It wasn't just individual moments.
Ren made time.
Classic dates.
...
He took Rias to Kyoto first.
Not the youkai district or a hidden battlefield—human Kyoto, under normal stars.
They walked side by side down a lantern-lit street, the faint scent of soy and grilled sugar hanging in the cool night air. Tourists drifted past without a clue that a Devil Princess and an Ancient Saint-level monster were sharing a paper umbrella between food stalls.
Rias had left her uniform and battle outfits behind. Simple sweater dress, dark coat, boots. Her crimson hair was pulled into a loose side ponytail that brushed his arm every time she turned to look at something.
"You're smiling," he said.
She glanced up at him, cheeks faintly pink in the lantern light. "Is that strange?"
"For you?" he said. "Not really. Certainly better to see you smiling more after everything."
Her lips curved, but there was still that old habit in her eyes—the way she kept checking the corners of the street, the rooftops, watching for trouble.
Ren bumped her shoulder gently with his.
"Relax," he said. "Tonight, the only dragons I'm allowed to punch are the ones on souvenir T-shirts."
"That is not reassuring," she murmured, but her tension eased.
They stopped at a small stand where an old man was grilling skewers of mochi over charcoal, brushing them with sweet sauce until they blistered and smoked.
Ren paid before Rias could even reach for her wallet, then held one skewer out.
She blinked. "We can each have—"
"Nah." He took a bite from one end and nodded toward the other. "Share with me."
"Honestly…" She sighed, but it was soft, indulgent. She leaned in and bit from the other side.
The mochi pulled and stretched between them, string of melted sugar trembling. For an instant their faces were closer than either expected, noses almost touching.
Rias' eyes widened. Then she laughed, genuinely laughed, head tipping back, crimson hair spilling down her back and catching lantern light like liquid flame.
Ren let the sound sink into his bones.
He smiled, easy and warm, and offered her the last bite.
...
With Akeno, the world narrowed to storm and shrine.
He booked out a small mountain shrine after dark—no priests, no tourists, just old wood, stone steps, and a clear view of the sky. The city lights below were a distant glow. Up here, the air felt crisp, clean, the way it did right before lightning split it.
Two sake cups sat between them on the veranda. Akeno knelt on the worn boards, kimono sleeves tucked neatly, hair down, black waterfall spilling over her shoulders. In the faint light from the lantern, she didn't look like the seductive priestess she played so easily.
She looked… tired. Human. And very, very beautiful.
"Is it really all right," she asked quietly, "to use a shrine like this… for me?"
Ren poured sake into her cup, then into his own.
"It's a building," he said. "Pretty one, sure. But if the gods have a problem with me sitting here helping my girl breathe, they can come tell me to move."
Her lips quirked at "my girl," eyes softening even as a faint blush crept up her neck.
"You say such embarrassing things so casually," she murmured.
"I like seeing your ears turn red," he said. "Call it a hobby."
He tapped his cup lightly against hers.
"Drink. Then show me your sky."
For a moment, the old weight in her chest tightened—the memory of her human father, her fallen mother, all the pain tied to shrines and lightning and prayers that had never been answered. But Ren's presence beside her was solid, warm.
She smiled, slow and honest this time.
"…All right."
When she raised her hand, the thunder answered.
Heavenbreaker Circuit lit up inside her, lines of light flickering under her skin. Lightning crawled up her arm, not as a savage, writhing beast, but as a trained predator—tamed, but never declawed.
She drew symbols in the air with casual flicks of her fingers. Bolts wove themselves into patterns above them—circles, spirals, a scattering of stars that mimicked distant constellations. A fox's silhouette formed, then a dragon, then a pair of wings that unfolded across half the sky.
Each stroke hummed in Ren's senses, the flow of demonic power, fallen light, and now the subtle spin of Myriad Origin loops turning even the waste heat of the lightning into fuel.
"You're getting better," he said. "The way you're stacking those charges… you could cook an army and still have energy left to fry the general's ego."
Akeno laughed softly, shoulders relaxing.
"Ufufu… I suppose that would be a fitting punishment."
They talked about everything and anything after that.
By the time they finished the second bottle, the sky was full of intricate, harmless lightning art, and Akeno's laughter had grown light enough that even the shrine's old kami probably forgave them for the noise.
...
He took Koneko to an all-you-can-eat sweets café.
Which was, to Sona's absolute horror, a real place that existed in the human world.
Koneko sat across from him with the solemn focus of a general planning a war campaign, silver eyes narrowed at the menu. Her ears—white now, fully manifested and unhidden—twitched as the waitress explained their unlimited parfait policy.
"If you eat too much," Asia said nervously from the next table over, "won't you get sick…?"
Koneko didn't even look away from the menu. "No."
Ren hid a smile behind his glass of water.
"Pick what you want," he said. "If the staff starts crying, I'll leave a big tip."
In the end, four towering parfaits appeared in front of Koneko. Then a fifth. Ren lost count somewhere around the mountain of mochi-topped pancakes.
She demolished them methodically, ears flicking every time a new plate landed. Whipped cream, ice cream, fruits, cake, layers disappearing with relentless, adorable efficiency.
Halfway through, a smudge of vanilla ended up on the tip of her nose.
Ren watched it for three whole seconds, just to make sure it wasn't his imagination.
Then he leaned his elbow on the table and smiled.
"Hey."
Koneko paused mid-bite. "…What."
"You're beautiful," he said.
Her ears went scarlet. "Don't say strange things."
"Not strange," he replied. "Just accurate."
He reached over, thumb brushing the smear of cream from her nose before she could flinch away. Her Touki, always coiled tight under her skin, flared for a heartbeat at the unexpected contact. Then it settled, purring instead of snarling.
He licked the cream off his thumb like it was nothing.
"See?" he added. "Sweet suits you."
She stared at him. Then huffed, looking away, but the tips of her ears stayed red all the way until the next parfait.
...
On another day, he sat on a rooftop with Serafall.
They were in the human city this time too, on top of an office building whose owner was going to have a very exciting electric bill.
Serafall sat on the ledge, legs kicking, pink hoodie fluttering in the breeze, magic wand—today's version had an absurd star on the end—twirling between her fingers. To any human looking up, she'd be nothing more than a shadow against the night sky.
Below them, the city lights glowed in tidy grids. Above, the stars watched.
"So," Ren said, leaning back on his hands. "Magical girl battlefield or giant robot playground?"
"Hmmm…" Serafall tapped the wand against her cheek. "Magical girl first. Save the robots for the finale."
She flicked her wrist.
Illusions unfolded across the skyline.
A phantom, pastel-colored city layered itself over the real one, buildings transforming into glittering towers with heart-shaped windows. Enormous spell circles appeared in the sky, spinning lazily. Somewhere in the distance, a titanic monster made of dark fog rose, roaring in dramatic slow motion.
"Nice," Ren said. "Good production value."
"Of course." Serafall puffed up a little. "I am a professional."
Her smile dimmed a shade as she lowered the wand.
"Even if most people just see me as… that."
He glanced at her.
"You mean the hyperactive magical girl who terrorizes news crews?" he said dryly.
She pouted. "You say it so meanly…"
"But it's not all you are," he added. "And the ones who matter know that."
Her legs stopped swinging.
"…Sometimes," she said quietly, "it feels like they don't. When I am serious as Maou, they listen, but they don't see. When I am Serafall, they see, but they don't listen."
She took a breath, eyes fixed on her illusionary city.
"What about you?" she asked, voice light but too casual. "When you look at me, what do you see?"
Ren watched her for a moment.
"The woman who helped hold the line while I gutted an apocalypse," he said. "The Maou who is stubborn enough to stand up to old devils for her little sister. And," he added, lips quirking, "a cute idiot who uses top-tier magic to put sparkles on skyscrapers."
Her shoulders shook with a small, helpless laugh.
"That's… a lot to be at once."
"Yeah," he said. "You handle it. I'm impressed."
She turned her face away, but he could see the faint red touch her ears.
"You're unfair," she muttered.
"Probably," he said.
He stayed on that rooftop with her until the illusions faded and the city returned to normal, until her worries eased enough that she could go back to being Serafall Leviathan, Devil King, Magical Girl, and exasperating sister all in one.
...
Every girl he'd already claimed. Every woman he was still courting. Each got at least one day like that—where the universe was not ending, and Ren Ming's full attention was their only apocalypse.
They relaxed.
Laughed more easily.
And somewhere along the way, the subtle tension that had coiled in his chest since stepping into this world started to loosen.
"This," he thought one afternoon, watching Asia and Irina argue over who brewed better tea while Gabriel solemnly taste-tested each cup like a judge at some celestial contest, "isn't bad at all."
...
Behind the manor, the air hummed.
Ren sat cross-legged on a floating stone above the training field, arms folded loosely, gaze sweeping over everyone below.
The field itself had changed since the early days. What had once been simple grass and dirt was now layered with formation lines, some visible, most hidden—Devil magic circles, angelic sigils, youkai wards, and beneath all of it, the alien script of an Emperor's Domination merit law, woven together into a single, breathing system.
The world here was not quite the same as outside.
And his first students?
They had changed even more.
Most of them—Rias, Asia, Koneko, Issei, Kiba—had pushed their first Soul Palaces to ninety-seven percent and beyond in that frantic sprint before Trihexa. Back then, it had been like building fortresses with a dragon chewing on the horizon.
Now, with the apocalypse permanently gone and their motivations sharpened by watching him stare down pantheons, each of them had fully condensed their Second Soul Palace.
The difference was visible.
Even if the others didn't understand why.
Ren let his perception slide outward.
To normal eyes, Issei stood in the center of a formation circle, sweat beading under training clothes, breath coming in controlled pulls as he threw punches into empty air.
To Ren, Issei's Soul Palaces were wide open—two inner worlds spinning behind his sternum, one built of stone and sky, the other still half-formed chaos, swirling like a newborn galaxy.
Chaos energy streamed down into that second palace like a hesitant, invisible waterfall. Each thread that tried to leak away was yanked back by loops of Myriad Origin Scripture—Cycle of Waste running so hot in Issei's body that every stray spark of power, every shudder of dragon aura that might have dissipated, was caught and recycled into fuel.
"Good," Ren thought. "You finally learned to stop bleeding energy like a punctured tire."
Below, Issei grunted, driving a fist forward.
His punch didn't just push air.
For a moment, the formation lines under his feet flared, and the space ahead of him compressed, like invisible walls drawing closer. Anyone standing there would feel their defenses squeezed from all sides before the blow even landed.
Half Dimension's logic, bent back on itself and layered over a devil body.
Nearby, Rias sat cross-legged on her own training circle, crimson aura rising and falling with her breathing. Behind her, her Throne of Ruin manifested and faded in patient repetitions—each appearance sharper than the last.
In her Soul Palaces, Myriad Epoch True Self Canon carved tiny, bright Dao Fruits along the branches of her forming Primordial Tree. Each fruit held a piece of understanding—how to compress destruction without losing stability, how to tether a throne to an inner world without cracking it.
Asia knelt in quiet prayer, Twilight Suppression and Reliquary pulsing gently with each word. But this was no passive girl waiting to heal others anymore.
Inside her Soul Palace, the walls were a sanctuary—literally. Seals inscribed along them caught the backlash of curses and injuries she absorbed, turned that poison into gentle light, then fed that light into tiny shrines floating like islands in her inner world. Each shrine stored miracles as patterned power.
Koneko's training space was quieter, heavier.
She stood bare-foot in a circle inscribed with simple lines, Touki wrapped around her in a white aura, foxfire occasionally licking along the edges.
Every punch she threw, every surge of senjutsu that tried to fray her emotions, hit the Immutable Core at the center of her dual Soul Palaces. That core swallowed noise, sorted it, and sent it back as clean, solid intent.
Her growth spurt had startled some people. Ren still found it funny.
'Turns out,' he thought lazily, 'if you stop choking your own life force, your body remembers how to grow'
Nearby, Kiba's sword traced deliberate paths through the air.
Heavy Earth Severing tugged at the floating stones themselves as his second Soul Palace began to feel the pull of a future Primordial Tree. Every swing dragged a little more of the battlefield into alignment with his will—stones tilting, air thickening, as the world around him learned the weight of his Sword Intent.
Around them, newer students worked through their own cycles.
Sona and her peerage moved with careful precision, their magic circles smaller than usual, shoulders tense as they adjusted to the idea that their demonic power now poured through inner worlds instead of purely external spells. Ren had tailored their Merit Law patterns to fit chess pieces on a board—Sacred Gears, strategy, control, all layered into their Soul Palaces.
Serafall, of course, spun toy wands in one hand while calmly stabilizing a complex Myriad Origin circulation with the other. Her smile looked light; her focus did not. In her inner world, a second Soul Palace formed like a glittering stage, chaos energy coalescing into light effects and special-attack engines.
Sairaorg and his team were drenched in sweat, bare-knuckled fists slamming into reinforced training stones.
Calamity-Shearing Veil shimmered along their skin like a second, invisible layer. Every foreign "rule" the training formations tried to impose—gravity shifts, illusions, curse-like debuffs—slid off them like oil off water, sheared away by the Merit Law Ren had given them.
Slash Dog's members worked in their own corner, under dimmer light.
Slash Dog himself wrestled with his Sacred Gear's shadows, forcing the devouring darkness into an Anima-shaped harness that wrapped around his Soul Palace instead of gnawing at it. Every time the shadows snapped, Myriad Origin's loops caught the recoil and tied another knot into the leash.
On the far edge, Tiamat lounged on a boulder, blue hair spilling over her shoulders, legs crossed, arms folded under her chest.
She pretended not to pay attention.
Ren smiled faintly.
The first hints of a Primordial Tree were already sprouting in her Soul Palace, roots probing the edges of a world that smelled of Dimensional Gap silence and dragon dreams. She was too old and too stubborn to admit how quickly she was adapting, even to herself.
Ren's gaze softened as he watched all of them.
"They're all moving," he thought. "Good."
....
"Ren-nii!"
A golden blur slammed into his side.
Kunou hit his floating stone with the full confidence of a child who had decided gravity had no rights here and never would.
Ren let the impact rock him and shifted just enough to keep her from overbalancing. Fox ears and tails, bright as a summer festival, rustled against his arm as she latched onto him.
"I did it!" she declared, eyes shining. "I made the little world like you said!"
"Oh yeah?" he said. "Show me."
He let his perception dip inward, brushing lightly against her Soul Palace with the ease of someone used to navigating universes.
It was small, bright, and very Kunou. Foxfire danced along the walls, which weren't proper walls yet so much as swirling boundaries—shrine gates and paper charms and lantern poles forming a circle. The "ceiling" was a simple night sky, but the stars were tiny fox-shaped flames.
Threads of Myriad Origin Scripture ran through it, tuned to her youkai nature. Every wild burst of power that should have scattered into the environment got caught in those loops instead, folded back into her core.
"Yeah," he said, smiling down at her. "You did. Give me a peek?"
Kunou squeezed her eyes shut, tongue poking out as she concentrated.
Golden aura rose around her, coalescing into the outline of a torii gate, then a tiny shrine hovering just above her head. Foxfire flickered along the roof. For a few heartbeats, everyone nearby could feel a miniature Kyoto pulsing there, perfectly hers.
Then the image flickered out, leaving her panting slightly.
Yasaka watched from a few paces away, one hand pressed lightly to her chest.
"…Thank you," she said quietly. "For guiding her."
Ren shrugged, easy.
"She's the one doing the work," he said. "I just gave her a map."
"And me?" Yasaka asked, wryness threading through her tone.
He met her gaze and slid his perception into her inner world for a heartbeat, with the kind of respectful care that said he knew exactly how intimate that was.
Yasaka's Soul Palaces were beautiful and dangerous—foxfire-lit Kyoto stretched under a vast night sky swirling with primordial energy. At its center, the half-formed Primordial Tree's roots had already anchored themselves into ancient shrine stones, drinking deep from the belief and history woven into them.
"You're ahead of schedule," he said. "If you keep this up, you'll have your second palace stable before half the youkai even understand what 'Soul Palace' means."
Yasaka exhaled, shoulders loosening.
"Then I will keep walking," she said.
"I'll walk with you," he replied, just as simply.
Her tails curled, just a little.
...
During the days that followed, life settled into a strange new rhythm.
The world outside the manor kept moving—pantheons arguing, politics shifting, paperwork breeding in dark corners.
Inside the formation-wrapped grounds, there was training, laughter, and a quiet that never quite forgot the edge of the last storm.
...
Ophis and snacks and silence.
Ophis had rarely been far from his side since the Dimensional Gap.
If he went to the training field, she ended up on a nearby rock, bare feet swinging, expression blank as she watched people sweat and shout and throw power around. Sometimes she mimicked their stances in tiny, lazy motions, as if testing how human bodies moved.
If he sat in the living room, she would eventually appear with a plate of snacks—cookies, donuts, slices of cake that Asia had nervously insisted she shouldn't eat for every meal—and tug his sleeve once.
"…Sit," she would say.
Then she would sit down herself, close enough that their shoulders touched, and eat in silence, occasionally nudging a cookie into his hand without looking at him.
One night, long after the others had gone to bed and only the hum of the manor's formations and the buzz of cicadas broke the quiet, Ren stepped out onto the roof.
The stars over Kuoh were softer than the mad skies of other worlds he'd walked, but still beautiful. Streetlights below painted their own constellations, mapped out in rows of human habit.
Ophis was already there.
She sat on the edge of the roof, legs dangling over the side, a box of cookies in her lap. Her black dress fluttered in the breeze, hair spilling down her back like a curtain of shadow.
Ren walked over and sat beside her, matching her posture.
She shifted, just enough that their shoulders touched, then held out the box.
"…Cookie," she said.
He took one. "Thanks."
They ate in silence for a while. Crickets sang. A car passed on a distant road. Above, the stars turned. Somewhere beyond them, in the places between worlds, his twelve Fate Palaces spun, reflecting that movement on a different scale.
Ophis' fingers tightened on the edge of the box.
"…When you went into that light," she said at last, voice almost too soft to hear, "I thought you would break."
Ren glanced sideways.
She stared straight ahead, expression as flat as ever, but her grip on the cardboard had deformed the edges. Only the tiniest tension at the corners of her mouth betrayed her.
"I did break," he said mildly. "That was the point."
Her brows drew together a millimeter.
"…I don't like it," she said. "Seeing you… melt. Fade. I don't like it."
He smiled, eyes half-lidded.
"You like me solid, huh."
"…Yes."
"Good to know."
He leaned back on his hands, letting the night air wash over them.
"I'm hard to get rid of," he went on. "You've felt that. Even if I crack, my Dao doesn't let me stay broken. So…"
He tilted his head and bumped her shoulder lightly with his.
"You don't have to be scared every time I step forward."
"That is… difficult," she muttered.
"Yeah," he said. "Fear usually is."
He didn't tell her not to feel it. Didn't give her some speech about trust or destiny. That wasn't how she worked.
Instead, he reached over and, very deliberately, poked her cheek.
She blinked.
"…What are you doing," she said flatly.
"Checking something," he said.
He poked again.
Her cheek was soft, skin cool from the night air. When his finger pressed, her eyes narrowed and she turned her head to glare at him.
"Mm," he murmured. "As I thought."
"…What."
"You're cute."
The words left him as casually as if he'd commented on cloud cover.
Ophis froze.
Her fingers clenched around the cookie box until it crinkled.
"…Cute," she repeated, like a foreign term she'd just encountered.
"Yeah." He took another bite. "You get flustered, but you don't run. You just stay and complain right into my side. That's cute."
Her eyes—dark as the Dimensional Gap when it was calm—flicked to his face, searching.
"I am Infinite," she said, as if reminding him. "Not cute."
"You can be both," he said. "Infinity with bed hair and crumbs on her lip is still Infinity."
Before she could react, he reached out and brushed a thumb at the corner of her mouth where a stray crumb clung.
She stiffened.
"…Ren," she said, very quietly.
"Mm?"
"Your heart is loud," she muttered.
He chuckled.
"Can't help it," he said. "It likes dragons."
Her head snapped away, hair swinging like a curtain to hide her face.
Her hand, though, inched sideways along the tiles until it found his. Cool, small fingers tangled with his larger ones.
She didn't look at him.
He didn't push.
They sat there like that, hand in hand, sharing cookies under a quiet sky, while far above them, stars and Fate Palaces turned.
...
Ren made a habit of dropping into the Grigori training wing and the Kuoh school grounds more often.
Not to loom.
Just to be there.
Sometimes that was all people needed—a terrifying monster who had casually sealed Trihexa sitting in the corner with a thermos of coffee, watching you do push-ups and humming under his breath.
Shigune was almost always easy to find.
She gravitated toward the manor's kitchen the moment she had free time, like a shy comet orbiting a warm star. Asia and the others had all but adopted her; Poh, the devouring beast inside her Sacred Gear, lurked at the edge of Ren's senses whenever she was near, hunger more controlled now but still very present.
One afternoon, he slid the back veranda door open and found her there, clutching a mug of hot cocoa, mismatched eyes fixed on the garden like it might disappear if she blinked.
"Hey," he said.
She jumped, nearly sloshing her drink.
"R-Ren!" she stammered, then ducked her head. "Ah, sorry, I was just…"
"Existing," he said. "Solid life choice. Mind if I join?"
He didn't wait for an answer, just sat down beside her—far enough to give space, close enough she could reach out if she wanted.
Poh rumbled faintly in the background of her aura, sensing him. That old, gnawing hunger rose for a moment.
The Myriad Origin loops he'd woven around its core caught the reaction, re-routing the impulse. The devouring instinct hit a closed circuit instead of Shigune's sanity, spinning into refined energy that sank back into her Soul Palace.
The beast calmed.
Shigune's shoulders loosened a fraction.
"…Poh likes you," she said, almost accusingly.
"Poh has good taste," he replied.
Her lips twitched, then smoothed.
"You say that like you're not scary," she mumbled.
"To enemies?" he said. "I'm terrifying. To my girls?"
He shifted his gaze to her, eyes soft.
"I'm comfortable," he said simply. "That's the goal."
Her cheeks flushed.
"I'm not… I'm not one of your girls," she protested, voice getting smaller.
"Not yet," he agreed, utterly unbothered. "But you're walking in that direction."
She made a tiny strangled noise, cocoa trembling in her hands.
"…You can't just say it like that."
"I can," he said. "Do you hate it?"
Silence.
"…No," she admitted, barely audible.
His smile gentled.
"Then we'll see where it goes," he said. "Slow. Your pace."
He let the quiet stretch.
It wasn't the heavy, suffocating quiet of trauma. It was warm. The kind of silence that said: you can breathe here.
After a minute, her free hand shifted closer on the wooden floor.
He pretended not to notice. His own hand turned palm-up on the boards between them, as if by chance.
Her fingers rested there a moment later, small and hesitant.
He closed his hand around hers, carefully, like she might vanish if he squeezed too hard.
Poh rumbled again inside her, but this time the hunger tasted… different. Less devouring, more possessive, protective.
...
Natsume was louder.
Ren found her in the training field arguing with one of Slash Dog's other members about wind formations, hands waving, ponytail whipping behind her as Qiongqi's wild wind aura circled her like a half-tamed hurricane.
"You're overforcing it," he said, stepping into the circle.
Both girls turned.
Natsume's eyes narrowed.
"Ren," she said. "You're the one who told me to push my limits."
"Right," he said. "Pushing is good. Tearing your channels is not."
He reached out, flicking a line of Dao essence into her Soul Palace.
The veil pattern he'd laid along Qiongqi's wind channels shivered, then adjusted. Excess pressure split into tiny spirals that sank into forming Dao Fruits instead of bursting out as chaotic gusts.
Natsume's eyes widened.
"Oh," she breathed. "That feels… smoother."
"Imagine a storm," he said. "If you try to hold it all in one hand, it'll break your fingers. Cup your hands. Make a few smaller streams. You'll carry more that way."
She listened, jaw tight, then slowly nodded.
"…You always make it sound easy," she muttered.
"It's not," he said. "You're the one doing the hard part. I'm just giving you better cups."
She snorted, but the corner of her mouth tugged up.
"You're annoying," she said. "In a way that makes it hard to stay mad."
"Perfect," he said. "I like annoying you into getting stronger."
He stayed there for a while, adjusting patterns whenever the wind around her tried to get ugly, letting her fight Qiongqi with fewer self-inflicted wounds.
By the time he left, her strikes were carving clean arcs through the training air, each step leaving afterimages like claw marks in the wind.
...
Tsubaki, in contrast, didn't shout even when she was exhausted.
He found her one evening in the Kuoh Student Council room, surrounded by hovering paperwork.
Magic circles held documents in neat stacks in the air—club budgets, change requests, maintenance reports, all rotating in precise orbits. She sat in the center of that little cosmos, pen moving, glasses sliding down her nose as she read line after line.
She looked up when he knocked on the frame.
"Ren," she said. "Is something wrong?"
"Yeah," he said.
Her spine straightened immediately. "What happened?"
"You," he said. "You're still working."
Her brows rose, just slightly.
"That would be… irresponsible to stop," she replied.
He walked in, closed the door behind him, and stopped beside the desk.
"Let me see," he said.
Before she could object, he tapped the air.
The hovering papers froze mid-orbit, held steady by a field of Dao that slipped between the school's minor enchantments like a polite but unwavering stranger. Calamity-Shearing Veil rippled along the edges of every bureaucratic binding and expectation, taking just enough of the weight off that they stopped pressing on Tsubaki alone.
She blinked.
"…It feels lighter," she murmured. "You didn't remove anything, but…"
"Different spine," he said. "You were carrying all of this on your own. I just put a bit of it on mine."
"You already carry the sky," she said, tone dry. "You don't need student council forms on top of that."
"I like the feeling," he said.
She stared.
"What feeling?" she asked, unable to help herself.
"You, working hard next to me," he said, smile small and genuine. "Paperwork, training, people relying on you… it suits you."
Her cheeks colored, barely.
"You flatter too easily," she said.
"I don't waste words," he replied. "If I say you look good like this, it's because it's true."
She looked away, mask slipping just a little as the tight line of her mouth softened.
"…Five minutes," she said at last. "I can rest for five minutes."
"Good girl," he said, voice dropping unconsciously into a softer register.
Her shoulders jumped at the words. For a heartbeat she looked torn between outrage and… something else.
Then she set her pen down.
"Very well," she said, closing her eyes.
He kept the papers suspended, the weight off her mind, watching her sit there and actually do nothing for five whole minutes.
In a way, it was harder for her than half the training regimes he'd given the others.