Disclaimer: I do not claim ownership of Highschool DxD. If I did, I'd cover more ground than that psycho LN author who claims to want to be taken seriously and actually stop denigrating the story's fellow males and give Issei, Motohama and Matsuda a proper basis of friendship rather than the nonsensical deal they got.

A/N: Trying to migrate here from my AO3 account because I am unused to (and dislike) the formatting there. This story was made out of spite. If that kind of causation rubs you the wrong way, I offer you my most insincere apologies in return.

Chapter One: Tunes

It's the second week of April in the new school year.

It's the second day of schooling for a particular young man, who, despite a very specific label to the contrary, is not at all native to the strange new surroundings of Kuoh Academy.

Ayasaki Rohan scratched the back of his head, mulling over the appendix before turning the page over, his irritation only climbing to its zenith faster with the vertical lines of transliterated characters. He scratched the underside of his chin, shifting his massive frame slightly to the left for more comfort, his bare grunt catching the eye—or rather, the glares—of the coven of female students by the bookshelf closest to the wall. He flushed slightly, starting a motion to raise his hand in apology … before realizing that it'd do much less for his reputation than it would for him to just keep his lips sealed and his eyes down. Grabbing a pen, he went about his work, the only entity for likely miles around that had his stack in a pile that didn't align itself into a proper right angle.

He turned the wheel on his music player, doubling down on his workload, eager to get as much done as possible, if not for the sake of completion, it was at least for his own peace of mind. He'd gone through the indices and the sidenotes just fine, but even with deadline being the week before the end of the school year—some months away—he couldn't exactly afford to not be thorough, even with all his other assignments in tow. The path he had set himself on left no pockets for quarters to be spared … and being this geographically distant from his preferred location—even with the alleged prestige that came with his current alma mater's—meant that those goals were, for the most part, more distant than they probably would have been had the powers-that-be decided that he would have served his presumptive sentence in a more domestic, familiar setting than he would thousands of miles away here, in Kanto … in Japan.

That his so-called partner hadn't showed up just yet didn't particularly help his mood, either.

Then again, his overall mood was hardly something to pin on someone who was—

'Sorry, Ayasaki-san,' he heard a voice, speaking in accentuated, but perfectly fluent, Japanese, 'were you waiting long?'

Perfect timing, he thought, tugging his earphones out of his ear and hitting the pause button on his device.

To call her hair fiery would have been a disservice to its quality. Thick, long bangs and locks that could probably have doubled as a winter coat came immediately into view, along with the sound of a scraping chair. Rias Gremory, looking more harried and exhausted than he had expected her to be, dumped—and there was no other word to describe her action—her satchel on the edge of the wooden table, causing the messy, unbalanced stack of paper to teeter worryingly before centering itself once again from the impact's inertia. Rohan watched Gremory pull her chair in at several decibels higher than was probably allowed in an attempt to strap herself into the saddle of the role of the catcher-upper, pulling her notepads and pencil case out from her satchel.

'No,' Rohan responded, half-lying. He strongly considered chastising her for being disrespectful of his time, but had decided against it seeing how distraught and mussed up she was. It wasn't pragmatic or good for a first—well, second, really—impression to be indented with him playing an uppity jerk, especially with how he himself had conducted himself prior to his transfer.

Everyone had their own lives to sort out, even the girl who had had the misfortune to be paired up with him.

'Right,' Gremory started, running a hand through her thick, rose-red strands, 'right.'

She unzipped her pencil case. Rohan gave it a quick glance; it was quite high-end, if a little simple in design. Not that he didn't at least expect the students to show some level of their luxuries around here. Kuoh Academy's prestige was self-explanatory; it was a miracle that he was able to get in at all.

Yeah, a true-blue miracle, he echoed, silently and dryly.

Then again, looking at what was laid out before his eyes, maybe there was a catch—

'Sorry again,' Gremory reiterated, her tone genuinely matching the sentiment. 'Had to, um … take care of a few things.'

Rohan waved it off, turning his attention back to his research almost immediately. There was work to be done, and the less time that the both of them wasted going over her apology and the more time they had to get this project off the starting blocks, as far as he was concerned, the less time that he risked crunching it all towards the end. He was already in motion, ready to pick up the pencil for yet another embarrassing show of Hiragana (despite the very western origin of the majority of texts that laid before them), the messy dark blurs of erased chicken scratch telling indicators of his infant-equivalent skill level.

However, Gremory actually being open enough to elaborate further—a rarity to most of the student body—had him returning the gesture with a serve back of his own … if only to at least show that he wasn't altogether dismissive or leave an early impression that could be potentially permanent, especially when the both of them were meant to be working together for this project.

'The supernatural club, right?'

He didn't know much about it. From what he guessed, it was probably the school's equivalent of a cryptid interest social group … or whatever it was that people called it.

She scowled a little.

'The Occult Research Club,' Gremory corrected, pulling out a ruler, pen and writing pad.

'Ah, yeah,' Rohan responded, thumbing the stacks of paper on his side of the table until he found what he was looking for, quickly pulling them out and placing them about a ruler's breadth away from her, 'well, I took the liberty of sorting out the appendices. You can pick whichever one you want to start with.'

'Oh,' she returned, picking up a folder, 'thanks.'

Rohan went through the other appendices as he had before, popping his earphones back in and humming as he did so. The next couple of moments seemed like a blur, as he and his project partner played the role of file browsers, trying to make as much sense as they could of their assignment without tearing the school-owned materials in half out of frustration. Gremory worked swiftly and cleanly, but the lack of scribbling and the occasional slam of wooden pencil to wooden surface told him that her luck at rifling through and making any progress had found its own ceiling. The shuffling of pages and the scribbles and strikethroughs continued fruitlessly for moments that went beyond reasonable comprehension (along with the occasional whisper of curse words borne from frustration) to Rohan's mind, as he began staring and putting away seemingly identical sheets of paper without an inkling of progress to his name. By the conclusion of it all—or the distinct lack of it, from his perspective—Rohan set his pencil down.

On the mark of two hours and sixteen minutes, his music player looped back to the start.

Leaning back into his chair, Rohan let out a light grumble of frustration, wondering why he'd even decided to pick this—

'What're you listening to?'

Rohan sat up straight, wondering if he'd heard right.

'Huh?' he let out, without dignity or poise, his chair creaking as his body swung forwards and his hand popped his earphone right out of his ear once again.

'What're you listening to?' Gremory repeated, her elbow on the edge of the table and her hand.

Rohan's eyes quickly darted back to the player, recognizing that it had looped right back to the start of the playlist … to a certain song.

His fingers, sausage, long and plump as they were, were extra swift in trying to keep that information privy; this tune wasn't one that he was particularly eager to share with anyone. 'You wouldn't be interested,' he replied, quickly, trying to recall if he had a less embarrassing revue of songs to mask as the—

'Come on, let's have a look.'

Rohan had found himself on the backfoot many times in his life; one of those so-called backfoots had even been the reason behind his presence here, but none of those times had it been backed by a smile so brilliant that it almost caused him to fall out of his chair by a girl who wielded it like a might left straight. He opened his mouth to communicate a protest or an excuse, but the extension of Gremory's hand and the smile and expression had, apparently, replaced the brain cells that still functioned with prime inhibitors to any firing of brain waves with just why she had, to his limited knowledge, a legion of admirers. Hesitation's cold grip, however, kept his fingers from extending and doing anything else, up until the realization of the passing seconds prompted him into a proper response.

Letting out another breath and wearing a wry smile, Rohan popped the other earphone from out of his ear, tapping a button on the player and setting his earphones on the table before sliding it over for her to see.

'Backstreet Boys?'

He'd expected a burst of laughter in a cruel show of mockery, or even recognition.

He hadn't, however, expected confusion.

'Yeah,' he responded, briefly wondering if she was confused by his preferences in music or if she just didn't know who the band was … before the realizing that it was probably the former; even in Japan, you'd had to have lived under a rock to have never heard of the Backstreet Boys. 'They're a long in the tooth, but age's no qualifier for a beat.'

Gremory tilted her head, her brows furrowing slightly.

Rohan turned his head up to her, pulling his chair in as he realized that she had, indeed, fallen into the latter category. He pulled his chair in loudly and clumsily, despite himself. It was almost surreal to believe that anyone could—

'You don't know Backstreet Boys?

'Should I?' she responded. Rohan opened his mouth to say something … before realizing that there was probably a decade between the present and the band in its heyday; jumping over the turnstile to accuse Gremory of being ignorant of music wasn't something that any sane person would do to someone that they had known for less than a day, especially someone that was as popular as Rias Gremory.

'Probably not,' he replied with a good-natured chuckle, reaching for his player and eager to complete—or, at the very least, progress—with the assignment.

Instead of the player, however, his hand, or rather, his fingers, only managed to tap the surface of the wooden table, grasping air and laminated wood instead of the plastic and metal of his player. Rohan raised his head, puzzled, as he was certain that he had left the device right there, but, true to reality, the white player had been removed from its spot near the corner to his right … and was now in the direct possession of the red-headed girl, nestled gingerly in her left palm, her a long, manicured finger tapping its interface in a manner he could only interpret as curious, before reaching for the earphones and popping them both into her own ears. Rohan felt a little apprehensive, and irritated, watching this all unfold, as it was, by all rights and regards, his music player … and he certainly hadn't given her express permission to scroll through his playlists so intrusively! A part of him wanted to reach over and snatch his property right out of her hands, but for some reason or another, found himself regarding her as she appeared to listen to the files on his player, humming what appeared to be—

'I Want It That Way?' he guessed, feeling one corner of his mouth twitch slightly. It was an easy guess; if she didn't bother scrolling downward, that would have been the default top of his playlist.

'Pretty good,' Gremory commented, her voice tentative … hesitant. A quick thumb smacked against the pause button. The girl before him wore a small, bemused smile as she pulled out the left earphone, offering it to him to listen.

He frowned, briefly—it was his own property, after all—but otherwise scraped his chair noisily across the library floor and taking her up on her offer, placing it against his ear canal.

Then she hit play.

—but we, are two worlds apart

Despite his best efforts, he found himself nodding to the rhythm … as always.

Can't reach to your heart

He managed to keep himself from mouthing the words, however; that would have definitely been embarrassing.

'—When I say—'

Gremory, however, appeared to have no such qualms.

I want it that way.

He hummed the chorus.

'—ain't nothin' but a heartache—'

Tell me why

'—ain't nothin' but a mistake—'

The rest of the song turned to white noise as Rohan felt himself … caught in something, somehow. An intangible, yet present … presence seemed to coil around him, like warm air, but without the stuffiness that came with it. Gremory's soft whisper of the lyrics made him hazy, unfocused, but left him aware. For some reason or another he couldn't stop watching her, a strange sort of pull tugging from the top of his diaphragm and through his lungs; describing it in a manner that he knew best would be to call it the opposite of drowning, as though there was too much air being forced down his throat, but that he was unable to do anything to stop it. Shaking his head slightly, he tried to refocus, fixing upon on the only thing that came to mind.

That they had gone nowhere with the assignment in the last two or so hours … give or take.

'—I never wanna hear you say—'

Surprisingly, that had appeared to have done the trick.

Oddly rejuvenated, he sang the final lyric with her.

'I want it that way ...'

A small, amused snort escaped Gremory as she pulled the earphone piece she'd inserted before depositing his player on the table. Rohan picked his own side of the bud out of his ear, tossing it onto the table—or more accurately, onto one of the many stacks of paper that littered the surface—and pushing himself back into his original spot, scratching the back of his neck as he did so. The odd experience from before became an afterthought almost as quickly as he'd regained his senses. Perhaps he had been neglecting his health a little too much lately; he'd heard of the overweight and purveyors of bad diets being prone to lapses in consciousness before.

'Na' ba' 'tall, tha'.'

Rohan's head practically sprang from its previous state. That definitely wasn't Japanese that she'd muttered. English; it had definitely been English—he would stake all the money on his wallet on that summation. Heavily accented, but recognizable anyway. Gremory, seemingly realizing this, covered her mouth defensively, but that boulder had rolled. Rohan scanned his mind, trying to pin-point her accent as accurately as he could manage. He'd heard … a similar intonation before, a more stage-ready, produced emphasis where she'd blurted its casual counterpart, but was unable to actually get a lock on that he was fully committed to.

He decided to try his luck.

He spoke English practically every day of his life prior to arriving here, anyway.

'Nope,' Rohan responded—in English, just as she'd thrown out—smiling diplomatically. 'That they are not.'

Gremory scowled, puffing her cheeks, seemingly hesitant to—

'Was 'a slip, la'.'

Rohan shrugged, understanding. He'd slipped into the tongue a few times himself when he wasn't paying attention; it was hardly a thing he could hold against Gremory.

'Irish?'

With a last name like Gremory—and features like those—there was no way that Rohan—or anyone, for that matter—would have accepted her as one of the locals just like that. Her mastery of the Japanese language—despite the emphasis and audible underlining—however, made him at least hazard a guess that she was either born and naturalized through birth or had moved here at a very young age and accepted the customs and nuances as she grew up, to the point that she'd even become apologetic and embarrassed of the slip back into her native tongue.

Seeing his window, he tried again.

'Welsh?'

Gremory bit the inside of her lip, seemingly hesitant to reply in her original tongue … before nodding.

That was one way to meet him halfway.

Rohan nodded, raising his palm in a gesture of understanding, moving to offer her an exit by returning to his—

'Don' ge' 'a lotta chances 'te le' loose,' came the surprising follow up.

Rohan raised his head, trying process his own response. She'd followed up twice now, placing the ball in his court.

'I'm sure,' he returned, softly, in English, offering her a smile that he hoped was at least encouraging. 'Believe me when I say that I-I getcha. People think my Japanese is weird.'

'Ye' sown' oof lik' a prompt-klacker, ye,' Gremory teased, smirking.

Rohan felt his cheeks heat up, his embarrassment rising. It wasn't as though he'd intended for it to sound as such; he'd been raised to keep his enunciation sound and his message clear. There wasn't much that he could do about communicating the nuances and intentions behind the words to string them into fluent sentences from his end aside from waiting for his brain to actually finish the process by itself.

'You're from America, right?'

She'd slipped back into regular Japanese.

'Hawaii,' he reiterated, 'yeah.'

'Hawaii,' she whispered, her emphasis of the word making it sound as though it was something to be genuinely impressed by.

He'd never really understood the romanticism and mystique around the islands; for him it had just been … home.

Or, more correctly, it had been home, once.

'I spent a couple of years in Arizona, too,' he added, hoping to get his mind off Hawaii as best as he could manage. 'Tucson, most—'

'It must have been fun in Hawaii,' Gremory posited, interlocking her fingers as her elbows rested on the edge of the table. She placed her chin atop the bridge of slender digits, a friendly smile upon her features as she, once again, struck the proverbial racket and forced him into a return that he was thoroughly unprepared for.

'It … has its moments.'

The smile she wore could have interrogated a grizzled agent.

'Aye.'

Probably.

'The surf's as advertised,' he started casually, rolling his shoulder as he leaned forward.

The rest of the work, naturally, went unheeded.

He couldn't check them all out (reference check-outs and papers were limited to two per student), but some was better than none. The evening had crested without his notice, and before he was even aware that he had spent precious moments fraternizing instead of actually finishing his work, the library was off shutting its lights, shelf by shelf. Exiting the library, however, he found that the school grounds were still teeming with activity, with girls—an obscene proportion of them—and boys still tending to whatever it was that they had found a fitting use for their time on school grounds past class hours. He recognized tennis uniforms, volleyball uniforms.

His uncle was right: school life here was definitively different to how it was back in Oahu. Most kids were out on the streets within a second of school bell's ring; he couldn't fathom how anyone could willingly stay on school grounds without any mandatory commitments … or in his case, actual assignments.

'Have you joined a club yet?'

Rohan almost tripped over his feet at the sound of the voice, briefly checking—while hunched over and looking like a gorilla looming over tiny banana—if it had, indeed, been intended for him at all. He turned his head to the right, finding his project partner with her bag in hand, seemingly waiting on his answer.

'No, I,' he paused, wondering why he was so hesitant to reply in the negative; perhaps not being part of the crowd—or a crowd for that matter—messed with him more than he would have liked to admit: everyone seemed to … belong. 'I haven't looked into it yet.'

'Make sure you do,' said Gremory, smiling. 'Maybe you'll make a few new friends.'

Rohan chuckled, returning the smile … before surprisingly giving it some thought.

'You know if the tennis club's recruiting?'

Gremory made a face, causing him to chuckle even more. 'You … play tennis?'

He shrugged; he really didn't. He'd seen people play at those high-end country clubs back on the islands, but they were mostly the continental types that flew in and clinked their expensive glasses together before talking about whatever fleeting topic came to mind. Even listening in made him feel like he was trying to comprehend an alien tongue.

'No,' Gremory continued, smirking as she gave him a once over. 'You're definitely not the physical type.'

For one reason or another, Rohan felt like rolling his shoulders and flexing his shoulder blades.

'Actually, I was thinking of paying the swimming club a look-see,' said Rohan, more of a retort to what he believed was a sly insinuation than it was any actual commitment on his part.

Gremory raised one eyebrow, as if evaluating his return serve. A moment later, Rohan saw her eyes flash of something in her eyes, before seeing her playful smirk turn into a derisive, cruel one. While he felt no apprehension, Rohan likened her expression to one of a detective that had caught a felon mid-crime and was just waiting for the police to slap the cuffs on their wrists. Puzzled by the sudden shift in tone, Rohan decided that he'd probably over-stepped something somewhere who someone who had known the other for less than a day really shouldn't have.

'Oh, you've already made up your mind on that, then?'

He paused for a moment, considering her query: it was different here. Maybe clubs were really just a big deal for Kuoh Academy's student body. It'd certainly explain why most of the students looked happy to stay so late into the day instead of hauling themselves back to the comforts of their beds and couches.

'Not really, no,' Rohan replied, 'but …'

He pondered Gremory's previous words. It would do him good to join a club, even if he did prefer going back home over doing anything strenuous. He hardly knew anyone here in Tokyo, and while he would also rather hop on the first flight to Honolulu than continue to stay here, his … circumstances weren't so convenient to allow him such an avenue. He'd been told to use this as an opportunity to start fresh, but at the same time, there wasn't really … anything that made him believe that just being in a new place in some fancy elevator school was worth living his old life behind … even with those same circumstances.

As his grandfather had told him, however: nothing started without him turning the key in the ignition.

Maybe it was time that he did that.

'I'd like to at least give it the ol' college try,' Rohan finished, shrugging slightly, the last three words emphasized in English for a mish-mash of unnatural dialects. Some things fit better in Japanese and some translated better in his language of origin. Regardless, he hoped that he'd communicated his intention well enough.

Gremory's expression softened. She nodded, smiling.

'Right,' she started, giving his bag a once-over. 'So, I'll cover my part and—'

'—I'll cover mine,' he finished, raising his hand. It took him a moment to remember that her credentials were on the line just as much as his were. 'If there's anything … we'll just compare notes,' he added, a little awkwardly.

'Of course,' Gremory answered.

That seemed to have done it for the day.

Not knowing what else to do, Rohan extended a fist.

Gremory stared quizzically at his action … before giggling and extending her own, thankfully familiar enough with the practice to knock her knuckles against his. Rohan frowned slightly at the contact, finding that the girl, despite being a measure shorter than he was, packed some serious force behind those hills of hers.

'You know, it actually might do you some good.'

Rohan blinked. 'Huh?'

'Maybe you'll get the chance to pick up friends and drop those pounds.'

Those were the last words she said that evening, before turning on her heel and leaving him, all by his lonesome. Turning on his own heel and starting his own journey back to his house, Rohan felt himself in a distinctively chippier mood than he had been coming to school.

'Please,' he snorted, mostly to himself as he patted his paunch. 'I'm not even two-fifty.'

He was off by six.

END OF CHAPTER

A/N:

Four years you'd think for sure,

That's all you've got to endure,

All the total dicks,

All the stuck-up chicks,

So superficial, so immature ...

To my younger readers (which are pretty much all of you, really) ... I'm sorry to say, but ... it's true. High school never ends.