- Hey guys, so this is where the fun begins. Authors Out. -
I woke to the sound of my alarm pretending to be a reasonable suggestion and silenced it like it owed me money. Morning in Kuoh tasted like laundry detergent and cheap chalk. The sun was a smug little tyrant climbing over the school roofs, and the crosswalks were a tide of blazers and bookbags, everybody moving with the sleepwalking conviction of ants who thought GPA was God. For everyone else, it was just another school day. For me, it was camouflage. I ironed my uniform like a ritual, tied my tie straight, slid my expression into "inoffensive wallpaper." Teachers liked me for being quiet, classmates liked me for not being an ass, and the occasional cluster of girls liked the illusions they were willing to paint on silence and broad shoulders. If only they knew that under the pressed shirt and polite nods, a dragon's heart kept time against my ribs like a war drum wrapped in velvet.
[Keep your breath even. Calm body, calm aura. You are a ripple in a pond, not a stone.]
Mentally, I nodded. Exhale. Inhale. Sink the pulse. A ripple in a pond. A dragon pretending to be a goldfish in a school hallway. I slid into my seat just as the bell screamed mercy and the homeroom teacher did the ceremonial "good morning" dance teachers perform when they've long since made peace with the fact teenagers are legally sentient fog.
"Yo, Hyoudou!" Matsuda's voice arrived less like a greeting and more like a wardrobe malfunction, followed by his hand slapping my shoulder as if he was trying to wake a steak. Motohama hovered behind him with the measured dignity of a man who believed his glasses granted him diplomatic immunity from common sense.
"Big day, dude," Matsuda said, vibrating like a cheap massage chair. "Joint PE with Class 2-A. I heard—" He lowered his voice for dramatic effect. "—we might be near the third-year gym slots too."
Motohama cleared his throat with scientific gravitas. "Correlation suggests heightened probability of notable upperclass presence within visual—"
"Japanese," I said.
"Hot people might be there," he translated, unflapped.
I looked at him and let a small smirk ghost over my mouth. "Still running your little census?"
"It's data," he said, deadly serious. "Civilizations rise and fall on accurate recordkeeping."
"Yeah," I said. "This one's gonna fall."
They laughed; I didn't. It was a game to them. For me, it was a mask. The dumb jokes and half-whispered dreams ran interference, keeping them from asking the only questions that mattered: why my hands moved like I'd memorized violence, why I never joined a club, why I always seemed a fraction of a second away from listening to something no one else could hear.
Classes blurred into each other: history vomiting dates, math sharpening knives out of letters, literature pretending humanity could be found by diagramming it. I answered just enough questions to be worth a nod, never enough to draw a spotlight. Out of the corner of my eye, familiar faces cut bright shapes out of the school day: Rias with that effortless gravity that made other people's eyes orbit; Akeno with a smile like a secret she'd already decided not to tell; Kiba radiating that knightly politeness you could use as a coaster. They were all players in a story I already knew. But this time, I wasn't the fool waiting for the trap to spring on his neck. This time, I'd walked the whole board alone in the dark and counted the teeth on every gear.
Lunch smelt like soy sauce and ambition. A couple of girls from another class waved as they passed my desk. "Hyoudou-kun, you're so serious," one of them giggled, as if seriousness were a cute shirt I'd tried on. "You should smile more," another teased. I gave them a small, neat smile—the kind you can fold back into your pocket afterward. They blushed like I'd done a magic trick.
[You attract attention without trying. A shame your heart beats for discipline instead of chaos.]
Not my fault people write fanfiction on a poker face, I thought back.
[Hmph. Presence is a weapon. Learn to sheathe it as well as draw it.]
Sure, Sun Tzu with scales. I unwrapped my lunch like I was arming a bomb and ate like a monk.
After school, Matsuda and Motohama peeled off toward the arcade, plotting the world's dumbest heist—time theft. I drifted the opposite direction, letting the school noise fade until the city settled into the low, pleasant hum of commuters and crows. The bridge waited where it always did, concrete spine over traffic with many color passing by. Canon's first act liked this place. So did stalkers. So did monsters.
I leaned on the railing halfway across. The sunset bled reds into gold, pooling on the road like God had knocked over a paint can. The breeze carried sakura and exhaust and something else: attention. A gaze, soft as silk and sharp as a razor hidden in that silk.
"Beautiful evening, isn't it?"
"Depends who's asking."
Footsteps ghosted closer, each one adjusted for a boy's ego and a predator's patience. When I turned, there she was: Yuuma Amano. Black hair that fell into place like it had a choreographer, violet eyes too old for the act, posture trained, smile calibrated in a lab.
"I've seen you around, Hyoudou-kun. You're… different."
"People keep telling me that," I said. "I'm beginning to think it's true."
[Careful, partner. That one reeks of fallen feathers.]
I know.
She closed the distance a fraction, confidence like perfume. "You don't talk much, do you? Kinda mysterious. I like that."
"You'd get bored," I said, voice smooth as glass. "I'm exciting in the same way unplugged toasters are exciting."
Something flickered in her eyes, a hairline crack in stage glass. She reached out and brushed my sleeve, and the air trembled just a little—a tiny earthquake in a theater set. Beneath the perfect-girl mask, a static prickle of malice threaded through the evening like a note only dogs could hear.
I didn't move, didn't flinch, didn't blush. I let the silence sit there like a third person on our date. Most boys would be begging for her number by now, choking on compliments they'd practiced in the mirror. She could see none of that in me. The hunger she expected wasn't there. There was just a lake with something very, very large sleeping on the bottom.
[She is strong for a lower fallen. But you have trained beyond her tier already.]
Yeah. She doesn't know I could end this in seconds.
Still, I didn't. Because I wanted to see what she'd do when the candy machine didn't take her coins.
Her smile faltered for a heartbeat. There it was: doubt, quick and real. "You really are strange, Hyoudou-kun," she murmured. "Most boys—"
"Most boys," I said, pushing off the railing, "aren't worth the trouble."
She laughed softly, but her eyes didn't do it with her. "Maybe you are."
"Maybe," I said, and walked away.
Her voice followed me, feather-light and edged. Promise and threat are cousins who share a toothbrush.
That night, high above the city, black wings unfurled against the moon. A black-haired, big boobed and voluptuous black feathered woman. Yuuma Amano molted into Raynare, her plump lips pressed thin, mind running drafts. "He's not like the others," she told the air. "No fear. No heat. Just… stillness." Her hand ghosted over her mouth as if the lie might still be smudged there, frowned when it wasn't.
"Tch. He's a tool." But conviction didn't sit on her tongue right.
Streetlights painted my walk home in islands of white. My bag felt light. My shadow looked like it might have teeth.
[You shifted her footing.]
I know. She'll bring friends next time.
[Good. You need better practice dummies.]
I snorted under my breath. "You're very nurturing."
[I am the pinnacle of childcare, boy.]
At home, I slipped out of my uniform like shedding a borrowed skin. Mom called from the kitchen, warm and sweet and ordinary, and a second later Dad's joke arrived late and still somehow on time. I ate curry and asked about their days and told them nothing about bridges with knives for smiles. Later, the house dropped into that precious hush where every creak had a name. I lay on the floor of my room and stared up at the ceiling until my eyes stopped pretending to be tired. Then I slid the closet open and let my hand rest on the wrapped length of Ashdod. Even like this, buried in cloth and beneath plaster and propriety, it radiated a sleeping tiger's patience.
[Your suppression has improved.]
Thanks. I've been practicing the ripple thing.
[You are a pond with a volcano under it. Do not forget the volcano.]
Hard to. The volcano leaves scorch marks.
Nights were for the other life. I slipped out the back, hopped the fence so softly even the fence didn't notice, and jogged a route through empty lots and silent alleys to the warehouse district. Inside a forgotten building that smelled like oil and secrets, I built a world where I could be what I was. Chalk lines on the concrete for footwork grids. Stacks of sandbags for strikes. A battered metal locker that held a change of clothes, wraps, and a first aid kit that had opinions about my life choices.
I rolled my shoulders, wrapped my hands, and breathed in like the night was oxygen and forgiveness. The first strike was always to remind my body it belonged to me. The next ninety nine were to teach it I meant it.
Lunges and pivots until my thighs sent complaint letters to HR. Thrusts that stopped on a coin, sweeps that ended exactly where they meant to and not an inch further. The lance whispered under the cloth when I lifted it, weight settling into my palms like a handshake from an old friend who'd once tried to kill me and gotten over it. Flame crawled along the shaft in thin lines, their light soft and hungry.
"Easy," I said, not to the weapon, not to the fire, but to myself.
[Anchor.]
I dug my heels in like they could sprout roots through concrete, let my breath stack in my ribs the way Ddraig had drilled: inhale to gather, exhale to cut. Ashdod's flame answered restraint with shape. A clean arc tore a chalk line into a blackened wall. A precise thrust stitched a hole through three hanging sandbags and let all of them realize it at once.
Sweat ran down my back in hot paths. I welcomed it. Pain shook my forearms; I argued back with better structure. By the time I hit the cooldown bell in my head, my lungs had that good ache and my hands felt like they'd been having a conversation with fire and come out friends.
On the way home, a sound stitched itself into the night—a hiss, wet and off-key, the kind of noise sin makes when it forgets to wear shoes. I froze in the alley, felt rather than heard the aura. Foul. Hungry. Familiar in the worst way.
The thing stepped into the spill of the streetlight with the embarrassment of somebody who'd lost an argument with a mirror: a Stray Devil wearing a human shape like clothes stolen from a scarecrow. Too many joints. Not enough mercy behind the eyes. It grinned at me with a mouth that had taken a class in grinning and flunked.
"Lost?" it slurred.
"No," I said. "Found."
It lunged with the messy confidence of a bar fight. I slid left, let it commit to the wrong space, and tapped the back of its knee with my heel. It stumbled. I drove a palm into its sternum with just enough strenght to remind its bones they were rented.
It hit a dumpster and dented a lesson into it. The thing unhinged a smaller thing from inside its face and screamed. The kind of sound you have to sign for when it's delivered.
[Efficient.]
Thanks. I'm trying not to paint the alley.
It slashed, sloppy-fast; I met it with forearms and angles, kept the power off the grid and on the hands. The dragon wanted out. The saint wanted in. I kept both on short leashes. One beat, two, three—timing became a language. When it overextended the third time, I spoke fluently: inside the guard, hook behind elbow, twist, shoulder folds like origami. It sprawled. I pinned the wrist, boot to tricep, other arm in the crook—click—joint says uncle.
It writhed. I didn't kill it. Not here. Not with neighbors who watered their plants on Tuesdays and kids who chalked hopscotch universes on this concrete Saturdays. I pushed aura down, spoke through my teeth: "Run." Something in my voice convinced it that was the wisest idea it had ever had. It left a trail of dark apologies nobody would see.
[Mercy.]
Not mercy. Optics.
[Hnh.]
The next afternoon, the bridge again, because of course stories love choreography. The air tasted like static and first dates. I parked my elbows on the railing and watched the traffic do its best impression of a race. Yuuma drifted into frame like a cinematographer adored her, smile already cut to fit the scene. We did our lines, all the expected ones, and then she deviated what she thought was imperceptibly: a softer look, a hand almost but not quite reaching mine, a question laced into the silence—will you play?
I let the silence swallow it. She blinked, misstepped, recovered with the grace of a professional. "There's a new café near the station," she said. "You should come with me this weekend."
"That so?" I said. "You shouldn't skip your shift." Her eyes went flat for a frame. Gotcha. She hadn't mentioned a shift. I knew because I'd already trailed her to the dead drops she thought looked like convenience stores.
She pivoted. "Oh? I told you? I must have." Smile smile smile.
"It happens," I said. "Memories are liars."
She tried a different angle: vulnerability. "Can I be honest? You… make me nervous."
"Honesty's good," I said. "But you're better at other things."
Something like admiration flickered across her face before the mask smothered it. She was good. Most hunters were. But she'd been sent to catch a boy whose blood sang to knives. Instead, she'd found a young man who'd spent most of his years turning those songs into metronomes.
She didn't press the invite. I didn't accept it. We parted with the grace of fencers ending a bout that hadn't actually started.
Later that night, three rooftops over, Raynare hissed at two silhouettes. Kalawarna listened with her arms folded, eyes hooded, sharp yellow set in blue hair that caught moonlight and threw it back like an accusation. Dohnaseek bored holes in the street with his glare by virtue of being constitutionally humorless. "He's not like the others," Raynare said. "He doesn't bite." Dohnaseek, in a voice that could flatten toast: "Then use a different bait." Kalawarna smiled without warmth. "Or a different hook."
[They are not fools.]
No. But they still think I'm a kid with good posture. Let them.
At school, the rumor currents shifted a millimeter. Akeno's eyes found me twice where once had been enough. Kiba offered a deeper nod. Rias's gaze crossed mine like a fingertip across the surface of a cup—to test the temperature, not to drink. I kept my expression mild and my aura asleep. The day moved in its polite, murderous way. After club hours, I stopped by the archery range and watched the club captain correct a freshman's grip with the kind of patience that steals time and replaces it with skill. When he glanced my way, I smiled and clapped once, meaning it.
On the way home, on purpose, I took a street that had just enough shadow to suggest a plot twist. It obliged. A flicker of black—Dohnaseek's spear of light kissed the asphalt where I'd been standing an eighth of a second ago. I sighed, rolled my shoulders.
"Evening," I said to the air. "If this is your sales pitch, it needs work."
He stepped out, wings unfurling like a particularly judgmental coat. "You will come," he said, "or you will be carried."
"Bold opener," I said. "What's step two?"
Kalawarna's voice landed behind me like velvet over a knife. "Step two is whether you can walk after step one."
Raynare landed last, smile sharp, eyes fever-bright, mask shed. "Surprise."
"No," I said. "Telegraphed."
Dohnaseek threw the next spear with intent. I slid; the spear edited a mailbox. Kalawarna drew a blade of light that sizzled against the night; I answered with nothing in my hands and the promise of everything. Raynare watched me fight and recalculated, then recalculated the recalculation.
I didn't draw Ashdod. I didn't Boost. I let the years I'd forged do the talking: footwork that wrote short stories about not being where knives expected you, hands that made agreements with wrists and elbows and leverage. Dohnaseek left the conversation with a dislocated shoulder and a new respect for sidewalks. Kalawarna's blade sang; my forearms rang; sparks outlined decisions. Raynare finally entered, feathers sharpening to intent, light blooming into a spear that remembered saints.
I stepped inside it and smiled. "No."
Her arm stuttered without permission. Confusion is the oldest magic. I took her wrist, redirected the spear so it learned to love concrete, and set her gently but firmly against a wall that caught her breath for her. "You'll come back," I said. "Bring more. Bring better. I'll be here."
"Who are you?" she whispered, eyes wide not with fear, but with insulted curiosity.
"Just a man," I said, and left them holding the rest of the sentence.
[Risky.]
Calculated, I thought as I moved. They needed to see a shape, not the shadow behind it. Let them tell themselves a story where I'm a martial prodigy with good ankles. Let them leave Ashdod's name out of their mouths. Let them tell the devils I'm interesting but not an emergency.
[Hnh. You lead the hunt to a different trail. Not clumsy.]
Praise? From you?
[Do not faint.]
At home, I rinsed blood that wasn't mine off my knuckles and memorized the exact temperature where the water turned too hot to stand. Dad asked from the living room if I wanted to watch a variety show with him. I said yes and laughed at all the right beats. Mom asked if I'd like more tea. I said please and thank you and meant both. I went to bed with metal in my bones and tenderness in my throat.
Two days later, the student council posted a reminder about curfew and safety. The archery captain nodded at me again in the hall—deeper. Akeno's smile curved, sharper and more honest. In the old building after last bell, the Occult Research Club stirred like a chessboard whose pieces were tired of pretending to be carved wood. Rias stood at the window with her back to the room, and the sunset lit her hair like a promise other people demand to be kept.
I walked home under that promise and counted steps. At my door, I paused long enough to listen for the absence of wrongness—the house hummed right. Inside, I exchanged shoes for slippers and apocalypse for affection. After dinner, after dishes, after a quiet joke about Dad's eternal war with the garden hose, I stepped into my room and set the world down on the floor before I picked up the lance. Ashdod's flame murmured, distant and content, like a predator that has eaten and can afford to be polite.
"Soon," I whispered.
[Soon.]
I was seventeen. Second year. The soft edge of the timeline had sharpened into a blade. The devils had started watching more curiously, almost recklessly. The fallen had decided I was worth making choices about. The town had shifted a degree out of true. Under my skin, a dragon paced. In my hands, a saint's answer to dragons slept with one eye open. In my chest, something that had once been only human learned to beat in time with a's roar.
In the morning, the bell would ring and students would swarm the gates like ants and the sun would burn too bright for anyone who hadn't had coffee. I would iron my shirt, tie my tie, and wear the mask.
The storm would come anyway. But I am the stillness before it.
[Enjoy it, boy.]
I do it already.
[Good. I want them to understand what they squandered when they believed you were ordinary.]
Then let's teach politely.
[Politely,] he agreed, and the laugh under the word was an avalanche that had promised the mountain it would wait a little longer.
That night I dreamed of the bridge, empty and clean, and of a hand reaching for mine that never quite touched, and of fire that did not consume but refined. In the dream, I stood in all the places I had stood these last years—the desert, the dojo, the chalked warehouse, the school hallway—and in each of them I was not waiting. I was choosing. When I woke, the morning had a different kind of light in it, the kind you get the day before a thunderhead arrives to negotiate with the horizon.
I packed my bag, slid the lance back into its secret place, and left the house with a kiss on Mom's cheek and a "later" to Dad that meant more than one thing. On the way to school, I bought a canned coffee that tasted like if a robot tried to remember love and almost got it right. At the gate, Matsuda waved both arms like semaphore and shouted something about PE again; I shook my head and kept walking. Motohama adjusted his glasses like maybe if he got the angle right the universe would confess its crimes.
By first period, the rumor mill had thrown sparks against the day: strange lights, a noise in an alley, a foreigner with blue hair seen on a rooftop, a boy on the bridge who didn't act scared when fear asked him politely. By second period, the teachers were reminding everyone about safety and responsibility in a tone that meant they'd asked the police to drive by a little more. By lunch, Kiba asked if I'd ever consider joining a sports club and I said I was better at independent study and he laughed like that made sense to him. By last bell, the sky had gone the color of a bruise thinking about its life choices.
On the walk home, the wind changed its mind. The stillness pressed its palm to my chest and waited for me to breathe into it. I did. Somewhere above me, I felt wings that didn't belong to birds. Somewhere ahead, a redhead turned her head a degree. Somewhere behind, a priest sharpened words into weapons and called it righteousness. Somewhere far away, an old desert remembered my footprints and warmed them again out of habit.
I put one foot down. Then the other. The street accepted both and made no comment.
I was done being dragged into stories. If they wanted me in this one, they could come meet me where I stood.
[Then stand.]
I will.