Some days, the demon got bored.
It was a dangerous thought, one Akuma Yōtenshi usually kept locked down tight. But watching two third-years shove a first-year boy against the shoe lockers, he felt it stir—that ancient, restless thing inside him, unimpressed by the petty theater of it all.
Posture: aggressive. Voices: mocking. Target: vulnerable.
His father's training kicked in, cold and analytical. Assess. Classify. Neutralize. But beneath the logic, a storm whispered a simpler verdict: This is beneath me.
He didn't decide to move; the space simply seemed to part for him. The chatter in the hallway dipped as he passed. He was used to it—the tall, broad-shouldered silhouette, the unnatural light-gray hair, the storm in his eyes that made even teachers hesitate. He wasn't a student here; he was a landmark.
"Problem?" The single word cut through the bullies' jeering, flat and final.
The larger one, with a haircut that looked like a failed science experiment, spun around. "Y-Yōtenshi. This is none of your business."
"It is now. You're clogging the hallway." Akuma's gaze slid past him to the first-year, a kid trying to become one with his own bento box. "You hurt?"
The boy shook his head, eyes wide with a fear that included Akuma in its scope.
"See? He's fine," the bully said, his voice losing its edge.
Akuma didn't move. His stillness was a physical force. "Let's do the math. You gain nothing. You risk a disciplinary file and my undivided, permanent attention." A faint, almost imperceptible chill seeped into his tone. "The equation doesn't work in your favor. Walk away."
A snort echoed from the lockers. Hatsuma Hatake lounged against them, uniform a lost cause, hair a masterpiece of bedhead. "Translation: scram before he gets out the big words. It gets weird."
The bullies exchanged a look. The fight had gone out of them, replaced by a primal urge to flee. They muttered something and scattered.
Hatsuma ambled over, grinning his lazy, all-knowing grin. "A 'please' would've worked too, you know."
"And give them the satisfaction of thinking they had a choice?" Akuma shot back, the tension in his shoulders easing a fraction. Just being near Hatsuma was like dropping a heavy weight he hadn't realized he was carrying.
"Whatever, Mr. Charisma. Come on, Kayel's mission is about to hit critical failure. Front row seats."
They found Kayel Brown leaning against the school gate, his red hair a defiant blaze under the sun. He was strategically positioned, a practiced grin on his face as a group of second-year girls passed by.
"Any second now," Hatsuma murmured, sliding next to Akuma like a spectator at a sporting event. "Watch the master at work."
Kayel pushed off the gate, falling into step beside one of the girls. "Hey, just wanted to say your hair looks really—"
"Get lost, Kayel," the girl said without breaking stride or looking at him, her friends giggling.
Kayel's shoulders slumped for a grand total of two seconds before he bounced back, spotting another target and immediately changing course, his energy undimmed.
"Strike one," Hatsuma said with a chef's kiss. "The man is a poet."
Akuma watched the display, a faint, almost invisible smirk touching his lips. It was a train wreck, but it was their train wreck. Kayel's relentless, sincere enthusiasm was a bizarre constant in his world.
As they walked out the school gates and into the afternoon bustle of the country side, the light suddenly felt wrong. Not in temperature, but in texture. A static hum vibrated at the edge of Akuma's awareness, a pressure building behind his eyes. He clenched his jaw, forcing it down.
"You feel that?" Hinamori's voice was soft, but it landed like a stone in still water.
She fell into step beside him, the sun setting her blonde hair on fire. Her sakura clip was perfectly in place, but her eyes—calm, deep, and seeing everything—were troubled
"Feel what?" The lie was a reflex, a shield.
"The air," she whispered, her gaze scanning the empty sky. "It's… heavy. Like the world is holding its breath."
He looked at her, truly looked, and found no escape. She saw the cracks he tried to plaster over. Lying to her suddenly felt cheap.
"Maybe a little," he admitted, the words feeling foreign. "Just a change in the weather."
She accepted this with a slow nod, but her eyes promised the conversation wasn't over. Her intuition was a quiet, relentless tide, and his walls were made of sand.
They walked in a comfortable silence that did more to calm the static than any of his mental discipline. He parted ways with Hatsuma and a dramatically sighing Kayel, then with Hinamori at her corner. Her "See you tomorrow" felt like a rope thrown to a drowning man.
Then he was alone.
And the static became a scream.
It happened on the long, quiet road home. A fog pooled in a doorway—thick, oily, and impossibly cold. As he passed through it, the world died. The distant city sounds, the rustle of leaves, the very color of the day—sucked into a vacuum of absolute silence and monochrome gray.
His heart hammered a frantic, mortal rhythm against the silence.
Then, a voice. Not in his ears, but etched directly onto his soul. Regal. Mocking. Hungry.
"Soon, My Twice-Fallen. The lock is rusting."
The voice was a key turning in the cage of his ribs. The storm inside him roared to life, not in fear, but in recognition. In welcome.
And then, nothing.
The fog vanished. Sound and color crashed back in, a sensory avalanche that left him dizzy. He stood frozen on the pavement, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles were white.
He took a sharp, ragged breath, shoving the storm back down, rebuilding the walls brick by brick.
Just tired, he told himself, the thought hollow. A trick of the light.
But as he forced his feet to move, the echo of the voice clung to him, a ghost in his veins.
The lock was rusting.
And he knew, with a cold, sinking certainty, that the voice in the smog wasn't a hallucination.
It was a countdown.