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He found a note on his desk, after the Harvest Festival celebrations wound down and everything went back to normal. Well, as normal as ever, which wasn’t anywhere close. ‘Meet me outside Class 1-A for lunch. - Orobas’ See, that wasn’t even slightly normal. They barely knew each other, aside from the time Orobas tossed him off a cliff.
Iruma had—he was growing. He had standards now; forgiving someone for throwing you off a cliff and giving you nightmares didn’t mean you were friends, but the apology seemed sincere.
He found Orobas leaning against the wall by the door, arms crossed; the usual crowd flowed past him like a stream around a large rock. “H—Hello?”
He looked down. Iruma was an ant in his eyes, probably. Then he smiled. “Iruma-kun! I’m glad you came—I would’ve just texted you, but I, um, don’t have your number.”
“Oh,” Iruma replied, pulling out his hell-phone, “I’ll add you. I don’t know anyone in this class. I think Azu-kun is friends with this one girl, Oni-san—anyway, there.”
“Thank you.”
Lately, he felt like everyone was talking about him behind his back. Not in a mean way, but ever since Royal One, it seemed like demons he didn’t even know stopped to take a glance too long at him. It made standing around in the middle of the hallway uncomfortable. “Why did you ask me to lunch?”
“I wanted to ask you a question.”
That didn’t sound too bad. “Oh,” Iruma accepted. “Well, I’m starving, so let’s go!”
He set off for the cafeteria, where he would be anyway, and got a couple giant lunchboxes. And then they went to sit under the ever-blooming tree, because it’d be too cold to really enjoy it soon. There weren’t many demons out as is. Orobas sat down on one of the tree roots, and pressed his palm against the trunk, contemplative. “The legendary leaf… something never before seen in this world. You grew this, didn’t you?”
Iruma froze, though he’d learned that demons didn’t have much of a tendency to freeze, and waved the notion away. Even though it was true. “N—No, I mean, it just sort of happened! Total fluke! Honestly, I don’t think it’s even the same kind—”
Orobas reached out and picked a flower out of his hair, and the innocuous gesture sort of stalled out the panic. Like a dot moving in a circle, faster and faster until it becomes a ring and appears to stop. “Sorry, that’s not really what I meant to ask you about. I’m not good at,” he waved a hand, “Talking to people.”
“S—So what was it, then?” Iruma asked. “That you wanted to ask me about?”
He deliberated a moment, adjusting his glasses.
“During the festival… I never felt alone. Not once.” Iruma didn’t know what to make of that whatsoever. “It was almost like someone was watching over me.”
***
He didn’t see why he had to be kidnapped to his birthday party, but it wasn’t the first time something like that happened. It happened in the human world, too, and he narrowly escaped being turned into cat food. The party was fun! It was also sort of overwhelming, between everyone thanking him for being born—not his decision—and all the gifts, and the moat of green fire. Once the official festivities were over and everyone was having general fun, he ducked out into the hallway to be alone. It didn’t work; Soi reappeared next to him. Iruma could generally sense his presence, but that didn’t mean he always knew where he was .
“You look existential,” he noted, helpfully. “Should I get somebody or something?”
“No, I’m good. I mean—it’s my demonic rites, but I just kinda feel like something’s missing… Purson-kun, do you remember the Batra Party?”
He wasn’t even sure why he asked that question. “I mean, yeah. I was just walking around, eating a funnel cake—they had really good funnel cake, you know, the cinnamon kind—and then that whole maze thing happened. This school is insane. What if somebody really needed to use the bathroom? Or like, had a food stall fall on them?”
Listening to him gripe was reassuring. It’d been a normal night, for everyone else.
“I barely made it to the courtyard before the countdown. Everyone gets so pushy in crowds, and I was thinking about how much I hate that, but then—BOOM!”
It was sort of understated, for a sound effect; he could take lessons from Clara. “Yeah,” Iruma agreed. “The fireworks.”
“Didn’t you make them?”
“Azu-kun and Clara and Kirio-senpai helped too!”
“Kirio-senpai?”
It didn’t feel at all weird to say his name again. It felt weird to realize that, even though they’d all been there, at the same time, in the same place, they didn’t know who he was. LIke he was keeping a secret he didn’t really have a use for.
“There you are!” Lied exclaimed, opening the door. “You’re missing your own rites, y’know.”
***
He’d meant to ask Iruma about the whole, ‘wall of flame’ thing, since he wasn’t going to ask the terrifying being otherwise known as Asmodeus Alice, but then he may have gotten distracted rambling about random things until Iruma wanted to rejoin the party. But he was still curious, so when the tall boy started skulking around again, Soi followed. He was an expert at skulking.
Asmodeus ducked into an oft-avoided office. Well, Balam-sensei had been his tutor during the harvest festival, when Soi had mercifully avoided any kind of tutoring. He hadn’t done too badly for himself, with his ability. The woods were scary, though, so he ended up taking shelter in the castle, and then there was a siege on the castle, so he ended up in the woods again. Not his business. (Everything was his business, until Declared Otherwise.)
Point being. He slipped into the room before the door could swing closed, and sat on the arm of a chair. If nobody noticed him, then there wasn’t a problem.
“Balam-sensei.”
“Asmodeus,” Balam replied, looking not very surprised to see him. He was reading a book about magical creatures, but he hastily hid it in a desk drawer. What a weirdo. He stood up and plugged in a small electric kettle; there was a teapot on a nearby table, safe from the teetering pile of winter homework on the desk.
“I came to ask you about increasing security measures—”
“I can’t tell you.”
Asmodeus looked dejected, but maybe that didn’t suit his temperament, because he fired up again immediately. “Still! The fact that he was able to—”
“It isn’t your responsibility,” Balam interrupted. He was too gentle about it; it would be easy to ignore, but Asmodeus sat there staring at his teacup and not drinking it. It honestly looked like the tea had offended him.
“If…” He sounded scared for a moment, and then his tone resolved into something more serious. “If I see that bastard again, then I’m going to wring his neck like a washcloth. Are you sure you don’t have any news?”
Balam’s eyes were shifting all over the room. They even glanced over Soi, who did his best to be very still and quiet as well as made out of mist. “Absolutely. Nothing’s happened at all since then, everything is. Totally fine.”
“So you do know something!”
“N—No, I don’t!” Who knew teachers were so malleable? Especially Kalego-sensei’s BFF, wow, Soi could see why Asmodeus didn’t go to him for info. He just looked a lot like he might go into hysterics. “Well, it is public information, so I can probably tell you…”
Asmodeus brightened up again. Like a nether-daisy, popping up out of the half-frozen ground.
“Amduscias-sama is missing. There’s no proof that it’s related, but he hasn’t been seen since the end of the festival.”
***
This wasn’t the type of problem Iruma expected when he agreed to join Kuromu for the Akudol Games. Or even when he indebted himself to her in the first place. Or when he’d been summoned to the netherworld in the first place, or when he met Kirio-senpai, who was currently on loudspeaker exposing his deepest, darkest secrets to the world.
“I was so happy when I realized my Iruma-kun was an Akudol! You deserve the praise!”
He was very upbeat, given the situation. Because of the situation. That being: the six fingers had taken over the stadium, quite by coincidence, and he was apparently the only one to see through Iruma’s hair extensions. They hadn’t seen each other at all in months—he’d missed Iruma’s demonic rites! He hadn’t even thanked Iruma for being born, and Iruma would totally thank him for being born, if he weren’t so busy committing acts of terrorism.
He might be a bit freaked out, if his thoughts were this weird. It wasn’t like he could just run away. There were people counting on him.
***
Kirio was waiting at the top, naturally. He liked high places. So did Iruma, but that was more because someone was waiting for him; he felt like he was dragged along by an invisible string, hardly needing any other direction. “Kirio-senpai!”
He smiled; it wasn’t a nice smile, necessarily, but it somewhat suited him. “Iruma-kun, you made it!”
“You missed my birthday.” It wasn’t what he meant to say; everyone missed his birthday, technically speaking.
“What?”
“It’s in October. You weren’t there. You were at Walter Park, weren’t you? It was the Six Fingers… And at the Harvest Festival, Orobas-san told me he saw someone else—why don’t you ever talk to me?!”
“What?”
“I didn’t even know you’d broken out of prison until an hour ago!”
“I tried to come see you,” Kirio defended. “But then Azu-san tried to murder me, and we had other things to do, so—”
Iruma did have standards; he’d found his standards, and they went something like, 1. Don’t try to hurt people, 2. Call me when you break out of prison, and 3. Maybe mention it if your terrorist senpai drops by on a social call. He was honestly very annoyed. “What’s the point of all this, anyway?”
Kirio seemed to consider; he smoothed the lapel of his coat. It had one lapel, because it was half a coat, which Iruma didn’t claim to understand. “Well, I want to watch you fall into despair, and then I have to help Baal establish the new world disorder or whatever.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” Iruma decided. “If it were, you could just cast a spell on me or something. I think… you’ve been watching over me. You told me to look out, that malice always lurks in unexpected places, but it’s not just malice. Demons are a lot kinder than you give them credit for.”
The teal haired demon looked out the window, where his plot was being foiled by friendship, teamwork, and a convenient rainbow. “How does anyone think you’re one of us, when you walk around sayin’ stuff like that?”
“One of us?”
“Jeez, I almost forgot my trump card.” He took Iruma’s hand, and it was like the first time, when he told him it was alright if he didn’t have any magic, either. Like when they decided to aim for the grand prize together—Iruma was still trying to live up to it. It was like the string that had been pulling at him all the while finally ran out. “I know you’re—”
Iruma kissed him. He squeaked, but Iruma hugged him tight for just a second, in case that was it. In case all they could do was orbit around each other, from now on, and all he could do was break Iruma’s heart as harshly as possible.
He touched his lower lip with one black-gloved finger. He was definitely blushing, but it wasn’t clear whether it was an ‘oh boy, crime!’ blush, or if he actually cared that Iruma just kissed him. “Wh—what is this feeling?”
“Love?”
“I’m down with that,” he decided, and kissed Iruma back. Iruma didn’t see any fireworks, and he was glad, since. Well. Explosives. “Do you wanna join the six fingers? Really fuck up that hand?”
“No!” Iruma objected. “Terrorism is bad, senpai.”
“That’s what makes it fun!”