Sona's date came a little later.
Not because he valued her less.
Because she would have been genuinely angry if he tried to drag her away from her responsibilities too soon without a reason she couldn't logically shoot down.
So he gave her one.
...
"Ren," Sona said, frowning at him over a fortress of holographic tablets in the manor study. "You can't just appear and say 'come with me' in the middle of a schedule like this."
She didn't even look up at first. Devil-script and Underworld legislation scrolled across multiple panes of light, and the air around her thrummed faintly with the pressure of her compressed demonic power. Her Soul Palace pulsed behind her like a too-tightly wound clock, gears turning just a little too fast.
Ren leaned against the doorframe, ankles crossed, arms folded loosely. His presence bent the room's atmosphere without effort; the formation lines woven through the manor recognized him and shifted, subtly muting the fatigue in her aura.
"I can," he said mildly. "I'm very good at it."
"Ren," she repeated, sharper. "These are Underworld educational reforms. The revised Rating Game regulations need—"
"They need you sane," he cut in, tone still calm. "Not half-burned out and running on spite and tea."
Her jaw tightened.
"That's exaggerating."
He glanced at the tablets. At the faint, overworked flicker around them. At the way her demonic power was circulating in short, clipped loops that spoke of too little sleep and too many meetings.
The rhythm of her Soul Palace told him more than any expression could. The circulation lines he'd help carve there were running at an efficient but unhealthy overclock.
"Mm," he said. "You're right. Quarter-burned out."
She shot him a flat glare.
"That's not—"
"Come out with me," he said, voice softening. "Just for today. No paperwork. No meetings. You, me, and a day where nobody asks 'Chairman Sitri' for anything."
Her fingers tightened around the edge of a tablet, the glowing frame creaking faintly.
"…You're abusing your influence," she said, but the protest came out weaker than she wanted.
"I prefer 'using my charm responsibly,'" he replied. "You can bring one clipboard if it makes you feel better."
The corner of her mouth twitched before she could stop it.
"Just one," she said, as if conceding a battlefield.
"Deal."
He pushed off the doorframe and held out his hand.
For a second she just stared at it—at the easy offer, at the way he didn't try to weave arguments around her, just cut straight to what she actually needed.
Then Sona Sitri, next head of House Sitri and architect of the Underworld's future school system, put her tablet down, slid her glasses into place, and slipped her hand into his.
Her Soul Palace's strained rhythm eased, just a little.
...
He took her to the human city.
Not the familiar Kuoh shopping district they used for errands and quiet strolls. Further in. Deeper into the urban sprawl.
Steel and glass towers rose around them, neon signs blinking in layered colors. Cars streamed past like glowing beetles, every honk and engine noise blending into a steady urban hum. A different kind of sea than the one he'd shown Asia—a sea of people, of lives, of tiny worlds moving beside each other without ever touching.
Sona stood still on the sidewalk for a moment, watching a group of students in unfamiliar uniforms rush past laughing, backpacks bouncing.
"…It's noisy," she said.
"Good noisy or bad noisy?" Ren asked.
She thought about it, letting her senses stretch out, tasting the lack of magic in the air, the fragile but earnest rhythm of human lives that had no idea what slept above their heads.
"…Good," she decided at last. "A lot of these people don't know devils exist. Or angels. Or the things in their sky. They're just… living. It's… nice."
He smiled.
"Thought you might like it," he said. "Come on."
The board game café he led her to was modern and bright: warm wood floors, long tables, floor-to-ceiling shelves stacked with colorful boxes. Low chatter and occasional bursts of laughter filled the air, the scent of coffee and pastries mixing with cardboard and plastic.
A staff member came over, cheerful and efficient, explaining the system in practiced Japanese. Sona listened with polite attention, nodding in all the right places, but her eyes were already drifting past him to the shelves.
Ren saw the shift.
The way her posture straightened, the way her gaze sharpened. This was her battlefield: systems and rules and possibilities laid out waiting to be understood.
The moment the staff member stepped away, she moved toward the shelves like a general walking the lines before a war.
Her fingers skimmed across box titles—party games, card games, simple dice games—until they stopped on something more complex. A heavy box with a map sprawled across its cover, tiny city icons and colored tokens scattered over stylized continents.
A game about building cities. Managing resources. Preventing disasters. Negotiating with neighboring factions.
"…That one," Sona said.
Ren huffed a quiet, amused breath.
"Of course," he murmured.
They settled at a corner table. The staff brought the game over and began to explain the rules. Sona listened, serious as if this were a real policy briefing, eyes tracking every symbol, every mechanic.
Halfway through, her composure cracked.
"This system is surprisingly robust," she muttered, mostly to herself. "If you shifted this part here, it could model devil territories. And if you… no, that would break the economy unless you—"
Ren propped his chin on his hand and just watched her.
"You're cute when you're plotting," he said.
She froze mid-gesture, one fingertip hovering over a tiny cardboard representation of a power plant.
"…Plotting in a good way, I hope," she said dryly.
"The best," he said.
They started.
Sona's competitive streak surfaced quickly—not loud or flamboyant, but precise. She built her first city with ruthless efficiency, every resource allocated, every risk assessed. Her demonic power remained calm, but her eyes glittered in that way they did when she saw three moves ahead on a board—or on a political map.
Ren, for his part, played like he lived.
Relaxed. Curious. Willing to make strange moves just to see what the system did. Sometimes he made a ridiculous trade that had no immediate benefit, just to watch the ripple that went three turns later. Sometimes he sacrificed obvious advantages to try an odd strategy.
"You're not taking this seriously," Sona accused, narrowing her eyes as he exchanged one of his best resource cards for a card whose only power was allowing him to rename all his territories something stupid.
"I'm having fun," he replied. "So are you."
"I…" She hesitated, looking down at the board, at the miniature city she'd just saved from a disaster through three layers of planning. "…Yes. I am."
He leaned forward a little, elbows on the table, smile soft.
"Good," he said. "That was the point."
By the time the game reached its final round, the quiet little war on the table had drawn a few curious glances from nearby players. Sona sat straight-backed, fingers steepled, calculating. Ren lounged back, watching her more than the board.
She won.
Barely.
She tried to pretend the margin didn't matter. Her mouth set in a calm line, voice neutral as she said, "Well, that was interesting."
But the satisfied tilt of her lips, the subtle glow of her demonic power, the eased slope of her shoulders all betrayed her.
Ren chuckled.
"Congratulations, Chairman Sitri," he said. "Your rating just went up."
She huffed, but the faint pink touch at the tips of her ears didn't fade.
...
They left the café and walked to a nearby park.
Trees lined the path, leaves whispering overhead. Children shrieked and laughed on a playground. A couple shared coffee on a bench. An old man tossed crumbs to a cluster of birds by a pond, content in a world that would never show him dragons.
Sona walked with her hands loosely clasped behind her back, clipboard tucked under one arm more out of habit than need. The weight of it felt different now; less like a shackle, more like a tool.
The late afternoon light threaded through her hair, catching in the frames of her glasses.
"Ren," she said suddenly. "What do you think of my goals?"
He glanced at her.
"Which ones?" he asked. "You have a lot."
She let out a quiet breath that was almost a laugh.
"The main ones," she said. "Reforming the Rating Game. Making education accessible to all devils, not just nobles. Creating a culture where strength isn't the only thing that matters."
He didn't answer immediately.
Instead, he walked a few steps ahead, then turned so he could walk backward, facing her. The path crunched quietly under his boots.
"I think they're good," he said. "Necessary. Difficult."
Her eyes narrowed. "You don't have to be polite."
"I'm not," he replied. "I like hard problems."
His gaze softened.
"And I like that your answer to 'the world is cruel' isn't 'make it softer' but 'make more people strong enough to stand upright in it.'"
He smiled—small, real.
"That fits well with my own Dao," he added. "I don't want a world where only I can walk freely. I want a world where the people I care about can, too."
Her steps slowed.
"…Sometimes," she admitted, "I worry I'm being selfish. That I should accept the system as it is, instead of trying to bend it. That if I push too hard, it will hurt my sister. My clan. The people under me."
"Selfish is fine," he said calmly. "You're trying to give more people room to breathe. If that's selfish, the word doesn't mean much."
Her throat worked.
"You always make it sound so simple," she murmured.
"It's not," he said. "But you're not alone."
He stopped walking.
She almost walked into him.
Her hands came up automatically, pressing lightly against his chest to steady herself. The warmth under her palms felt different from demonic power. Older. Deeper. Something that felt like the world itself humming.
He caught her hands with his own.
"Sona," he said quietly. "I'm with you. For your goals. For your dreams. For the headaches that come with them."
Her heart stuttered.
His thumbs brushed over the backs of her hands, slow and steady.
"I'll break systems for you," he said. "Rewrite frameworks. Knock on Ajuka's door when you need something I can't do alone. If anyone tries to block you just because they're scared of change…"
His eyes darkened, an emperor's ruthlessness surfacing beneath the easy warmth. For a moment, the park seemed too small to contain that presence.
"…They can deal with me," he finished.
Sona's chest tightened.
"I don't want you to fight all my battles," she said. "I need to walk my own path."
"I know," he said. "I'm not here to walk it for you. I'm here to walk beside you. Clear the debris you can't move yet. Point out shortcuts when you're too tired to see them. Remind you to rest."
His hands tightened around hers, just enough for her to feel the promise in his grip.
"To warm you up when your heart starts freezing from stress," he added lightly.
Her cheeks flushed.
"That's very… poetic," she managed.
"Maybe," he said.
He leaned down and kissed her.
It wasn't rushed. Not stolen in an adrenaline high between battles or as a desperate, half-conscious plea.
It was deliberate.
Soft.
A heart-deep kiss that said, plainly, this is where we are now. This is who we are to each other.
Sona's eyes widened, then slowly fluttered closed. Her hands slid up from his chest to his shoulders, fingers curling in the fabric of his shirt as if to anchor herself. The park sounds receded—the shouts, the birds, the city's distant hum—until all she could hear was the rush of her own blood and the steady beat of his heart.
When they finally parted, she was breathing a little faster. Her glasses had slid down her nose; a lock of hair had come loose against her cheek.
"Ren," she said softly. "That was…"
"Good?" he prompted, amused.
"…Yes," she admitted.
He smiled.
"Unforgettable?" he teased.
She swallowed.
"…Yes," she said again, even softer.
"Good," he said. "I was aiming for that."
She made a small, flustered noise and lightly smacked his chest with one hand.
"You're impossible," she muttered.
"I get that a lot," he replied cheerfully.
They walked on, fingers drifting together until they laced naturally.
After a while, he spoke again, tone casual in that way that meant he'd chosen every word.
"By the way," he said, "I want to set up a meeting with Ajuka soon."
Sona's head snapped toward him.
"With Ajuka-sama?" she repeated. "About what?"
He looked at her, eyes amused, warm, and maddeningly unreadable.
"A surprise," he said.
Her brows furrowed. "Ren…"
He leaned in and gave her a quick, soft peck on the lips.
"Trust me," he murmured. "You'll like it."
Her heart flipped.
She hated how easily he did that.
She loved that he did that.
"…Fine," she said, trying to sound stern and not quite managing it. "I'll trust you."
"Thank you," he said simply.
He spent the rest of the day making sure "unforgettable" stayed accurate—through small things as much as big ones.
Letting her push him through a brutal logic puzzle in a bookstore café and then confessing, with a straight face, that he'd deliberately taken a suboptimal route just to see her scowl and then melt when she realized it.
Buying her a simple, elegant fountain pen from a stationery shop—one that fit her hand perfectly—and engraving, with a casual brush of his finger, a tiny, near-invisible sigil along the barrel that would help keep her demonic power from fraying when she wrote too long.
Walking her home through Kuoh's quiet evening streets, fingers intertwined, the manor's lights warm in the distance.
By the time they stepped back through the threshold, Sona's steps were lighter. Her Soul Palace's rhythm had smoothed. The clipboard under her arm felt less like a burden, more like a weapon she'd chosen to wield.
She suspected he'd planned it that way.
She didn't mind.
...
Two days later, he stood in Ajuka Beelzebub's personal lab.
Sona stood on his left, composed but clearly tense. Her glasses were freshly polished, her uniform immaculate, clipboard in hand like a shield.
Serafall stood on his right, less composed. Her magic-girl outfit had been traded for a dark, formal dress that still somehow had glitter and a subtle star motif. Her usual bubbly aura was dialed down—but only a little. Under the airheaded surface, a Maou's pressure simmered.
Ajuka sat behind a desk cluttered with magical screens and alchemical apparatus. Arrays of translucent symbols floated around him like tame galaxies. Green hair fell over one eye as he regarded Ren with flat curiosity.
"You don't usually ask for meetings like this," Ajuka said. His voice was quiet, precise, the voice of a man who measured everything. "If you want a new framework integrated, you simply send a data package and tell me not to break it."
Ren smiled.
"Today's a little more personal," he said. "I'm here as a man first, apocalypse repairman second."
Ajuka's eyes narrowed just slightly.
"Should I be worried?" he asked.
"Not unless you're opposed to saving cute girls," Ren replied.
Serafall perked up instantly.
"Saving cute girls?" she repeated, eyes sparkling. "Ren-chii, are we doing a magical girl rescue mission?!"
"Something like that," he said.
He stepped fully forward, the lab's formations reacting to him. Some of Ajuka's floating equations shivered as his Dao brushed them, lines of alien logic passing through and quietly correcting minor inefficiencies. Ajuka noticed; his fingers tapped once on the desk.
"I'm going to save your sleeping princess," Ren said calmly. "Ingvild."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop.
Sona's head whipped toward him.
"Ren," she said sharply. "How do you—"
Ajuka's fingers, resting on the desk, stilled completely. The soft hum of the lab's machinery seemed to mute itself.
"Interesting," he murmured. "We have never discussed that name with you."
Serafall's playful aura vanished like a dropped mask. The air around her tightened, taking on the clear, cutting pressure of a Maou.
"Ren," she said. No honorifics. No singsong. "That information is classified at the highest level. Only a handful of us even know where she is."
Ren shrugged lightly.
"I read the world," he said. "Your systems. Your history. The way your magic flows around… missing pieces."
He tapped his temple.
"My Soul Bone's good with puzzles," he added.
Sona's grip whitened on her clipboard.
"…Ingvild Leviathan," she said quietly. "Descendant of the original Leviathan. Half-human. Possessor of a dangerous Sacred Gear. Born with a disease that puts her in a permanent sleep…"
Ajuka's gaze slid to her, then back to Ren.
"Nereid Kyrie," he added. "A Longinus. Her song can influence devils, dragons, and those with dragon-type Sacred Gears. At full range, it could potentially affect Dragon Gods. Combined with her bloodline, it is… problematic."
Serafall's lips pressed together.
"And because the old regime panicked," she said, voice low, "they sealed her away. Out of sight, out of mind. Let the girl sleep so nobody has to decide whether to fear her or protect her."
Ren listened, eyes half-lidded.
"I figured as much," he said. "Fits the world you had back then. Dangerous girl. Dangerous power. No clean way to control it. So they locked the problem away."
His gaze met Ajuka's directly.
"I don't like locked-away problems," he said softly. "Especially not ones shaped like people."
Ajuka's expression didn't change.
But his aura did.
A subtle sharpening. The noise of extraneous calculations dropping away. Full focus.
"What are you proposing?" he asked.
"I'm not proposing," Ren said. "I'm telling you what I'm going to do."
He straightened, shoulders loose, eyes steady. The lab's lights seemed a little dimmer around him.
"I'm going to cure her," he said. "Take apart that sleep disease. Re-thread the link between her Sacred Gear and her body so it doesn't burn her out. Make sure she wakes up with full control and no drawbacks you can't handle."
Sona swallowed. Her mind, trained to analysis, raced down pathways of theory and was met by walls labelled 'impossible'.
"That's…" She pushed her glasses up. "Ren, every healer and researcher who's looked at her case has said it's impossible. The disease and the Sacred Gear are intertwined. If you disrupt one, the other—"
"—collapses or flares out of control, taking her with it," Ajuka finished. "We've built containment. Stabilization. But a cure…"
He trailed off.
Ren's smile turned faint.
"Your system doesn't have the tools," he said. "Mine does."
He lifted a hand and tapped the spot between his brows.
"Immortal Soul Bone," he said. "Twelve Fate Palaces. A Heaven that runs on rules the disease has never seen."
He let the weight of his next words settle.
"I've taken apart Trihexa," he continued, voice still calm. "I've re-threaded Angra Mainyu's curses. Compared to that, one girl's tangled soul-pattern is… manageable."
Serafall exhaled a shaky half-laugh.
"You say that like you're talking about fixing a broken toy," she said. "You know this is someone's life, Ren-chii."
"I do," he said. "That's why I'm careful."
The lightness slid from his tone for a moment, revealing the steel beneath.
"What I'm offering," he said, "is simple. I'll solve it. You won't have to worry about her Sacred Gear going berserk. Or her bloodline destabilizing your politics. If anyone doesn't like a Super Devil-tier girl waking up…"
He smiled then—sharp and lazy all at once.
"Tell them to come see me," he said. "I'll adjust their attitude."
Sona's heart lurched. She'd seen that side of him before—on battlefields, in front of arrogant nobles, when he dismissed titles and bloodlines as meaningless noise.
Serafall's eyes glinted, a flash of pride and something more complicated crossing her face.
Ajuka studied him.
"You're asking us to trust you with a very dangerous piece," Ajuka said. "If you succeed, you'll have woken up a potential game-changer. If you fail…"
His gaze flicked, just for a moment, to Serafall. To Sona. To the invisible weight of the Underworld on his shoulders.
"Have I ever failed before?" Ren asked.
Ajuka snorted softly.
"Confidence is not evidence," he said. "Though in your case, it is… heavily suggestive."
His fingers danced once in the air, summoning and then dismissing a half-dozen projection windows filled with data. Sona caught just a glimpse: Ren's frameworks, Soul Palace schematics, Myriad Origin circulation diagrams that had once looked like madness to her and now felt disturbingly natural.
"Still," Ajuka continued, "you have given me more than enough reason to assign you a very high success probability."
He tapped a command into the ether. The room's wards shifted, acknowledging a new access route.
"Fine," he said. "Come with me."
He stood, lab coat falling around him like a scholar's cloak.
"If you can do what you claim…" Ajuka began.
He didn't finish.
He didn't need to.
They all knew what it would mean.