Is it Wrong to Have a Harem in DxD

Second period was Japanese history, and the teacher was talking about the Sengoku period like it was the most important thing that had ever happened to anyone, and I was sitting in the back row of a classroom full of girls who hated me, trying to remember if Issei Hyoudou had ever taken notes in his life.

Probably not. I opened the notebook in front of me and found three pages of doodles. One of them was a surprisingly detailed sketch of a girl's bust, labeled with measurements in Motohama's handwriting. I closed the notebook.

The day before had been orientation. Today was the real test. Could I sit through eight hours of high school in a language I shouldn't be able to understand, in a body I was still getting used to, with a dragon in my head who hadn't spoken since yesterday morning but whose silence felt deliberate. Like she was waiting to see what I'd do next.

I could. It turned out sitting quietly and paying attention was the most alien thing Issei Hyoudou had ever done in this building, and people noticed. The girl two seats ahead of me turned around twice to check if I was still awake. The teacher called on me once, expecting nothing, and I gave a passable answer about Oda Nobunaga that earned a beat of confused silence from the room.

Lunch was worse.

"Okay." Matsuda set his tray down across from me and leaned forward with both elbows on the table. He had rice on his chin already. "Okay. You passed on the kendo room yesterday. Fine. Bad stomach. We get it. But today-"

"No," I said.

"-the swim team is doing laps and the fence by the pool has that loose panel we found last week-"

"Still no."

Matsuda stared at me. Motohama, sitting beside him, was eating his lunch in silence, watching the exchange over the top of his glasses with the detached interest of a man observing a science experiment.

"Issei." Matsuda put his hands flat on the table. "Issei. The swim team. In their swimsuits. In the water. Right now."

"Eat your lunch, Matsuda."

"Who ARE you?"

He'd said that yesterday too. Yesterday I'd been worried about it. Today it just sounded like Matsuda. This was how he processed confusion. He asked the question, didn't really want the answer, and moved on when food was available.

"I'll make it up to you," I said. "Next time."

"You said that yesterday."

"And I'll keep saying it until you believe me."

Matsuda opened his mouth, closed it, and then shoved a piece of fried chicken into the gap. The conversation was over. Motohama adjusted his glasses. He hadn't said a single word during the whole exchange, and I had the uncomfortable feeling he was the one actually paying attention.

I looked up. Across the cafeteria, near the doorway, a girl with a black bob and square-framed glasses was watching our table. Slim, composed, holding a clipboard against her chest. She wasn't looking at Matsuda or Motohama. She was looking at me. Violet eyes behind those lenses, focused, cool. Evaluating.

Sona Sitri. Student Council President. Secretly the heiress of one of the most powerful Devil clans in the Underworld, running her peerage out of the Student Council office the same way Rias ran hers out of the ORC. I knew her whole story. Her broken engagement, her dream of building a school for low-class Devils, her sister who cosplayed as a magical girl and ruled a quarter of Hell.

Right now she was just a girl with a clipboard, watching the worst pervert in school turn down a peeping trip for the second day in a row. She pushed her glasses up with one finger, and her eyebrows lifted. A millimeter, maybe. On Sona Sitri, that was a billboard.

I went back to my lunch. She went back to whatever she'd been doing.

Ddraig was still silent. Curled up at the base of my awareness like a cat sleeping with one eye open. Present but not participating.

The rest of the school day was uneventful. I took notes. I answered when called on. I didn't look at any girl longer than was normal, which for the original Issei was an achievement worth a medal. By the time the final bell rang, the classroom had settled into a cautious confusion about me that I could work with. Confused was better than suspicious.

After school, I didn't go home.

I took the long way through Kuoh Town, walking with my hands in my pockets and my bag over one shoulder, and I mapped everything. The route from the anime was vague in my memory, more vibes than geography, but the town itself was small enough that it didn't matter. I found the landmarks on foot.

The bridge came first. A pedestrian overpass crossing a canal about ten minutes from the school gate, lined with chain-link fencing and just wide enough for two people to pass. The water below was slow and greenish, with beer cans caught in the reeds along the bank. This was where Raynare would stop me. Where she'd put on the Yuuma face and ask me out with that rehearsed nervousness and those violet eyes and that voice designed to make a lonely teenage boy say yes to anything.

I leaned on the railing and looked down at the water. A plastic bag was caught on a branch, fluttering in the current like it was trying to pull free.

I kept walking.

The park was next. A public space with a fountain at its center, benches along gravel paths, trees old enough to block the sun. The fountain was running. An older woman was sitting on one of the benches feeding pigeons from a paper bag, tearing off pieces with methodical precision. This was where the date would end. Where Yuuma would smile and ask me to die for her, and then drive a spear of light through my stomach.

The church was last. Set on a hill overlooking the eastern edge of town, visible between rooftops once you knew where to look. I didn't get close. Consecrated ground would burn a Devil, but I wasn't a Devil yet, so it would just be a church. Still, I didn't want to flag myself to anyone who might be watching from inside. Raynare's cell was already in there, according to canon. Freed Sellzen and the other exorcists, plus Kalawarner, Mittelt, and Dohnaseek. A Fallen Angel nest sitting right on the edge of Devil territory.

I turned around and walked home as the sun got low. My feet were sore. I wasn't used to this body's shoes.

"You have been walking in patterns."

Ddraig's voice hit me mid-step, and I almost stumbled. She'd been quiet for over twenty-four hours. The vibration in my chest was the same as yesterday. Low. Heavy. A woman's voice that came from everywhere inside my skull at once.

"I was exploring," I said, keeping my voice down. A couple was walking on the other side of the street. "New town. Wanted to see it."

"You walked past that bridge twice. You stopped at the fountain for three minutes. You looked at the church but did not approach." A pause. "You were not exploring. You were scouting."

I didn't answer. She was right.

"You do that often."

"Do what?"

"Go silent when I say something accurate. The boy before you would argue, deny, bluster. You simply stop speaking." Another pause, longer. "What are you?"

"Issei Hyoudou."

"That is the name of the body. I asked what the contents are."

I turned the corner onto my street. The Hyoudou house was three doors down, lights on in the kitchen window. I could smell dinner from out here. "I'm the guy living in here now. That's all I've got for you."

"It is not."

"It's all you're getting."

Silence. The aggressive kind.

At home, I ate dinner with Issei's parents. His mother had made tonkatsu. His father asked about school and I gave answers that were vague enough to be true. They seemed satisfied, or maybe just used to their son not volunteering much. I excused myself early, went upstairs, and locked the bedroom door.

I sat on the bed. Pulled off my uniform jacket. Rolled up my left sleeve.

"Okay," I said. "Let's talk about the Boosted Gear."

Ddraig didn't answer immediately. Her attention sharpened, the passive awareness becoming focused.

"Why?"

"Because I need it. And I need to know what this body can handle."

"What it can handle now? Nothing. You are human baseline. Your muscles have no memory of combat. Your stamina is pedestrian. Your pain tolerance is untested. The Sacred Gear is dormant and will remain so until a moment of genuine mortal danger forces it to manifest."

"So I need to almost die before it turns on."

"That is the standard activation, yes."

"Is there another way?"

Silence. She was considering it. The pressure in my skull shifted, went somewhere else, came back.

"There is channeling. Pre-activation conditioning. I push dragon energy through your body's pathways in small amounts, acclimatizing the vessel to what the Gear will demand when it activates. It is painful. Most hosts cannot endure it before their Gear has already awakened."

"Let's try."

"You have not asked what the pain will feel like."

"Figured you'd just tell me while it was happening."

She didn't laugh. I was pretty sure dragons didn't laugh. But the silence afterward had a different texture than the annoyed ones. Warmer, maybe. Or more surprised.

"Extend your left arm. Open your hand. Close your eyes and breathe. I will guide the flow."

I did what she said. Arm out, palm up, fingers spread. My eyes closed. For a few seconds there was nothing except my own breathing and the distant sound of Issei's mother running water in the kitchen sink downstairs.

Then Ddraig's voice dropped.

It didn't get quieter. It got closer. It went from filling my skull to sitting right against my left ear, close enough that I could feel the shape of each word forming somewhere behind my jaw. Intimate. Coach-close. Her voice had always been low, but this was her leaning in.

"Breathe in. Hold. Now release, slowly. Feel where your pulse is strongest in your forearm."

I did. My pulse was a dull throb in my wrist, and I focused on it.

"Good. I am going to push a thread of energy along that pulse. It will feel warm. Then it will feel hot. Then it will hurt. Do not pull your arm back. Do not clench your fist. Keep the pathway open. Ready?"

"Yeah."

It started warm. She was right about that. A thread of heat running from my shoulder down through my bicep, into my forearm, spreading along the veins. Comfortable, almost. Like holding your arm close to a campfire.

Then the heat doubled. Tripled. My forearm felt like it was being filled with molten metal, and the individual pathways burned as it traveled through each one. My jaw locked. My teeth pressed together so hard they creaked.

"Hold."

The green came. I couldn't see it with my eyes closed but it was there, a glow under the skin of my forearm, pulsing with my heartbeat. For half a second my whole arm was lit from the inside, green light leaking between my fingers.

Then the pain spiked and everything went dark and my arm dropped like someone had cut the strings. I was on my back on the bed, gasping, my left arm hanging off the edge. The forearm was tingling, pins and needles from shoulder to fingertips, and my left hand was shaking badly enough that I couldn't have held a glass.

"Half a second," Ddraig said, and her voice was back in its normal position, filling my head evenly. "Your body handled more than I expected. The previous one would have screamed."

I stared at the ceiling. My arm was still shaking. "How much is that worth?"

"In terms of combat? Almost nothing. In terms of conditioning? A beginning. Your pathways are wider than the previous host's. Whether that is natural or the result of whatever changed you, I do not know." A pause. "Do this every night and the Gear may activate faster when the moment comes."

"The moment is coming in about two days."

Silence. A long one.

"How do you know that?"

"I just do."

"That is the fourth time you have avoided a direct answer. I am counting."

"Count all you want."

More silence. Then, quietly: "You are prepared for pain. You are scouting terrain for a fight you say is coming. You know timelines you should not know. And you will not tell me how."

"That's about right."

"If you die, I am sealed again. For decades. Perhaps centuries. Alone in the dark until the next host. I have done this many times. I do not wish to do it again."

I sat up. My arm was still tingling but the shaking had mostly stopped. "I don't plan on dying."

"No one ever does."

I flexed my left hand. Open, closed. Open, closed. The sensation was coming back. "Then help me not die. That's what I'm asking."

She didn't answer for a long time. Long enough that I thought she'd retreated again, pulled back into whatever space she occupied inside the Sacred Gear. But she was still there. I could feel it.

"Same time tomorrow. We will push for a full second."

"Deal."

I lay back on the bed. The ceiling fan was turning slowly, one blade slightly off-balance, making a soft clicking sound every rotation. My arm ached from shoulder to fingertip. My shirt was damp with sweat. Somewhere outside, a car alarm went off and stopped after three pulses. Issei's mother was watching TV downstairs, something with a laugh track.

In two days, a beautiful woman was going to walk up to me on a bridge and ask me out. And then she was going to try to kill me.

I'd go on the date. Let Raynare think she had me. And when the spear came, I'd be ready. Or at least more ready than I was right now. Which, given that my left arm currently felt like I'd dunked it in a deep fryer, was a low bar.

I closed my eyes. Ddraig's presence hummed at the edge of my awareness, warm and watchful.

Having a woman's voice that far inside my head was more distracting than it should have been. During the channeling, when she'd dropped close and gone low, coaching me through the burn, I'd been focused on the pain. Mostly. But there'd been a moment, right before the glow hit, when her voice had gone soft and her instructions had come with a rhythm that felt less like coaching and more like breathing, and I'd noticed before I'd had time to think about it.

I didn't think about it too hard. I had bigger problems. But I noticed it, and I didn't pretend I hadn't.

Tomorrow I'd do it again. Push for a full second. And the day after that, a girl with violet eyes and black wings would come looking for me, and everything would start for real.