Issei
By the third morning, I had learned an important truth about training camps.
They were lies.
Not the training part. That was real. Horribly real. The lie was the word camp, because camp sounded temporary and outdoorsy and maybe even fun if you were the kind of freak who liked sweat and bugs and inspirational suffering.
What we were doing was not a camp.
It was an organized assault on every weakness I had.
I stood in front of a low worktable outside with a potato in one hand and all the dignity of a condemned man in the other.
Akeno-senpai stood opposite me, smiling like a devil who had discovered a new favorite branch of torture. Which, to be fair, she probably had.
“Again, Issei-kun.”
“I’m going to die because of vegetables.”
“No,” she said sweetly. “You’re going to improve because of vegetables.”
“That’s not better.”
Beside me, Asia-san was already on her third potato, she had joined in my training saying it was to practice her fine control. Her control is slow but steady, her brow knit in concentration. Every now and then she would blush for no reason at all, remember why I was doing this, then blush even harder and nearly ruin her own cut.
It was weirdly impressive.
I glared down at my own potato.
This was supposed to be training.
Demonic-power precision training.
Layer-removal training.
Perversion-as-functional-magic training, for my dreams.
Akeno-senpai had leaned into that last part so aggressively that I no longer knew where my embarrassment ended and her curriculum began.
“Don’t just cut,” she said. “Imagine removing.”
“That is what peeling is!”
“That isn’t what I said.”
I looked up.
Her smile widened.
I imagined all of Akeno-san’s clothes being torn away from her.
Exposing everything.
“Yes,” she said, reading my face far too easily. “That thought exactly. Use it.”
Asia-san made a tiny noise that sounded like a prayer for my soul.
I gritted my teeth, focused on the potato, and let a thin edge of demonic power gather against my fingers. I thought of beautiful girls. The trick wasn’t strength. The second I used too much, the whole thing became destruction instead of separation.
And the shape I wanted wasn’t destruction.
It was stripping away what covered the thing underneath.
Which, yes, would normally be a horrifying sentence to have in your head first thing in the morning, but I am me.
My power flickered.
The skin of the potato peeled away in a cleaner line than yesterday, curling down in one long strip before breaking near the end.
Akeno-senpai hummed approvingly. “Better.”
I stared at the potato.
Then at her.
“I hate how hard this is.”
“You hate many things.”
“That’s not advice.”
“Ara. Is my teaching not being appreciated?.”
I would have argued, but across the yard Yuuto-san called my name.
“Issei-kun.”
That tone meant I was needed for something painful.
Wonderful.
I dropped the half-peeled potato and trudged toward the sparring space where Yuuto-san and Koneko-chan were already waiting.
Yuuto-san had a wooden practice sword resting across one shoulder. Koneko-chan had nothing because Koneko-chan didn’t need weapons to humiliate someone.
“Why are both of you here?” I asked.
Yuuto-san smiled a little. “So the lessons don’t let you become complacent.”
“I don’t like what that means.”
“You won’t.”
Koneko-chan cracked her knuckles once. “Move.”
There were many bad ideas in the world.
Trying to impress both of them at once was near the top.
By now my body had learned enough to stop doing the stupidest things immediately. My stance with the practice sword still wasn’t pretty, but it was less openly offensive than it had been on the first day. Yuuto-san said so once, which was somehow worse than if she’d kept insulting me.
Because then I had to admit I’d improved.
Not enough.
But some.
The first exchange with Yuuto-san went better than expected.
That was the problem.
I got hopeful.
She corrected that quickly.
“Don’t chase my wrists,” she said after knocking my sword wide with one neat turn of her own. “Read the line.”
“You keep saying that like it means one thing.”
“It means several things.”
“That’s terrible teaching.”
“It’s fine teaching.”
Then she stepped back and nodded once to Koneko-chan.
Betrayal.
Koneko-chan came in low, fast, and without sympathy. My sword was still up for Yuuto-san’s range and angle, not hers, so the first thing she did was punch straight through that assumption and fold me at the middle.
I stumbled, regained my footing, and got kicked in the thigh for the effort.
“Koneko-chan!”
“…Too slow...”
“That wasn’t slow, that was sabotage!”
Yuuto-san, traitor that she was, said, “You’re supposed to adapt when the opponent changes.”
“Yes, I know that now!”
“You should have known that before,” Koneko-chan said.
I hate this peerage.
I also hate that they were making sense.
Training with the two of them like this forced me to stop thinking in one line at a time. Yuuto-san stretched my attention, made me watch spacing, rhythm, reach. Koneko-chan crushed that spacing as soon as I started relying on it. Yuuto-san punished stiffness. Koneko-chan punished hesitation. Between them, my choices became cleaner mostly because all the dirty, sloppy ones kept getting beaten out of me.
By the time we finally broke, I was sweating hard enough to soak the back of my shirt and breathing like the mountain itself had decided to sit on my chest.
Koneko-chan looked fresh.
Yuuto-san looked mildly warmed up.
I wanted justice.
Instead I got water and another round of training.
While I bent over with my hands on my knees pretending not to be near death, I caught sight of Kusari-san off to the side of the clearing.
She was working alone this time.
Not fully alone—Buchou was watching from the veranda, and Akeno-san drifted in and out at different points—but the spellwork itself was hers.
No dramatic circles. No huge impact. Just that strange, precise style she had where it looked like she was trying to make the world slightly worse in exactly the right place.
I’d seen some of it yesterday.
Today it looked… cleaner.
Still not obvious.
But cleaner.
She set something on the ground with a flick of violet-dark light and stepped back. For a second nothing happened. Then Akeno-san tossed a pebble at the marked point, and the pebble bent—not much, just enough to make the flight path feel wrong before it hit the training post a little harder than it should have.
I straightened.
That was new.
Kusari-san’s hand rose immediately to the center of her chest, pressing flat there for the space of one breath before dropping.
Not hand pain this time.
Something else.
Yuuto-san noticed me looking.
“You can ask her later,” she said.
I blinked. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were obvious.”
This peerage was a prison and everyone inside it was psychic.
We broke for lunch after that, and the house settled into the kind of tired midday rhythm that made it feel almost domestic instead of militarized.
Almost.
Kusari
Stillmark behaved better when I stopped treating it like a spell that wanted to be seen.
That had been the final answer.
Not more power.
Not finer shaping in the line of Baleful Bolt.
Not a cleaner strike.
A mark.
A stain of wrongness.
A place where timing bent badly and later harm landed more truly.
By the third day, I could set it with enough consistency that Buchou no longer watched every attempt as if it might explode backward into failure. By the fourth, I could place it faster. By the fifth, I had learned which surfaces held it best and which kinds of motion fed it most cleanly.
The backlash remained what it had been the night it was born:
coldness spreading outward from the center of my chest, followed by a numbness that sat under the breastbone and in the ribs like winter pressing from inside.
Smaller than Baleful Bolt.
Smaller than most of what I could do.
Manageable.
That made it dangerous in its own way.
“Again,” Rias— no, Buchou said from the shaded veranda.
I did not look back at her.
The marked training stones had been arranged in a half-circle across the clearing, with wooden posts, loose boards, and practice targets set between them. The task was simple in wording and irritating in practice: place a mark where another person would commit, not merely where they stood.
I watched the route Toujou-san had taken across the clearing in the last drill.
Shift. Pause. Forward burst. Impact line.
Not her feet. Her certainty.
I set Stillmark into the dirt.
It held.
“Yuuto-chan,” Buchou said.
Kiba-san moved before the word had fully settled.
She came in from the side, sword in hand, then changed direction halfway through the approach. The first angle missed the mark. The second crossed it.
The moment her foot cut through the edge of the placed sigil, her timing shifted by less than a breath.
That was enough.
Her follow-up strike landed into the post with a cleaner line than it should have, wood cracking where a glancing hit might have only bruised it.
Yuuto-san lowered the sword and looked at the broken edge of the post. “That’s unpleasant.”
“That is the intention,” I said.
Hijema-senpai, reclining with wholly unjustified elegance against one of the veranda supports, laughed softly. “My. Such a vicious little thing.”
Buchou looked pleased.
That was more unsettling than the praise itself.
“It works,” she said.
“Yes.”
There. That quick answer again.
Hijema-senpai's gaze sharpened only slightly. “What’s the cost?”
“Something small.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
I felt the cold under my ribs receding already, but not gone.
“Numbness,” I said. “From the chest. Then cold. It fades quickly.”
Rias nodded once. “Acceptable.”
Hijema-senpai tilted her head. “Better than half crippling yourself every time you want to make a point.”
That line slid in under the skin cleanly.
I did not answer it.
Not because it was wrong.
Because it was.
Buchou let the silence stand and gestured toward the training field again. “You’ll keep it. But you’re not allowed to lean on it as a replacement for judgment.”
“Yes, Buchou.”
This answer landed better.
Not because it was slower.
Because I meant it before it left my mouth.
Kiba-san turned the sword in one hand and looked from the damaged post back to me. “You could use it to set my line.”
I looked at her.
She clarified without changing tone. “In a real match. If I know where you’re placing the mark, I can attack through it instead of after it.”
That had already occurred to me.
Hearing her say it anyway made the thought more real.
“Yes,” I said. “That would work.”
Kiba-san’s mouth shifted by almost nothing. Satisfaction perhaps. Or simply recognition.
From the veranda, Hyoudou-san made a groaning sound from where Koneko-chan had just thrown him flat again.
“I hate watching everyone else discover useful things.”
Toujou-san stood over him. “…Discover harder...”
“Cruel!”
“Cute,” Hijema-senpai muttered.
The house had been doing this for three days now.
Folding us into repeated shapes until the patterns stopped being accidental.
Morning training.
Midday study or drills.
Afternoon individual work.
Meals.
Baths.
Corridors at night.
Doors opening and closing.
Tea appearing without request.
People learning who took which turn too quickly, who favored which side when tired, who went quiet when hurting, who became louder when frightened.
Dangerous.
The dangerous part was not that the patterns existed.
It was that I had begun to anticipate them.
It was a problem, but not one I could do anything about now.
I took my place beside the veranda for the next round of drills and accepted water from Asia-san without needing to be asked whether I wanted it. That only occurred to me after the cup was already in my hand.
Later, when Hijema-san called out to Yuuto-san from the kitchen entrance and Kiba-san answered without looking up from where she was adjusting Hyoudou-san’s grip.
Yuuto-san was kinder than Hyoudou-san realized.
I stilled.
Not Kiba.
Yuuto.
Again.
And this time I did not notice until the whole thought had already formed.
The realization sat beneath the cooling aftermath of Stillmark like another smaller chill.
I drank the water without tasting it.
Yuuto
By the fourth day, the house no longer felt like a temporary training site.
It felt like a pressure chamber.
That was not inherently bad. Pressure showed where structure existed and where it failed.
Issei-kun failed loudly.
Asia-san failed quietly.
Koneko-chan failed almost not at all and therefore found new things to be severe about.
Akeno-san seemed to fail only when it amused her.
Rias-buchou failed privately, which meant nobody was permitted to name it unless she did first.
Kusari-san failed in a way I found more interesting.
She solved problems by turning them sideways.
Most people, when told that a high-cost spell was too expensive, would try to use less power. She had invented a different curse instead. Not weaker. Different.
That was intelligent.
Also alarming.
We were taking a short break on the fifth afternoon when I found her alone near the side path below the bath structure, crouched by one of the old stone edging walls with one hand pressed lightly against the center of her chest.
Not injured.
Not panicked.
Just waiting for the backlash to finish fading.
I stopped a few paces away so she would hear me before I spoke.
“Kusari-san.”
She looked up immediately. Her ears had already been tracking me.
Not startled.
Never startled, if she could help it.
“Kiba-san.”
I leaned one shoulder against the post at the edge of the path. “Your new spell? Stillmark, right?”
“Yes.”
“How long does it last?”
“The mark or the backlash?”
“The backlash.”
She considered for a second. “Less than most. Long enough to notice. Not long enough to prevent continued use.”
That sounded exactly like something she would accept as reasonable even if she should not.
I looked past her toward the clearing below where Issei-kun was arguing with Koneko-chan again.
“You changed the kind of problem you were solving.”
That got her attention.
She stood slowly, more out of habit than because she needed to.
“Yes.”
“Most people would have tried to cast a smaller bolt.”
“I did. It was incorrect.”
I smiled a little. “That sounds like you.”
For just a second, something almost amused crossed her face.
Then it was gone again.
I let the silence stretch, because she handled it better when it was not treated like interrogation.
Finally I said, “Stillmark seems well fitted for our team. It should work well with most of our fighting styles.”
She looked at me for a moment. Then nodded once. “Yes, I know.”
The answer was not rude.
Only direct.
I appreciated that.
“So you were already thinking about combinations.”
“Yes.”
That should not have pleased me as much as it did.
Perhaps because it made her feel less like a strange weapon Buchou had acquired and more like someone actually adapting to us.
Or perhaps because she had begun, however reluctantly, to think in terms of ours rather than only Buchou’s orders.
“Then try it with me tomorrow,” I said.
A small pause.
Then: “Yes.”
Not as fast as before.
That seemed better.
I pushed away from the post and glanced down toward the clearing again. Issei-kun had somehow gotten hold of another potato despite not being anywhere near the kitchen. Akeno-san was definitely responsible.
“I should rescue him before he humiliates himself in a completely new category.”
Kusari-san followed my gaze.
“That seems optimistic.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
She blinked at the sound, as if she had not fully expected it from me.
Then I left her there with the mountain air and the fading numbness of her new spell, and as I walked back down the path I found myself thinking that she looked less temporary by the day.
That was probably good.
Probably.
Asia
By the fifth evening, I knew where everyone would be before I saw them.
Not every minute.
Not every room.
Just the general shape of them.
Rias-san in the main room or with Akeno-san when planning.
Akeno-san in the kitchen or beside Rias-san.
Koneko-chan near whoever she had decided to keep an eye on without saying so.
Yuuto-san wherever she was most useful.
Issei-san wherever the noise was.
Kusari-san in the places between everyone else.
That last part kept making my chest tighten in a way I didn’t know how to explain.
After dinner, I found her in the side hall near the storage shelves, folding towels that had already been folded neatly enough not to need help.
“Kusari-san?”
She looked up. “Argento-san.”
“You don’t have to do that alone.”
Her eyes went to the towels, then back to me.
“I am aware.”
That should have ended the conversation.
It did not.
I stepped farther into the hall and picked up the next towel anyway. “Then I’ll help.”
She watched me for a second. Then, instead of refusing, handed me the one nearest her.
That felt bigger than it probably should have.
We folded in silence for a little while.
Then, because three days of wanting to ask had worn down my patience, I said, “Does the new spell really hurt less?”
She did not pretend not to know what I meant.
“Yes.”
“That’s good.”
“It is.”
I folded the towel again even though it did not need it. “I was worried.”
The words slipped out before I could make them softer.
Kusari-san went still.
Not because she seemed frightened. Because of something else.
I made myself keep going.
“When you used the big spell before, it looked like it hurt so much. And I know you said it was manageable, but…” I looked down at the towel in my hands. “Manageable doesn’t always mean small.”
The silence afterward felt long enough to regret.
Then she said quietly, “No.”
I looked up.
Her expression was composed, but not closed all the way.
“Manageable does not mean small,” she repeated.
That should not have felt as honest as it did.
I smiled before I meant to.
“So this one is better?”
“Yes.”
A tiny pause.
Then she added, “You were correct to ask.”
That was, perhaps, the closest thing to reassurance I had ever received from her.
I held onto it carefully.
A few minutes later, when we carried the last stack into the linen room together, she said, without looking directly at me, “Thank you, Asia-san.”
I stopped moving.
Not Argento.
Asia.
The use of my first name was so clean and so quiet that for a second I wondered whether I had imagined it.
Then she looked at me, realized what she had done, and the room changed around the mistake.
Her ears flattened and her eyes held something close to shock for a small moment before she corrected herself.
I opened my mouth.
She turned away first and set the towels down with exact care.
I did not say anything.
Not because I wanted to embarrass her.
Because I understood enough now to know that if she had said it without thinking, it probably mattered more than if she had chosen it on purpose.
So I only smiled and said, very softly, “You’re welcome.”
Kusari
That had been a mistake.
Not because the name was wrong to use.
Because it had come naturally.
I stood in my room later that night with my hands braced lightly against the edge of the basin and looked at my own reflection as if it might explain when the shift had begun.
Yuuto.
Asia.
Rias.
Koneko.
The names had been coming more often.
More often.
Without the formal distance that should have remained safer.
Only in thought.
Only in internal slips, where no one else would know.
Until tonight.
Asia.
I closed my eyes once and let out a slow breath.
I knew that I needed to keep my distance. That I should only trust them so far.
That they weren’t the first peerage to treat me well. And that it could change as quickly as it had before.
The mountain house had done this.
Or the training had.
Or the repetition.
Or the shared meals.
Or Koneko sitting too near in the bath.
Or Yuuto treating Stillmark like something that belonged in a formation instead of something strange.
Or Rias speaking honestly in the dark clearing.
Or Issei being impossible and loud and somehow still earnest after all of it.
Or Asia cautiously checking on me without expecting anything in return.
Or Akeno poking fun but still watching and refusing to let things slide when it would be easier to ignore.
Perhaps all of them.
That was worse.
Because it meant there was no single point to fix.
I lifted my head and met my own eyes in the mirror.
Tomorrow would still begin at dawn.
The training would still continue.
Issei would still fail and improve at once.
Akeno would still poke at his perversion with indecent delight.
Koneko would still break him apart where necessary.
Yuuto would still look at battle lines and people as if both could be corrected into something cleaner.
Asia would still knock too softly and bring help without pretending it was anything else.
Rias would still carry the house around herself like a queen building structure over pressure.
And I—
I was already thinking of them that way.
Not titles.
Not ranks.
Not functions.
Specific people.
That knowledge sat colder than any backlash ever had.
Because a spell was useful.
This was not.
I turned away from the mirror before the thought could finish deepening and crossed to the bed. The room, at least, had not changed much. Still spare. Still too easy to leave.
And yet when I lay down, the house no longer felt borrowed in the same way it had at the beginning.
That was the thing I was the most worried about.