Chapter 6: The Real Question (How to Survive a Second Cup of Mango with Your Dignity Intact)

The second cup steamed just like the first one, and the question Rias Gremory had just dropped was still sitting in the middle of the room like a grenade without a pin.

"When was the last time your power ran into something it couldn't erase?"

Ren stared at the cup Akeno had just poured for him, trying to keep his eyes glued to the porcelain and not on what was happening right across from him. As she leaned in to set down the teapot, Akeno had rested one hand on the table, and the collar of her blouse, defying every law of gravity and decency, had opened up just enough for Ren to memorize the brand of her lace lingerie before his brain could react in time.

Okay. The tea's great. The tea has a lot of mango. Focus on the damn mango, Ren, or you're gonna end up selling your soul to the devil just for ten more centimeters to the left.

Akeno settled back into her chair with that smile that said she knew exactly how many beats per minute his pulse had jumped. At the head of the table, Rias held Ren's gaze without any hurry and crossed her legs slowly, a move that pushed her uniform skirt up two fatal centimeters. She knew perfectly well she had him exactly where she wanted him.

The whole room was silent. Kiba had closed his book on his knee, Koneko was holding her pen over her notebook without writing a single line, which in her language meant "I'm recording this in HD," and Issei, from the back of the couch, was watching Ren with a mix of genuine respect and the look of someone watching a man walk toward the guillotine with style.

Ren took a sip. The tea was perfect, the mango was honest, and the question was still burning.

"Three years ago," he said finally.

Nobody moved.

"It was in an area I shouldn't have crossed," he continued, setting the cup down slowly. "What I found there wasn't a spell or a barrier or anything that used the standard magic vocabulary. My silver made contact with it and nothing happened, no reaction of any kind, and that was the truly terrifying part."

Rias didn't blink.

"What was it?" she asked.

"I don't know, and that's the truth, not a dodge." Ren set the cup down with millimetric care. "Think of it this way. If magic is paint on a canvas, my silver is the thinner that dissolves the colors and leaves the canvas clean. But what was in that place three years ago wasn't the paint. It was the canvas itself, and thinner has no business going up against the fabric."

The silence that followed stretched long enough to hear Issei's cold sweat in the background.

"That's the most concerning thing anyone's told me in months," Rias admitted, leaning back in her chair. "And I live in Kuoh, so the bar is pretty high."

"I figured. Hence my policy of measured information."

Akeno rested her cheek on her hand and looked at him with an unusual softness that struck Ren as three times more dangerous than her flirty version. When Akeno Himejima got serious, it meant she was calculating how to undress your soul, or your clothes, whichever happened faster.

"Makes sense," she said. "Nobody goes around showing their limits in a first meeting with an unknown faction."

"Or a fifth one," Ren shot back. "But President Gremory has an annoying talent for asking the exact right questions when my mouth is full of tea."

Rias gave a small smile that Ren had to mentally file under weapon of mass distraction, moderate use.

"Whatever gets said in this club stays in this club. You have my word, Ren."

"And mine," Akeno added, dropping the playful tone she used for everything else.

Kiba nodded from the window without turning. Koneko set the pen down on her notebook. Issei nodded too, with the solemnity of someone who had just witnessed something that called for that level of response.

Perfect. Either it's a genuine honor-of-the-underworld-nobility thing, or it's the best coordinated theater I've ever seen. Since I can't verify it, I'll add it to my weekly paranoia list and move on.

"One question from me too, president," Ren said, locking his eyes onto Rias's bangs to avoid any unauthorized visual detours. "How long have you suspected my power had a catch?"

"Since Tsubaki sent me the report from Tuesday." Rias leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table and making the Kuoh uniform remind Ren all over again why he had a policy of not looking down during important conversations. "A power that erases magic without leaving any trace at all isn't a standard nullification. I just had to put two and two together."

"And if my answer had been a lie?"

"It would've been a boring answer. And you don't strike me as a boring guy, Ren-kun."

Ren glanced at the wall clock. 5:18.

Eleven minutes before Tsubaki Shinra starts drafting the Custody Breach Form, Model E, four whole pages. Eleven minutes is exactly how long I need to get to the Council if I get out of this hormonal minefield right now, which means standing up without looking at either side of the table because Rias Gremory has been leaning on the desk for twenty minutes in a way the Roman Senate wouldn't have tolerated during a plenary session.

He stood up, adjusting his jacket.

"I have a date with Shinra-senpai's bureaucracy at five thirty," he said, aligning the cup with surgical precision. "The tea was outstanding, Himejima-san. The second round had more mango and a latent risk of cardiac arrest. I appreciate it, sincerely."

Akeno, of course, stood up to walk him to the door. A completely unnecessary and calculatedly lethal move. She opened the door and leaned against the frame, putting her weight on one hip in a pose that stretched the fabric of her skirt in ways that should probably have their own section in the penal code. She watched him through half-lidded eyes.

"Come back whenever you want, Ren-kun," she whispered as he passed her, letting her breath brush against his neck. "There's always hot water for free agents who know how to keep it together under pressure. Among other things."

Ren locked his eyes on a fixed point in the hallway with the focus of a Buddhist monk crossing a river of lava.

"I'll keep that in mind."

"And the conversation about the canvas is still pending," Rias added from the head of the table, in a calm voice that promised future interrogations that were going to cost Ren three years of either therapy or confession, whichever came first.

"When the context justifies it, president," Ren answered, picking up the pace.

Issei sent him off from the couch with a thumbs up and a look that said you're my new idol, you lucky bastard.

________________________________________

The hallway in the old building was freezing, but Ren was walking out of a sauna. The afternoon sun came through the windows in orange strips, and he sped up toward the central courtyard.

Akeno Himejima served tea with visual **** intentions, Rias Gremory used the edge of the desk as a heavyweight argument throughout the entire conversation, and Akeno cornered me at the doorframe on the way out. If this is what they call a mystical evaluation, I'm gonna need a specific form to file for unspecified but very real damages.

He turned the corner of the central courtyard and the tower clock read 5:28.

Tsubaki Shinra was standing next to the door of the Student Council, impeccable, with the folder under her left arm and her eyes locked on her wristwatch.

"One minute of grace, Akatsuki-san," she said, without moving a single muscle in her face. "I was about to open the inkwell for Model E. Four pages. By hand."

"I made it in the nick of time, senpai," Ren sighed. "The Occult Club uses some seriously aggressive retention tactics based on mango tea and high-intensity psychological warfare. It was a very complicated negotiation."

Tsubaki looked him up and down, and her eyes paused for a fraction of a second on the stiffness in his shoulders before she discreetly sniffed the air.

"You smell like roses and black tea," she pronounced. "President Gremory applied her usual softening methods, from what I can tell."

"It was a strictly theoretical debate about the nature of magic, senpai. I swear on my academic record."

"I see." Tsubaki opened the folder with a sharp flick of her wrist. "President Sitri has Model G ready. Eight pages, although I spared you the environmental description section because I know visual distractions disrupt your concentration."

"You're an angel with glasses and a folder, Shinra-senpai. If you weren't my supervisor, I'd propose right here."

The left corner of Tsubaki's mouth went up roughly one millimeter, which on her emotional scale was the equivalent of a full belly laugh. She pointed at the door.

"Inside. Sona doesn't have patience today."

The Council office smelled like freshly printed paper and order without exceptions. Sona Sitri was behind her desk with Model G centered perfectly in front of her and a pen in her hand.

"Sit down," she ordered. "Statement on Tuesday's incident. Short and precise. Signatures on two, five, and eight."

Ren took the chair across from the desk, specifically designed so nobody could relax in it, and started his account: something off near the greenhouse in B wing, his silver in contact with the spell, the spell erased, and the rogue fleeing without direct confrontation.

Sona listened without blinking, jotting three clean lines into her notebook.

"You say you detected something off before seeing the spell active." Sona leaned forward, resting her interlaced fingers on the table. "How?"

And here we go again. Sona Sitri is just as dangerous as Rias Gremory, with the difference that instead of leaning on the edge of the desk and short-circuiting other people's brains, she uses pure logic to pull your guts out. The practical result is the same. Me answering things I hadn't planned to say this afternoon, only here I don't have a spectacular cleavage to distract me from the pain.

Although, looking at her properly, Sona's uniform was so ridiculously fitted to her frame that the result was just as unfair as Rias's, only presented in a different style. A style Ren mentally filed under the category of "information not requested but received anyway."

"The spell had a leak on the outer edge, senpai," he answered, signing page two quickly. "My silver reacts to the energy that lingers around an active spell. That's why I got there before it fully kicked in."

"That wasn't in the preliminary report." Sona looked at him over her glasses with an intensity that sped up Ren's pulse for reasons that weren't entirely bureaucratic. "Erasing magic isn't the same as tracking it at a distance."

"I wrote the preliminary report in fifteen minutes while trying not to get caught by the night patrol, senpai. I left some details out."

"Four and a half pages of details." Sona narrowed her eyes. "The omission doesn't bother me, Akatsuki-san. What bothers me is not knowing whether it was carelessness or a deliberate decision."

"Let's call it professional prudence. Model C doesn't have a checkbox for my silver tracks magical energy leaks, and I didn't want to generate an appendix without anyone formally asking for it."

"I'm formally asking for it." Sona pulled another sheet from the drawer. "Model H. Wednesday before four. Four pages detailing how that part works."

"You're a relentless woman, president."

"I'm efficient," Sona corrected. "A free agent who can track active magic in Kuoh territory is either an asset or a jurisdictional headache without an easy fix. I'd rather have the paperwork in order before you become the second one."

Ren signed page five and page eight, returned the stack of papers perfectly aligned, and accepted the ivory-colored card Sona handed him. On the back was a scale from one to five in very small type.

"A proprietary alert classification system," Ren commented.

"Efficiency doesn't rest." Sona clasped her hands. "One last thing. The rogue you neutralized on Tuesday belonged to the lineage of House Vaal, a minor clan with shifting affiliations that sells its services to the highest bidder. Which means he wasn't here on his own initiative. Someone funded him."

The signed Model G was still on the desk between them, and suddenly its eight pages mattered considerably less than what Sona had just said.

"That changes things," Ren said, dropping the joking tone somewhere in the last two sentences.

"A lot. Someone with resources is sending test pieces to this campus to measure response times, and the question is who and why now. There are no known House Vaal contracts in this area."

Spent the afternoon dodging Gremory's questions, survived Sitri's audit, signed eight pages of supernatural bureaucracy, and now it turns out the incident I thought was closed had someone behind it. Kuoh has a very particular way of managing information.

"Was this afternoon's audit partly to verify whether I was in on it with them?" Ren asked.

"It was to verify your consistency, and you are." Sona stood up from her chair, walked around the desk, and opened the door. "Which means I have one less problem and one more unknown."

Ren got to his feet, and as he passed her, he caught the scent of clean paper and mint tea coming off the president of the Council. He kept his eyes on the hallway with the effort of someone who had already burned through his entire self-control budget for the day and couldn't afford any additional spending.

"If I find another House Vaal mark in the north area, I'll let you know before acting," he said, lowering his voice a notch. "But if they come at me first, don't expect me to fill out the authorization form before pulling the silver."

"I wouldn't ask you to die for lack of stamps." Sona held the door, looking him in the eye. "Just the full report afterward. Five pages. No omissions."

"Five pages, appendix included," Ren promised.

The corner of Sona's mouth moved just barely. A small victory.

The Council hallway was deserted and the ceiling lights buzzed in that cold white tone they always did. It was 5:58. Ren walked toward the building's exit with his hands in his pockets.

Survived Akeno serving tea with visual **** intentions, Rias leaning on the desk for twenty minutes with everything that visually implied, Akeno blocking the doorframe on the way out, and Sona Sitri proving that administrative efficiency can also be ridiculously hard to ignore. If I make it to the end of the month with my sanity intact, it'll be a miracle that deserves its own recognition form.

He took the path toward the dorms, walking past the side of the B wing greenhouse. The grass was clean. Tsubaki had erased the remains of Tuesday without leaving a trace.

He was halfway down the outer path when the air changed.

A small creak, almost buried under the wind in the trees, sounded to his right, near the north fence. Ren didn't turn sharply. He kept walking, slipped his hand into his jacket as if reaching for his phone, and closed his fingers around the grip of his silver weapon.

The pulse on his right wrist activated in that instant. Cold and dull, just like Tuesday by the greenhouse, but weaker, like someone testing a door to see if it was still locked.

The sponsor is checking the area.

He counted ten seconds standing still in the middle of the path. The pulse faded gradually and pulled back the same way it had come. The intruder had decided this wasn't the moment.

Ren relaxed his fingers inside his jacket and resumed walking toward the north building. He went up the stairs, entered his room, locked the door, and dropped the jacket on the bed.

He pulled Sona's ivory card out and set it on the desk. He looked at the scale on the back: level one, something minor without urgency, report within twenty-four hours; level two, presence confirmed, report within four hours.

"Let's call it a one and a half," he muttered, leaving the card face down. "If that thing comes back to scratch at the fence tonight, Sona's gonna have her four pages before breakfast."

He turned on the lamp and opened the weekly report. Outside, the Kuoh wind was blowing against the glass with the usual normality, which in this city was just the amount of time it took for the next existential question or the next rogue spell to show up. And Ren had a feeling that this time they were going to arrive together.