat in the room like ice.

She kept going.

“I thought about what could happen to all of you.” Her gaze moved across us, one by one. “And the choice was obvious.”

A pause.

Then, in a voice so tired it nearly lost the last of its polish.

“Easy, almost.”

That one hurt everyone.

I saw it.

Asia’s face folded first, grief and disbelief mixed together.

Yuuto looked like she wanted to move to comfort Kusari.

Rias simply looked saddened, like she had heard this before.

Even Koneko, furious as she still was, looked wounded in a way I had not seen from her often.

Not only that Kusari had been willing to die.

That for her, once she saw how the fight could play out, it had become easy to place herself in the position of the sacrificed piece.

Koneko’s voice came out low and hard.

“No.”

Kusari looked at her.

“No,” Koneko repeated. “You don’t get to say that like it’s fine.”

Kusari did not answer.

Koneko stepped another half-step forward.

“Buchou doesn’t get to almost agree to it,” she said, turning to Rias now, “and Kusari-senpai doesn’t get to decide it on her own and then hide it until now.”

Rias took that without trying to shield herself from it.

Kusari did too.

Both of them deserved to hear it.

“You can’t make a decision like that again,” Koneko said.

The demand was simple enough that it should have been easy to accept.

It wasn’t.

Because this was Kusari.

She looked at Koneko and said, with that same exhausted honesty:

“I can’t promise that.”.

Koneko’s expression froze.

“You—”

Kusari did not let her finish.

“If we reach a point where the alternatives are everyone else dying or me staying behind again, I can’t promise you I would not reach the same conclusion.”

Koneko looked like she wanted to shake her.

“If I am given the choice to make sure either you or I survive, I’m going to pick you Koneko-chan.”

She said it simply, like she didn’t need to think about it.

Koneko’s anger broke slightly into something closer to tears.

Rias moved before she could break further.

“Then the decision won’t be yours alone.”

Everyone turned toward her.

She looked at Kusari first.

Then at Koneko.

Then at the rest of us.

“If it ever comes to something like that again,” she said, “then the choice will be made with the whole peerage. Not by Kusari alone. Not by me alone. All of us.”

I understood the tactic immediately.

She was not denying the possibility of sacrifice in absolute terms.

That would have been too impossible, and Kusari would have refused it at once.

Instead, she was refusing the isolation of the decision.

No one gets to choose who is left behind by themselves.

That was a much more practical answer.

Which was probably why it had a chance of working.

Koneko looked at Rias for a long moment.

Then at Kusari.

Then back again.

Her anger had not vanished.

But it had changed shape.

Less wild hurt. More reluctant, wounded calculation.

“You’re both promising that?” she asked.

Rias answered immediately. “Yes.”

Kusari was quiet for one beat.

Then she said, “...If it must be put that way, yes.”

It wasn’t perfect

Still a promise.

Koneko did not look satisfied.

I do not think she would be able to be.

What I saw instead was something better.

The first tiny easing of pressure in her shoulders since the conversation had turned toward Kokabiel.

It was reluctant and slow, but still there

Asia let out a breath she had clearly been holding for far too long.

Yuuto’s expression softened by a degree.

Not everything was fixed, but it was better. 

No longer one wrong word away from breaking again.

Koneko looked at Kusari one last time and said, “I still hate that you thought it was easy.”

Kusari’s eyes lowered.

“I’m sorry.”

She sounded genuinely remorseful at the pain it had caused her.

Koneko accepted the apology unwillingly.

But she moved next to Kusari and had her sit back down.

Kusari looked confused for a moment until Koneko retrieved her usual plate of snacks and sat down right next to her.

She still looked confused but accepted that she should probably let Koneko do what she liked.

I looked between Kusari sitting with Koneko and Rias who had returned to her desk.

It wasn’t all fixed and I don’t believe that anyone was directly in the wrong, but it seemed better.

A bit back to normal.

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