It was a quiet afternoon in the club room of the Occult Research Club. Club President Asia and the Student Council President, Xenovia, were discussing plans for the upcoming School Open House. Club Vice-President Kiba was looking through the filing cabinet at old meeting records. I, Houdou Issei, was sitting on the sofa reviewing some class notes.

There was a knock on the door. A moment later, a girl with glasses opened the door and came through with her head lowered. It was Kiryuu, a third-year classmate of ours. Some time before, Kiryuu had used one of the flyers that the ORC distributed and had summoned a Devil—Xenovia. She then learned that, among others, Asia, Kiba, and I were all Devils. It was not unusual for her to come and visit us in the club room, but her current mood was much different than her usual, confident self.

Asia stood up behind her desk with a concerned look on her face.

"Kiryuu, are you okay?"

Kiryuu nodded her head and after taking a deep breath asked, "Ise? Will you take me for a cup of tea?"

Bewildered by this sudden, unexpected request, I stood up and looked over questioningly at Xenovia and Asia. They both nodded their heads with a wide-eyed expression.

"Sure," I answered and crossed the room to where Kiryuu was standing. She took me by the arm with her eyes still directed to the floor. As we walked to the door, I looked back behind me at my friends and with the palm of my free hand upwards, I made a face as if to say, "What's going on?"

A stunned Kiba turned to the desk where Xenovia and Asia both shrugged their shoulders in confusion. I guess I would need to wait to learn what this was all about. Kiryuu and I left the room and I closed the door behind us.

A short distance from the school was a café that was popular with the students. Kiryuu held onto my arm in silence until we reached the café, then spoke only to give the clerk the style of tea that she liked. We sat at opposite sides of the table and I looked at her expectantly while she stirred her tea.

After a minute or two, Kiryuu, still looking down at the table, asked in a quiet voice, "Ise? Being a Devil...what's it like?"

With relief, I let out the breath I was holding and took a couple of deep breaths to calm my nerves. Ah, this—this, I could handle. Kiryuu slowly raised her face to look at me.

"Well," I started, "there's a lot of things that are still the same, and there's a lot of things that are far different than anything I could have imagined."

Kiryuu nodded her head. "I can imagine," she said.

"I mean," I continued, "I still eat and sleep, my fingernails still need to be trimmed, and I still have trouble memorizing things at school."

Kiryuu looked up at me with curiosity and increasing calmness. I lifted my hands dramatically over my head.

"I mean, I suddenly get this weird ability to understand any language as soon as I hear it or read it, and somehow my English scores get worse because it's preventing me from keeping it in my head."

Kiryuu gave a surprised giggle and covered her lips with her fingers. Good, she's starting to relax.

"Do you drink blood?" she asked?

"No, that's vampires. Devils eat the same things that humans..."

Suddenly Kiryuu kicked my ankle with the side of her foot and laughed, "Ha, you are such a dummy—you can't even tell when somebody is teasing you."

What is with this girl? How does somebody go from silent and moody to being a bully that quickly?

"Well, I know a couple of vampires and they're pretty good people. Some of them, anyway."

Kiryuu rested her chin on her hand and her expression gradually changed from amused to concerned.

"Did it hurt?" she asked.

"Did what hurt?"

"Being turned into a Devil."

"No, that part didn't hurt. The part before where I got killed hurt a lot."

The hand that was supporting her chin dropped to the table. "The what?"

"Yeah, took a magical spear to the chest. That was right after I got hit with the same kind of spear in each leg. That really hurt."

Kiryuu looked at me with an expression somewhere between shock and disbelief.

"You...died?"

"I did, " I said trying not to make it sound too awful. "Twice, actually."

Kiryuu gave the table a little slap and harshly whispered, "now you're teasing me!"

I shook my head and said, "Nope, but the second time was even more bizarre than the first. I don't understand what happened so I can't really explain it to you."

"I can imagine," she said as she looked back down at the table and started idly stirring her tea.

After a pause that kept getting thicker, I asked, "So what about you? What made you decide to summon a Devil?"

With that, her whole demeanor changed. She raised her hands and turned her head in a "you got me" pose and said while rolling her eyes, "Weeeeellll, I don't want to disappoint you, but this life may not be as glamorous as I may have previously led you to believe."

I closed my eyes slightly to give her my best "Oh, really?" expression. She took a sip of her tea and continued.

"Look...a long time ago I came to accept that I'm not very pretty. I don't like to do girly things, so the girly girls think I'm weird. I don't have a lot of friends. I guess it just finally got to be too much for me. I was holding that flyer and not really wishing for anything in particular, just wishing, and the next thing I knew, Xenovia was standing in my room with me.

She smiled as she remembered that moment. "I think she was more surprised than I was."

Wow. I stared at her for a moment. Just like that, huh?

"So what do you two do together?"

Kiryuu shook her head and said, "That's kind of personal so I'm not going to go into it."

Sure, I get it. I'm sure that most of my clients wouldn't like for the story of our meetings to be public knowledge.

"But you know?" she continued, "most of the time, I just listen to her talk. She talks about all of the amazing things she does with you and Rias and everybody."

Kiryuu's face started to sink again. "She tells me about all of the places you get dragged to, and all of the people you meet."

Again, the dark cloud settled over her. She looks at me with eyes becoming filled with tears.

"Ise?" she whispered. "Will you show me something amazing?"

I took her hand in mine and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

"Of course," I smiled. "Let's go."

We left the café and walked around to the back of the building. I stood with my arms down, hands curled, and my shoulders forward, and closed my eyes. I felt my aura spread out from me. I opened my eyes.

"I just performed a technique that will hide our presence from anybody who happens to look this way."

"You mean we're invisible?"

"Not quite," I explained. "It's more like we have become extremely uninteresting."

She gave me an evil grin, "I don't see how it could be possible for you to be any less interesting."

"Ha ha ha," I spoke in a flat tone. "Now watch this."

I lifted my hands so that my forearms were parallel to the ground and enabled my Crimson Armor.

"Whoa." Kiryuu gasped. "That is amazing."

She approached me slowly and reached her hand out to place her fingers on my chest.

"It feels warm. I was expecting it to feel like metal."

She moved closer and focused her eyes, "I can see my reflection!"

I reached my left hand behind her back and bent my knees so that I could position my right hand behind her legs. She seemed to understand what my intentions were and she allowed herself to fall into my arms.

I stood up. Her face was directed towards mine, her eyes wide and her mouth slightly open.

I deployed my wings. She let out a squeal of surprise. Then I leaped into the air and gave my wings a powerful flap.

Kiryuu screamed and wrapped her arms around my neck and squeezed me tightly.

"You're okay," I said and patted her on the shoulder.

After a short flight, I landed us in a small park on the top of a tall hill. I set Kiryuu down and released my armor. Kiryuu took little steps in a small circle with her palms pressed against her cheeks.

"Wow," she uttered over and over while occasionally looking over at me.

After a while, she waved her hands around the sides of her head as if she was trying to chase away a cloud of insects.

"That was..." she started. Then she looked at me and asked, "Could you go into space in that?"

I scratched my cheek and said, "I don't know. I've never really considered it." I wrinkled my brow and said, "I spent some time in the dimensional gap and that's kind of like space, so...maybe?"

She grinned and shook her head, and started walking around me, appraisingly.

"Your...wings..." she said as she was looking at my back, remembering what she had seen. "Your wings are different from Xenovia's. Hers look more like fancy bat wings."

"Oh," I said, "I've got those too..." and I let my Devil wings appear and spread outward. "But I can't fly with these."

And then I lowered my head in embarrassment and said, "I guess I'm a bit of a crap Devil."

Kiryuu smiled gently and rested her palm on the side of my arm. "No," she said, "you're not."

Feeling a little bit awkward, I brought my Devil wings back inside.

"So, what else can you do?" she asked.

"To be honest?" I started, "mostly just beat people up and destroy things."

Oh, man, when I really look at it, I'm not very impressive.

"Wait!" I said as I suddenly remembered, "there is something that I've been thinking of that I haven't tried yet. Would you like to see it?"

Kiryuu smiled with her eyebrows raised and nodded her head enthusiastically.

"Okay," I said and took a deep breath. "Ddraig?"

"Partner, I was wondering if you would ever get around to introducing me."

"Is that a computer?" Kiryuu asked.

"No, he's an ancient dragon who was defeated and sealed by the combined might of the Devils, Angels, and Fallen Angels, who now resides in something called a Sacred Gear that my body..." I trailed off. "You know, when I speak it out loud, it sounds unbelievably ridiculous."

Kiryuu gave me a tender smile and gently nodded her head.

"Anyway," I re-focused, "Ddraig, I want to fly as fast as possible and then use fire to write out the character for 'dragon' in mid-air. Then I want to land as quickly as I can. Can we do that?"

"It's as good as done." And with that, I launched myself as hard as I could and spun through the air sending out dragon flames in all directions. Then I landed hard back on the ground.

"How was that?" I asked.

Kiryuu looked around her and then up in the sky where the skywriting was dissolving from flame into smoke. She looked slightly confused as she started turning her head from side to side.

"Not that great, huh?" I asked as my armor became a cloud of aura behind me.

Kiryuu shook her head rapidly. "No, it's just that everything happened so fast." She looked at me and pointed, "there was a sound like thunder, a wind that almost pushed me over, and then immediately after that, there was a shaking of the ground like a small earthquake."

"Maybe..." she continued as she put her hand against my arm again, "maybe if you did it a little more slowly so I could follow along..."

I lowered my head and moved away, letting her hand slide from me. I found what looked like a comfortable spot and sat down. "No," I said, "I'm just not very good at this. I'm not smart like Rias, or talented like Kiba, or confident like Akeno."

I guess Kiryuu didn't know how to respond. She sat down more than an arm's length away from me. Then she leaned over and picked up a stick, and started tracing circles in the dirt between her feet.

Time passed and the sun started to set. Now what do I do? I can't just leave her here but I know that she doesn't want to be around me anymore.

As if she was reading my mind, she looked at me and asked, "Ise, you and Rias are dating, right?"

I hugged my knees a little more closely and nodded.

"I see," she said and turned her attention back to her dirt circles.

After a while, she spoke again. "And Asia?"

I saw that she wasn't looking in my direction so I mumbled, "I guess so, yeah."

Kiryuu continued to look down at the dirt while the stick slowly went around and around. The sky started to grow dark as the last of the sun dropped below the hills.

Kiryuu spoke again. "The last time Xenovia came over, she was so excited that she could barely control herself."

She paused again and I could tell that she was trying to maintain her composure.

"She told me that you were in some kind of battle contest and that your team was going to lose."

Oh, no.

"And that she shocked you by confessing her love to you in front of everybody."

Oh no, oh no, this can't be happening.

"And she said that you wound up losing the game anyway but that it didn't matter because you and she were going to be married."

Oh, if there's any mercy in this universe please let me die at this moment.

"Rias. Asia. Xenovia..." Kiryuu said as she shook her head. And then she looked at me, and I could see her eyes beginning to overflow.

"Ise?"

"…."

"Just how special are you?"

I couldn't speak. I don't know what's happening. Why is this happening?

Kiryuu stood up and started to walk towards me. I stood up as well. She came closer and pushed against me with her body, her hand on my back and her cheek pressed against my chest. Not knowing what else to do, I wrapped my arms around her just gently enough for her to know I was there.

Then Kiryuu made a sound that I had never heard before. Her hand bunched up the back of my school uniform and she gripped it very tightly. The tears could no longer be restrained and she was pounding me on the shoulder as hard as she could with the bottom of her fist, shouting, "I never wanted to be a part of your stupid pervert club, I was only playing along because I wanted you to notice me!"

She cried until she regained her breath and then she started pounding me even harder, shouting, "I hate you. I hate you. I hate you."

I pulled her in closely and let her cry while I looked up at the sky to prevent my own tears from falling.

I never wanted this.

With her face still against my chest, she said weakly, "I want to go home now. Please take me home."

I realized that she hadn't looked at me since she stood up the last time.

I brought up my armor and wings, and concentrated to expand my aura so that she may be warm on the way back.

We landed at the school.

"I..." I confessed, "I don't know where your house is."

She gently pushed my arms away and turned without looking at me. As she began to walk away, she said bitterly, "We have only been classmates for forever so why would you know where I live?"

And then, "I can make it home on my own, please don't follow me."

I stood there watching her get further and further away, not knowing what I could have done differently but still feeling like it was my fault. Then, when I could no longer see her, I turned and began my own walk home.

When I got home, I heard voices coming from the kitchen. It sounded like Xenovia was desperately trying to explain something and Rias was trying to calm her down. I stepped into the kitchen where Rias was standing behind Asia and Xenovia. Rias had a look of intense concern, Asia had her hands covering her mouth as if she had just witnessed a subway suicide, and Xenovia looked like she was about to be sick.

I stopped and looked at the floor. "I'm sorry I'm late. I'm sorry I missed dinner. I'm sorry I didn't call."

I turned to enter the hall and out of the corner of my eye, I could see Rias lightly pushing Asia and Xenovia to follow me.

"I'm going to bed."

I opened the door to my room and was not surprised that it was empty. I silently thanked Rias or Ravel or whoever for having the insight to make this happen. I left the door open. I wanted to be alone but I couldn't hurt Asia and Xenovia by closing them out.

While they stood just inside of the door, I removed my school clothes and put on my pajamas.

I climbed onto my bed and lay on my back. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes and gritted my teeth but I couldn't keep my emotions from flowing out.

With the voice of a dragon, I roared, "Why does my getting what I want mean that somebody else has to suffer?!" and my chest shook as I could no longer keep from crying.

"Oh, Ise!" I heard Asia cry out, then the sound of footsteps running towards me. Asia and Xenovia hugged me on either side as they both started to cry with me.

I don't remember falling asleep.