Chapter Text
***
Kalego has a sixth sense for trouble. Really, all Naberius’s do.
Principal Sullivan always sets that sense tingling—it comes with the territory—but today, that tingling sensation feels even more intense than usual.
When Sullivan walks onto the podium carrying an extremely large poster—a poster of his grandson, who’s starting school that year—Kalego feels… vindicated. More still when Sullivan cancels the speech Asmodeus is set to give last minute—a move that would have earned any lesser demon the full weight of Amuryllis’…wrath? No: disapproval—and gives the opportunity to speak to said grandson. Even more still when Sullivan’s grandson begins to chant a spell even demons of rank Zayin would think twice before casting.
Really, hearing about Asmodeus and Iruma’s destructive spar via Tsumuru and Eito’s very loud gossip session is superfluous at this point. Sullivan’s grandson, Iruma, seems to be made of the same kind of trouble as his grandfather. And considering the brief Dali gave about class groupings and a special class for particularly difficult students being created this year—the class whose homeroom teacher Kalego will be—the Sullivan family knack for trouble is something Kalego will have to deal with daily.
He fights the urge to put his palm to his face. It’s going to be a long year.
***
There’s something off about Iruma. Many things, actually. Enough of them to compose a fairly long list, as Kalego finds once he recovers from how utterly insulting it felt to get called through Iruma’s summoning circle and transformed into… that.
Actually, that’s a pretty good place to start. Given the right tools, circumstances, and training, all demons are able to summon familiars. Even the Naberius clan, whose lack of familiars has nothing to do with a lack of ability and everything to do with the hostility and the territorial nature of their living mana. Even the many-eared clan, who are known to possess very little mana or mana capacity. Of course, the familiars that demons summon are creatures and beasts. Always. No exceptions. The only beings who’d summon a demon as their familiar are deities, if they so wished, or… well, maybe Kalego is thinking too far.
But there’s other things to consider too. Iruma’s scent, for one—the scent underlying whatever Kalego’s nose typically perceives when he isn’t focused on picking apart the smells in a room. It’s not the smell of a demon, or a beast, or a deity. It’s the smell of something else entirely, something foreign to the underworld—or at least, foreign to Kalego.
The fact that Iruma didn’t fly for his first ranking trial, which is whatever—demons like Opera and Yamanda rarely ever use their wings and they get by just fine. Except Iruma isn’t a demon like Opera or Yamanda. Beyond Tsumuru’s report of him effortlessly avoiding Asmodeus’ blows in the fight that sealed his assignment to the Misfit class, he doesn’t show the physical aptitude of demons who prefer leaping over flying.
But weak demons aren’t a rarity—they make up the majority of the underworld. That doesn’t explain the fact that Kalego has never seen a demon like Iruma before. Kalego is no Shichirou—the only demon to make fifty thousand points simply by foraging in their year’s Harvest Festival, clearing all foraging-only scores to this day by at least thirty-five thousand points; an underworld-renowned expert on creature and beast studies, both demonic and imaginary—but he didn’t advance to his current rank by being neglectful in his studies, and definitely not in his study of biology. He knows these three things:
1.No demon that has ear-type one ever has their ears rounded instead of pointed.
2.No demon that has teeth has them so uniform, especially not on account of having such small, dull, canines, which is an issue unique from any stunting of tooth development Kalego has ever seen or heard of.
3.This one may be vague, and a product of Kalego’s bias based on the other two items on the list, but he hasn’t ever heard of a demon whose nails maintain a chisel-shaped tip as they get longer as opposed to tapering off into a sharp or semi-sharp point.
Kalego knows that those qualities are qualities that belong to… a certain other creature. One that has practically faded into myth.
Then again, Kalego is dipping too far into the theoretical. If this were a report for review by the Naberius clan head, he’d have been commended for basing his observations in reality and heavily admonished for counterchecking facts using fiction, a terrible habit his uncle had. What Kalego is getting at is that there’s no need to reach so far—not when he has teachers’ reports to reference.
To put it simply, ‘underperformance’ does not adequately describe the way in which Iruma handles assignments and assessments. ‘Underperformance’ would be an apt descriptor for Clara’s grades—for the grades of the majority of the Misfit class, really. Unlike Clara, who adds flourishes when writing out the ten demon ranks that make them almost illegible, Iruma seems not to know them at all.
Iruma seems not to have known the Ouroboros Rule—not simply in the sense of not knowing any of its colloquial names, but in a way that makes it seem like he’d never interacted with magic before.
Iruma—and this one gives Kalego pause—doesn’t know niginigi weed. The common variety weed of common variety weeds. The one that features without fail in many of their children’s play songs.
Kalego sits back, staring at the notes he’s compiled so far. His conclusion is that Iruma is… odd. Which is not much of a conclusion given that it was Kalego’s first impression of the boy. It feels like his research has lead back to what had him start it as opposed to anything new or concrete. Dissatisfactory.
So he turns to the first of his auxiliary sources. He turns inward, to his mana. To Cerberus. He isn’t surprised that Cerberus’ only reaction to the mention of Iruma is a small, brief, wag of the tail. Of course Cerberus likes Iruma. Especially given his and Kalego’s… situation, and the way in which Cerberus is more given to physical affection whenever he and Kalego pass through a summoning circle—physical affection Iruma is all too happy to give.
Kalego pinches his brow, shuts his eyes, and sighs again. He’s doing his best to be objective—conclusions backed by solid, tangible, evidence. He isn’t his uncle. He was sent here to be everything his uncle couldn’t be. But all he sees when he opens his eyes is that same conclusion. Thing is, ‘odd’ is what the evidence points to. Thing is, it just doesn’t cut it. After some consideration, Kalego neatly cancels out the word and puts another instead.
‘Dangerous’.
That one seems more apt, but it still doesn’t feel enough. It’s not the kind of dangerous Kalego thinks of when students like Beem or miscreants like Opera cross his mind. It’s something more akin to… Caim. Caim, who’s dangerous, but ultimately simply a lecher. Not to say that Iruma has Camui’s general disposition—not as far as Kalego knows, anyway—though that whole train of thought has finally given Kalego what he feels his conclusion is missing.
‘Dangerous’, his notebook reads once he’s done, ‘but not harmful’.
***
The matter of Sullivan basically pulling a grandson out of thin air one day isn’t something Kalego overlooks. It’s the first thing that made the bells in Kalego’s mind go off—the most glaring issue with the whole Iruma situation—but not the easiest to delve into.
Thing is, the higher a demon’s rank is the more they attract the attention of the public. There’s fairly accurate regular bulletins on the members of the Three Warriors’ clans despite them living reclusive lives. The Purson clan, as secretively as they lead their lives, have a careful and intensive process by which the helm of the clan is succeeded owing largely to how hard it is to stay under the radar once one has attained such a position. Shichirou loves the authority being a Chet earns him—the authority to study rarer and more dangerous demonic creatures—but more often hates that it means demons will want to look into the demon behind the research reports, and not always because of the reports themselves. Kalego himself appreciates that, for the more serious demons, his rank coupled with his current title dissuade any attempts at funny business, but only demons close in rank can really be called ‘serious’—for interactions with the anyone else, his rank serves to hinder his work.
To cut to the chase: a demon like Sullivan wouldn’t be able to live his life away from the public eye. Not completely. So Kalego has no trouble trusting the public knowledge that Sullivan has no children of his own. Nothing short of the most binding of blood oaths—the kind that take years to craft—would keep the adoption of a child by a demon of Sullivan’s stature secret for long. Where then, did Iruma come from? And why?
Frustratingly, trying to find answers where Sullivan is involved always feels like an exercise in futility. Kalego isn’t in the mood for the kind of headache trying to parse Sullivan’s intentions brings him. He concludes that particular line of questioning with a large question mark in an equally large circle.
But he isn’t done with Sullivan yet. Not really. He understands what he’s about to get into is more speculative than he’d usually like. Subjective. The kind of thing that would detract from his standing in the clan. But he still wants to note it down. What he feels is the key difference between Sullivan and Iruma.
Sullivan is intentional. He always has some sort of goal in mind. He’s always angling towards it. Even when his actions seem bumbling or silly or nonsensical, they only ever seem that way. An appearance—a façade. Because Sullivan isn’t the type to hesitate about using whatever people and tools are at his disposal to further his goals. What can come across as niceness, maybe naïveté, or even—and this one makes Kalego shudder—kindness, from Sullivan, is what Kalego has come to know as Sullivan’s slow but relentless pursuit of multiple goals simultaneously, all related but separate enough that it’s hard to put oneself in Sullivan’s head and confidently say they can predict what he’ll do next. It’s the fact that Kalego is a puppet to Sullivan’s whims more often than not that rankles him—that makes him dislike Sullivan.
Even then, that dislike says nothing of Kalego’s respect of or trust for Sullivan. Because despite Kalego disliking Sullivan, he does respect and trust him. Immensely. He’s never had reason to doubt that the principal of Babyls—capriciousness and dubiousness fully taken into account—is just as interested in keeping the school safe as Kalego himself is. Whatever his goals may be, Kalego is sure that Sullivan would never choose to do something that would invite the jaws of Babyls’ guard dog to his throat.
Iruma, on the other hand… Iruma is kind. It’s as simple as that. After a lot of consideration on Kalego’s end, he’s concluded that Iruma’s spending time with Asmodeus and Clara isn’t to further some distant goal or set of goals. That the respect he affords Kalego despite their shared situation is a show of true belief in Kalego’s authority, and not just the nice thing to do that’ll keep things moving smoothly. That his rivalry with Sabro isn’t one step in a series of a hundred, thought out, steps. That even during his… wicked phase? Kalego hasn’t had the time or energy to try understanding what how that would affect his notes and conclusions so far—he was brash and assertive but not mean or cruel. That his genuine-seeming concern for his classmates isn’t genuine-seeming, but simply genuine—no front.
Iruma is kind in a way that isn’t typical of demons. Even less typical when Kalego considers the kindnesses he’s done for others, does for others, without some transaction as his end goal. The reopening of Royal One is a testament to many things, including Iruma’s kindness. Kalego isn’t saying that demons aren’t typically kind, just that demons are very selective about who they show that kindness—Kalego would know.
Iruma is kind, unlike Sullivan.
Kalego pauses to consider what he’s written so far. He can see the point he’s driving at—that their differences might be something to consider in the mystery of Iruma’s origin. Phenotypical traits. Nature versus nurture. It’s a weak point, overall.
Andro Malius is a much more pleasant and grounded individual overall than his brother, whose nastiness is never fun to deal with, though that may just be a matter of age difference and time. Kerori’s interest in holding the public’s attention and affection isn’t something typical of the Kerori clan at large. Sabnock seems less interested in being the maker of the Demon King’s weapons and more interested in being the one wielding those weapons—in being the Demon King. The meandering and wordy responses Purson gives in his assessments are, in Kalego’s experience, indicators that he has more to say—way more—than would be typical of his expected role as a member of the Purson clan, and by virtue of his lineage.
And Narnia and Kalego may be brothers, but Kalego can’t imagine himself being able to achieve the degree of harshness and detachedness with which Narnia treats both adversaries and colleagues.
All this to say that being different does not disprove family ties.
Kalego hums pensively as he looks back at the page he’d left incomplete—the one about the missing segment in Sullivan’s family tree. Then he flips back to his comparisons of Iruma’s and Sullivan’s personalities. They hold more weight together than they do separately. Kalego renumbers the pages to clarify that the segments are linked.
Once he’s satisfied, Kalego shuts his notebook. What feels like a better grasp of Iruma and Sullivan as people is nice and all, but it’s done little to bring Kalego closer to the answers he’s seeking.
***
Kalego respects Shichirou’s desire for privacy and as much separation from the students as reasonably possible. It’s the chief reason he hasn’t picked Shichirou’s brain about some of his questions.
Still, he can’t say that he isn’t feeling a sense of anticipation when he learns that Shichirou and Iruma have met each other. It’s Kalego’s discipline that keeps him from abandoning his work and rushing to Shichirou’s office like he wants to—like he knows his uncle would have done, were he to be in a similar situation. It keeps him from feeling anything but the smallest degree of temptation to drop everything he’s doing and head there.
When the time finally comes, and Purson’s daily warm up of arpeggios and scales rings loud and clear all over the school grounds, and all the day scholars are in their mad rush to get to wherever they’re going, Kalego goes to Shichirou. He doesn’t rush—there’s no need to. The only issue is that Cerberus can sense Kalego’s anticipation, making Cerberus antsy and eager to do something, which means that Kalego is finding it hard to keep his steps even and slow.
He knocks at Shichirou’s door and waits until he’s welcomed in, as always. The fact that Shichirou had clearly been expecting him—that he has two cups of tea ready and is already seated in one of the couches when he’d usually be hanging from the ceiling or crouched in his nest—says a lot. He’d even been anticipating the nature of Kalego’s visit, judging from the placement of the cups opposite each other—an invitation for Kalego to sit across from him instead of beside him as he usually does on more casual occasions.
“Shichirou,” says Kalego, warmer and softer than he’d be with anyone else, as he takes his seat.
He’s found that it’s easier accepting that he’ll always be warm and soft with Shichirou instead of trying and failing to maintain the coolness and rigidity with which he deals with others.
“Kalego,” greets Shichirou.
His mask is still in place, but Kalego can tell from the way his eyes crinkle at the corner that he’s smiling. Shichirou never smiles unless he means it, so Kalego finds that some of the tension that came with his anticipation eases.
Kalego takes a sip of the tea and sighs, settling into the couch some more as the bitter flavour hits his tongue. After Kalego’s second sip, Shichirou unclips his mask and places it on the table between them before taking a sip of his own tea. He sighs contentedly as well.
“You’ve met my students,” says Kalego. “Three of them.”
“The Misfits… yes.”
“There’s one I’d like to ask you about.”
Shichirou takes another sip of his tea and continues to look at Kalego. He may be waiting, but it’s likely he already knows who Kalego is here about. Now that Kalego feels a bit more settled, he can even smell that he’d been in this office at some point today. He can’t smell either of the other two—not in a way that isn’t simply their scent underlying his. Yet another thing that says a lot.
“Iruma.”
“Mmm,” hums Shichirou, a small smile on his face.
He looks unsurprised, which is unsurprising.
“What do you think of him?”
Shichirou closes his eyes and tilts his head to the side, humming thoughtfully. He’s clearly considering Kalego’s question, which is, admittedly, a bit vague. But that vagueness allows for Shichirou to answer satisfactorily enough without saying anything he feels he shouldn’t. After a moment, Shichirou opens his eyes and looks right at Kalego.
“Iruma,” says Shichirou slowly, “is a good boy, I believe. He’s doing his best.”
It’s Kalego’s turn to do some thinking of his own. He turns the answer over in his head, because just as Kalego was intentionally vague, there is intentionality behind Shichirou’s answer.
Kalego takes a long sip of his tea. There’s the answer Shichirou is giving from teacher to teacher—telling Kalego not to worry too much about Iruma’s grades, because the work he’s putting into his studies will show. That one’s understood.
But, beyond that—because there is something beyond that—is something else. It’s something Shichirou may know for a fact, given the choice of words and the sureness in his tone. It’s something he believes Kalego shouldn’t know, given that he’s said nothing to imply what exactly it is. But most importantly, it’s something he thinks doesn’t have any bearing on Kalego’s most important duty. Or maybe something he thinks shouldn’t have bearing on Kalego’s most important duty—on his mandate as the member of the Naberius clan currently stationed at Babyls.
Whatever the case, that’s the answer Kalego was looking for in particular. Because—and Kalego feels reluctant to admit this, even in his head—he trusts Shichirou’s judgement. Almost absolutely. Narnia has had many things to say about that trust, and still does to this day. Many things to say about blind spots and weakness and being compromised. In fact, in this moment, the disapproving voice in Kalego’s head is his brother’s. "Scratch an itch if you must," he'd said, "but remember that a trusting Naberius is a compromised Naberius."
There'd been no need for Narnia to mention the exact Naberius he had in mind, but that’s no matter—Kalego isn’t his uncle, and he isn’t making the same mistakes, and he'd really rather not think about having heard the euphemism 'scratch an itch' from his elder brother's mouth and the implications it carried. So that’s that.
Kalego relaxes—truly relaxes—into the couch. The tension in Shichirou’s shoulders dissipates. And now, the office has turned back into the place they frequently meet to have tea and exist in each other’s company.
Kalego picks up his cup and relocates to the couch opposite himself, sitting beside Shichirou. The rest of the afternoon passes in shared silence. Easy. Comfortable.
As soon as Kalego gets home, he takes out his notebook. He opens it to the first section—the one he wrote that first week, when his distrust for Iruma was at its highest—and flips to the last page of that section. Somewhere near the bottom of that page, he makes one small addition.
He leans back to look at what he’s added—Shichirou’s name, right above Cerberus’, both with a small tick enclosed in a circle beside them. With a nod to himself, he shuts the book and puts it away.
***
After speaking to Shichirou, Kalego hasn’t added much to his notebook beyond small observations, things like the oddly large bursts of power from a boy who has little of it nine out of ten times.
He has multiple sound reasons beyond just his trust for Shichirou—has to, if he wants to quiet the voice of his… of his betters in his head.
Today is one of those rare days he has an addition to make to his notebook. You see, the idea that his students have that Kalego is interested in seeing them suffer and fail is far from true.
…Well, he wouldn’t mind seeing them suffer just a little bit, but that’s neither here nor there. The important thing is that he holds no ill will towards his students—he wouldn’t want them to not succeed.
Because of that, Kalego had been on board with Sullivan searching for highly skilled demons to hone each of the Misfits’ strengths and help them identify, understand, and cover their weaknesses as best as they can. But seeing as Kalego doesn’t fully trust Sullivan, he wouldn’t be so ready to trust any of the demons Sullivan picked… with a single exception, but that isn’t Kalego’s focus at the moment.
To cut a long story short, Kalego has been paying keen attention to the teaching techniques and assessments employed by each of the demons his students are learning under for the semester.
General Furfur is a highly untrustworthy individual with a nasty attitude to boot, and though Kalego dreads the ways in which his choice of method—introducing Allocer and Andro Malius to ‘the adult world’—could affect them, he can see how honing those particular social skills would bolster the strengths they already have.
Lady Vepar is… overwhelming, and her decision to literally throw Gaap and Agares into the deep end is reflective of her inability to do anything in halves. Still, that just might be what they each need—Gaap with his desire for friendship and Agares with his desire to live unbothered—to find their fangs, even if they aren’t too interested in baring them.
Raim has mastered her craft through and through, and no one else can handle succubus studies and the related fields with the skill she does bar Lady Amuryllis. Ix is definitely in the right set of hands hands. Valac… is Valac, but more importantly, she likes Raim and thrives under her instruction, which Kalego knows will go a long way in her development this semester. The only thing is that Kalego can’t predict what that development will look like. He doesn’t bother trying.
Mister Hatt is one of the instructors Kalego can admit, begrudgingly, follows a philosophy similar to his own—wanting his pupils to succeed but also wanting them to suffer just a little. Like Raim, he seems to have adjusted his training slightly more to cater to his students’—to Crocell’s and Caim’s—specific situations. If Crocell succeeds, it just might help her in bridging the two personas she keeps distinctly separate. As for Caim… well, he’d be even more insufferable, but the Caim family’s inherited magic would be incredibly potent in the hands of a trained beast tamer.
Shichirou… well, there’s no better instructor for powerful, temperamental, students than him. Kalego also understands that the strong genetic makeups of members of the Sabnock and Asmodeus families would go a long way in further testing and development of the wicked phase pill, which would be revolutionary, but not the matter of importance to Kalego. What’s important is that even Eito wouldn’t be able to truly push Asmodeus to anything further than some more finesse with controlling fire; that no other teacher, not even Momonoki or her grandfather, has the versatility to foster the development of a power as malleable as Sabnock’s. In terms of unlocking and honing raw strength and stamina, there’s no one better than Shichirou.
The Purson clan’s request to handle Purson’s training themselves was a stroke of good luck, given none of the other trainers have what it takes to hone Purson’s skills. In Kalego’s opinion, that is. And Sullivan’s as well, it seems, since he approved the request. But seeing as Kalego has no way to know how Purson’s training is going beyond the regular update letters from the Purson clan head, he simply has to trust that the boy’s training is going well.
Robin is too new for Kalego to truly know him beyond the contents of the papers he submitted before his employment and what other reports and records he looked through. Still, Robin’s high energy antics mixed with Shax’s love for gambling just might be a disaster waiting to happen, but maybe that’s Kalego’s dislike for Robin speaking. He’ll reexamine that thought at a later date. His bigger concern is—had been—how Robin would handle Iruma, given the ways in which Iruma is… unique.
But that’s no longer a worry, because Robin handed Iruma over to someone entirely different—someone who’s an entirely different issue altogether.
Barbatos Bachiko.
Kalego knows his concerns aren’t unfounded in that regard—she had spent the first few days treating Iruma as her butler. Kalego can understand the logic behind the whole thing, ensuring that Iruma was ready to handle the high intensity training of the Barbatos clan, but Kalego also knows that that wasn’t Barbatos’ goal at all.
Somehow, somehow, things have turned around now and Barbatos is actually training Iruma. That in itself isn’t surprising—as much as she hates the fact that all her students so far have dropped her as a master, she clearly hasn’t given up hope that a student will come along and be able to handle what it is she has to offer. Kalego understands. In fact, Kalego approves. Hope is a good thing for a teacher to have.
But that’s yet another thing that hadn’t been a large concern for Kalego, especially not given Bachiko’s disposition and Iruma’s persistence. The thing that most concerns him is a certain sentiment that Barbatos and other members of her clan share. A sentiment that cuts across both main and branch clans, given the way Robin immediately laughed off the idea that he was trying to make a sniper out of Shax. The sentiment that demons generally don’t have the stuff it takes to learn the archery of the Barbatos clan.
And though Kalego has a feeling that he doesn’t need to worry too much about about it, it still continues to nag him until the day he sees Iruma has manifested a bow. Not just any bow—majority of Barbatos’ drop outs have been able to manifest bows, after all—but a bow that has Barbatos’ seal of approval, if the fact that he’s doing target practice under her instruction is an indicator of anything.
There’s something there. Kalego knows it. Something in the ‘no demon can handle this’ of it all, and the fact that Iruma could handle it in a matter of weeks. And that’s one of the things Kalego notes down when he gets home—further evidence of the fact he already all but knows.
But there’s another important addition he makes to that particular section. See, though Sullivan went out of his way to invite the external instructors handling the Misfits, he went through his connections to get to them instead of contacting them directly himself. The only instructor he personally sought out was Barbatos. Because Sullivan trusts Barbatos enough to leave her alone with his… grandson. And Barbatos doesn’t seem like the kind of person to get chummy with someone she thinks is going to be a massive issue for the things Sullivan cares for, such as Babyls.
So, Kalego writes her name at the bottom of that particular page and puts a small circle enclosing a tick beside it, because the fact that Iruma holds Barbatos’ approval is no small thing.
***
Another addition. A smaller one this time.
Kalego had waited to see how things between Amelie and Iruma would play out for multiple reasons. The first is that given Kalego's own experience with Opera, there's always reason to be wary of an upperclassman seeking out their juniors. There's the fact that Amelie takes her position as student president seriously, and would not entertain frivolity from her colleagues or herself. The fact that Amelie has exhibited, time and time again, the same ability sense for potential danger and nip it in the bud that, among other things, earned her father his place as head of border security.
All this and more, and its clear that she approves of Iruma. Values him. Holds him in high regard. Feels other emotions for him that her father very clearly does not approve of. And once Kalego becomes aware of that last bit, he takes a step back from that particular line of research. Pursues it no further, actually.
'Compromised', he hears in his head. He can't tell whom it's directed at, himself or Amelie, but he's quick to dismiss the thought. Kalego doesn’t approve of a lot of the ways his uncle operated, but he does believe in his uncle's insistence on maintaining people's privacy and dignity. Kalego has no qualms witnessing whatever's blossoming between Amelie and Iruma, but he draws the line at scrutinising their every move and putting them under a microscope—at being invasive—for the sake of evidence.
Kalego is careful to leave out any mentions of anything he feels isn't his business as he makes his final touches to that particular entry. At the bottom of that page, he writes Azazel's name and puts beside it a tick enclosed in a small circle.
***
“Is that—?”
“Nope.”
“Kalego—”
“No.”
Kalego continues to stare at the screen while Shichirou looks back and forth between it and him.
Yet another lesson Kalego learnt from his uncle is the power of information. That information is a powerful thing. That not every piece of information needs to be in one's possession, and that some information can do more harm than good to the people who possess it. That's the reason Kalego trusted Shichirou's judgement, no pushing or further questioning.
And that's why, beyond one Crocell Kerori, Kalego does NOT recognise any of the other three faces on her evidol team. He chooses not to. Because this is information he doesn’t need to have. Because having this information wouldn't do him any good.
Kalego reaches for the remote. Before he can grab it, Shichirou's hand covers the back of his and presses it into the couch. A brief exchange of looks. Kalego sighs. He doesn't withdraw his hand, but he does relax his arm such that it's clear he isn't reaching for the remote any longer. Shichirou doesn't withdraw his hand either, but now it isn't where it is to keep Kalego from taking the remote.
"Training with Mr Hatt has drawn her out more," says Shichirou eventually, "she feels more… real."
That's an accurate assessment. It really does feel like Kalego is watching his prediction - that training under Hatt would bridge Crocell's two lives - come to pass.
"Yes," is all he says in response.
They watch the rest of the games in silence.
***
(Seeing as Kalego didn't recognise any of the members of Crocell’s team, there are no new notes to add.
However.
However…
With a sigh, Kalego flips to his segment on Sullivan versus Iruma.
'Will come to the odd rescue', he adds under the notes on Iruma.
Then, he goes back to his preferred version of things - Crocell and three unfamiliar strangers.)
***