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“First it was the president...” Azu muttered, taking baubles in and out of boxes and rearranging regardless of whether it made any sense to do so. This was supposed to be Kirio’s batra. These were supposed to be his artifacts. “Then it was you , and now—forsake it all, does he have no need of me?”
Azu was having a fit of pique, or a mental breakdown, and Kirio was guarding bitter amusement behind an expression of concern. “Shh,” he suggested, “I’m sure Iruma-kun hasn’t abandoned you forever. He definitely doesn’t hate you. He thinks your uniform is stylish and practical.”
“You think so?”
“Of course I do. C’mere, sit down for a minute.”
Azu had the audacity to look suspicious. He was a noble ; he was too good to be ordered around, nevermind the way he’d trip over himself trying to impress certain demons. He’d throw himself whole-heartedly over the nearest available cliff if it would help. “Did you need something?”
Kirio’s mouth could run contrary to his mind; while he thought incessantly, he was already replying with some meaninglessness. “Oh, it’s not important. Just thought you might like to see this artifact I found while you were… rearrangin’. You put it on your hand, like this—good! Now the other one."
Azu did as he was told. He was ensnared in the finger trap, but he only looked fascinated by it. "So what does it do?"
"Now your fingers are stuck together."
"Another childish game! I'll remove it with fire."
"That would be the most childish way of solvin' it, Azu-kun." Maybe this would keep him busy. It was a useless toy, but it counted as an artifact by virtue of zapping anyone who tried pulling it apart too hard.
Azu reclined to one side, abandoning manners and rules about elbows on tables. When he got tired of the charade, he looked for someone else to take on that most enviable task of ‘keeping order’: the antidote to a straightforward fear that the world would fall back into ruin and depravity.
Kirio wondered how he knew.
"A-hah!” he declared. "I’m free. I solved the puzzle." The puzzle was only partially melted. He was hardly the worse for wear; the trick hadn’t gone off, or he hadn’t noticed.
Kirio thought he was interested in demons who were ‘like’ himself, whatever that meant, but he wondered if arms couldn’t be twisted into place, the bones creaking and the flesh contorting until the mind had no choice but to follow.
Thoughts of cruelty would remain secure in their repetition, and content to ramble on about nothing, he would forget. He blinked eyelids that felt heavier than usual. He reached up to rub at them, forgetting his glasses in favor of ineffectively batting himself in the face.
“Honestly,” Azu sighed. He had no petty insults in store. The calm was stifling. It was another lovely day and he wasn’t even suffering at all. “How do we always end up heading home together?”
Kirio was running out of time, as related to more important plans. He was too easily swayed by threats of ‘not being able to find anything later,’ and ‘never getting a clue where Iruma had gone off to,’ though that one was obvious. Iruma was always getting dragged into strange business.
“Don’tcha have other things to do?”
“Well, of course I have my Demonology work, and the extra credit assignment we got in Cryptozoology, and I’m going to make flash cards for Astronomy since Iruma-sama was having trouble with it,” Azu recounted, describing the most boring afternoon one could possibly imagine, “but it shouldn’t take long.”
He hovered in the doorway, lonely in sharp angles; his lines were drawn taut and impersonal. He was attentive to all the right responsibilities. Maybe Kirio could distract him a while longer. “Why not study with Clara-chan? Aren’t you friends?”
“We are,” Azu paused, “spending plenty of time together.”
“I see.”
They always got looks, walking around. Clara could withstand the scrutiny just fine: she didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of her, and she was one of Iruma’s closest allies, so she had plenty of reason to be there. They had all their classes together. They had lunch together. They played together. It was sweet.
There were three flights up to the dorms, if you took the wrong way, and Kirio was wheezing by the final stair. He suffered. That was his lot in life.
“Are you alright?”
It couldn’t be his own tendency to cough up blood and collapse. It was obligation, loneliness, and proximity, but Azu still asked such a silly question. It had become mundane. It was becoming exhausting.
The impulse to shatter that trust was sharp and undeniable. The fleeting image; the recurring image, the negative and the finished photograph, laid over each other to reveal a shower of glass, sparks and kerosene. The secret burned in the back of the throat. It pricked at the corners of the eyes. It stung, and found an outlet in a fingernail running over an earring.
Azu fixated to the point of single-mindedness. He followed the sun; he smiled for one person, and that was why it felt so strange to catch his attention. To bear witness to one of his softer expressions—to realize, at an insignificant time, in an insignificant place, that he was watching back.
Kirio turned away.