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For Akeno Himejima, Kuoh City had always been divided into two overlapping maps. There was the bright map of her current life: Kuoh Academy, the Occult Research Club, Rias Gremory's territory. And then there was the map of shadows, a labyrinth of dark alleys and pain that she avoided at all costs.
But that Wednesday night, as she patrolled the skies from high above under the moonlight, her violet eyes settled on a specific spot in the business district that forced her to stop in mid-air.
The old neon sign flickered, casting a white and blue light onto the asphalt.
«Saturn».
The Thunder Priestess's heart leapt so violently that she almost lost control of her demon wings. It had been ten years since that place had closed. It had been ten years since she had fled from there in the middle of a storm, leaving behind a crayon drawing and a strawberry candy wrapper.
She had spent a decade convincing herself that the young foreigner who had given her her own futon, who had protected her from nightmares, and who had shouted at the Himejima clan's trackers in an incomprehensible language, had been killed because of her. The guilt had gnawed at her for years, buried beneath her facade of a sadistic, smiling Vice President.
She descended slowly, her wings dissipating into magical particles before her boots gently touched the concrete of the adjacent building's rooftop.
The shop had been remodeled. It even had a small annex on the second floor that hadn't been there before. Akeno approached the edge of the roof, peering out at the street. Through the clean windows of the facade, she saw something that left her speechless: Raynare, Kalawarner, and Mittelt, Grigori's assassins, mopping the floors and arranging shelves while wearing green aprons.
"What are they doing here?" Akeno thought, frowning. She knew the Fallen had been enslaved by Hano-sensei, the academy's lethal anomaly. Did that mean the teacher had bought their old refuge?
Driven by a mixture of overwhelming nostalgia and tactical curiosity, Akeno moved nimbly through the shadows of the rooftop until she reached the back of the building, right above the back room window that overlooked the alley.
He crouched down silently, resting his hands on the edge of the ledge. The small storeroom window was ajar to let in the night breeze.
Akeno closed her eyes, preparing to leave. She was invading the privacy of the monster who had humiliated Sona Sitri and who could evaporate demons with a snap of his fingers. It was dangerous.
But then... a sound floated through the open window.
A male voice. Deep, resonant, monotonous, and weary, yet undeniably imbued with a tenderness Akeno had never associated with the present. The voice was humming, and then it began to sing in a foreign language, soft and rhythmic.
"My dear child, stop crying now..." Akeno froze. The air caught in her lungs.
Her violet eyes opened wide, pupils dilated by the impact of a memory that struck her with the force of lightning.
—I will be by your side, and no one will ever hurt you again...
She didn't understand the language. Ten years ago she hadn't understood a single word of Spanish, and she still didn't. But the cadence, the deep tone that vibrated in her chest, the soothing melody... that song was seared into the very walls of her soul.
Akeno's mind was pulled ten years into the past.
Thunder rumbled over Kuoh. Little Akeno, covered in grime and dried blood, huddled in a corner of this same back room, covering her ears, crying for her murdered mother, terrified by the black feathers of her own executioners.
And then he sat down beside her on the cold floor. He didn't touch her, respecting her terror. He simply began to sing that same melody in his husky, melancholic voice, enveloping her in a blanket of sound that drove the monsters from her mind. When the storm subsided, she looked up at him, clutching a mug of hot chocolate that had already cooled.
—Watashi no namae wa... Akeno—the girl whispered, her eyes swollen. —Anata wa? (My name is Akeno. And yours?)
The young foreigner, his face smudged with dust from working the night shift, gave her such a pure and sad smile that Akeno's heart ached. She raised a rough hand and, with infinite gentleness, caressed her cheek to dry a tear.
"My name is ****," the young man replied in a warm whisper.
Currently, on the cold rooftop of the minimarket, Akeno Himejima brought both hands to her mouth to stifle the sob that escaped from her throat.
Trembling violently, the Queen of the Gremory clan peered through the crack in the window.
The light from a small lamp illuminated the back room. There, seated on a box, was Asia Argento, fast asleep, her head resting on the shoulder of the man sitting beside her.
Yugo Hano.
The strict history teacher. The "Discipline Demon." The monster of magma and crystal. Sona Sitri's pawn.
There he was, his gaze lost in the cardboard boxes, stroking the nun's golden hair while singing her the same lullaby he had once sung to her.
Thick, burning tears began to roll uncontrollably down Akeno's cheeks.
The pieces of the puzzle, which for years had lain scattered in the void, fell into place with a beautiful cruelty. The foreigner who didn't speak Japanese well had become the impeccable teacher of literature and history. The malnourished young man who used to clean floors was now the bearer of an apocalyptic arsenal.
The black crystal. Akeno remembered the strange necklace the young man always wore under his shirt; that's why she could never sense his aura at the academy. He had been by her side all this time. He walked the same halls. He handed her club reports. He called her "Himejima" with icy coldness, looking at her with those dead, empty eyes.
But now Akeno understood everything.
She understood Yugo's broken gaze. She understood why he had transformed into a ruthless executioner of demons and fallen angels. He wasn't a psychopath; he was a survivor. And if he had become so dark, so cold and calculating...
"Was it because of me?" Akeno thought, her chest aching so much she felt it would break in two. "I fled in the middle of the storm to protect him from the trackers... but he didn't know. He must have thought I'd been killed, or that I was lost forever in the darkness."
Guilt and remorse mingled with such immense relief that she almost lost her balance. He was alive! Her first protector, the man who had given her shelter when her own clan wanted to kill her, hadn't died. He had survived, hardened, become a titan to ensure no one else was trampled by the factions. And now, he was protecting Asia in exactly the same way he had protected her.
Akeno rested her forehead against the cold brick of the store's exterior wall, closing her eyes as tears soaked the concrete.
Her sadistic, flirtatious, and playful mind vanished, leaving behind the loyal girl, wounded and desperate for affection. Rias Gremory's Queen had just found the missing piece of her soul, and she wasn't on her mistress's side, but in her rival's territory.
"My savior..." Akeno sobbed silently beneath the starry sky, listening to the last notes of the lullaby fade into the night. "I swear... I swear that this time I won't leave. I will return all the warmth you gave me. Even if I have to pierce your ice armor. Even if I have to take Sona Sitri from you."
...
The afternoon sun filtered through the windows of the teachers' lounge, tinting the airborne dust with a melancholic orange hue. Classes had ended more than an hour ago, and the main building of Kuoh Academy was shrouded in that deceptive stillness that precedes the factions' nightly activities.
Seated at his desk, Yugo Hano graded history exams with his usual mechanical and tedious precision. However, his mind was far removed from the dates of the French Revolution.
Ever since he arrived at the academy under his false identity, he had systematically and deliberately avoided Akeno Himejima. He knew the canon. He knew she was Rias Gremory's queen, a central piece on the chessboard he planned to destroy in his most deranged moment. But beyond tactics, there was a much more personal and cowardly reason for his distance.
He knew perfectly well that the stunning Thunder Priestess was the same terrified little girl he had fed strawberry candies in the back room of the Saturn ten years ago. Yugo had convinced himself that the kind young man who had saved her was dead, replaced by a blood-stained killer. To approach her, to allow her to recognize him, would have meant tainting the only pure memory he retained. That was why he had built the "Hano-sensei" wall: an unreachable block of ice.
The soft sliding of the teachers' lounge door pulled him from his thoughts.
Yugo didn't look up from the exam he was marking with red ink. His demonic senses had already identified the magical signature and the unmistakable aroma of ozone and black tea.
"The teachers' lounge is restricted to students outside of class hours, Himejima," Yugo said, his voice flat and lacking inflection.
Akeno closed the door behind her with unusual gentleness. She was carrying a small tray with a steaming cup of tea. There was no characteristic "Ara, ara," nor the sadistic, flirtatious smile she usually wore as armor against the world. Her posture was tense, almost vulnerable, as if she were about to defuse a bomb.
"I know, Sensei. But I noticed you haven't left here all afternoon. I thought you might like some tea," Akeno replied, walking slowly until she stopped in front of his desk.
She carefully placed the cup on the wood.
Yugo put the red pen aside and sighed, adjusting his glasses.
"If this is Gremory's attempt to smooth things over with his clan, tell Rias I don't drink anything that I or the Student Council don't prepare myself," he retorted, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed. "I don't have time for spy games, Akeno."
It was the first time he had called her by her first name instead of her last name, a tiny slip-up resulting from the exhaustion of the last few days.
Akeno remained unfazed by the rejection. Instead, her violet gaze fixed on the professor's cold, gray eyes. There was an intensity in them, a painful devotion that took Yugo completely by surprise. It was the same look Asia had given him in the church, but now laden with ten years of experience.
"I'm not here on Buchou's orders," Akeno said, her voice losing all its playful facade, becoming a deep, genuine whisper. "I'm here for myself."
Yugo held his gaze, his wall of ice trying to remain firm. "What do you want?"
Akeno swallowed. Her hands, clasped in front of her skirt, trembled slightly.
"Last night... I was flying near the shopping district. I saw that the Saturn convenience store had reopened," Akeno began, choosing her words carefully. "I went up to the rooftop. And... I heard something through the back window."
Yugo's demonic heart lurched brutally in his chest, but his face remained like a mask of stone. His overactive mind calculated the damage. If she had overheard his conversation with Asia, if she had heard him sing that lullaby...
"Listening to private conversations is a bad habit, Himejima. So what?" he tried to deflect, hardening his tone.
Akeno took a step toward him, placing both hands on the wooden desk and leaning forward. The tears she had held back since the night before began to shine in her eyes.
"My clan's trackers would have killed you if I had stayed," Akeno sobbed, her voice breaking completely. "I fled in the middle of the storm because I didn't want my presence to bring you death. I spent ten years believing that monsters had devoured you for trying to protect me."
The red pen rolled off the desk and fell to the floor.
The wall surrounding "Yugo Hano" cracked from top to bottom. The professor froze, unable to utter a single word, his lungs suddenly forgetting how to process oxygen.
"And then you come to this academy," Akeno continued, tears finally sliding down her cheeks, falling onto her history exams. "So cold, so distant, scaring everyone. You looked at me like I was nobody. You made me believe that the boy who gave me strawberry candies and his own futon didn't exist..."
"Akeno, stop it," Yugo tried to stop her, his voice unusually hoarse, feeling panic creeping over him. Not panic of an enemy, but panic of actually being seen.
"No!" she retorted, shaking her head, a smile both radiant and painful on her face. "I saw what you did for Asia. I know you saved her. You became that terrifying monster, covered yourself in blood, and shut yourself off from the world... just to make sure that people like us wouldn't be hurt again."
Yugo looked away, his gaze fixed on the window. His breathing was ragged. He had spent an entire decade burying his identity, assuming the role of the soulless killer. He had erased his past so efficiently that he himself had forgotten what it was like to be human in her presence.
"You're wrong," Yugo muttered, clutching his guards desperately. "You don't know the things I've done. I'm not the boy you remember. He died in the streets of Kuoh."
Akeno circled the desk. Yugo tensed, but didn't move away when the Thunder Priestess knelt beside him, placing a warm hand on the cold fabric of his trousers.
"He didn't die," Akeno whispered, looking up at him with the purest devotion a demon could possess. "He sang a lullaby last night. He protected me from the lightning. And he's still here."
Yugo closed his eyes, feeling the last barrier of his stoic sanity crumble. The weight of loneliness he had carried for ten years suddenly became unbearable.
Akeno raised her other hand and, with a delicacy that rivaled that of a feather, caressed the professor's pale cheek. Exactly the same gesture he had made for her ten years before to dry a tear.
And then, with a tender smile filled with overwhelming nostalgia, Akeno uttered the words that made Yugo's universe come to a complete standstill.
—Thank you for surviving... Jose.
Yugo's gray eyes opened wide, his pupils dilated to the maximum with pure and incomprehensible disbelief.
Jose.
The name echoed in the killer's head, bouncing off the walls of his skull like the echo of a life he thought he'd burned away. It was a Latin name. On his original identity document in his other universe, it was followed by a middle name and two surnames, a testament to his roots, his blood, his mother. But in Kuoh, on this twisted chessboard of demons and gods, it was just an alien sound that no one else knew.
Nobody, except the little girl to whom he had whispered it ten years ago.
Yugo's breathing—Jose's—became erratic. For the first time since facing the Fallen Angels, real, visceral panic gripped him. His right hand, trembling, instinctively rose and pulled Akeno's hand away from his cheek. It wasn't a violent movement, but the terrified retreat of a wounded animal.
"No..." he murmured, backing up in his wheelchair until he bumped into the filing cabinet behind him. His voice lacked its usual monotonous, icy tone; it sounded raspy, fragile. "Don't call me that."
Akeno didn't move from her kneeling position, even though the initial rejection hurt her. Her violet eyes, still moist, observed him with complete understanding.
"I never forgot," Akeno said softly, ignoring his order. "I didn't understand your language back then, but the way you pronounced it… it sounded like home. I held onto that name for months, Jose. Even after Buchou found me, deep down, I was still hoping you'd open that back room door again with another bag of sweets about to expire."
The professor brought both hands to his face, hiding his gray eyes behind his palms.
The psychological fortress he had meticulously constructed over 3,650 days was crumbling. The cracks were spreading at an unstoppable rate. He had survived by assuming the identity of Yugo Hano, a man without a past, a functional block of ice designed to kill and teach history. Upon hearing his true name, the emotional detachment shattered. Suddenly, the weight of all the blood he had spilled, of all the people he had massacred to hone his murderous intent, didn't fall on "Yugo Hano." It fell on Jose. On the 21-year-old who just wanted to wash his mother's dishes.
An uncontrollable tremor shook his shoulders.
"That boy is dead, Akeno," he managed to say from behind his hands, his voice choked with a misery that tore at his throat. "The young man you remember, the one who gave you that futon... he died of hunger and despair in an alley. What you see before you is a monster. I'm a murderer. I've done things... things that would disgust you."
Akeno slowly stood up. She placed both hands on the desk and walked around to his side. She crouched down, invading the personal space of the feared professor, and did something that no one in the entire Kuoh Academy would have dared to do.
She put her arms around his shoulders and rested her head against his chest.
Jose's demonic body tensed like a violin string. The scent of black tea, ozone, and floral perfume flooded his senses.
"I am Rias Gremory's Queen, Jose," Akeno whispered, her voice vibrating against his shirt. "I am half Fallen Angel, the daughter of Baraqiel. I know blood. I know darkness and self-loathing. I have electrocuted and tortured enemies until nothing remained of them, all to prove my loyalty to my mistress and to escape my own past."
Akeno raised her face, searching for the gaze of the man who still had his face half hidden.
"You don't disgust me," she stated with unwavering conviction. "If you became a monster to survive, to ensure the safety of me, Asia, and your students... then you're my favorite monster in the Three Worlds."
Jose slowly lowered his hands from his face. His gray eyes, now free of their walls of apathy, gazed at her. They were bloodshot, filled with an ancient, suffocating pain, but, for the first time, they allowed Akeno's warmth to enter.
The ice melted. The killer stopped pretending he felt nothing.
He let out a sigh so long and heavy it seemed to empty his lungs of ten years' worth of ash. His arms, almost instinctively, hesitated for a few seconds in the air before slowly descending and returning the embrace. It was an awkward, stiff gesture, as if he'd forgotten how to hold someone without hurting them, but Akeno clung to him even tighter.
"Damn it, Himejima..." he muttered, resting his chin on the girl's black hair, surrendering to reality. "You're a pain in the neck."
Akeno let out a wet laugh, closing her eyes in pure happiness.
They remained like that for several minutes, in the silence of the teachers' lounge. The "Demon of Discipline," the anomaly whose left wrist held the power to destroy continents, and the Thunder Priestess, simply embraced like two orphans who had just found each other again in the middle of a minefield.
Slowly, Jose broke the embrace, gently pulling away. His face still reflected emotional exhaustion, but the cold hostility toward her had completely vanished.
"You can't keep calling me that out loud," he said, returning to his usual tone, though much softer. "Yugo Hano is the name that exists in this world. If Rias or Sona hear that name..."
"It'll be our secret," Akeno promised, bringing a finger to her lips with a smile that blended her newfound devotion with a trace of her usual sadistic coquetry. "I'll only call you that when we're alone."
Jose adjusted his glasses, feeling a very different kind of headache beginning to form in his temples. He leaned back in his chair, staring at the steaming cup of tea she had brought him.
"This complicates things, Akeno," he warned, pointing to the Gremory Clan emblem on the girl's uniform. "You know this, don't you? I'm Sona Sitri's Pawn. You're Rias Gremory's Queen. Officially, in the demon hierarchy, we're from rival factions. If your mistress finds out you've come crying to me, she'll think I'm trying to undermine her nobility."
Akeno's smile widened. She straightened up, smoothing her skirt with her characteristic elegance. The vulnerable girl vanished, and the seductive Vice President of the Occult Research Club took control, though this time her eyes shone with undeniable affection.
"Ara, ara... is my dear savior afraid of a little political drama?" Akeno joked, leaning across the desk. "If Buchou finds out, I'll have to tell him I was bewitched by the incomprehensible charm of the fearsome Hano-sensei. Besides... I like danger. If Sona Kaichou thinks you're just her pawn, I'll have to steal her most valuable piece."
Jose stared at her expressionlessly, but a faint, fleeting, ironic smile crossed his lips. The old personality of the Latino boy, the one who wasn't intimidated by bravado, briefly peeked through the cracks.
"Good luck with that. Sona's so possessive of her pieces that if you try to steal from me, she'll drown you in the school lake before recess," he retorted, finally taking a sip of his teacup. "Besides, I'm not for sale. I have enough on my plate keeping a nun and three pigeons alive who don't know how to use a cash register."
Akeno let out a genuine, crystal-clear laugh, a sound rarely heard in the academy.
"I'll help you if you need it, Jose," she said gently, pausing in the doorway of the teachers' lounge. "It doesn't matter what King Gremory decrees, or what King Sitri commands. If you ever need the heavens to rain lightning down on your enemies... just call me."
Yugo took a small sip of the tea. It was surprisingly good.
—Go home, Akeno. It's getting late.
She nodded, gave a small bow, and left the room, closing the door behind her.
Jose was left alone. He looked at the exam marked in red on his desk and then at the dark Omnitrix on his left wrist. The unbreakable wall of ten years had been shattered. His name had been spoken. He had forgiven Mittelt, he had bowed to Asia, and now he had Akeno back.
His self-imposed solitude, his strongest shield, was fading. And although that terrified him more than any Fallen Angel, for the first time since falling into this cursed world, the young man named Jose felt that life was worth living.