Ch.31
Day two started with Koneko trying to break my ribs.
She was waiting for me at the training grounds when I got there, standing in the early fog with her gym clothes and her cat-clip hair and a bag of rice crackers in one hand. She ate the last cracker, folded the bag, put it in her pocket, and then hit me in the solar plexus hard enough that I slid backward on the packed dirt and tasted copper.
"Morning," she said.
I straightened. Breathed through it. The impact had compressed my diaphragm and my vision had gone white for a second but I was standing and my feet were under me and the Boosted Gear's stored reserves were humming through my core like a second heartbeat.
"Morning, Koneko."
She came at me again. Rook conditioning was simple in concept: she hit me, I took it. The goal was building my body's ability to channel demonic energy into passive reinforcement so I could absorb blows that would shatter a normal human. The method was Koneko's fists and my stomach and the dirt I kept sliding across.
But today was different from yesterday.
She hit me and I took it. She hit me harder and I took that too. She threw a combination, left-right-left, each impact landing on my crossed forearms, and the third one was her strongest. The third strike landed and my guard held and my feet didn't move.
She hit me with a straight right aimed at my jaw. Full rotation, hips into it, her gold eyes flat and focused.
I caught it.
My hand closed around her fist. Her knuckles pressed into my palm and her wrist flexed and the force of the punch rippled up my arm and through my shoulder and I held. The Boosted Gear's reserves braced through my muscles and my grip tightened and her fist didn't move.
Koneko's gold eyes went wide. Her lips parted.
She pulled. Her fist didn't come free.
She pulled harder. Planted her feet, leaned back, her whole body leveraging against my grip. My arm burned. My fingers ached. But I held.
Two seconds. Three.
I let go.
She stumbled back a step. Caught herself. Her gold eyes were on me and they were wider than I'd ever seen them and her mouth was a thin line and she was breathing faster than the exertion warranted.
"You've been holding back in the ORC," I said.
She looked at the ground. Her white hair fell across her face.
"…You've gotten stronger, Ise-senpai."
She turned and walked to the water station. Fast. Her ears were pink at the tips, visible through her white hair, and she picked up a water bottle and drank from it without turning around.
I let her go.
Lunch was at the villa's porch. Rias had set up a long table under the overhang because the weather was clear and the mountain air was better than eating inside. The whole group ate together. Kiba made onigiri that were suspiciously good. Akeno brought the tea. Asia had prepared a salad with herbs from the villa's garden that she'd identified by smell because apparently Italian nuns learned botany.
Koneko sat beside me.
The seat was open and she sat in it and opened her bento and started eating with small precise bites, eyes forward, expression blank. Her knee was against mine under the table. The contact was light. Warm through the fabric of her gym shorts and my training pants. She didn't move it. I didn't either.
Across the table, Akeno's violet eyes tracked the seating arrangement. Her mouth curved behind her teacup.
The conversation was general. Training observations from the morning. Kiba reported that Rias's peerage combinations were improving but needed work on the timing between Rook-advance and Bishop-support rotations. Akeno discussed barrier strategies for the Rating Game field. Asia asked about the rules of Rating Games and Rias explained them with the patience of a teacher, her voice calm and controlled and fully in King mode.
I ate and listened and watched Rias while she talked.
She was good. Organized, intelligent, clear about her peerage's strengths. Her tactical framework was solid on paper. But I'd watched four seasons of this story. I'd seen the Rating Game play out. And what the anime showed me was a King who relied on her Power of Destruction as a trump card, whose peerage was half the size of Riser's with less than half the combat hours.
Rias would lose the Rating Game.
She would fight well. Her peerage would fight beautifully. And they would lose because Riser had fifteen veterans and she had five kids and no amount of ten-day training would close that gap. The wedding was where it mattered.
Koneko's knee was still warm against mine. She was eating grilled fish and rice with methodical precision, gold eyes on her food. She hadn't looked at me since the spar. She hadn't moved her knee either.
I finished my onigiri. Kiba's were good. I'd have to ask him what he put in the rice.
Afternoon. The training grounds.
Rias and Kiba were running tactical combinations on the far side of the clearing. Rias would launch a concentrated blast of Destruction energy, Kiba would use the detonation's flash as cover for a sword-speed flanking approach. The idea was sound. The execution was rough.
Rias's blasts were powerful but imprecise. She'd aim for a target zone and the Destruction energy would scatter at the edges, widening the blast radius but diluting the impact. Her timing with Kiba's approach was off by a beat. She'd fire, Kiba would move, but the blast would still be settling when he arrived at the flank, which meant he was running through the debris field of his own King's attack.
They ran it four times. The fourth was better than the first. Still not clean.
Akeno was coaching from the sideline, offering suggestions on energy compression that Rias listened to with a clenched jaw because taking advice from her Queen about her signature ability was hard for a Gremory whose family had invented the Destruction bloodline. But she listened. She adjusted. The fifth attempt was cleaner.
I sat on a stump at the tree line and watched. Ddraig was quiet. The notebook was on my knee and I was writing nothing in it and thinking.
Rias was getting stronger. Her peerage was gelling. In ten days they'd be better than they were today. And it wouldn't be enough. Riser's full peerage of fifteen, his Immortal Flame regeneration, his eight Rating Game victories, Yubelluna's bomb-magic from the sky.
I closed the notebook.
Evening. The villa's main room.
Asia had set up a healing station at the low table, her green rings glowing softly, a cup of tea beside her that Akeno had made. The training had been hard on everyone. Kiba had a pulled muscle in his shoulder from the combination drills. Koneko had bruised knuckles from punching me all morning, which she'd refused to mention until Asia noticed and grabbed her hand. Akeno was fine because Akeno was always fine. Rias had overextended her Destruction reserves during the afternoon session and was sitting on the couch with her eyes closed, recovering.
I was last.
Asia's hands found my shoulders. The Twilight Healing warmth spread through the muscle and into the joints and the ache from Koneko's morning session faded like someone was turning a dial. Asia's fingers were on my bare skin because I'd taken my shirt off for the healing, and her palms pressed against my shoulder blades and her touch was careful and thorough.
Her fingers were on the back of my neck. The muscles there were tight from Kiba's sparring, knotted, and her thumbs worked along the tendons with a pressure that was half healing magic and half actual massage technique, and the warmth of her Sacred Gear mixed with the warmth of her hands and my head dropped forward.
"You can feel where the tension is," I said.
"The energy shows me." Her voice was quiet. Close. Her mouth was near my ear because she was leaning over my shoulder to reach the back of my neck and her breath was warm and her hair was brushing my arm. "Your muscles hold damage in patterns. The training with Koneko-san left impact signatures all through your core."
Her hands moved down from my neck to my shoulders and her thumbs pressed into the muscle where my shoulders met my arms and the healing energy flowed deeper, warm green light sinking through layers of fatigue.
Her hands stayed. The healing was done. The green glow faded. Her fingers were still on my shoulders, warm without the Sacred Gear, and she was standing behind me with her hands on my bare skin and the healing was finished and she hadn't moved.
Her fingers tightened. Then loosened. Then pulled away.
"S-sorry, I just-"
"Don't apologize."
I reached back without turning and caught her wrist. Light grip. My thumb on her pulse. Her heartbeat was fast under the pad of my thumb, quick and fluttery.
"You're good at this, Asia."
Her wrist was warm in my hand. She didn't pull away. Her pulse was hammering.
"Thank you, Issei-san." Her voice was very small.
I let go. She stood there behind me for another two seconds, her hands at her sides, and then she went to refill her tea and her face was the color of the sunset coming through the windows.
Across the room, Koneko was watching from behind her light novel. Gold eyes over the top of the page. She ate a piece of konpeito. Looked back at the book.
The page hadn't turned.