The answer seemed to catch Rias off guard—just briefly, a small pause where she hadn't expected one. Then she smiled, and the surprise folded neatly into something warmer and more considered.
"I won't give up, though," she said. "So don't blame me if my methods feel a little persistent."
"I'd appreciate some moderation in the persistence," Kai replied evenly.
He turned the situation over in his mind as he moved toward the bathroom. Whatever he'd expected from becoming a Devil servant—some grim life of exploitation, dangerous errands, thankless labor in the service of someone who regarded him as a tool—the reality had taken a dramatically different shape. A Master who healed him herself, who showed genuine fury when he was hurt, who apparently felt comfortable enough with him to make offers that would have knocked most people sideways.
No television writer would have dared script this. It was too strange to be believed.
"I'm going to shower," he said.
The dried sweat was bothering him. His Devil body made every physical sensation sharper than it used to be, and 'uncomfortable' was no longer something he could simply tune out the way he once had.
He washed quickly, came back out—and found Rias exactly as he might have expected if he'd thought about it: seated on the sofa with her legs crossed, utterly unconcerned about her state of undress, working her way through a cup of red tea with the calm of someone who had absolutely nowhere else to be.
She looked up. "You took forever," she said mildly.
Then she deposited the tea, stood, and swept past him into the bathroom, already humming something light and private to herself.
Kai watched the bathroom door close.
He gathered Rias's clothes from where they'd been left on the bed, folded them with more care than strictly necessary, and set them on the bedside table in the guest room. Then he went back to his room, didn't spare a glance at the silhouette moving behind the frosted panel of the bathroom door, and dropped onto the bed.
The exhaustion arrived all at once—the way it does when the mind finally accepts that the danger has passed and releases everything it was holding back during it. Today's fight had been brief by any measure, but brief in the way that a knife wound is brief: over quickly, consequences lasting considerably longer. Forcing himself to move through the contamination of Holy Light, making every mental calculation under that kind of pain, holding himself together through the sheer refusal to stop—
At least I came out the other side of it.
The thought was his last coherent one. He was asleep before Rias finished her shower.
He was dimly aware, some indeterminate time later, of the mattress shifting. Of warmth settling in behind him. Of something soft and real pressing against his back and an arm finding its way around him, and him, still more asleep than awake, instinctively pulling the warmth closer.
His hands registered something.
Even in his half-conscious state, there was a brief, vivid impression—soft, warm, substantial, the kind of thing that could not be adequately contained by one hand—before he drifted back down into sleep, accompanied by what might have been a small, surprised, not entirely displeased sound from somewhere nearby.
Morning arrived in the form of traffic sounds drifting up from the street below.
Kai surfaced slowly from sleep, opened his eyes, and found himself looking at a curtain of deep red hair.
Rias was asleep against his chest, her back to him, still and peaceful. His right arm was around her waist, which was fine. His right hand, however, had apparently developed its own agenda at some point during the night, and its current position caused him to raise an eyebrow slowly at the ceiling.
He lay there for a moment, taking stock.
He was reminded, with the peculiar clarity of early morning, of a childhood memory—playing with those small, soft water-filled balloons in summer, the specific, yielding give of them in his palms—and found the comparison more apt than he'd like to admit.
I prepared a guest room for her.
He did not say it aloud. It seemed, at this point, largely beside the point.
What was done was done. He drew Rias a fraction closer, closed his eyes, and enjoyed the warmth—the softness, the simple, encompassing comfort of it—for a few minutes more.
The back of his hand received a gentle, deliberate pat.
"Kai." Rias's voice was soft and quietly amused. "You can't keep sleeping. It's time."
"…I know." He came back to full wakefulness and let his arm fall. He stretched and lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling with the expression of someone who has had quite enough of mornings. "Sorry. Fell back under."
Rias turned over to face him, propping herself up on one elbow. She studied him for a moment with bright, unhurried eyes, then reached out and prodded his cheek with one finger.
"You were rather demanding last night."
Kai turned his head slightly to look at her.
"…Didn't I prepare a guest room for you?" he said.
Rias laughed—clear, genuine, unrepentant. She sat up, pushed her hair back, and stretched with total unselfconsciousness, which made ignoring her figure a conscious exercise in discipline.
"The guest room is far away."
"It's several steps further. At most."
"When something warm is available closer by," she said simply, looking back at him with a smile that was entirely without guile, "why would I go further? Being held by you is comfortable. I couldn't help myself."
Kai stared at her for a moment.
"Could you at least wear something to sleep in?"
"Hmm?" She looked genuinely puzzled. "Do you sleep in something?"
A pause.
"…No."
"Exactly." She said it with the satisfaction of a settled argument and leaned back against the headboard. "Now go get my clothes."
"Yes, yes."
He retrieved them. He watched her dress—the gradual, composed restoration of order—and redirected his thoughts to the question that had been sitting in the back of his mind since last night.
"President. How many Fallen Angels are actually operating in this city? Are encounters like last night going to be a regular problem?"
Rias considered this, smoothing out her sleeve. "Not typically. All three factions lost enormous numbers in the Great War—they've never fully recovered. Fallen Angels in particular are not as numerous as the legends suggest."
She looked at him with a reassuring directness. "Last night was an outlier. When we move as a group, the chance of a hostile encounter drops significantly—most won't engage a High-class Devil without specific orders to do so."
She paused, and something shifted in her expression—a trace of self-correction. "That said, last night reminded me that our Crests need upgrading. A barrier that can block our ability to signal each other is an unacceptable vulnerability. I'll have that addressed."
Kai nodded. She was right, and he didn't feel any need to pretend otherwise. His current strength was a starting point, not a destination. Relying on Rias's reach while he built toward something greater wasn't weakness—it was honesty.
"I'll get stronger. As quickly as I can manage."
Rias gave him a look that was warm and slightly proud. "Akeno sent me the report this morning. The Fallen Angel you killed had four wings, Kai. Do you understand what that means? Four wings marks her as a former High-tier Angel. A Middle-class Devil would normally be the minimum required to fight one."
She shook her head slowly, still smiling. "For a Low-class Devil to take her down—and to hold together under Holy Light contamination while doing it—that's not something I can simply attribute to luck."
She patted his shoulder once. "But don't push so hard you break something. There's no rush. Build steadily."
Kai filed the information away and stood.
Rias glanced at the clock on the wall, made a small sound of concern, and with no further ceremony, opened a teleportation circle where she was standing, stepped across to take Kai's arm, and pulled him through it with her.
The bedroom vanished. The clubroom appeared.
Kai looked around at the familiar space—sofa, table, shelves—and then looked at Rias, who was already smoothing her hair and appearing entirely unruffled.
He would never stop being envious of that ability. Not for as long as he walked anywhere.