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The afternoon after the Music Festival's closing ceremony, the Misfit Class was gloriously, catastrophically loud.
Rank-up celebrations had a way of doing that — ten-plus demons who had grown up being told they were wrong, told they were too much, told they would never amount to anything, all suddenly wearing the golden glow of Dalet on their crests. The classroom that had once been tucked away in Babyls' most forgotten corner was now a place people whispered about with something between awe and exasperation.
Iruma Suzuki sat at the center of the chaos, laughing so hard his stomach hurt.
"IRUMA-SAMA!" Alice Asmodeus — Azz-kun, as most of the class had privately started calling him, though never to his face — slammed both palms on the desk with theatrical passion. His violet eyes were blazing with the kind of fervor usually reserved for declarations of war. "Your performance during the festival was, without question, the most magnificent display of raw, untrained musical talent the demon world has ever witnessed! I have already begun composing a twenty-four-movement symphony in your honor!"
"Azz-kun, you've only known how to play instruments for like two weeks," Iruma said, still giggling.
"Details." Alice waved a hand dismissively. "Genius transcends experience."
Across the room, Elizabetta was dramatically fanning herself while Keroli made notes in a small pink notebook — probably more material for her idol persona. Gaap was trying to balance three desks on his head. Lied was telling anyone who would listen that he had definitely predicted all of this. Picero, Goemon, Kamui — the whole wonderful, ridiculous crew of them were in various states of jubilation.
Iruma looked around and felt something warm settle deep in his chest. He had lived his whole life learning how to be invisible. How to stay small. How to make himself as unnoticeable as possible so that his parents' latest scheme wouldn't pull him under with it. He had never known what it felt like to belong somewhere until he came to Babyls and landed, somehow, in the middle of this beautiful disaster of a class.
He was still smiling when he noticed Clara hadn't made a sound in almost ten minutes.
For Clara Valac, ten minutes of silence was practically a medical emergency.
Iruma turned in his seat. Clara was sitting slightly apart from the group, her knees drawn up, her arms folded over her stomach. Her usually wild twin-tails were drooping. The bright, chaotic energy that surrounded her like a personal weather system was completely absent. She was pale — or at least, paler than usual — and her expression was tight in a way he had never seen on her face before.
"Clara?" Iruma got up immediately.
She looked up. Tried to smile. It didn't reach her eyes. "I'm fine, Iruma-chi!"
The singsong lilt was there but hollow. Performed.
Alice materialized at Iruma's shoulder with supernatural speed, because he always materialized at Iruma's shoulder. His expression had already shifted from theatrical enthusiasm to sharp, genuine concern. "You are not fine," he said, without any of his usual bluster. "Your face is doing something it doesn't usually do."
"It's called relaxing, Azz-azz"
"Clara." Iruma crouched down to her eye level. His voice was soft. "What's wrong? You can tell us."
Clara looked at them both — her two best friends, the two people who had chased after her and stayed — and something in her expression cracked just a little. She pressed her lips together. Her cheeks flushed pink with what looked like embarrassment.
"It's... my stomach," she said quietly. "It really hurts."
"Did you eat something bad?" Alice asked immediately, already calculating which classroom offenders might have offered her dubious snacks.
"No, it's..." Clara hunched her shoulders. "It's that time. You know."
Iruma blinked. Alice blinked.
"...That time?" Iruma repeated carefully.
Clara made a vague, uncomfortable gesture at her lower abdomen and looked away. "It happens every month. It's fine. It's always fine. But this one is..." She winced, and it was a real wince, the kind she couldn't perform her way out of. "...a lot."
Understanding clicked into place for Alice almost immediately — he was exceptionally well-read, and also had access to what was essentially a private library of everything Iruma-sama might ever need to know. His expression went from confused to concerned in under a second.
For Iruma, it took just a moment longer — and when it clicked, he felt a surge of something fierce and helpless at the same time. He knew what a period was, in the abstract way you know things you've read about but never had direct experience with. But Clara was sitting here in real pain, her stomach cramping, embarrassed to say it out loud, and Iruma realized with a start that he had absolutely no idea what to do.
He had been alone his whole life. No mother to learn from. No older sisters. No friends who were girls, not real ones, not before Clara.
He didn't know what helped. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know if there was anything he could get her or make for her or—
I want to help her, he thought, and the wanting was so clear and simple and certain that it steadied him. I don't know how yet. But I'm going to find out.
"Okay," he said. "Come on, Clara. Let's get you somewhere comfortable."
Getting Clara settled was the first mission.
Alice, for all his dramatics, was actually quite capable in a crisis — he had a spine of steel under all the theatrical declarations. He managed to clear a space on the long couch in the back corner of the classroom with quiet, efficient authority, commandeered a blanket from somewhere (Iruma didn't ask), and positioned himself as a very dignified, very concerned human wall between Clara and the rest of the class without drawing attention to what was happening.
The rest of the Misfit Class, to their credit, seemed to understand that something was up. The noise level dropped a few notches. Nobody crowded in.
Once Clara was lying down with the blanket over her and Alice sitting nearby with a carefully neutral expression, Iruma slipped quietly to the other end of the classroom.
He had two people in mind.
Ix Elizabetta was still holding court near the windows, her dramatic fanning having slowed to something more languid and pleased. She was the most socially savvy person Iruma knew — she understood things about people, about how the world worked, about what wasn't being said. And Crocell Keroli, sitting beside her with her notebook, was one of the most practically capable people in the class. Between the two of them, Iruma thought, surely they'd know something helpful.
He approached with the particular kind of earnestness that tended to make people want to actually answer him honestly.
"Elizabetta-san. Keroli-san." He bowed slightly. "Can I ask you something? It's about Clara."
Both girls looked up. Their expressions sharpened with immediate attention.
"What happened?" Keroli asked.
"She's having a really bad— a really painful period," Iruma said, keeping his voice low. "I want to help but I..." He exhaled. "I grew up kind of on my own. I don't really know what helps. I don't want to do the wrong thing or make her feel worse. Can you tell me?"
There was a beat of silence.
Elizabetta stared at him. Her dramatic persona flickered, and underneath it was something genuinely touched — a soft, surprised warmth.
Keroli had stopped writing in her notebook. She was looking at Iruma with an expression that was part calculation, part something much more sincere.
"You came to ask us," Keroli said. "Because you didn't know, and you wanted to know properly."
"Yeah," Iruma said simply. "She's my friend. I don't want to just pat her head and not actually help."
Elizabetta made a small sound like a sigh that had gotten tangled up with a laugh. "Iruma," she said, "you are genuinely the strangest and most wonderful person in this entire school."
"I— thank you?"
"Sit." She pointed at the desk across from her with the authority of someone who had given this speech before. "I'll tell you what you need to know."
What followed was fifteen minutes of the most earnest, practical education Iruma had ever received. Elizabetta explained — clearly, without embarrassment — what was happening in Clara's body, what made it worse, what tended to help. Heat for the cramps. Hydration. Comfort food — warm things, not cold. Rest. Not being fussed over too visibly, because that could make the embarrassment worse. Being present without making it a big deal.
Keroli chipped in with specifics: the difference between a normal period and a painful one, the kinds of things demons sometimes experienced differently from humans (Clara's family had a slightly unusual physiology, she noted with the calm confidence of someone who had done her reading), what to watch for.
Iruma listened with his entire self. He asked careful questions. He remembered everything.
"The most important thing," Elizabetta said at the end, with unusual gentleness, "is exactly what you're already doing. You noticed. You cared enough to find out. Most people just tell a girl she's being dramatic."
Iruma's expression tightened at that, quiet and certain. "That's not what she is."
"No." Elizabetta smiled — a real one, not the performed one. "It's not."
While Iruma had been on his information-gathering mission, Alice had been thinking.
He was very good at thinking when Iruma-sama wasn't present to render him temporarily incapable of rational thought through the sheer radiance of his existence. He sat beside Clara's makeshift resting spot, keeping watch with quiet steadiness, and ran through everything he knew.
Heat helped cramps. He knew this the way he knew most things — comprehensively, because he had once decided that knowing everything Iruma-sama might ever need was a personal responsibility.
The school infirmary would have heating pads. But the infirmary was on the other side of the building, Clara looked like moving would make her feel worse, and Alice was not about to leave her alone.
He looked around the classroom with the calculating eye of someone who had once reorganized an entire school event through sheer force of will.
Goemon — who could heat things — was across the room, arm-wrestling Picero.
"Goemon," Alice said, in his most perfectly modulated tone of authority.
Goemon looked up. Took one look at Alice's expression. Came over immediately. "What do you need?"
"I need you to heat this." Alice had found — sourced, commandeered, manifested, the exact mechanism was unimportant — a cloth folded into a thick rectangle. "Evenly. Not too hot. Consistent. Can you do that?"
Goemon looked at the cloth. Looked at Clara, who had her eyes closed and was doing a very poor impression of being asleep. Looked back at Alice. "Yeah," he said quietly. "Yeah, I can do that."
It took him about ninety seconds to bring the cloth to a perfect, steady warmth — the kind that seeped in rather than burned.
Alice folded it carefully and, with a gentleness that would have shocked anyone who had only seen his more nonchalant side, placed it against Clara's lower stomach over the blanket. "This should help with the pain," he said, matter-of-fact and calm. "You don't have to talk. Just rest."
Clara cracked one eye open. Her expression was complicated — embarrassed, grateful, trying very hard not to let either of those things show too much. "You're being weird, azz-azz."
"I am being," Alice said with great dignity, "a friend."
Clara stared at him. Then she closed her eye again. Her shoulders, which had been held tight with effort, dropped a little. "...Thanks," she said, very quietly. "Don't make it weird."
"I would never dream of it."
"You literally make everything weird."
"That is a baseless accusation and I refuse to acknowledge it."
A small, real laugh escaped her. It sounded like it surprised her.
Iruma had sent a message to Opera before he even finished his conversation with Elizabetta and Crocell.
Opera-san. Clara is having a really painful time and I want to make her something warm that would help. Can you help me? I know you're busy but—
Opera's response had come in approximately twelve seconds.
Tell me what she needs. I'll come.
Opera appeared in the classroom doorway seven minutes later carrying a small basket with the quiet efficiency of someone who had anticipated this exact request before it was even made. They had, in fact, already prepared several things: a thermos of warm cinnamon-spiced tea — Iruma had mentioned Clara's preferences once, months ago, and Opera had filed it away — a container of soft rice porridge with the gentlest possible seasoning, and a small paper packet of what turned out to be dried demon-world herbs that Elizabetta had already mentioned were good for cramping when brewed.
Iruma met Opera at the door. He took the basket carefully, then looked up. "Thank you," he said, and he meant it completely.
Opera looked at him for a moment with that calm, unreadable expression that always managed to convey a great deal anyway. "You asked the right questions," they said simply. "That matters."
"Elizabetta-san said something like that too."
"Elizabetta-san is correct." Opera tilted their head slightly. "Iruma. You've grown."
It wasn't about the rank. Iruma understood that. He ducked his head, feeling the warmth of it. "I had good people to learn from."
Opera almost smiled. Almost. "Go take care of your friend."
Iruma went.
He settled beside Clara with the thermos and the porridge and explained — quietly, without fuss — what each thing was and what it was for. He didn't make a big production of it. He didn't act like she was fragile or broken or something to be managed. He just... offered. Set things within her reach. Poured the tea into the small cup from the thermos lid and handed it to her.
Clara sat up slightly, accepted the cup, and wrapped both hands around it. She stared into it for a second.
"You went and asked people," she said. It wasn't quite a question.
"Yeah." Iruma scratched the back of his neck. "I didn't know what to do. So I went and found out."
Clara was quiet for a moment. The tea steamed gently between her palms.
"Iruma," she said. "You're really dumb, you know that?"
He blinked. "...What?"
"Like, really, really dumb." Her voice was doing something strange. A little wobbly. She was staring very hard at her tea. "Normal people don't just— go and learn things because their friend is having a bad time. Normal people just say 'feel better' and then go back to doing their thing."
"But you needed—"
"I know." She looked up. Her eyes were bright. "That's the point, dummy."
Iruma looked at her. Looked at the bright, wet shine in her eyes that she was fighting so hard against. And he understood, suddenly, that what she was saying was not an insult.
"Oh," he said softly.
"Don't make it weird," she said, in exactly the same tone Alice had used thirty minutes ago.
"I would never," he said, in exactly the same dignified tone Alice had used in response.
Clara laughed — a real, full laugh this time, warm and startled, and it seemed to loosen something tight in her whole body.
Alice, from his post two feet away, permitted himself a small, private smile.
Word spread through the class the way it always did — without anyone explicitly saying anything, through the particular osmosis of a group of people who had spent enough time together to read the room without being told.
Nobody made an announcement. Nobody pointed. But one by one, in ones and twos, the Misfit Class migrated toward the back corner of the room where Clara was resting.
Not crowding. Not overwhelming. Just... gathering.
Keroli came with her notebook closed for once and sat nearby, and when Clara was ready to talk, Keroli was the one who made her laugh first with a completely deadpan impersonation of their homeroom teacher's most exasperated expression.
Elizabetta draped herself across a chair nearby and launched into an extremely dramatic retelling of the most chaotic backstage moment from the Music Festival — the one involving Gaap, three instruments he couldn't play, and a very confused sound technician — and she performed it with such commitment that Clara was covering her mouth to muffle her laughter within minutes.
Gaap himself appeared with a bag of snacks — the warm kind, meat buns from the school stall, which he had apparently sprinted to get without telling anyone. He deposited them in the center of the group with the energy of someone who wanted to help and had decided that food was always the right answer. He was, in this instance, correct.
Lied showed up claiming he had predicted Clara would need cheering up today. Nobody believed him. He sat down anyway and started dealing out cards for a game without being asked, because that was the kind of thing Lied did when he didn't know what else to offer.
Picero tried to start a competition over who could tell the most embarrassing story about themselves in order to make Clara feel better about having a bad day. This worked spectacularly. Goemon's contribution to this competition was so extraordinarily self-deprecating that even Alice, who was sitting with his arms folded and his very dignified facade carefully maintained, made a small undignified sound that might have been a suppressed laugh.
Kamui brought a blanket from his own bag. Nobody asked where he'd gotten it. The blanket was extremely soft and smelled faintly of something pleasant, and when he handed it to Clara he did it with the particular gruff gentleness of someone who had four younger siblings.
"You don't have to do all this," Clara said at one point, looking around at all of them — her voice softer than her usual register, the performance stripped back to just her, just Clara.
"We know," Keroli said simply. "We're not doing it because we have to."
And that, somehow, was the thing that undid Clara the most. She pressed the edge of the soft blanket to her face for a moment. Her shoulders shook — but when she lowered it, she was smiling. Wide and genuine and unguarded in a way she usually kept for very small moments.
"You're all so weird," she said.
"We're the Misfit Class," Lied said, with the particular satisfaction of someone who had fully embraced an identity. "Being weird is the whole point."
By the time the light through the classroom windows had turned the long gold of late afternoon, the celebration had settled into something softer. The whole class was still there — nobody had left, which was its own kind of thing, the kind you didn't comment on directly because commenting on it would make it smaller somehow.
Clara's pain had eased. Not completely — it would come and go for another day or two, Elizabetta had told Iruma — but the hot compress, the tea, the food, the warmth of the room and the people in it had taken the sharp edge off. She was sitting up now, leaning against the wall with the soft blanket still around her shoulders, a half-eaten meat bun in her hand.
Iruma was on her left. Alice was on her right.
The three of them sat in their particular triangle of friendship — the one that had been improbable from the start, a human boy and a devotion-driven demon boy and a chaos-powered girl who collected things and people alike — and watched the rest of their class be itself around them.
Lied was losing spectacularly at cards and insisting he had planned it this way. Elizabetta was refereeing the embarrassing story competition with the gravity of a supreme court judge. Gaap had gotten a second round of meat buns. Keroli was writing again, but she was smiling at her notebook.
"Iruma-chi" Clara said.
"Mm?"
"Thank you." She said it simply, without the deflection she'd used earlier. Just the two words, direct and clear. "For noticing. And for doing the thing."
"The thing," Iruma repeated.
"The going and finding out thing. The learning how to help thing." She took a bite of her meat bun, chewed, swallowed. "Most demon don't do that."
Iruma thought about that. About all the years of his life before this — the moving, the scraping, the learning to be invisible. The ways he had learned to take care of himself because there was no one else to do it, and the ways that had left gaps in him he was only now starting to understand. He had never had someone to learn from about this kind of thing. He had never had a girl for a best friend before Clara. He had never really had friends, period, before any of this.
But here was the thing he was slowly learning: not knowing something wasn't the same as not caring. And caring, it turned out, was a pretty good place to start.
"You're my friend," he said, the way he might state a simple fact, because that's what it was. "Of course I wanted to help."
Clara went very still for a second. Then she leaned over and pressed the top of her head against his shoulder — a very Clara gesture, tactile and unannounced and completely sincere.
"You're my friend too, iruma-chi," she said, muffled slightly against his sleeve.
Alice, on Clara's other side, said nothing. He simply sat with the particular quiet of someone who was exactly where he wanted to be, watching Iruma-sama be the extraordinary person he had always known him to be, in the specific soft way that didn't require a declaration to be true.
After a moment, Clara lifted her head and looked at him. "You too, azz-azz."
Alice blinked. Something flickered across his expression — surprised, pleased, working very hard not to let how much that meant to him show on his face. "...Obviously," he said, with all the dignity he could muster. "I am your classmate and companion and—"
"azz-azz."
"...Yes."
"Shut up and accept the thing I said."
A beat.
"...You are also my friend, Valac Clara." Quieter. Genuine.
Clara grinned — wide and bright and completely herself. "There you go."
When the classroom finally began to empty as the late afternoon tipped toward evening, the Misfit Class dispersed in the way it always did: noisily, reluctantly, in clusters rather than all at once, trailing conversations behind them like streamers.
Elizabetta paused in the doorway and looked back. She caught Iruma's eye and gave him a small nod — the kind that said you did well without saying it out loud. He nodded back.
Keroli closed her notebook and tucked it under her arm. She had written something on the last page before shutting it: just a few words, private, but real.
The reason I can be Keroli and still be myself. Days like this one.
Clara walked out into the corridor with a meat bun in one hand and her tails bouncing again, her step lighter than it had been all afternoon. She was talking about something to do with a new creature she wanted to show them tomorrow, her voice back to its usual brilliant noise.
Iruma walked beside her, listening and laughing.
Alice walked on her other side, adding commentary that was approximately sixty percent over-the-top and forty percent actually quite insightful, which was his usual ratio.
Behind them, the classroom settled into its afternoon quiet — the desks and chairs slightly rearranged, a few snack wrappers forgotten, a blanket left folded neatly on the couch in the back corner.
The Misfit Class had taken another strange, loud, warm day and made it into something they would all carry forward. Not in the big ways — not in rank-ups or legendary performances or battles against overwhelming odds. But in the small, real, irreplaceable way of friends who had learned to take care of each other.
Iruma Suzuki, who had been alone for so much of his life, walked between his two best friends into the golden light of the demon world's late afternoon.
And he had never felt less alone in his life.