Warning: Fluffy ending to the chapter.
I stood in front of a load of weapons. Bon watched me carefully.
Most of them, I have to say, scared me really badly, being sharp scary death bringers. A sparkle caught my eye and I reached through the pile and brought out a knife.
"Oh, I like this!" I said, turning it over in my hands. Bon stared at it.
"That's more like a tooth pick than a weapon."
I made a face at him and he frowned at me. "Juvenile little kid!"
"Overly serious bossy guy!" I shot back, a smile curving my lips. I slashed quickly at the air, almost like I was used to it and Bon watched me.
"I don't think you need me to teach you to use that. You seem pretty capable."
A smile flickered across my face and I saw Kione appear behind Bon. He saw Kione too and tried to punch him.
"Don't!" Without thinking I flung myself between them, and pointed the knife at Bon before recovering somewhat.
"Oh, s-sorry. I d-didn't mean to p-point the knife at y-you." I was shaking, as my brain handily informed me that Bon had the upper hand if we fought even with my mist, and could easily beat me.
"It's… a coal tar." Bon said this slowly and carefully.
I nodded, to show that I knew this. "He belongs to me. Bon, meet Kione. He's a friend of mine."
Kione squeaked and chittered, and Bon rolled his eyes. "Do all girls adopt demons or is it just the girls at this school?"
I snickered a little and patted Kione's head. "Probably all girls. I think that this one is a little different."
"They only hang around gloomy humans," Bon pointed out. I smiled to myself. I certainly wasn't human, but I was a little gloomy.
"Well, I'm happy here and he still hangs around me. Perhaps he hangs around here because he likes me."
Bon snorted. "Yeah, right. More like he gets free food here."
I considered this and then nodded. "Probably. But I'm fine with that as long as this fellow here hangs around."
Bon just rolled his eyes again. "Let's spar…"
…
I struggled forward, and caught sight of a frog before calming myself down. I was most likely just seeing things, and anyway, I now had a weapon. It was pretty, with a scratched seal in the mother of pearl handle, and a shining blade now that I'd cleaned it. It was almost lovely, but if you looked closely it was clearly a demon's weapon designed to kill other demons. I don't know why I'd picked it out of the pile but it was lucky I had, as all the others appeared to have demon disintegrating seals on them. They would have turned me back to my original misty vaporous substance, and I wouldn't have been in fighting shape at all.
I turned it over in my hands and reached out for Kione. He was there, but watchful. Maybe the frog hadn't been a figment after all; maybe there had been a Leaper.
I shivered, and started to hurry back to my dorm. I really didn't want to run into any sort of demonic trouble right now. As I came to my room I collapsed onto my bed and started to breathe normally, and reached for the pack of snacks I'd started to keep on the table by my bed.
I found a book of some sort in its place and frowned. A little note was on top.
Hey Niece!
So I found your snacks and thought I should check them for poison…
But they could have all been poisoned! So I checked all of them. Here's a comic as a sort of apology.
Rin
I sighed. "He ate all my snacks and left a comic here as an apology?"
I started to read, with Kione peering over my shoulder and chirruping happily. I grinned at him every time he did this.
…
Rin creaked open the door to see how his present had gone down and whether Kasumi was mad at him or what.
He almost choked at the adorable sight in front of him. Kasumi was asleep with that little bug demon of hers, and both of them were snoring while they slumbered. The comic was open beside them, obviously reread a few times and a packet of Mikado that he'd missed was empty beside them. Kasumi's weird-mist-magic thing was starting to happen as she fell into even deeper sleep and nuzzled her face into the pillow and made little sniffling noises.
He was so lucky that he had that camera with him. He wasn't as lucky that Yukio was standing right behind him to make sure he went back to studying. After a little while, Yukio crept into Kasumi's room and tucked a blanket over while brushing the crumbs of the snack off the bed. He didn't thank demons for a lot but he was glad Egyn had given him a niece. He lifted the sleeping Kione and tucked it into the blanket as an afterthought.
