High School DxD: Fox of Ill Omen

Koneko

“You already know my name is Shiramine Yuki. I want to tell you why Serafall-sama and Azazel-sensei referred to me as the Fox of Ill Omen.”

After she said it, nobody spoke.

We were all silent as we waited for her to continue.

I watched Yuki-senpai.

Most people would have called her calm.

She was not calm.

She was holding herself still.

Her shoulders were too level.

Her breathing was too even.

Her face was arranged too carefully.

She looked like she wanted to have this talk but knew that it would be touching on old wounds. 

“Well…. first I should tell you why you first knew me as Kusari, and why I said that I didn’t want to be called that anymore.” Yuki-senpai said 

Issei-senpai looked like he was still trying to fit the words into place in his head before he spoke.

“Was it a name that the Devil that reincarnated you gave you? Like Yuuto-san and Koneko-chan were given names by Buchou?” he said.

He said it carefully.

Kusari looked at him.

“Yes. It was a name given to me by my first owner.”

Her voice was quiet.

She said it like she had not been a member of those peerages at all.

Like she had been an object that was bought and sold.

The way she phrased it caused a small reaction in the room.

Asia-senpai’s breath caught.

Yuuto-senpai’s eyes narrowed slightly.

Xenovia-senpai frowned immediately. 

Issei-senpai clenched his fists by his sides 

Akeno-senpai’s gaze sharpened.

Buchou looked down at her desk for a moment.

I was mad.

I was already angry that someone had treated her in a way that made her think of her previous [Kings] that way.

Rias-Buchou inclined her head very slightly, giving her room to continue if she wanted.

Issei-senpai was the one who forced the next question out.

“So your first [King] gave you the name, and it stuck with you?” he asked “Were you not able to tell your next [King] that it wasn’t your name?”

“There wasn’t a point.” Yuki-senpai replied. “I was with my first [King] the longest. It was a few years before I went to my second owner. When I was introduced as Kusari, there was no point in trying to correct it. I would probably have been punished, and I did not care enough to tell someone who I hardly knew and didn’t trust. And my second [King] never ended up giving me a reason to trust them. None of my owners ever did.”

Yuki-senpai did not soften it.

Her voice was level but I could hear a slight strain beneath it. 

Asia’s voice came small and hurt. “How… how old were you when you first became a devil?”

Yuki-senpai looked at her.

“I was eleven years old when I was reincarnated as a devil. I stayed with my first [King] for three years before being moved to another peerage. After that I was moved between multiple peerages over the next three years until I ended up here.”

It was quiet after Yuki-senpai finished speaking.

Then Xenovia-senpai broke the silence. 

“Did they all treat you like property?”

It was an extremely blunt question, but one probably on everyone’s mind.

Kusari gave a very small nod.

“Yes.”

Her gaze was angled downwards as she spoke

“They bought, sold, traded, or and made deals over me. The details changed. The result did not.”

There was a grim understanding in the room

That was why she had said owner.

Because that was the accurate word for what they had been to her.

“You call them owners,” Akeno-senpai said, “because that is how they treated you. You had said that you had never been treated as a real member of a peerage.”

Yuki-senpai looked toward her and nodded once.

“Yes, I was not treated as if I properly belonged to their peerages,” she said. “I belonged to them, like property.”

That explained far too much about her. 

Why obedience came so easily to her.

Why being near people in power made her act the way she did.

Why usefulness sounded safer to her than affection.

Why when she was cared for she treated it with suspicion.

Rias-Buchou’s voice was low and controlled.

“Why was that name given to you?”

Yuki-senpai’s eyes shifted to her.

“It was given to me by my first [King],” she said. “I had tried to escape and after I was caught the earliest of my seals were placed on me.”

My hands tightened in my lap.

“He gave me a new name as a joke. He told me that Kusari means chains,” she said.

Asia-senpai shut her eyes.

Issei-senpai swore under his breath.

Yuuto-senpai’s gaze lowered for just a second.

Xenovia-senpai’s mouth hardened into a scowl .

Akeno-senpai did not move at all.

Buchou looked furious.

She wasn’t trying to hide her anger.

“After capturing a child who was trying to flee, he sealed you and then named you that as a cruel joke,” Buchou said.

She looked like she would be pacing if she was standing. 

“Yes.”

Yuki-senpai’s voice stayed level.

“It was meant as a joke for him, or a reminder for me. Possibly both.”

The calm way she said it made it worse.

It was the same detached way she had talked about everything wrong that had happened to her.

It made me angry, like I wanted to break something.

I did not like that feeling.

I especially did not like that the person who had caused it was not in the room for me to hit.

Asia wiped at her eyes. “That’s horrible.”

Yuki-senpai looked at her.

For a second, there was something in her face that almost looked uncertain. 

Like she wasn’t certain what to do with such raw concern.

She had gotten better at understanding that we cared for her and that we only wanted the best for her.

But she still had moments where the idea of it was foreign. 

Buchou took a breath.

“You already told us that you don’t want to be called Kusari anymore, and I will not let anyone call you that again.” Buchou paused before continuing. “You are a member of my peerage. I will not allow you to be treated as anything less than I would expect to be treated.”

Yuki-senpai stared at her for a second.

Then lowered her eyes.

“…Thank you,” she said.

Buchou gave the faintest nod and let the silence fill the room again. 

Issei-senpai still looked frustrated.

Akeno-senpai wasn’t wearing one of her usual smiles.

Yuuto-senpai nodded at Buchou’s words. 

Xenovia-senpai was frowning while she watched Yuki-senpai.

Asia-senpai’s face held open worry and concern.

Buchou looked tired.

After a moment, Yuki-senpai spoke again.

“Now I can talk about what I already promised to tell you all.”

“You don’t have to now Yuki.” Buchou said

“It’s alright if you want to wait for now.” Asia said.

“No, besides Gasper-kun, we are all here. I want to tell you now.”

After a few seconds Buchou nodded and then leaned back into her seat.

Yuki-senpai drew in a slow breath.

“Before I became a devil,” she said, “before the seals, before any of that, I lived in a small village.”

Xenovia-senpai frowned slightly. “One of the hidden youkai settlements?”

“Yes.”

Yuki-senpai continued before anyone could branch away from the point.

“I was not considered ordinary there.”

That almost made me snort.

It would have been the wrong reaction, so I didn’t.

Not ordinary was one way to describe her.

“At first,” she said, “that was viewed well.”

Akeno-senpai’s eyes sharpened. “‘At first’?”

“Yes.”

Yuki-senpai folded her hands loosely in front of herself.

She looked like she was trying to contain herself more.

“When I was very young, the village considered me fortunate. Promising. A good sign.”

Issei-senpai frowned. “Because you were talented?”

“In part.”

She paused.

“And because I was born different.”

He tilted his head slightly. “Different how?”

Yuki-senpai looked at him and answered plainly.

“I was born with three tails.”

That caused a reaction across the room.

Rias-Buchou straightened at once.

Yutto-senpai leaned forward. 

Akeno-senpai’s eyes widened.

Even I forgot to breathe for a second.

Three.

At birth.

That was not just unusual.

That wasn’t heard of.

Issei-senpai looked around immediately, because unlike the rest of us, he did not yet understand exactly why that was so shocking.

Asia-senpai looked confused too.

Xenovia-senpai did as well, though she looked like she was trying to remember something.

Buchou noticed and explained.

“All kitsune are born with one tail,” she said quietly, eyes still on Yuki-senpai. “They gain more as they grow older and stronger.”

She paused.

“The exception to that is the kyuubi.”

“The nine-tailed fox,” Issei-senpai said.

“Yes.”

Buchou nodded.

“Kyuubi are born with all nine already present. They’re extraordinarily rare.”

There was a faintly distant note in her voice now, as if she was trying to figure out exactly how Yuki-senpai could have been born that way.

Or what that would mean for her and our peerage. 

“One of the youkai leaders is a nine-tailed kitsune,” Buchou added.

That made Asia-senpai tilt her head.

Xenovia crossed her arms more tightly. “So being born with three would have made her…”

She trailed off.

I finished it.

“…Looked at differently from birth.”

Everyone looked at me.

I did not care.

“All kitsune begin with one. A kyuubi begins with nine. Three doesn’t fit either. So people would be interested and speculate.”

Buchou nodded slowly. “Yes.”

Akeno-senpai exhaled softly.

“So even before anything else, there was already something about her that people would not have known how to place. Were your parents normal Kitsune?”

Yuki-senpai gave the smallest nod.

“Yes. As far as I’m aware there was nothing special about either of my parents.”

She paused.

Her eyes looked distant, like she was remembering something from long ago. 

“At…. At first I was treated like I was special. Like the golden child of the village. I was treated as a sign of good fortune for the village. My parents were praised. I was told that I would bring good things to our home. There were those that were skeptical or concerned, but they were the minority. My parents were known well enough in the village for people to overlook the oddity and see it as good luck.”

I could picture it too easily.

A younger, smaller version of her.

Watched.

Praised.

Told she was special.

But then something went wrong.

It made my chest hurt in a way I did not enjoy.

“They saw me as exceptional,” Kusari said. “A prosperous sign, perhaps. Something rare that had come to the village.”

Asia-senpai’s expression softened slightly.

Yuuto-senpai frowned, probably realizing that if Yuki-senpai had been treated well, then obviously something had changed.

Then Issei-senpai asked the obvious question.

“If that’s how they saw you,” he said, “then why were you known as the Fox of Ill Omen?”

Yuki-senpai did not answer immediately.

Her gaze lowered for a moment.

Then lifted.

Her eyes held an old pain in them before she schooled her face.

_________________________________________

Akeno Himejima

“If that’s how they saw you,” Ise-kun asked, “then why were you known as the Fox of Ill Omen?”

The room became still again after he said it.

It had been the question in everyone’s head. 

Yuki-chan didn’t respond at first.

Then She looked at him quietly.

She had held herself together with admirable discipline all evening, but by now it was becoming possible to see the strain of it even through her control.

Not in some dramatic or obvious way.

Her posture was still straight.

Her voice, whenever she used it, was still measured

She had not once broken apart, not once begged us to stop asking, not once reached for pity.

That, perhaps, was the most painful part.

She was offering us the ugliest truths of her life as though she were laying them one by one out for us and trusting us not to recoil.

A part of me admired that.

I had practiced not showing my pain for a long time now.

Another part of me wanted to shake her and ask why she thought that she thought she wasn’t aloud to show her pain.

She lowered her gaze for a moment, then looked back up.

“Because the things that made me fortunate when I was small became reasons to fear me as I grew older.”

It was simple.

And it was sadly an obvious response to something different in a small village.

I saw the words strike around the room.

Asia-chan’s hands tightened in her lap again.

Koneko-chan’s went just a little stiller.

Yuuto’s attention sharpened.

Xenovia’s brow furrowed.

Rias’s expression remained controlled, though I could feel the tension in her from across the room. 

Ise-kun looked as though he already disliked the answer and had not yet even heard the rest of it.

Yuki-chan continued.

“When I was very young, being born with three tails made me rare in a way people could still romanticize. Children are easy to praise. Especially when the thing that makes them unusual was odd or cute rather than threatening.”

That phrasing made my chest tighten.

A child could be called a blessing so long as the people around her had not decided that what made her special was an issue.

“And then?” Rias asked quietly.

Yuki-chan’s eyes flicked toward her.

“Then I grew.”

There was something very cold in the simplicity of that.

She clasped her hands loosely in front of herself and went on.

“I learned too quickly. Magic first. Then curses specifically.”

At that, I felt the room shift.

Because that word did not sit the same way other forms of talent did.

Not to people who did not understand it.

Not to small villages.

Not to communities that liked their talented children perfect and their dangers easy to identify.

Yuki-chan did not miss the reaction.

“My aptitude for it was obvious,” she said. “Too obvious.”

“And that alone was enough?” Xenovia asked.

“No,” Yuki said. “Not alone.”

Her gaze lowered briefly, as if she were watching the memory arrange itself into something she would be able say aloud.

“It wasn’t just that I was born different or that I was partially skilled with curses. I gained tails faster than I should have. I learned spells people did not think a child should understand. My tails gave me abilities that made the people in my village nervous. 

I watched her face carefully as she said it.

There was no pride in her voice.

Just a detached retelling of events.

That, too, made the story sound uglier.

I could imagine the whole sequence of events.

A child with gifts she did not know she should have hid.

A village that had first called those gifts fortunate.

Then watched them become something they could be afraid of.

Then decided that being afraid was the same thing as being in danger.

“The parts of me that had once seemed exceptional,” Yuki said, “began to look unnatural.”

Asia-chan shook her head at once.

“No.”

Yuki-chan looked toward her.

Asia-chan’s eyes were bright already, and her voice trembled with the effort of holding steady.

“That isn’t true,” she said. “Not about you.”

Yuki-chan’s expression changed slightly.

Not in sadness or appreciation.

Something more fragile than either.

The expression of someone who still had trouble realizing that some kindness was sometimes just that.

That it could arrive without a price attached.

Asia-chan kept going before that expression could vanish.

“I know you, Yuki,” she said. “You’re kind. You’ve tried to protect all of us. You care about people even when you try not to show it. You’re not a monster, and you’re not something bad just because other people were frightened.”

Yuki-chan looked like she didn’t know what to say to that.

Asia-chan had that effect sometimes.

She said simple things with so much honest kindness that it took you for surprise even if you knew her. 

Yuuto spoke next.

“She’s right.”

Her voice was calm, level, gentle in the way it had become more often lately.

She had been softer with Yuki-chan as well when the situation called for steadiness instead of teasing or argument.

“You are our friend,” she said. “Whatever they chose to call you doesn’t change who you are.”

Ise-kun gave a rough nod.

“Yeah. Exactly.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, glaring not at Yuki-chan but at the thought of the people from that village he was currently imagining.

“If a bunch of idiots saw a talented kid and decided that made her some kind of bad omen or a freak, that says more about them than you.”

It was blunt and angry.

And because it was Issei, it landed better than it would have from anyone else.

Yuki-chan looked at him, Yuuto, and Asia-chan for a moment in that same uncertain, quiet way she sometimes did when one of us cared about her too openly for her to know where to place it.

Then she lowered her eyes again and said softly, “Thank you.”

Koneko-chan did not speak.

She didn’t need to.

The way she was looking at Yuki-chan said enough.

Quiet, fixed, too attentive for anyone who did not know her to recognize the depth of it.

The sort of attention Koneko-chan reserved for things that mattered to her more than she would ever volunteer aloud.

I filed that away and returned my attention to Yuki-chan.

She drew in a small breath and continued.

“I don’t know exactly when the change began.”

That made Ise-kun frown. “What do you mean?”

Yuki-chan lifted her gaze a little, though not fully to his face.

“I mean I still don’t know what the first true cause was.”

There was something sharp about that sentence.

She didn’t sound angry.

It was something sadder.

Maybe if there had been one clear reason, one obvious beginning, then perhaps she would have something to blame for the cruelty that followed.

Easier to imagine it could have been stopped.

But small villages and paranoid people, human or youkai, were rarely kind enough to make ugliness simple.

“Perhaps it was jealous children,” Yuki said quietly. “Perhaps I frightened one of them, or beat one of them at something too easily, or learned something faster than I should have and they began telling stories because they were jealous or disliked me.”

She paused.

“Or perhaps it was adults. An elder muttering that I was abnormal. A man deciding I was an ill sign as a scapegoat for a bit of bad luck. A woman whispering gossip to her neighbor that something about me was wrong, and the whisper becoming common gossip.”

Yuuto’s gaze darkened.

Koneko-chan was still quietly watching Yuki-chan. 

“And perhaps,” Yuki said, “none of those things would have mattered on their own. But together they became something people couldn’t ignore.”

That was often enough.

Rumors or gossip repeated enough was treated as truth.

Once people in a small community singled out a single person that was it. 

There was almost nothing that person could do to change the view of others who had decided that they were an issue in the place they home.

Yuki’s voice never rose.

Her voice would get thin or waver, but she never became angry or outraged at what happened to her.

“The village’s view of me changed gradually enough that I didn’t understand it while I was inside it,” she said. “People smiled less. Then only when they had to. Then not at all. Praise was replaced with watchfulness. Watchfulness was then replaced with caution. That caution turned into paranoia and stories.”

“The Fox of Ill Omen,” Rias said.

Yuki-chan frowned at the title, but nodded once.

“That was when it began. It wasn’t common at first,” she said. “Not at first. It was just something said where I could not hear. Then where people thought I could hear and did not mind. Then often enough that no one in the village bothered to pretend that they were calling me anymore.”

Ise-kun’s hands clenched.

I could tell he wanted to interrupt again and was only holding himself back because he understood that this part wasn’t something he should touch yet.

Yuki-chan’s eyes had gone distant now, her eyes were locked on the coffee table in the middle of the room.

“I was fortunate,” she said. “Then strange. Strange, then troubling. Troubling, then dangerous.”

She paused, and when she continued her voice was even softer.

“Eventually people no longer needed a reason to believe it. It was simply treated as the truth by everyone in the village.”

I did not miss the way Koneko-chan’s fingers dug into the fabric at her knee.

Or the way now Asia-chan had tears building in the corners of her eyes.

Or the way Rias’s jaw had tightened just slightly.

Or the fact that Ise-kun looked ready to march out into a village that no longer existed and fight someone.

I understood more of what she meant than I wanted to.

I understood being hated and targeted because you were different or because of something you couldn’t control.

It was different for me in multiple ways, but it was still close enough to compare.

The Himejima clan had come for my mother because of that man.

Yuki-chan’s village had turned on her and her family because they were afraid of her.

Yuki-chan continued.

“The treatment worsened over time.”

No one interrupted.

None of us were able to.

“It stopped being whispers,” she said. “It stopped being only distance or looks or stories. People grew bolder. Crueler. If I went out on my own I was harassed or chased off. Children who had been my friends now treated me like a freak. Adults that had been kind to me would no longer speak to me or be seen with me.

Asia-chan made a soft, hurt sound and pressed her hands together tighter.

Yuuto’s expression hardened, though her posture remained controlled.

Xenovia’s eyes narrowed.

“And your parents?” I asked.

The question came out more quietly than I intended.

Yuki-chan looked at me.

“They protected me,” she said.

Her voice was warmer as she said it.

Then her eyes grew colder as she continued.

“They did what they could,” Yuki went on. “For as long as they could. They tried to counter the rumors. Tried to shield me from some of it. Tried to make the village remember what I had been to them before fear became easier.”

A tiny pause.

“It wasn’t enough.”

Yuki’s expression had not broken.

I was beginning to suspect that was not because she did not want to.

It made me wonder if she had become numb to the pain or if she had been taught that if she showed too much weakness or pain in front of others she would be punished.

“The view of me in the village kept worsening,” she said. “And so did the way I was treated.”

Ise-kun finally spoke again, low and tight.

“And nobody stopped it.”

Yuki-chan’s eyes moved to him.

“Some tried, for a little while, but that ended quickly. So no, no one stopped it.”

That made something inside me curl unpleasantly.

Of course no one stopped it.

There were always people who noticed what was being done and told themselves that someone else would do something, or that it wasn’t their problem.

There were always people who pitied quietly and did nothing.

And there were people who disliked cruelty in the abstract, but accepted it once enough others around them had agreed on inflicting cruelty on others.

Yuki-chan lowered her gaze.

“It came to a head,” she said, “on the day my parents and I were killed.”

I saw Rias stop breathing for half a beat.

Asia-chan’s hands flew to her mouth.

Yuuto went rigid.

Xenovia’s arms tightened across her chest.

Koneko-chan did not move at all.

Ise-chan looked like he had been struck.

Yuki-chan kept her posture straight and her voice measured, or at least she tried.

Her voice broke for the first time since she had started speaking.

“T-They died on the day I was reincarnated as a Devil.” She said.

She stopped there.

She took one shuddering breath before recomposing herself.

No one tried to force anything more from her.

We all understood the fact that the next memory she shared would be more painful than the rest had been.

And none of us wanted to hurry her there.

I watched her for a long moment.

I wanted to comfort her, but I knew that if she stopped talking she may not be able to continue.

And because I knew that someone had to ask the question plainly, I spoke.

“What happened that day, Yuki?”

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