Day six belonged to Koneko.
She didn't greet me with words. Just appeared at dawn beside a boulder twice her height, wearing training clothes and a complete absence of expression.
"Strength," she said. One word. Then she pointed at the boulder.
I looked at it. Looked at her. "You want me to..."
She hit me.
Not hard enough to break anything. Just hard enough to make the point clear. Training had started.
The morning was brutal.
Koneko's teaching method made Akeno's look gentle by comparison. There were no explanations, no demonstrations, no patience. She hit, I blocked. She threw, I fell. She waited, I got back up.
Then we repeated.
The boulder served multiple purposes. I carried it. I pushed it. I dodged around it while she tried to drive me into it. Every muscle in my body screamed for rest that never came.
"...weak," she observed after the tenth time I dropped the rock.
I didn't argue. Just picked it up again.
"...still weak."
Picked it up again.
She watched with those golden eyes, flat and unreadable. No approval. No disappointment. Just observation, like a cat watching a mouse run an endless maze.
By the time the sun rose fully, my arms shook when I tried to lift them. My legs felt like they belonged to someone else. Enhanced Regeneration worked overtime, healing torn muscles as fast as I damaged them.
But I was still standing. Barely.
"...acceptable," Koneko said.
That was practically a standing ovation.
Durability training was worse.
She hit me. I took it.
That was the drill. No blocking, no dodging. Stand and receive.
"Your body learns," she explained in her usual fragments. "...needs to remember pain."
"Pretty sure my body already has strong opinions about pain."
"...opinions change."
Her fist connected with my ribs. Something cracked. Enhanced Regeneration kicked in, knitting the bone before I finished gasping.
"...again."
I planted my feet.
She hit me again. Same spot. The regeneration had barely finished healing. The fresh bone snapped again, sharper this time.
I didn't fall.
"...good."
Crack. Heal. Crack. Heal. The cycle continued until my body started anticipating the impacts, tensing before contact, absorbing force in ways I hadn't known were possible.
Koneko noticed. Her strikes came faster, harder, testing the adaptation.
I held.
Minimal dialogue, maximum pain. Her preferred teaching style, apparently.
The break came without announcement.
One moment she was winding up for another strike. The next she was sitting on the boulder, a bag of snacks materialized from somewhere, eating with the same intensity she'd applied to beating me senseless.
I collapsed onto the grass. Every breath hurt. Every movement felt like a negotiation with muscles that had given their two weeks notice.
But I was alive. Getting stronger. The numbers in my head, Fragment calculations I tried not to rely on, confirmed what my body already knew.
Progress.
Koneko reached into her bag. Pulled out a chocolate bar. Held it toward me without looking.
Same brand as the first one she'd given me, months ago. The day we'd met, when I was barely a devil and she'd silently offered comfort I hadn't known I needed.
I took it. "Thanks."
"...fuel," she said. Not acknowledgment. Just facts.
But her ears, those hidden ears I pretended not to notice, twitched slightly. Satisfaction, maybe. Or something close.
The chocolate tasted better than it had any right to. Rich, dark, with a sweetness that hit somewhere between comfort and craving.
I want another one.
The thought surfaced without warning. Intense. Specific. Followed by a mental image of stockpiling chocolate bars, hoarding them in a sunlit corner, eating slowly while the world moved around me.
I blinked. That wasn't my craving. That was...
I glanced at Koneko, still eating with methodical precision.
"Echo imprint confirmed," the Fragment observed. "Koneko Toujou behavioral patterns integrating. Current saturation: minimal. Projected increase: 1% by chapter end."
By chapter end?
"By training end," it corrected. "Unit of measurement is approximate."
I shook off the thought. The chocolate craving lingered, insistent and foreign.
Koneko finished her snack. Set aside the wrapper with careful precision. Her eyes fixed on the treeline, distant and unreadable.
"The small one contains suppressed power," the Fragment noted. "Nekomata heritage. Youkai bloodline sealed, possibly by choice. Current display represents perhaps 40% of true capability."
Nekomata?
"Cat spirit. The ears are not cosmetic. Neither is the strength."
I watched her from the corner of my eye. A small girl with white hair and golden eyes, sitting on a boulder like a queen surveying her kingdom. No hint of the youkai power the Fragment claimed lay underneath.
I didn't ask. Whatever she was hiding, whatever she'd locked away, that was her story to tell when she was ready. Pushing had never worked with Koneko. Silence worked better. Presence without demands.
"Break's over," she said.
I stood. Still aching. Still craving chocolate.
Still trusting.
The afternoon was endurance.
Koneko didn't explain the drills. She just demonstrated once, a sequence of movements that looked simple until you tried to maintain them for hours.
Squat. Hold. Stand. Strike. Squat again. Hold longer.
My thighs burned. My core screamed. Sweat poured down my face in rivers that wouldn't stop.
And Koneko watched, patient and implacable, making micro-corrections with single words or pointed looks.
"...lower."
I went lower.
"...hold."
I held until darkness crept at the edges of my vision.
"...again."
I started again.
The sun crossed the sky. The shadows lengthened. My body failed and recovered and failed again, each cycle pushing me slightly beyond the previous limit.
Somewhere around the fiftieth repetition, I collapsed.
Not a controlled descent. A complete system shutdown, my legs simply refusing to support weight anymore. I hit the ground hard, tasting dirt and exhaustion.
Koneko appeared in my field of vision, standing over me with that blank expression.
I pushed myself up. Collapsed again. Pushed. Fell.
Pushed.
Stood.
Swayed, but stayed upright.
Koneko tilted her head. The motion was so slight I almost missed it.
"...why?"
One word. But the way she said it, soft, almost confused, suggested more.
I wiped dirt from my face. "Because giving up isn't an option."
"...you could rest. Resume tomorrow. No one would judge."
"I would." I planted my feet, forced my trembling legs to lock. "Four days until Riser. Four days to get strong enough to matter. I don't have time to rest."
"...you'll break yourself."
"Then I'll break and heal and break again." I met her eyes, gold meeting gray. "That's what devils do, right? We fall. We get back up. We keep going until we can't, and then we find a way to keep going anyway."
Something flickered across her face. Not quite emotion. Koneko didn't do emotion, not outwardly. But a softening of the stone. A crack in the wall she kept so carefully maintained.
She looked at me like she was seeing something unexpected.
Then the expression vanished, replaced by familiar blankness.
"...continue."
I continued.
Evening brought dinner and exhaustion in equal measure.
The compound's common room was warm and bright, the peerage gathered around a table laden with more food than I could imagine eating. My body disagreed. After a day with Koneko, it wanted to consume everything in sight and then ask for seconds.
I sat at the end of the table, too tired for conversation. The others chatted around me. Akeno teasing Kiba about something, Asia earnestly describing her healing practice, Rias presiding over the chaos with fond exasperation.
Family. That's what they were. What I was becoming part of, slowly and painfully.
Movement beside me. Weight settling on the bench.
Koneko. Plate loaded with food, positioned closer than strictly necessary.
She didn't speak. Didn't acknowledge me beyond the proximity.
But she'd chosen to sit here. Next to me. After a day of breaking me down and building me back up.
That meant something.
"The small one is more dangerous than she appears." The Fragment's observation came unbidden. "Current power display is fraction of potential. Sealed heritage. Suppressed nature. Interesting."
You said that before.
"Repetition reinforces importance. She carries weight you do not see. One day, that weight will matter."
I didn't respond. Just ate in silence, grateful for the food and the company and the absence of demands.
Koneko ate beside me, methodical and focused. Occasionally, our elbows touched. She didn't move away.
Across the table, I caught Rias watching us. Something warm in her expression, approval, maybe, or satisfaction at seeing bonds form within her peerage.
Our eyes met. She smiled, soft and private, before returning to her conversation with Akeno.
The romance number ticked up somewhere in my mind. I was too tired to analyze it.
After dinner, I retreated to my room to collapse.
But before I reached the door, a small hand pressed something into my palm.
Koneko. Silent as always, appearing without warning.
A chocolate bar. Same brand. Same wrapper.
"Eat." Her voice was soft, barely above a whisper. "...you'll need energy."
That was the most she'd said all day. More words in one sentence than the entire training session combined.
Somehow, it felt like more than words.
"Thank you," I said. "For today. For all of it."
She blinked. The faintest hint of color touched her cheeks, so slight I might have imagined it.
"...senpai is strong," she said. Not a compliment. A statement of fact. "...stronger than he knows."
Then she was gone, padding away on silent feet, leaving me with a chocolate bar and a strange warmth in my chest.
I stood in the hallway, too tired to move, turning the candy over in my hands.
Four days. Power Level: 68. Still not enough.
But the gap was closing. Every training session, every broken bone and rebuilt muscle, every piece of myself I absorbed from those around me, it all added up.
Kiba's precision. Akeno's duality. Koneko's quiet strength.
And now this: a chocolate bar given without expectation, a gesture so small and so significant it defied analysis.
I really want another chocolate bar.
The craving hit again, stronger this time. Specific and insistent and definitely not mine.
Echo: 19%. The Fragment confirmed what I already suspected.
I was becoming pieces of them. And maybe that wasn't entirely a curse.
Four days.
I unwrapped the chocolate and took a bite. Rich and dark and comforting.
Getting closer.