"Do you have any games?" Allen got himself to ask as he and Kanda headed back into the mansion.

The demon hummed as he thought, cocking his head to the side. "It has been a while since I've played it, but I brought a game board from my homeland. It's in my quarters." He replied, already changing their route as he started leading them up the several flights of stairs.

Allen smiled brightly and Kanda looked back in front of them with a huff, making Allen smile even brighter. "What's the game?" He asked excitedly. He hadn't actually thought the other man would have a game for them, given what he'd been told about the demon's schedule.

"It's called Shogi." Kanda readily responded. "It'd be better to wait until we're playing it to describe the rules to you." He continued, not unkindly.

"Sounds good!" Allen smiled, practically skipping up the stairs after him. He noticed he was more energetic than normal now. He couldn't tell if that was because he was spending time with Kanda or if it was the meditation that did something.

The smile dropped for a second as he got something to wonder about. "Why did you bring the game from your original home? It doesn't seem like something you'd do." He asked, his tone one of pure curiosity.

Kanda stopped walking for a second at that, causing Allen to look at him in startled curiosity before the demon started up again. It still took the man a moment more to string together an answer and during that time, Allen put in the effort to lengthen his stride so that he was walking beside him.

"It...had some good memories for me." Kanda spoke quietly, more quiet than Allen thought the man's voice could get. Allen didn't know how to feel about the statement that he had good memories with the game. He felt like the demon didn't have many of those.

He hoped it was a sign of good things to come.

"Why don't you just resign and save time? You know I'm going to win." Allen gloated smugly, giving the demon a toothy grin. He got a scathing look back, but it didn't bother him one bit since he knew he had the other man cornered.

"I loathe the fact that I taught you that term when we started." Kanda growled as he moved his next piece, refusing to surrender. This was the fifteenth time they were playing the game in a row and despite having never played it before, Allen had yet to lose once.

Lavi had woken up around the tenth round and interrupted the two to get them to eat something. Apparently Kanda had not been the most truthful with Allen about his schedule, because Kanda did not eat breakfast or any kind of meal every day and sometimes not every week. Allen, on the other hand, needed to eat, Lavi had informed him.

The vampire had nearly been scared out of his wits when the two rounded on him furiously at one unit for having the gall to interrupt them in the middle of a game but despite being terrified of the both of them, he refused to take a break until they took a break and Allen ate something.

He did it, Lavi watching them nervously as the two men glared at each other from across the table in challenge, lightning practically flashing between them. They were back at it again in under an hour.

Allen teased further. "You really should just learn when to call it quits. Don't be so prideful, BaKanda!" During the first game, Kanda had called him Baka, which he then had to explain meant something akin to "idiot" in the language of his homeland.

...It didn't take long for Allen to see the possibilities of that.

"Shut it, Beansprout! It's not over yet!" Kanda made a move, slamming the piece on the board aggressively.

Allen's only response was to grin even wider and move a final piece Kanda hadn't seen. WIth that final move, Kanda's king piece had no other moves left that wouldn't result in it being captured. "Checkmate, BaKanda." The pale boy leered.

The demon growled in anger, practically snarling at the boy who couldn't be bothered to even pretend to be intimidated. "Um...you guys." Lavi started to quietly try to intervene, only for both of them to turn to him in unison and aim the power of their glares towards him. The vampire continued on, valiantly. "Maybe you guys should go for a walk to cool down a little."

"We don't need to walk it off, Rabbit!" Kanda seethed. "We're fine!"

Lavi carefully responded. "You see...you say that, but you're nearly over the table strangling each other..." Allen looked over towards the window and saw it was starting to get late, the sun was going down. If he was going to go for a walk somewhere outside of the mansion, then he was running out of time to do it.

"That sounds like a good idea." Allen chimed in, making both other men look at him. "We've been in this room for hours, we should stretch our legs!" The boy forced down the competitive smirk that he'd had on his face for the last several hours, knowing it was only egging Kanda on.

In point of fact, it did help the demon calm down and with a lighthearted scoff, Kanda stood up from his chair and got ready to leave. Surprising Allen, Kanda didn't make any argument of going out for a walk. Instead of that, he simply said, "Let's go, then. Hurry it up. I still say you were cheating, anyway…"

To Lavi, he said, "Clean this up before you do anything else." He gestured to the board while saying that and without further ado, the demon headed out of the room. Allen scrambled out of his chair after him, stopping as he was about to pass by Lavi. "Thank you very much." He told the redhead politely before ducking out, following after Kanda.

The vampire just looked happy to be rid of them for the moment. Shaking his head, he got on with his work. Those two exhausted him sometimes.

"It's been a really fun day today." Allen stated when he caught back up to Kanda.

"Was it?" The demon asked, looking back at him. His tone sounded neutral, as usual, but he seemed to Allen to be curious.

He didn't know when it happened, but somewhere along the continuous line of rematches, Allen thought he had started to be able to read Kanda a little better. The man's dark eyes, growling voice, and flat tone had made it hard at first to know what he was feeling at any given time or if he was feeling anything particular at all.

There were two exceptions to this; those being that it was obvious when he was really riled up about something and the second was that the man clearly had a problem with mincing words. Although Allen couldn't always secure an answer, the raven haired man was always honest and direct in the answers he did give.

"Yes!" Allen nodded eagerly. "Even the slow start to the day was an interesting new experience. Playing Shogi with you was even better! I'm kind of tired now." He placed a hand on his chest and let out a content little sigh.

"It's been a long time since I've been challenged like that." Kanda added.

Allen's mouth dropped open as he looked at him because...he actually sounded happy when he said it. Not irritated. Not pleased. Happy! The demon's face showed him to be free of those stressed lines he usually had. He looked relaxed. His lips had the slightest of smiles to it, so much like a shadow or a ghost that Allen wasn't sure he was actually seeing it.

The sight made a light as air feeling swell in his chest and the boy had to force down the impulse to laugh, but he still felt great!

"Let's go for that walk then, huh?" He moved on so he didn't risk making the demon uncomfortable, he knew by now that feelings were a little bit harder for the raven to deal with than for himself. "There is a place I have been aching to walk to." He gave the other man a toothy smile.

"They can smell you, you know. The ones that can't sense you." Kanda said a while into their walk. The two had been quiet for the last couple minutes and Allen wasn't exactly sure what he should feel about what the demon chose to break the silence with, though he's barely unnerved by it unlike the reaction he probably would have had a small handful of days ago.

"Who's 'they'? They would smell me?" Allen turned to his partner, finding the demon staring determinedly forward as they proceeded on their walk.

It had taken some argument on Allen's part to get Kanda to walk him through the forest. Given the fact that he'd been attacked before and there was a bunch of he-didn't-know-what's lurking in there. Funnily enough, Kanda didn't seem to want to go walking out there, even though it seemed he did so on a regular basis.

Either the demon didn't want to go around having to protect Allen every time something happened or he didn't want him to be in danger at all. The white haired boy couldn't help but hope it was the second one, he really wanted it to be that.

"Intelligent response as always." Kanda first replied sarcastically, but not too meanly and Allen found himself scoffing lightly at it. "And I was talking about the lowly creatures in and around the forest. They can smell you, it's how the Harpy that attacked you before had found you in the first place." The demon informed him.

"Is that so? I hadn't thought much about how it found me, but I did kind of think it just stumbled onto me by coincidence." Allen said.

"It was likely a combination of both." Kanda growled out, his eyes narrowing at the memory. "It probably just happened to be close by and zeroed in on your location when it caught a whiff of your distinct smell."

Allen hummed. "And what do I smell like?"

"Human." Kanda stated simply. "You smell human and the smell of a good meal always brings in predators as well as scavengers."

Allen couldn't help the shudder at hearing himself referred to as a meal, even if he had already known what most monsters ate. It was still unnerving. "Is that what the harpy was?"

The demon grunted in annoyance, like the mere thought of the creature was enough to anger him. Allen couldn't allow himself to snigger at that, he couldn't. "Yes, they're scavengers. They will eat anything they find, especially if it's dead or dying. They will occasionally attack something that isn't already fatally injured if it looks weak enough to be easy prey."

The heavy implication that Allen looked weak enough to be killed by just about anything did not go over Allen's head and the boy felt his own sense of irritation at it. Worse, even if Kanda was simply being his usual surly self with that implication, Allen couldn't even argue that he was wrong about it given what had happened.

He hadn't even been able to make himself do anything defensive, even if the shock of the whole situation was a major reason why he'd been so helpless, the point still stood.

"Why isn't anything coming around now, then?" Allen asked, though he had an idea on what the answer might be.

"Because I'm with you." Kanda explained. His tone immediately went from peeved to educational, a transition that Allen was at this point becoming intimately familiar with. "They can smell me too, likely stronger than they can smell you. The smarter ones stay out of my territory completely. Even the more desperate creatures know to keep their distance when I'm wandering around. Even when they smell a meal, if I'm nearby then they know it's not worth approaching me for it."

Allen nodded thoughtfully, yet again feeling as if he were looking at Kanda in a new light. The demon was strong, that was for sure, and definitely more brave than Allen had previously given him credit for. How much of that was because of his inherent physical strength?

Of course, it made sense with his demonic physique, but there was a reason why Kanda was at the top of the food chain in this place and he didn't think it all had to do with his species. There was something uniquely Kanda that had gotten him to this place in life and Allen, only being slightly above a week old, could only stand and marvel at it.

He'd gotten his first good look at it earlier, during all of those consecutive Shogi games. Seeing Kanda defending him from the harpy well before had given Allen a clear idea of the true natures of a few things, namely Kanda's own and the world he found himself born into.

But it hadn't shown anything else. When playing Shogi together...it was something different. Allen mentally kicked himself for getting caught up in the game because - from what he had paid attention to - he'd been given a very good look at the other man's passion and desire to win. The man had also been diligent, explaining the rules of this unfamiliar game in a way that Allen could quickly grasp. Which may have backfired on him since the demon proceeded to not win a single round against him.

Actually, Allen got the feeling that he'd played a lot of other games different to Shogi in his previous life as he continually beat Kanda starting from round one. The process of going through the game of strategy with his partner felt uncomfortably like he was toeing the line between his current life and another. Annnd just like that, he kind of wished he was thinking about something else. He hated that ghostly feeling of another life infringing on this one.

He turned away from the tangent his mind went on since he could admit that he had a lot of fun going crazy with Kanda even if he did wish he'd paid more attention to something other than the man's various strategies to beat him. Instead, he went back to thinking about Kanda's last comment.

"So they're staying away now that you're here. What kind of things are there around here?"

"Only a few different species make their nests in this area." Kanda spoke with a derision that Allen instinctively knew wasn't directed at him. "All of them are either the lowest of the low or scavengers. Harpies, Lamias, Goblins...whatever doesn't need to actively hunt humans or wants to be left alone. Most monsters are tied to a particular area like lakes or otherwise choose to remain close to human settlements. More food."

Kanda explains this all nonchalantly and Allen surprised both of them by giving out a dark bark of laughter. The demon looked at him with wide eyes while the silver haired boy continued to chuckle a little to himself.

Before it had even tapered off, Allen looked back up at the taller man with humor shining in his eyes and Kanda found himself asking, "What are you laughing about, Beansprout?"

"It's Allen." The boy insisted lightly, shaking his head with a smile. "Nothing, BaKanda, just…" Another chuckle. "You're so dark, I don't think you know how to even be normal."

The demon's eye twitched even as a sardonic smile touched his own lips. "I could say the same about you. Not a lot of people would be so incredibly eager to come back to a place they know is dangerous so soon after being attacked there. You're downright obsessed with this place, so don't act like you know what normal is either."

That statement renewed Allen's laughter, this time in the form of giggles. He hadn't realized until he'd actually started to have some fun with Kanda that he kind of had a darker sense of humor on his own, so maybe the other man was right.

"At least that's something we have in common." He said lightly, slowly moving his hand to wrap softly around the other man's that hung at his side.

"I suppose...it is." Kanda barely smiled in the direction ahead of them, letting him do it.


(A/N): Let me know what you think of this chapter because I don't really know what I think about it, but I think I like it?