Chapter 52 : Tempus Fugit - Beauty.
Sirzechs had rather mixed feelings about the current situation, and couldn't help but reminisce about how it started as he patiently waited for the person of interest to reach for her home after the end of her extracurricular activities, if his intel was right.
As one of the Satan, it was unbecoming of him to exert his authority for a personal matter, yet his hands had been forced when his mother had called him yesterday evening, her distress thick in her voice, and had explained to him what exactly bothered her so.
An explanation which would've been proven unnecessary if his parents had deigned to inform him about their 'gift' for his precious sister in the first place, a fact that he was still annoyed about even a day after.
According to his mother, little Ria-tan, in an unusually demure fashion, had asked for the both of them to sign a document authorizing her to get a tattoo from one of her human friend, one he had apparently signed himself beforehand, and he wasn't dumb enough not to put two and two together and realize that the innocuous authorization to renovate his sister's little lair that he had signed a few weeks ago had gotten a little 'makeover' when he wasn't looking.
Considering how notoriously difficult it was to break the skin of a supernatural creature above middle-class for a magicless being, an issue which had plagued the rare few Devils interested enough in getting their own tattoos without employing their inherent shapeshifting magic -an understandable issue, considering magic couldn't really emulate artistic talent if you aren't talented in the first place- neither Zeoticus or Venelana had thought that much would come from his sister's latest whimsy, and went along with it.
After all, the so-called artist was human, one Ria-tan had assured them wasn't connected to the supernatural world -despite her best attempts to bring her in her peerage, he had been led to believe- and so, rather than denying his sister, they had instead opted to let her get away with the obvious scheme sooner than butting heads with her while she was visiting the Underworld for a few rare days.
Except it did work, according to his parents, and they were now panicking because they didn't know what to believe anymore.
Either his sister lied to them when pretending that her friend wasn't supernatural, or something more insidious was at play.
And now, it was apparently his turn to disentangle this particular gordian knot, all because, apparently, his whole family couldn't help themselves but lie by omission to each other.
Saying that he wasn't in the best of moods then would be a gross understatement.
"She's here." A measured, almost demure feminine voice brings him out of his fugue, prompting him to look away from the little two-story house this pretended orphan lived in.
He looks further down the road, his attention quickly zeroing on the sole individual approaching in the dark of the night, her face faintly illuminated by the lights of her phone -one of Ajuka's, if he isn't mistaken- as she nears by, her attention captured by the little screen. Her bag negligently held over her shoulder with one hand, earbuds in her ears, she distractedly taps away at the touch-screen without visibly paying attention to the outside world.
It could be a ruse, Sirzechs tells himself, only to be quickly disabused of this notion when the human girl only notices his presence when only a few meters remains between them.
He watches her intensely, a neutral expression on his face as she comes to a halt, eyes snapping upward and away from the phone's screen, surprise written all over her face, dark-blue orbs darting between him and his wife at his side, onto which her attention stops for a beat.
"...Sakuya Izayoi?" The girl with a side-shave mumbles under her breath, a hint of disbelief.
Despite himself, his lips twitch very minutely.
He can almost hear Grayfia's annoyance radiating from her. This little game's existence had brought her no small amount of headache for a few years already.
"Not quite," He answers quickly, not letting his wife gears herself up for another of her long-winded rant about how 'a bunch of pixels is ruining her carefully crafted image', and coincidentally bringing the alleged human's attention to him, "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Sirzechs Gremory, Rias-"
The girl slumps her cautionary guarded posture, not so dissimilar to a soldier's, her expression turning a little flat.
Intriguing.
"-Slightly overprotective brother." She ends her sentence in a long-suffering tone, one hand coming to clutch at the bridge of her nose, "Let me guess, she lied to me?"
The Satan of internal affair pauses for a short beat, the segue throwing him slightly for a loop.
"I'm afraid I don't quite follow?" He answers, his brows slightly furrowed, discreetly motioning to his wife to relax her coiled and ready magic, his love always a tad touchy when propriety wasn't observed.
The girl's eyes snap open once more as her hands drop back at her side.
"Did Rias lie to me when she swore that she had your blessing or not?" She reformulates her previous question.
"...Yes." Sirzechs answers after another short beat, getting curious despite himself at the direction this discussion was taking.
"His rotten bones dammit," The girl swears in an unusual manner, the oddly accurate deformation of a well known idiom ringing alarm bells to the two devils present, "I swear I knew it in my gut! One moment."
The Satan and the Lucifuge can't help but watch, slightly bemused, as the girl stomps in her house's direction, busying herself with the keyhole for a few seconds, before throwing her school bag in the entrance-
-only to come back a few seconds later a paper clutched in her hand, that she unceremoniously hands him, the door clicking shut behind her.
"I get it you've never seen this, then?" She asks, her tone dead serious.
Discreetly shaking his head in his wife's direction before she jumps the gun, Sirzechs takes hold of the previously carefully folded and now quite wrinkled paper, speed-reading through it with the ease of one used to skim through dozens of official documents every day.
Mentally taking note that the contract was redacted according to their customs and that there indeed were his parents and his signatures at the bottom, he folds the paper back before handing it back to the human teen, giving her a slow, negative headshake.
"I am afraid I did not." He eventually answers, his tone slightly apologetic in a bid to learn about what makes the strange girl tick.
He could always force the situation if he really wanted, after all, but centuries spent governing had showed him that letting people go at their own rhythm was often more efficient when you wanted to decipher their intent.
The human girl's eyebrow ticks once, before exhaling loudly through her nose even as she puts the paper back into her uniform's coat.
"Apologies, Gremory-san, but would you mind terribly if we had the discussion you obviously wanted us to have while walking?" She seemingly shifts gears.
Once again being brought a little short, the Satan can't help but ask the obvious.
"I do not, but I have to admit that I'm quite curious as to where you'd have to go this late in the evening?" He mildly points out.
It was, after all, getting quite late, for a week day, and she had class tomorrow, assuming she was really a high schooler.
"To your sister's home, so that I can shout at her for playing fast and lose with the only rule I set up for me to ink her." The girl with a side-shave answers, dead-serious.
Faced with such blunt honesty, from one who either is an excellent actor or completely ignorant of the rumors surrounding him, a little snort of laughter escapes Sirzechs nose.
Still a little taken aback by the novelty of the situation, and having ascertained that the girl had as much magical potential as a shallow pool, he answers amusedly.
"By all means, then." He gives his blessing, a faint note of humor in his voice.
The girl with a side-shave gives him a serious nod, before starting to stomp her way toward his sister's manor, Graifya and him stepping next to her.
"I apologize for my rudeness," The dark-blue eyed teen eventually says after a few seconds, her features smoothing out of her annoyed frown, "I never introduced myself. Hanako Prima, well met."
"Your apologies are accepted." Sirzechs answers, giving a little warning look to his wife in passing not to make any difficulties now that the girl had made amends, "As you correctly deduced, I'm Rias older brother, and this-" He gestures toward his Queen, "-is Grayfia, my wife."
"Nice to meet you," The dark-blue eyed girl gives a respectful bow toward his wife, which coincidentally mollify her a little if the crease of her eyebrows lessening is anything to go by, "I also apologize for not inviting you inside, but I'm rather upset with my friend right now and I'd rather deal with the issue now than later."
"Couldn't it have waited until tomorrow?" The Satan probes mildly.
"I prefer this kind of issue to be dealt with behind closed doors, his rotten bones know Rias doesn't deserve to get into another spat on school grounds this soon." She answers simply.
The same bastarded idiom, again.
But something is more important.
"Another spat?" Sirzechs leads, his brows furrowed.
The girl with a side-shave gives him a careful glance, the lights of the lamppost highlighting her beautiful, if slightly sharp, features for a second, before answering as she looks back at the road.
"Her childhood friend made her disagreement quite vocal about Rias' choices earlier in the week. Right in the middle of the cafeteria." The teen explains simply.
A blunder if Sirzechs had ever heard of one, one which shouldn't have happened in the first place.
There was an etiquette to this kind of thing. Two Kings may have words, but never in front of those they rule upon.
"I see." He ends up answering, "How did this happen exactly? Rias and Sona are close."
The dark-blue eyed girl shrugs lightly.
"I can only give you my own relatively biased opinion, but I think Sitri-san's Japanese sensibilities got rattled hard enough for her to lash out like that."
Sirzechs almost misses a step at the out-of-left-field analysis, but manages to catch himself in time.
"I think she thought that the whole thing would radiate badly on her?" His interlocutor hazards, idly gesturing with her hand, "When you take into account the fact that she's the freshly elected president of the Student Council, has still to make a good enough mark to get reelected and that it is no secret that Rias and her are friends to those in the known, I'd imagine it had cast some doubts on her judgment. Mind you, it's only a hypothesis, she did invite me to be part of the StuCo a few months ago, and everyone already knew I'm the 'tat' chick'."
Sirzechs blinks at the statement, feeling his spouse's confusion spiking a few steps away from him.
Little Sitri had invited one of Ria-tan into her peerage and got the boot? How come he was only learning of this now?
Breach of etiquette aside, Serafall certainly hadn't talked about it when they exchanged news of their respective siblings to better commiserate how they missed them.
Nonetheless, this whole thing was quite ridiculous from what he could pick up.
The basis of the argument was centered around something as mundane as human norms, for Lucifer's sake!
"Pardon my curiosity," His wife interjects, prompting the teenager to look at her properly, "Why did you refuse her offer?"
The dark-blue eyed girl's eyebrows crease in confusion.
"The better question, I think, is why would I accept in the first place, Gremory-san." She answers after a beat, and neither of the two Devils takes care of correcting the misnaming, "I'm already stretched thin as is between Kuoh High's school work, my obligations to the Kendo club and the hours I spent at the gym each day. I'm not about to get myself sick with stress for, pardon my French, a bunch of snot-nosed brats who don't even like me in the first place because I refuse to bend to their idiotic choices of life-style."
A rather vitriolic answer, one which paints a very peculiar picture.
"I know that both of you come from abroad, so you probably don't really get it," She elaborates unprompted, "But this entire society is stuffy when you're stuck in it as deep as a native can. 'Gaijin's' have a, let's say, margin of error when it comes to adhere to the norms. Japanese born simply don't. When I was younger, I understood really quickly that this society wasn't made for me, and I aim to make a living abroad for myself as soon as I can once I'm old enough. Had I been 'happy with my lot in life' and 'patriotic', I would've accepted Sitri-san's invitation because refusing would've been improper. Alas, I have more self-esteem than that, and I was already treated like a pseudo black sheep anyway by everyone bar my fellow Kendoka. So I really didn't see the point at the time being."
"And now? Do you see it?" His Queen probes further.
"Even less." The answer is immediate, and a little flat, "Because I really do not see Sitri-san not attempting to change my ways to fit with her ideals, and our relationship would've ended badly if she tried."
"You seem to have your way in life all planned, then." The Satan rebounds.
"In a way, yes." The teenager answers seriously, giving him a determined nod, "I'm compiling an artbook with my drawings and tattoos, and I've already started to look out for a parlor who would take me in as an apprentice in the US. Money would've been an issue, but now that I landed a serendipitous windfall…" She suddenly trails off, before looking back at him with wide eyes.
"The money is yours." Sirzechs waves her concern away, "Even if I'm not a fan of the circumstances-" Albeit not for the reasons she seems to think of, "-I wouldn't begrudge a ward of the state the hard earned reward for her work."
Her complexion lights back up, pointing in favor of her monetary situation actually being what she pretends it to be, and she gives him a shallow bow in thanks.
"Thank you," The teen gives him an honest smile, "Your generosity means a lot to me."
Considering how rich the family is, the note probably didn't even begin to make a dent in Rias' allowance anyway.
"Think nothing of it, it's not like the fault is yours in the first place." He answers good humoredly, before grasping the opening the teen gave him, "Albeit I do admit being curious about your art itself…"
The dark-blue eyed girl tilts her head his way in an inquisitive fashion.
"In which way, Gremory-san?" She asks, a hint of curiosity in her tone.
"How did you come up with the motif?" The Satan bullshits a little, actually having no idea how Rias' new addition to her body looked like, "I understand it was a cooperative process?"
"Oh! That?" She visibly perks up, and, for lack of a better word, her whole countenance seems to shift, her fast-paced walk becoming more elegant and her demeanor more graceful, stumping the super devil, "Well, I started by asking Rias if she had a theme, and she ended up answering with both a basis for the motif and an additional keyword, which-"
Sirzechs trades a look with his wife, wondering if she also caught it.
A pair of silver eyes locks back with his own, just as bewildered.
Because, at the moment, both of them can feel the conceptuality backing the girl, despite her apparent lack of magic, ruling out a possible demi-goddess status-
-yet, doing nothing to dissuade them from a possible divine blessing.
His attention comes back to the teen as she narrates her thought process, hands moving with a mind of their own, fingers twirling in arabesque and whatnot.
Elegance.
Grace.
He turns himself to his wife once more, and she silently mouths out a word to him.
'Beauty'.
Sirzechs can't help but agree with the assessment.
How rare to stumble upon a mortal gifted enough for her work to be blessed!
[AN: I thought I was about to get gray hairs writing that chapter, REEEE.
Hope you enjoy, xoxo]