The four girls had retreated into the feast’s general crowd, casting backward glances that mixed disappointnt and residual hope in equal asure. Whether the yokais had acted on their own initiative or under quiet instruction from their mistress was a question that hung in the air between Nathan and Rena without either of them formally raising it.
Nathan glanced at her sideways.
"Look what you’ve done," he said, swirling wine in his cup with the mild tone of soone noting a minor administrative disruption.
"I did nothing," Rena replied, her chopsticks moving with precise, focused efficiency.
"You ordered your yokais to drive them away from ," Nathan said. Not an accusation — simply a statent of what had clearly happened, presented for acknowledgnt.
Rena scoffed with the particular quality she reserved for ideas beneath serious engagent. "You think entirely too highly of yourself."
"A sha either way," Nathan said pleasantly, the slight smile returning. "I could still reach out to them about their private gathering later tonight."
"You are scum," Rena said flatly. "And trash."
"You think so," Nathan replied, without the slightest indication that the words had landed anywhere aningful.
"You collect won without any care or consideration," she said, the contempt in her voice carrying the crisp certainty of a verdict delivered after thorough deliberation.
"I’m not collecting anyone," Nathan said, setting his cup down. "Won co to . The ones I accept, I take care of." He paused briefly, feeling the slight dishonesty in his own words — the distance from Aisha, from Alia, from daughters he hadn’t held — and anded it internally without voicing the andnt. The intention was real even where the current reality fell short. He would never abandon any of them. That much was completely true.
"You have genuinely terrible taste," Rena added, her gaze moving to the four retreating figures with the particular cool assessnt of soone examining inferior rchandise that had been incorrectly valued.
Nathan nearly laughed.
She was extraordinary. Harsh in every direction, entirely indiscriminate in her contempt, saying precisely what she thought with zero adjustnt for how it would land — and sohow, from where he was sitting, deeply, specifically lovely because of all of it rather than despite it.
"Speaking of taste," Nathan said, his voice dropping slightly into the casual tone that Rena had learned — though she would never admit this — to be wary of, "you certainly rember Semiramis. I had you as my hostage in that cave, and I took her while you were there." He picked up his wine cup. "You watched with considerable intensity, as I recall."
The color that flooded Rena’s face was imdiate, total, and spectacular.
"I...I did not watch anything!" The words ca out with more force than she’d intended, her composure fracturing cleanly at the foundation.
"You tried your best not to," Nathan agreed generously. "And you watched everything regardless. I don’t bla you — you’d never experienced anything like that, your curiosity was entirely natural, there’s nothing remotely shaful about it."
His tone was so completely matter-of-fact, so entirely without mockery, that it was sohow worse than mockery would have been.
"I watched nothing," Rena said, her voice lower now, rigid with the effort of reconstructing composure over a face that was radiating heat she couldn’t control. "Nothing at all. You are fabricating things entirely."
Nathan said nothing. He didn’t need to.
Because he was right and she knew it and he knew she knew it, and no quantity of denial was going to change the simple fact that she rembered every detail of that night with a clarity that three years had done absolutely nothing to erode.
The image was there whether she invited it or not — Nathan and Semiramis, the sounds that had filled that cave, the particular quality of his focus and thoroughness that had been simultaneously the most alarming and most impossible-to-look-away-from thing she had encountered in her seventeen years of carefully maintained sheltered existence.
She had watched. She had watched with the horrified, riveted attention of soone who had stumbled into sothing she had no frawork for and found her frawork permanently revised by the experience.
She picked up her wine cup and drank from it with great dignity.
She drew in a slow breath, forcing the heat in her cheeks to recede—at least enough that she could pretend composure. She uncrossed and re-crossed her arms tightly over her chest.
"That was before," she said, her voice cooler now, though the faintest tremor still lingered beneath the surface. "Back when I wasn’t... accustod to certain things."
Nathan tilted his head, one dark brow lifting in polite, predatory curiosity.
"Back when you weren’t?" he echoed, letting the word hang between them like an invitation.
Rena’s jaw tightened. "My personal life ceased to be any of your concern a long ti ago."
He turned fully toward her then, rotating in his seat with lazy grace until their knees very nearly brushed. A slow, knowing smile curved his lips—not the charming one he wore in public, but the private, dangerous one that had always unraveled her defenses far too easily.
"I find that remarkably difficult to believe," he said, voice low and velvet-smooth, each syllable asured and deliberate. "I cannot imagine you—you—allowing any of those limp-wristed boys from your class, or any puffed-up noble’s son in this entire kingdom, to so much as lay a trembling finger on the soft skin of your inner thigh... let alone slide themselves inside that perfect, untouched pussy of yours the way you once permitted to do. Repeatedly. Eagerly. With those sa lovely hands of yours clutching my shoulders asking silently do continue my teasing."
The words landed like stones dropped into still water—crude, explicit, and utterly unapologetic.
Rena shot to her feet so fast the chair scraped harshly against the stone floor. Crimson flooded her face, throat, even the delicate tips of her ears; the blush was so fierce it almost hurt.
"You—!" The single syllable cracked like a whip.
She had ant to needle him, to provoke him making him believe she had already had a boyfriends or get into relationship but it had spectacularly backfired.
Nathan, when it ca to sex—had never believed in subtlety. He never had.
"You’re disgusting," she hissed, voice shaking glaring at him with flushed face.
She spun on her heel and strode away, right after.
Nathan remained exactly where he was, one elbow resting casually on the table, chin propped on loosely curled fingers. He watched her retreating figure with that sa small, satisfied curve of mouth—the smile of a man who had just confird exactly what he already suspected.
"It’s genuinely rare to see Rena-san that worked up."
Nathan turned.
Ryuuki stood nearby with the slight smile of soone who had caught the tail end of sothing amusing — his eyes moving briefly after Rena’s retreating figure before settling on Nathan with the direct, assessing quality that Nathan had noticed during the ceremony. Not hostile. Simply honest.
Haruka stood beside him, Ryuuji settled against her shoulder.
"Sothing going on between you two?" Ryuuki asked.
"She inford I was disgusting," Nathan said. "Several tis, with variations."
Ryuuki laughed — genuine, unguarded, the laugh of soone who had known Rena long enough to find the image completely believable. He pulled out the chair across from Nathan and sat with the relieved ease of soone sitting down for the first ti after a long walk.
"That’s entirely consistent with how she functions," he said. "But I’ve never seen her that specifically agitated when talking to anyone. Usually she’s cold rather than hot."
Haruka took the adjacent seat with graceful economy, settling Ryuuji against her with the automatic adjustnt of long practice, and glanced at the feast hall around them with an expression of mild, polite exhaustion.
Nathan observed both of them settling in with the slight narrowing of soone noticing sothing that didn’t quite fit the expected pattern.
"What are you doing," he said.
Ryuuki had the grace to look mildly sheepish. He scratched the back of his neck with the awkward candor of soone caught in sothing he’d rather present differently.
"The nobles," he said, with the resignation of a man who had spent two hours being congratulated by people whose congratulations contained agendas. "They’re sowhat less inclined to approach when we’re sitting with you. So."
"I humiliated their Heroes and forced a truce on their kingdom," Nathan said, with the complete absence of discomfort that might have been expected given that the leader of those Heroes was sitting directly across from him. "That seems like sufficient reason."
Ryuuki’s laugh ca out weaker this ti — the sound of soone processing a blunt truth about themselves with reasonable grace. "You genuinely don’t filter much, do you."
"But we are allies now, Samael-sama," Haruka said, her voice carrying the warm, composed certainty of soone who had decided how she was going to approach this relationship and was applying it consistently. She smiled at Nathan with the directness of a woman who had learned to be direct from necessity. "Whatever ca before, that’s where we stand now."
Nathan looked at her briefly. "We are," he confird.
"About the army Kaguya-sama promised you," Haruka continued, shifting naturally into more substantive ground with the ease of soone more comfortable with direct business than social performance. "I want you to know that I will do everything in my capacity to support it. The Light Empire—" She paused, sothing tightening briefly in her expression. "These last years they have been escalating. Provocations, border threats, diplomatic pressure that stopped just short of requiring a formal response. It was already present before, but after the truce with Tenebria was made public, the pressure beca genuinely threatening."
"That’s the Divine Knights’ work," Nathan said. "They are the Empire’s actual power structure — the Emperor is a figure they manage. Once I remove them, the Empire loses the chanism driving that hostility. What’s left will be manageable."
"You seem to know them very specifically," Ryuuki said, his eyes on Nathan with the focused attention of soone filing details carefully.
"I know enough about them," Nathan replied, with the even tone of a statent that contained considerably more than it offered.
A brief silence fell.
Ryuuki looked at Nathan for a mont — weighing sothing, choosing whether to say it — and then said it.
"I don’t an any offense by this," he started, with the particular preamble of soone who suspects offense might arrive regardless of intentions. "But — were you like this on Earth as well? Because you were around our age when you were summoned and you..." He gestured vaguely, the gesture encompassing Nathan’s entire bearing, the conversation they’d just had, the general impression of soone who had been conducting himself like a seasoned commander since before he should have had the experience for it.
He had been expecting sothing like a mafia boss when he tried to picture Nathan’s Earth life. But they had been teenagers. The sa age, the sa world, just different countries.
Nathan didn’t answer imdiately. He looked at Ryuuki with a flat, level gaze.
"I killed one of your classmates," he said. "What do you think?"
Ryuuki blinked. "What—"
"I killed one of your classmates," Nathan repeated, the sa even tone, no harder and no softer. "And I could have killed more. What does that tell you about what I was or wasn’t on Earth?"
Ryuuki’s hands closed slightly on the table’s edge. The muscle in his jaw moved once.
Then he exhaled and answered honestly, which was the thing Nathan had half expected him not to do.
"I was angry," Ryuuki said. "For a long ti after. I felt like I’d failed — like protecting everyone was supposed to be my function and I hadn’t done it." He paused. "But when I thought about it clearly — we were the ones who attacked. We crossed into Tenebria’s territory with weapons and hostile intent. Death in that context wasn’t sothing I had any real right to be surprised by. It was war." His voice carried sothing that had clearly been worked through rather than simply accepted — the specific weight of a conclusion that had cost sothing to reach. "Taketa-kun died and I carry that. But I can’t place the bla entirely sowhere else."
Nathan looked at him.
He had expected the standard protagonist response — righteous anger dressed in reasonable-sounding language, the fundantal refusal to fully absorb an uncomfortable truth. The type of thinking common to every manga hero who had ever charged into a situation with pure intentions and clean hands and erged sohow still clean.
Ryuuki had surprised him. There was genuine thinking happening behind those eyes. Real processing, real accountability, real understanding of cause and consequence.
"Understanding is good," Nathan said. "But understanding alone won’t protect your family."
Ryuuki glanced at Haruka instinctively.
"You need to change," Nathan continued. "All of you. You’ve been fortunate — dropped into a kingdom with soone like Kaguya who treated you as honored guests rather than tools, kept you safe, gave you ti and space and dignity. That was genuinely lucky." He set down his cup. "But because of that you’ve been living inside a protected version of this world for three years. You haven’t seen what’s outside it. What it actually looks like when there’s no one like Kaguya standing between you and reality."
He wasn’t being cruel. He was being precise, which was different.
His forr classmates, the Heroes of the Light Empire had gone through the Trojan War and co out the other side fundantally altered — whatever softness or naivety they had carried into it had been burned away by necessity, leaving sothing harder and more honest in its place. Painful. But necessary.
The Heroes of Amun Ra had needed only a brief exposure to Ro — the real Ro, the ancient machinery of power and violence and political calculation — to have their misconceptions stripped away permanently and their capabilities recalibrated.
But Kastoria’s Heroes, three years in, still carried the particular quality of people who had been summoned last week. Still operating inside the worldview they’d arrived with, still protected by the bubble Kaguya’s care had created around them.
That bubble wouldn’t always hold. And the mont it didn’t, they would not be ready.
Ryuuki sat with Nathan’s words settling into him visibly, finding the places where they were true and not arguing with those places. His expression was complicated but not defensive.
He opened his mouth to respond—
The sound of armor reached them first.
The particular rhythm of soone moving through a crowded hall with an escort — unhurried, creating space by presence rather than request.
Takehiko stopped at the table’s edge.
He looked at the three of them — Nathan, Ryuuki, Haruka with her infant son — with the warm, easy smile that had been his consistent expression throughout the entire day. His orange eyes moved across the table with the comfortable assessnt of soone who saw exactly what he was looking at and found it interesting.
"A remarkable gathering," he said pleasantly. "The Hero of Light, my dear sister, the young heir and our distinguished guest from Tenebria." His gaze settled on Nathan last and stayed there a beat longer than the others. "May I join you?"
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