Issei
By the time classes ended, I had learned three things.
First: Kusari-san was even harder to read in a normal classroom than she was in the clubroom.
Second: she was somehow worse for my heart when she was sitting one row over in a school uniform and pretending not to notice when idiots like Matsuda and Motohama nearly broke their necks looking at her.
And third—
I was starting to get annoyed by how often she said I’m fine when she obviously wasn’t.
I slung my bag over one shoulder and headed with Asia toward the old school building, trying not to think too hard about the fact that I already knew Kusari-san would probably be there before me.
She was.
Of course she was.
When I pushed open the clubroom door, the usual warm smell of tea and polished wood hit me first. The second thing that hit me was the sight of Kusari-san already standing near the long table with a stack of papers in her hands, like she’d materialized there when the second school ended.
Rias-Buchou sat in her usual place by the window, one leg crossed over the other, perfectly composed as always. Akeno stood at her side pouring tea. Koneko-chan was in her usual chair. Yuuto-san was near the shelf, sorting something that looked like contract files.
And Kusari-san—
She was standing where she could see the door, the windows, Buchou, and most of the room without having to turn much.
I noticed because I’d started noticing that kind of thing with her.
She looked up when Asia and I entered. Her expression didn’t change much, but her eyes flicked over us fast before settling.
“Good afternoon,” she said.
“Good afternoon, Kusari-san,” Asia said brightly.
“Afternoon,” I said. Then, because I was apparently incapable of being normal around attractive girls, I added, “You really do get everywhere fast.”
Her gaze shifted to me.
“I came directly here, Hyoudou-san.”
“Right. That, uh, makes sense.”
Amazing. Smooth.
Akeno-san giggled into one hand. Yuuto-san looked away with suspicious timing, which meant she was probably hiding a smile.
Buchou spared me a single amused glance before tapping one finger against the papers in front of her.
“Since everyone is here,” she said, “we have a small assignment today.”
That got my attention fast.
I straightened at once. “A devil job?”
It had only been a few days since Asia’s first job.
Buchou smiled faintly. “A simple one.”
Those were famous last words in the supernatural world.
Asia took her seat beside me. Kusari-san remained standing until Buchou looked at her and gave the slightest nod. Only then did she sit, folding herself into the chair with that same careful, exact neatness she did everything with.
Buchou lifted the top page from the stack.
“There have been complaints from a family in our territory about repeated disturbances near a small storage building behind one of their rental properties. Knocking sounds, a strange chill, lights failing, a pressure that makes ordinary humans reluctant to approach the area.”
“A ghost?” I asked.
“Not quite,” Yuuto-san said. “More likely a low-level wandering spirit or leftover residue that has begun to gather around something.”
Akeno-san set a cup in front of me and smiled. “A nuisance rather than a major threat.”
“Still,” Buchou said, “it falls within our responsibilities.”
Which meant we were going.
My mood improved immediately.
I mean, come on. Devil work was still one of the coolest things in my life. Dangerous, sure, but also cool. It beat homework.
Buchou continued, “This is a suitable job for practical coordination. Yuuto-san, you’ll take point on close engagement if needed. Issei, you’ll back her up. Akeno-san will handle containment if the residue is more active than expected. Asia will stay behind the front line and support.”
Her eyes shifted to Kusari-san.
“Kusari-chan, I want you reading the area the moment we arrive.”
“Yes, Rias-Buchou.”
Again.
Too quick. Too automatic.
I felt that faint irritation tug at me, the same one from yesterday.
Buchou must have noticed something too, because her expression sharpened a fraction before smoothing again. “Good. We leave in ten minutes.”
That was that.
The room moved.
Yuuto-san gathered what she needed with the same elegant efficiency she did everything else. Akeno-san finished arranging the tea like we weren’t about to go deal with some supernatural problem behind a rental property. Koneko-chan crunched a cookie like all of this was routine. Asia checked her bag and healing gear with quiet seriousness.
Kusari-san rose from her chair and adjusted her sleeves once.
Nothing flashy. Nothing dramatic.
Just one precise movement and stillness again.
I ended up next to her near the door while Yuuto-san finished discussing the route with Buchou.
“You know,” I said in a low voice, “you don’t always have to answer her that fast.”
She glanced at me. “Answer who fast?”
“Buchou.”
The pause that followed was small, but it was there.
“I was addressed,” she said.
“That’s not what I mean.”
“No?”
She sounded genuinely uncertain, and that threw me off just enough to annoy me.
I scratched my cheek. “I just mean… you don’t have to sound like you’re bracing for something every time.”
Her eyes rested on me for a moment too long.
Then she said, very softly, “I see.”
No, she didn’t. Or maybe she did and just didn’t know what to do with it.
Before I could figure out how to dig myself deeper into that conversation, Buchou stood.
“Let’s go.”
The rental property turned out to be exactly the kind of place that made minor supernatural trouble feel worse than it should.
It was one of those ordinary little buildings people stopped really looking at after the first glance. A narrow lane. A small fenced lot. A storage shed behind the main structure with weathered wood and a sloped roof. The sun was already lowering, throwing long shadows across the ground.
Nothing about it screamed spirit problem.
But the moment we stepped through the gate, the air changed.
Not enough for a normal human to point at it and say there’s something supernatural here. More the kind of thing that made the back of your neck prickle for no reason. The kind of wrong that settled at the edge of noticing.
I felt it.
Then I looked at Kusari-san.
She had gone still.
Not tense. Not frightened-looking.
Just still in that focused way she had in the clubroom when Buchou put magic in front of her.
Her gaze slid over the building, the ground, the shed door, the fence line, the roof edge, then the patch of shadow beneath the eaves.
Yuuto-san lowered one hand toward the sword at her side. “Well?”
Kusari-san took two slow steps forward.
“Something did gather here,” she said.
Her voice was quieter than usual, but more certain.
Akeno-san hummed. “What kind?”
“Not a ghost.”
Kusari-san’s eyes narrowed. “More like residue that found shape around a point it liked.”
That sounded creepy enough to count.
Asia drew closer to me. “Is that dangerous?”
“It can become dangerous,” Buchou said. “If it continues to feed.”
Kusari-san crouched near the packed dirt path that led to the shed. She didn’t touch the ground right away. Her hand hovered above it.
“The flow bends here,” she murmured. “Then drags toward the rear corner.”
Yuuto-san moved closer, careful not to crowd her. “An anchor?”
“Yes.”
That one word came without the automatic obedience. Just information.
I noticed because, apparently, I noticed everything about her now.
Buchou folded her arms. “Can you find it exactly?”
Kusari-san lifted her head toward the far side of the shed.
“There,” she said.
I stared. “You can tell just from looking?”
She rose again, pale hair shifting lightly in the breeze. “It isn’t hidden well enough.”
Akeno-san’s smile turned amused. “That sounds unfair to whatever poor little thing chose the wrong place to nest.”
We circled toward the back of the shed.
The sensation worsened immediately.
The chill deepened. Not cold enough to see your breath, but enough that the air felt thinner. My skin prickled. Asia shivered a little.
Behind the shed, half-hidden by an overgrown stack of broken boards and an old rusted bucket, something had been nailed into the wood at the rear corner.
At first I thought it was just junk.
Then Kusari-san pointed.
“Don’t step closer yet.”
Everyone stopped.
I leaned, squinting.
A strip of paper.
No—several strips. Faded. Half-rotted. Pressed into the wood and dirt beneath something sticky-black that glistened too wetly for how old it should have been.
“A leftover charm?” Yuuto-san asked.
“A damaged one,” Buchou said.
“Damaged on purpose,” Kusari-san added.
That made all of us look at her.
She stepped slightly to one side, eyes fixed on the mess of old paper and residue.
“It was a ward once. A weak one. Human-made, I think.” Her gaze sharpened. “Someone damaged the center and left the remains in place. The break drew things badly. Fear, stress, stagnant emotion. Enough to gather here.”
I blinked.
She said all of that like she was reading from notes only she could see.
Akeno-san gave a low whistle. “You really do see too much.”
Kusari-san didn’t answer. She was staring at the space around the ruined ward with unnerving intensity.
Then she said, very quietly, “It already noticed us.”
“Of course it did,” I muttered.
The air behind the shed pulsed.
Not visibly at first. Just enough that the shadow under the eaves thickened wrong, the edges going blurred and oily at once. Then the black smear around the damaged ward stretched upward like tar pulled by invisible fingers.
Asia gasped.
Something peeled itself out of the shadow.
Not a full monster. Not like the fallen angels or stray devils we’d dealt with before. It was half-formed, all dragged-out limbs and a face that never fully settled into one shape. Hollow eye sockets opened where no proper head should have been.
I made a face. “Okay, that’s disgusting.”
“Contain the lane,” Buchou said calmly.
Akeno-san’s magic flared at once, lines of power flashing wide enough to cut the area off from ordinary notice.
Yuuto-san drew her sword.
I got into position beside her on instinct.
The thing lurched.
Not fast—wrong fast. Like each movement skipped the part where it should have had weight.
Yuuto-san started forward.
“Please wait,” Kusari-san said.
It wasn’t loud.
But something in the way she said it made us listen.
She hadn’t moved much at all. She stood a little behind our line, one hand lifted near her chest, eyes fixed on the creature with a focus sharp enough to cut.
Not dramatic.
Not like a spellcaster in a movie.
Just precise.
The creature jerked toward us, dragging shadow with it.
Kusari-san watched it for one heartbeat. Two.
Then I saw a tiny change in her face.
Not fear.
Calculation.
She had already decided where to hurt it.
“Kiba-san,” she said quietly, “don’t go closer.”
Yuuto-san checked herself immediately.
The creature reared, malformed body widening as if it meant to throw itself across the yard in one ugly rush.
Kusari-san’s fingers spread.
Dark-violet light gathered there at once.
It looked wrong in a way that made the hairs on my arm rise under the Boosted Gear. Like all the power had been crushed down into one narrow, hateful point instead of allowed to spread.
I heard her whisper something under her breath.
Two words.
Too fast for me to catch properly.
Then she fired.
The spell was so fast it barely looked like motion at all.
A single line of purple-black lightning-cursed light punched through the center of the creature before it could finish moving.
There was no clash.
No struggle.
No back-and-forth.
For one frozen instant, the thing simply existed with a hole burned straight through the point that mattered most.
Then the entire body convulsed.
Purple-black cracks burst across it from the wound, racing through the dragged-out limbs and unstable head like ink spreading through wet paper. The creature let out one broken shriek—
And collapsed instantly.
Not defeated.
Not staggered.
Killed.
The whole half-made body folded in on itself and came apart into a spill of black residue and ash before Yuuto-san’s blade ever touched it.
Silence hit the yard so hard it felt like another impact.
I stared.
Yuuto-san stared too, sword half-raised.
Asia made a tiny sound beside me.
Even Akeno-san blinked.
Buchou’s gaze flicked from the remains to Kusari-san so quickly it almost looked like a cut.
And Kusari-san—
Kusari-san swayed.
Just once.
Then her hand snapped inward toward herself as if something had yanked on the bones under the skin.
The color drained from her face so fast it scared me more than the spirit had.
Her fingers locked.
Her other arm folded hard towards her hand.
A breath tore out of her—small, sharp, and clearly not meant for anyone to hear.
She hunched over slightly.
“Kusari-san!” I shouted.
Yuuto-san moved first because she was closer, catching Kusari-san by the shoulder before she hit the dirt. Asia rushed in from the other side immediately.
Kusari-san’s jaw had gone tight. Too tight. Her eyes were open, but unfocused for a second in that dangerous way people got when pain hit hard enough to blank everything else out.
“It’s backlash from the spell,” Buchou said sharply, already crossing the distance to us.
Akeno-san dropped the containment with a flick of her fingers and came in right after. Koneko-chan was suddenly there too, quiet and fast.
Kusari-san tried to straighten.
Of course she did.
“I am—”
Her hand spasmed so hard the rest of the sentence died.
She bit it back with visible force.
My stomach twisted.
That bolt had killed the thing so fast it barely got to exist once she decided to end it.
And this was what it had cost her.
Asia came up beside her. “Kusari-san, please don’t move your hand—”
“I can continue,” Kusari-san said.
Her voice was thin.
Tight.
Wrong.
And hearing that line again, right then, did something ugly to my mood.
“Continue what?!” I snapped. “It’s dead!”
Every eye turned to me, but I barely cared.
I pointed at the black ash where the creature had been. “You killed it in one shot! There’s nothing left to continue!”
Kusari-san looked at me.
Actually looked at me.
Pain had stripped something out of her expression. Not the control, not entirely, but enough that for a second she looked less like the careful, quiet fox girl from the clubroom and more like someone holding herself together because falling apart wasn’t allowed.
Her fingers tried to uncurl and failed.
A sharp line of pain crossed her face.
Then it was hidden again.
“Asia,” Buchou said.
“Yes!”
Asia’s healing light appeared immediately around Kusari-san’s hand and forearm.
Kusari-san flinched.
Not away from Asia herself.
Away from contact.
Then, after one frozen instant, she forced herself to hold still.
The warm glow spread over her fingers, wrist, and the tendons that had locked so painfully they looked wrong even to me. It helped, but only a little. I could tell by the way her shoulders stayed rigid and the way her other arm remained pressed against her ribs.
Akeno-san’s gaze sharpened. “That was more than ordinary recoil.”
Buchou knelt in front of Kusari-san, crimson eyes steady on her. “Where else?”
A pause.
Then, quietly, “Hand. Forearm. Shoulder. Side.”
Not “my side.”
Just “side.”
Like she was listing damage on a report.
Something about that made my chest feel hot in a really bad way.
Yuuto-san had not let go yet, but she had shifted into the kind of support that gave Kusari-san room instead of pinning her. “The anchor point is still there,” she said evenly. “I can destroy the remains.”
Buchou nodded once. “Do it.”
Yuuto-san moved at once.
One clean slash. The ruined ward papers, the black residue, and the fouled wood were cut apart. Akeno-san followed with a burst of lightning that burned the remains down into something too ruined to gather anything ever again.
Koneko-chan crouched in front of Kusari-san now, staring at her hand.
“You overdid it,” she said flatly.
Kusari-san’s eyes shifted toward her.
No answer.
Koneko-chan kept staring. “It hurt before it hit.”
That made me look at her.
Koneko-chan looked back at Kusari-san like she was pointing out the weather.
Not accusing.
Not sympathetic either.
Kusari-san lowered her gaze.
“Yes,” she said quietly.
The first real answer.
Asia’s healing light softened. “I can ease some of it,” she murmured, “but not all of it at once.”
Kusari-san inclined her head. “Thank you, Argento-san.”
Her thanks sounded genuine.
I let out a breath and scrubbed one hand over my face.
“Seriously,” I muttered, half to myself, half to everyone, “what kind of spell does that?”
Akeno-san gave a soft hum. “A very strong one.”
Buchou’s gaze did not leave Kusari-san. “One she should not be using carelessly.”
Kusari-san bowed her head from where she sat braced between Asia and Koneko-chan. “Yes, Rias-Buchou.”
Too fast again.
Too practiced.
Even like this.
I hated that.
Not her.
That.
The thing in her that kept reaching for the right answer before anything else.
Buchou rose. “The job is complete. We’re returning.”
Nobody argued.
There wasn’t anything left to argue with.
The spirit was gone. The anchor was destroyed. The lingering presence would clear. The humans living here would never know how close a minor nuisance had come to becoming something uglier.
And Kusari-san—
Kusari-san had ended it instantly.
Then paid for it.
The walk back was quieter.
Asia stayed at Kusari-san’s side the whole time. Koneko-chan drifted near enough that it very obviously wasn’t accidental. Yuuto-san carried herself as elegantly as always, but I caught her looking at Kusari-san twice in a way that said she was recalculating something. Akeno-san’s smile had gone thinner, more thoughtful.
I ended up just behind Buchou and Kusari-san for part of the walk.
Kusari-san’s right hand flexed once.
Badly.
She hid it against her skirt almost at once.
Her shoulders were too straight. Her posture too careful.
Everything about her looked controlled.
Everything about that control looked expensive.
“She defeated it instantly,” I said under my breath.
Yuuto-san, walking at my other side now, answered just as quietly.
“Yes.”
“With one shot.”
“Yes.”
I looked ahead again.
Kusari-san was pale in the evening light. Too pale. Her face was composed, but only because she was forcing it to be.
“That’s insane,” I muttered.
Yuuto-san was silent for a second before saying, “So is what happened to her after.”
Back at the clubroom, Buchou handled the report quickly. Territory disturbance cleared. Anchor destroyed. No civilian contamination. Case closed.
Ordinary devil business.
Except the room didn’t feel ordinary after that.
Not to me.
Kusari-san stood near the window again, but this time she held her injured hand loosely at her side like fully relaxing it would hurt worse. Asia lingered near her. Koneko-chan had chosen the seat closest to where Kusari-san stood without saying a word about it. Yuuto-san finished the paperwork with her usual grace. Akeno-san watched the whole room over the rim of her tea.
I went to the sideboard, poured a glass of water, and stood there longer than necessary.
Then I carried it over.
“Kusari-san.”
She turned.
I held the glass out.
For one second, she looked startled.
Not by me. Not exactly.
By the fact that it was being offered.
“You should drink,” I said.
A pause.
Then she accepted it with both hands, carefully, like the weight of the glass mattered.
“Thank you, Hyoudou-san.”
“No problem.”
She drank a little.
Not much. Just enough to wet her throat.
Then lowered the glass.
“I was only doing what was required,” she said.
There it was again.
The way she treated it.
I leaned one shoulder against the nearby desk. “That’s not really the point.”
Her brows drew together slightly. “No?”
“No.” I scratched my cheek. “You ended the whole fight before the rest of us even got started. That was…” I let out a breath. “That was amazing. Stupidly scary, but amazing.”
Kusari-san looked at me like she was trying to place the shape of the words.
Behind me, I heard Akeno-san set her cup down softly. Asia had gone still again. Koneko-chan’s gaze lifted from Kusari-san’s hand to her face.
Kusari-san lowered her eyes first.
“…Thank you,” she said.
And this time, because I’d seen what came right after the spell, the words hit differently.
Not because she had been told to say them.
Not because they were polite.
Because she genuinely didn’t seem to know what else to do with being praised for something that had hurt her that badly.
That made my chest feel weird all over again.
Which was becoming a serious problem.
Buchou stood. “That’s enough for today. Everyone, go home.”
There were the usual acknowledgments. Chairs shifted. Bags were gathered. The room began to empty.
As I moved toward the door, I looked back once.
Kusari-san was still standing by the window, pale in the fading light, face composed, posture careful, one hand hanging slightly wrong at her side even after Asia’s healing.
She looked like she could disappear into the room if she wanted.
But now I knew better.
Kusari-san didn’t disappear.
She watched. She judged. She chose.
And when she decided something needed to die—
It did.
That was definitely scary.
And whatever kind of power let her do that while tearing her apart on the way out—
I didn’t think I was going to forget it anytime soon.