High School DxD: Fox of Ill Omen

Kusari

I found Akeno outside the old school building just before sunset.

That had been deliberate.

If I had asked to speak with her in the clubroom, there was too much chance someone else would notice and either linger or misunderstand.

If I had waited until after the meeting, there would be too many other things pressing in around us.

This moment was private enough and quiet enough to use.

She was leaning against the low railing by the path, looking toward the school with one hand placed on the railing next to her.

The evening light made the edges of her hair and uniform look softer than they normally would. 

When she noticed me, she smiled immediately.

“Ara, Kusari-chan. Did you come to spend some alone time with Onee-san?”

“No.”

“That was a very quick answer.”

“It was a simple question.”

Akeno laughed softly, then straightened from the railing. “Then what did you come for?”

I stopped in front of her.

For a second, the words sat in my throat in the wrong order.

It shouldn’t be so hard for me to do this

I had explained to a child why she should not keep using devils for petty revenge more easily than this.

I exhaled once and said, “I wanted to apologize.”

Akeno blinked.

I could tell she had not expected me to begin there, but wasn’t exactly surprised by me seeking her out.

“For what?” she asked, though I could tell she already knew.

“What happened at the pool.” I kept my voice level. “And for taking so long to say it.”

That made her smile change.

It softened at the edges and became more careful.

“Kusari-chan,” she said, voice warm again, “if this is about the oil, then you don’t need to apologize. It was a lovely surprise.”

“That is not an answer.”

Akeno’s brows lifted very slightly.

I went on before she could tease again.

“I wanted to make sure I did not go too far,” I said. “Or make you uncomfortable.”

That, at last, drew a moment of real silence out of her.

Only a moment.

Then Akeno put on the bright, easy smile again and waved one hand lightly as though shooing away smoke.

“It’s all fine,” she said. “Really. You only gave me back what I asked for. If anything, I should be apologizing for dragging you into it in the first place.”

She was good at putting on a mask for others to see. 

I might not have noticed a month ago.

Now I did.

The smile was right.

The tone was right.

The words were even mostly true.

And none of them were the whole thing.

I had enough experience of my own to notice.

I looked at her for a second longer than was polite.

Then I asked, “Are you really all right?”

That made her blink again.

A smaller reaction this time..

Because I had not accepted the first answer when she tried to move away from the issue.

I could almost see the moment she checked whether I was actually concerned or just saying it to sound like I was. 

Akeno’s smile thinned into something realer. “You really can see through people when you want to, can’t you?”

“Sometimes.”

“My, my.” She tilted her head. “And here I thought I was the dangerous one.”

“You are.”

That got a laugh out of her.

A proper one.

Then she sighed and looked away toward the path.

“I was surprised,” she admitted. “And flustered. Quite a lot, actually.” Her eyes slid back to me with renewed amusement. “I’ve never really had someone turn one of my games back on me like that.”

I accepted that with a small nod.

“But did I go too far?”

Akeno considered that more seriously than I had expected.

Then she said, “No. Not in a way that hurt me.”

“I know that you want to reassure me but if I-”

“Kusari-chan,” she said, cutting me off.

Her smile was gone from her face for a moment as she looked at me.

“I’m fine, really. It was a lot and embarrassing, but you didn’t hurt me. I know that you think I’m just trying to make you feel better now like I was then, but I’m being honest. You don’t have to worry about it.”

I looked at her for a few seconds longer before slowly nodding.

“Alright, but if you decide that’s not the case anymore I would understand.”

Her usual teasing smile returned.

“Besides being flustered and embarrassed by it I got to have a pretty girl’s hands all over me. I don’t think that’s too bad.”

“I was so afraid that I had done something to you that you wouldn’t be able to forgive me for.” I stopped and looked down at the railing. Then added more quietly. “I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself if I had hurt you that way.”

I looked back at Akeno.

Her smile had slipped from her face again before returning.

“Well, you didn’t.”

We started walking without discussing it further, both of us choosing the same direction toward the quieter path that curved around the side of the old school building.

The evening air had cooled a little.

The sounds of the main campus felt farther away here, filtered into something gentler by distance and trees.

For a while we said nothing.

That silence was not awkward.

Not easy either.

Just shared.

Akeno walked with the sort of effortless poise that made every ordinary step look faintly like a performance

Simply practiced.

I had the unpleasant suspicion that she had spent a large portion of her life learning how to make every version of herself beautiful enough to be accepted before anyone asked what she actually felt.

Perhaps that was projection.

Perhaps not.

After long enough that the quiet had settled properly, she spoke.

“So why did you do it?”

“Tease you back?” I asked back

“No, I understand that was a bit deserved. Why did you go so far with it if you weren’t comfortable with it?”

I looked up at the evening sky for a moment.

“I….. I got caught up in the moment of it. I let myself get carried away and forgot about anything else until I stopped.”

She stepped ahead of me on the path and turned while continuing to walk backwards.

She put her arms behind her back and leaned forward while smirking.

“Oh, so you were that excited to be able to touch your Onee-san?” 

“It was a mistake and it won’t happen again.” I said while meeting her gaze.

“Hmmm…. Well I don’t think that it would be horrible if something happened again. I’ll be ready for it next time so it will be much more interesting. Plus the look you had in your eyes was…. interesting.”

She spun back around and resumed walking next to me along the path.

“Like I said, it won’t happen again.”

She smiled at me but didn’t respond.

I narrowed my eyes at her.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing, Kusari-chan.”

Deciding that this part of the conversation I decided to move on.

“So how are you?” I asked

Akeno glanced at me sideways. “What a broad question to change a subject with.”

“With Issei,” I said. “After the shrine.”

That made her smile turn sly again.

The first mask she preferred when things touched too close.

“Ara. Kusari-chan, are you jealous that I had time alone with Ise-kun?”

I gave her a dull look.

She smiled brighter.

“No? Not even a little?”

“No.”

“Not because you wanted your own romantic moment with him?”

“No.”

“Then maybe you wanted more alone time with me?”

I stared at her without answering.

Akeno put one hand lightly to her cheek. “My, that seems almost cold.”

“You know it isn’t that.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

She laughed under her breath.

Then, because she was Akeno and apparently could not leave a tease half-finished, she added, “Really, though, the way Rias has been watching you lately, I began wondering if she’d decided you were joining the competition for him too.”

I let her talk.

That was deliberate.

Akeno was clever enough that if I cut her off too quickly, she would only circle harder out of curiosity. Better to let the momentum spend itself.

Even if she had come up with the same nonsense that Rias had.

“She’s been acting almost as if you’re a rival,” Akeno went on, glancing at me with clear amusement. “And after the pool, well... you can’t blame me for thinking about it. You did put quite the show on for him.”

I stopped walking.

Only for a second.

Then said, very evenly, “I think you look more open around Issei-san since he visited shrine.”

Akeno stopped too.

The teasing left her face so quickly it was almost startling.

Though not completely.

The reflexive curve of a smile remained.

But something under it gave way, and in its place came something warmer. 

Softer.

So simple that for one strange second she looked younger.

“You noticed that?” she asked.

“Yes.”

The answer mattered to her more than I had expected.

I could see it in how her shoulders eased.

Not because she thought I approved.

Because I had noticed it as genuine.

Akeno’s gaze drifted away from me and out toward the trees. “I suppose that means I’m being transparent.”

“More honest.”

That made her laugh once, softly.

“I like your version better.”

We started walking again.

This time the quiet between us was easier.

She seemed less ready to put up a shield between us.

Akeno let the silence stretch first.

Then she asked, in a tone so casual it was immediately suspicious, “Kusari-chan, can I ask you something hypothetical?”

“You’re going to regardless.”

“Yes, but it’s polite to ask first.”

“Is it?”

She smiled.

Then looked ahead again as she spoke.

“What would you think,” she asked, “if someone in the peerage was related to an enemy? Or to someone who hurt you?”

The question landed too neatly to be random.

I studied her profile for a second.

Beautiful. Graceful. Smiling lightly.

Asking as if it were just an idle thought.

I turned my eyes forward again and answered just as plainly.

“It isn’t worth thinking about.”

Akeno’s steps slowed by half a beat.

I continued before she could decide whether to hide or test me.

“We are our own actions,” I said. “Not our parents. Not our blood. Not someone else’s sins.” I looked at her then. “Who someone’s family is or where they come from matters less than what they choose to do. It would be stupid to think otherwise.”

Akeno went very still.

Her breath seemed to hitch for a moment

The question had not been hypothetical in any meaningful sense.

I had known that halfway through it.

I suspected she knew I knew.

Neither of us said so.

After a moment, Akeno smiled again.

But this one was quieter than the others.

Less weaponized.

“Stupid, hm?”

“Yes.”

“My, my. You can be severe.”

“You asked.”

“I did.”

We walked in silence for a few more steps before she continued.

“You know, you were quite impressive in the rating game against Riser.”

I was slightly caught off guard by the shift in conversation.

“That was a while ago, and I was retired like most everyone else.”

“Wel yes, but you were still very impressive. You took down their [Queen] all by yourself after I failed to defeat her.” She said, looking forward again.

“I didn’t defeat her on my own. If you hadn’t injured her and made her use her phoenix tears before I fought her I wouldn’t have stood a chance.”

She chuckled.

“I think you’re giving yourself too little credit. I’m our peerage’s [Queen], but I hardly did much when it mattered. But both you and Ise-kun were very impressive during the match.”

Her smile looked warmer as she talked.

“Is that so?” I asked

“It is.”

We were quiet again after that

A short while later we had reached the turn in the path that would me lead back toward the old school building.

I stopped there and looked toward the fading light over the campus.

The meeting would begin soon.

There were larger things waiting for all of us tonight than an apology delayed too long, a question hidden inside a hypothetical, or memories of a past fight.

I looked back at Akeno.

“Thank you,” I said.

“For what?”

“For answering honestly enough.”

Akeno’s smile warmed by a degree. “Then I should thank you too.”

I nodded once.

Then turned and continued on my way.

I did not look back.

Akeno

I watched Kusari walk away until the old school building swallowed her.

She did not hurry.

She rarely did.

Even when she was unsettled, even when things around her had shifted and she was forcing herself to forward carefully, she still carried herself with  precise movements that made it feel as if every step had been decided before she took it.

And she had seen through me.

That was the part still sitting strangely in my chest.

Because so few people did it that quickly and then chose to ask anyway.

Most people let me be what was easiest for them.

Playful. Flirtatious. Perceptive.

Dangerous in enjoyable ways.

Kusari-chan had looked straight through the pleasant version I offered her and asked whether I was truly all right.

I had been shaken when it had first happened at the pool, but I was really alright.

She looked like she was about to break down after it happened.

I think that if I had told her that she had done something to violate me that something g in her might have broken.

So I told her the truth, that I was embarrassed and flustered but fine.

We were both fine. 

And when I asked that clumsy little half-hypothetical in return she had answered more honestly than I had prepared for.

She had told me that the idea of it was stupid.

I folded my arms loosely beneath my chest and let out a chuckle.

We are our own actions. Not our parents. Not our blood. Not someone else’s sins.

The words circled in my head again.

My thoughts went back to the shrine.

To Ise-kun’s face when I showed him the wing.

To the fear I had hidden inside a smile because if I let it show plainly, it would have become too easy to be wounded by whatever came next.

And then to his answer.

Simple and honest.

Clumsy in the way only he could be.

Accepting me before I’d even fully braced for rejection.

Now, Kusari-chan had given me another version of the same thing.

Sharper than Ise-kun’s.

Less warm, but still sincere. 

She had viewed it as if the idea of treating me different because of what I am was idiotic.

It was funny.

Ise-kun had answered from the heart without stopping to think, and Kusari-chan had answered as if the entire question was too foolish to deserve a more complicated response.

Both of them had made it sound easy.

That, perhaps, was the sweetest part.

And the cruelest.

Because for me, it could never be that easy.

I smiled to myself, though there was no one left to see it.

Everyone in this peerage was too good to me.

Another interesting thing was that Rias had started treating Kusari like competition for Ise-kun.

I had brought it up to her and she hadn’t tried to deny it.

She hadn’t really reacted until she had changed the topic to Ise-kun’s visit to my shrine. 

I wasn’t certain that Rias was right yet, but I had my suspicions that she may be.

After all, every other girl in the peerage, myself included, was looking at him already

I stayed where I was a moment longer, looking down the path Kusari had taken, and remembered something else Kusari-chan had said.

She had let herself get carried away when she turned my game around on me at the pool.

She had said it with remorse and had said that she wouldn’t let it happen again.

But it made me wonder what would happen if I pushed her that far again.

I was good at hiding behind a mask to protect my true feelings.

Kusari-chan had learned to live with a mask as part of her survival.

She still wore one even now.

But at the pool the look in her eyes when she was running her hands over my body was intense.

It was something I had never seen from her before.

The look in her eyes was…. hungry, i think.

Just remembering that look sent a small shiver down my spine.

And It made me wonder exactly what would happen if I took that mask off of her.

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