The dinner had taken place in an atmosphere that could only be described as a surreal domestic kidnapping.
Asia had cooked a humble but comforting meat and vegetable stew. At the small table in the back room, Yugo ate in silence, processing the nutrients with his new demonic metabolism. A few feet away, seated on overturned cardboard boxes, Grigori's three ancient warriors ate from their plastic plates, not daring to make a sound while chewing for fear of being incinerated.
When the last plate was empty, Yugo stood up and adjusted his glasses.
"Recess is over," he announced in his flat, lifeless voice. "Raynare, Kalawarner. To the storeroom. And if I hear a single whisper, complaint, or flapping during the night, I'll be selling your feathers as decorations on the counter tomorrow."
The two fallen women nodded stiffly, lowering their heads, and hurried to lock themselves in the small, damp supply room, settling in among boxes of detergent and brooms.
Mittelt, trying to go unnoticed, took a couple of stealthy steps to follow them, but before she could cross the threshold, a pale, firm hand grabbed her by the back of the collar of her gothic dress.
—Not you —said Yugo.
"W-What?!" squealed Mittelt, kicking his legs in the air like a frightened kitten. "But Master, I want to sleep in the dust too! I love dust!"
Yugo didn't bother to argue. He walked to the stairs, carried her up the steps like a simple duffel bag, opened his bedroom door, and with one fluid, effortless motion, literally threw her inside. Mittelt landed face-first on an extra futon lying on the floor.
"You stay here," Yugo ordered from the doorway. "You have good hearing. If the clock starts making strange noises or projecting ghosts, you scream. Good night, teddy bear."
He closed the door, leaving her alone in the darkness with her cosmic terror, and went downstairs.
In the main area of the store, fluorescent lights hummed softly. Asia was behind the counter, wiping the glass of the cash register with a damp cloth, humming a calming melody.
Yugo walked over to her, took another rag from the cleaning cart and, without saying a word, began cleaning the nearby shelves.
The contrast was stark. The nun's hands were small, delicate, made for praying and healing; Yugo's hands, though his skin had healed with reincarnation, still retained the hardness, the thick calluses from sword training, and the invisible stains of his atrocities.
They cleaned in comfortable silence for twenty minutes. For Yugo, this commercial monotony was a balm for his fractured mind. But every time he glanced at Asia's pure smile, a suffocating oppression twisted in his chest. Guilt, that old friend that not even Sona Sitri's magic could cure, demanded that he release the poison he carried within.
I couldn't keep lying to her. Not to her.
Yugo placed the cloth on the counter. He walked over to the small electric coffee maker, brewed two cups of green tea, and carried them to one of the seating tables near the shop window.
"Asia. Leave that for today," he called, his voice a little hoarser than usual. "Come, sit down. We need to talk."
The nun blinked, noticing the sudden heaviness in the professor's tone. She put down the rag, wiped her hands on her apron, and walked over to sit opposite him, taking the hot cup in her palms.
Yugo didn't look at her immediately. He fixed his gray, empty gaze on the dark liquid in his cup. The Omnitrix on his wrist emitted a faint green flash, as if sensing the turbulence in its wearer's heart.
—In the forest, before you went into the church... I told you a story—Yugo began, breaking the silence. His tone was clinical, almost as if he were reading a medical report, the only way he knew to keep his voice from cracking. —I told you about a young man who was taken from his home and became a monster to take revenge on the universe.
Asia nodded slowly, her emerald eyes fixed on him, sensing where the conversation was going.
—That young man... was me, Asia.
Yugo lifted his face and looked her in the eyes. In that instant, he dropped his mask of stoic educator and alpha predator. He allowed Asia to see the immense and painful abyss in his pupils.
"But I didn't tell you the worst part of the story," Yugo continued, interlacing his fingers on the table. "I'm not from this world. I don't belong to the human faction, nor to God's. Where I come from, this world… the demons, the fallen angels, Rias Gremory, the clans… they're just a TV show. A work of fiction I watched to pass the time."
Asia parted her lips slightly, trying to process the magnitude of that revelation, but she did not interrupt him.
"I was twenty-one years old, with a mother who worked herself to the bone, an older sister, and a younger brother. I was happy," Yugo recounted, his pain so raw it made the air heavy. "One night I went to sleep, and I woke up in a park in Kuoh. Half-naked. Not speaking the language."
Yugo clenched his hands. "I spent weeks starving on the streets. I ate from the garbage. I begged, humiliating myself. And when I finally found a job at this very minimarket and started sending money to my family… I discovered I was in a dimension where they never existed. My letters just vanished into thin air."
A silent tear rolled down Asia's cheek, but Yugo didn't stop. He had to get to the end. He had to show her the monster.
"My mind shattered, Asia. I realized my real life had been stolen and thrown into a sick fantasy. So I decided to destroy it. I was going to kill Rias Gremory so the story would never begin. But to do that, I had to become undetectable. I had to shut down my soul."
Yugo extended his hands in front of her, showing her his palms.
"These hands are not clean. I murdered. I murdered a young exorcist who was only trying to help me and stole his weapon. I massacred innocent families, people who begged me for their lives, just to quell my murderous intent and become a perfect predator. I destroyed my own lungs and bones through training. And now, I've sold my humanity completely: last night I let Sona Sitri reincarnate me. I'm a low-class demon in the service of an heiress of the Underworld."
Yugo withdrew his hands and adjusted his glasses. His breathing was slightly labored.
"I am everything the religion you were raised in taught you to hate. I am a demon, a murderer, a psychopath pretending to be a teacher to hide from his sins. And this watch—" He touched the Omnitrix—"is not a gift from God. It is a machine that allows me to become nightmares to terrorize other nightmares."
The silence that followed was deafening. Outside, the city of Kuoh slept in ignorance. Inside, Yugo awaited his sentence.
"I hid this from you because I was selfish," Yugo said, his voice trailing off, reverting to the apathy of a man resigned to his fate. "I wanted to preserve the only light I found in this hell. But it's not fair to you. You are pure, Asia. And I am radioactive."
Yugo stood up, pushing the chair away. He reached into his pocket and took out a key, placing it on the table.
"If I frighten you, I understand. If you feel disgust when you look at me, that's the right reaction," Yugo said, looking down at her with a devastating sadness that his motionless face couldn't quite conceal. "The door is open. Rias Gremory is desperate to have you in her peerage. She's the heroine of this story. If you go with her, she'll protect you. And I… I won't stop you. I won't even go near you at the academy."
The history teacher gave a slight bow, lowering his head like a criminal before the judge.
"And even if you leave... if one day the demons or the fallen try to hurt you, I'll kill them from the shadows. But you don't have to live under the same roof as a monster. The choice is yours, Asia."
Yugo turned around, ready to go upstairs and lock himself in his room. He knew that by dawn she would be gone. It was the punishment he deserved. The price for his sins.
But he had barely taken two steps when he heard the sound of the wooden chair scraping the linoleum floor.
Small, warm, slender arms wrapped around his waist from behind. A soft forehead rested against the hard back of the Pawn of Sitri.
Yugo's demonic heart stopped.
"Asia..." he murmured, tensing up completely.
"I'm not leaving," the nun said. Her voice was broken with sobs, but there wasn't a trace of doubt, disgust, or fear in her words. It was absolute conviction.
Yugo looked down at the small hands that were clutching his black shirt.
—Asia, I just told you I'm a murderer. That I'm a demon. That I lied to you.
"He told me he's someone who suffered so much he forgot how to live," Asia sobbed, squeezing him tighter, as if afraid he might faint. "He told me he lost his family. That he was alone on the streets, cold and hungry, just like I was when the Church excommunicated me."
Asia rested her cheek against the professor's back.
—Rias Gremory abandoned me on the ground to save her servant. The God I prayed to all my life turned His back on me when the Fallen struck me. But you… you came. You coughed blood on the ground to come and find me. You went down into that abyss and stood up to Father Freed when no one else would.
Asia slowly let go of him, only to walk around him and stand in front of his face. Tears streamed down her cheeks, but she gave him the most beautiful, sad, and loving smile Yugo had ever seen.
"The heroes of your TV story left me to die, Yugo-san," Asia whispered, taking the killer's rough hands in her own. "It was the monster that stayed with me. So I don't care what world you come from. I don't care what monsters are in your watch, or what color the magic is that runs through your veins now. You are my family. And family is not abandoned."
Yugo was breathless.
The enormous dam of guilt, cosmic hatred, trauma, and pain that she had carried on her shoulders for ten years finally cracked irreversibly. Before this girl, there were no arrogant gods to defy, no demons to humiliate. There was only forgiveness. Undeserved forgiveness, but bestowed with absolute grace.
The dreaded Hano-sensei, the anomaly of Kuoh, the giant who had atomized demons and crushed angels, fell to his knees on the cold floor of the minimarket.
For the first time since the night he woke up in the rain in Kuoh Park, Yugo cried. They weren't quiet tears. It was a heart-wrenching, deep, and painful cry—the cry of a twenty-one-year-old who had finally found his way home.
He buried his face in Asia's shoulder, clutching her apron as if it were the last lifeline in a shipwreck. The little nun hugged him tightly, stroking the professor's hair as he crumbled in her arms.
"It's alright, Yugo-san..." Asia whispered softly, kissing the top of his head. "You're not alone anymore. I'll take care of you, just like you take care of me."
Upstairs, in the darkness of the second floor, Mittelt, who had nearly suffered a heart attack from the static noises of the clock, heard the sobs coming from the first floor. She covered her ears with the pillow, terrified that the monster was performing some kind of satanic ritual, unaware that, at that very moment, the human inside the Omnitrix had just saved his own soul.
The heart-wrenching sobs, the ones he had suppressed with layers of stoicism, blood, and cynicism, gradually subsided until they became deep, trembling breaths. Clinging to the little nun's apron, Yugo felt the monumental tension that had been holding his muscles suddenly vanish.
The adrenaline, the trauma, and the constant alertness that had kept him alive on the streets of Kuoh vanished, leaving behind an overwhelming emptiness. An absolute and crushing fatigue, one that was not physical but purely spiritual, took hold of him. His knees, resting on the cold linoleum floor, seemed to lose all their strength.
Asia realized it immediately. She felt the weight of the imposing man press lightly against her.
With infinite gentleness, the girl slid her arms from the professor's shoulders and guided him to the floor. Yugo, his mind clouded by extreme exhaustion and his eyes heavy behind fogged glasses, offered no resistance. He let himself fall sideways, and before his head touched the hard floor of the convenience store, Asia nimbly sat up and placed the professor's face on her lap.
Yugo blinked, stunned. The sensation of softness and warmth under his cheek was so foreign to his life that it took his brain a few seconds to process it.
"Alright, Yugo-san..." Asia whispered, her voice sounding like a soft lullaby in the silence of the tent. "You don't have to fight tonight. Rest."
The girl's slender, delicate fingers began to caress the professor's black hair, parting the strands damp with sweat and tears. The touch was so pure, so devoid of malice or hidden intention, that it disarmed the last defenses of Yugo's mind.
He closed his eyes. He waited, as he had every night for the past six years, for the darkness of his eyelids to fill with horrific images. He waited to hear the screams of the young exorcist, Mateo. He waited to see the blood of the civilians he had massacred to train his murderous intent. He waited to see his mother's face vanish into thin air.
But... nothing happened.
For the first time in ten years, the abyss of his mind was not inhabited by monsters or ghosts. It was simply darkness. A warm, silent, and profoundly peaceful darkness.
Lulled by Asia's soft humming and the rhythmic movement of her fingers in his hair, the dreaded Pawn of Sitri, the demon slayer and wielder of the Omnitrix, fell into the deepest and most unbreakable sleep of his existence.
...
A faint ray of golden light slipped through the slit in the metal shutter of the main shop window, hitting Yugo's closed eyes directly.
The professor frowned slightly and opened his eyes.
The dawn light bathed the interior of the "Saturn" minimarket. The refrigerators hummed with their usual monotonous rhythm. Yugo blinked, feeling a lightness in his chest that completely unsettled him.
He didn't feel the usual lump in his throat. He didn't feel the urge to check the perimeter. His mind was clear, sharp, and free from the fog of constant regret. He had slept. He had truly slept. Not a single nightmare had crossed the threshold of his subconscious.
As he tried to move, he noticed a gentle pressure under his head and a light weight on his shoulder.
He looked up. Asia was sitting on the floor, her back against the counter. The girl had fallen asleep sitting up, her head tilted forward and one of her hands still resting limply on Yugo's hair. Her breathing was calm and peaceful.
Yugo remained motionless, observing her.
The young man's analytical and calculating mind assessed the situation, but this time, the variables weren't magical or tactical. They were pure human logic. This girl, rejected by her God and hunted by demons, had heard him confess to being a ruthless killer... and instead of running away, she had granted him absolution and given him his first night of peace in a decade.
With extreme gentleness so as not to startle her, Yugo slowly sat up. He sat on the floor in front of her, crossing his legs, and adjusted his glasses.
The slight movement was enough to wake Asia. The girl blinked, rubbing her emerald eyes with the back of her hand, and let out a small yawn before focusing her gaze on the man who was staring at her.
"Um... Good morning, Yugo-san..." Asia murmured, her voice still hoarse from sleep, blushing slightly as she realized they had spent the entire night on the tent floor. "Did you get any rest?"
Yugo looked at her silently for a couple of seconds. His cold gray eyes, usually empty, now reflected an absolute calm and a subtle warmth that only she had the privilege of seeing.
"I slept," Yugo replied, his voice monotonous but lacking its usual sharp edge. "For the first time in ten years, I slept without a single ghost in my head. It was... a perfectly restorative sleep."
Asia's smile lit up the room, outshining the dawn light. "I'm so glad to hear it! It means his heart has finally begun to heal."
Yugo nodded slowly, processing that fact. Then, with the same serious, clinical, and imperturbable expression he would use to lecture on the French Revolution, he dropped a bombshell that defied all social convention.
—Asia.
—Yes, Yugo-san?
"I've been analyzing the events of last night and my current state," Yugo began, resting her elbows on her knees and interlacing her fingers. "You've proven to be the only person capable of stabilizing my psyche. You're compassionate, loyal, and we share a deep understanding of what it means to lose everything."
Asia tilted her head, a little confused by the professor's formal tone. "What do you mean?"
Yugo looked her straight in the eyes.
—I mean, I wouldn't have any problem marrying you. In fact, I consider it the most logical and best outcome for our future.
Asia Argento's brain suffered a monumental short circuit.
The silence in the convenience store lasted exactly three seconds. The nun's face shifted from a light pink hue from sleep to a crimson red so intense it rivaled Rias Gremory's hair. Her emerald eyes widened to their maximum capacity, and an imaginary wisp of steam seemed to escape from her ears.
"E-Eeeeeeeeh?!" Asia shrieked, waving her arms in front of her in a state of total panic, her Japanese becoming an incomprehensible babble. "M-Marry?! Yugo-san?! But... but I...! You...! We just...!"
Yugo remained unfazed by her hysterical reaction. He maintained his relaxed posture and expressionless face.
"I'm not asking you to do it today. You're still only fifteen; it would be a crime in the human world," Yugo explained with a pragmatism that only worsened the girl's confusion. "I'm simply establishing a future fact. You've declared that we're family. I accept that premise. And if you decide to stay by my side permanently, marriage is the social contract that best secures that union. I don't dislike the idea at all."
"Yugo-san, you can't say things like that with such a serious face!" Asia whined, covering her burning face with both hands, completely overwhelmed but feeling her heart pounding a mile a minute with happiness at his words. "That's something you say romantically, not like it's a math equation!"
A very slight, almost imperceptible smile appeared at the corner of Yugo's lips.
He stood up, extended his hand, and helped her up from the linoleum floor.
"I'll learn about romance if that makes you happy," he murmured, dusting her apron. "Go wash your face. We're opening the shop in three hours, and I want to see how the pigeons upstairs handle the mop."
Asia nodded shyly, her face still as red as a tomato, and ran up the stairs to the second floor, her heart about to burst with joy in her chest.
Yugo Hano was left alone on the first floor. He looked around at the clean shelves and the sunlight streaming through the window. He took a deep breath. For the first time in his new life, the world no longer felt like a prison. It felt like home.
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I apologize for the delay; I had this chapter in draft form, but it was confusing and I had to fix it.
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( ̳• · • ̳) ~ ♡ Thanks for reading ♡
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