Adrien walked through the hallway while eating a donut.
A faint smile formed on his face as he sensed a large number of devils moving around the school, all hidden from the eyes of ordinary students. They worked quietly behind walls, beneath floors, and in places normal people would pass by without noticing anything unusual.
The Agares family had officially started working on Seijo High, turning it into their new outpost in Japan.
In a way, they were copying what the Gremory family had done with Kuoh Academy. A school in the human world. But Adrien couldn't care less if he was honest.
He still had about a year and a half of high school left, not even counting college. Since the Agares were already investing in the school, Adrien was planning to take it further and create a full American-style college system later. Mostly because he wanted to experience the so-called prime time of youth.
Not that he had been lacking in that area.
'Actually, maybe I've been experiencing too much of it.'
After all Adrien had four girls on rotation for now with a potential for three new members joining them, he was building a roster basically.
He finished the last bite of his donut and entered the classroom, heading straight to his usual seat. The room had the same lazy morning atmosphere as always.
The day continued without anything strange happening. Classes passed one after another, teachers explained things with the confidence of people who believed anyone was listening, and Adrien spent most of his time scrolling through his demonic phone under the desk.
The only thing flooding Nethergram was news of Diodora Astaroth's death.
Every post, every comment, every repost circled back to the same topic
Adrien also checked XXX, the Underworld's version of X. For some reason, the name sounded like a porn website to him. Then again, after looking at the comments for five minutes, he quietly decided there was not much difference between the two.
After school ended, Adrien and his peerage headed to Kuoh Academy.
His peerage went straight to the old school building, where the Occult Research Club usually gathered, but Adrien separated from them and made his way toward the student council room first. He wanted to check on Sona.
The hallways of Kuoh were quieter than usual. Students had already begun leaving, their voices fading toward the gates, while the supernatural side of the school slowly rose beneath the ordinary one.
Sona was inside. But she was not alone.
Adrien stopped in front of the student council room and knocked once before opening the door.
He stepped inside with calmly. The moment he entered, the room went still.
Eight people were gathered inside. Sona's peerage sat around the room, their expressions heavy with the weight of the previous week. The atmosphere was tense, though not as suffocating as Adrien had expected. A week had passed since the Rating Game, after all. Time did not erase humiliation, but it did dull the first sting of it.
Sona sat behind her desk, her posture as straight as ever. Her glasses reflected the light from the window, hiding her eyes for a brief second.
Then she saw Adrien. Her eyes widened slightly and her head lowered a bit.
The effect spread through the room immediately.
Her peerage noticed. Of course they did. They were devils, servants, students, and comrades. Their King's mood was their anchor, and seeing Sona react like that made the rest of them stiffen.
He walked in and sat on the desk in front of her, he wore a smile on his face. He then looked at the re
Adrien glanced at the rest of Sona's peerage.
"I want to talk to Sona alone."
The words were calm, but they landed with enough weight to break the tense atmosphere in the room. No one argued. No one even looked toward Sona for confirmation. One by one, they stood up and left the student council room in silence.
They all knew who Adrien was. More importantly, they knew what he meant to Sona.
After the Demon Youth Social, after he had defended her dream in front of half the Underworld, there was no one in the room who could pretend he was just another noble. He had stood beside her when her own ambition had been mocked. He had given weight to a dream most people treated like a childish fantasy.
So they understood. If anyone could speak to Sona right now, it was probably him.
The door closed behind the last member of her peerage, and silence settled over the room again.
Adrien did not speak immediately.
Sona remained seated, her hands folded neatly in front of her. Her posture was still proper, almost perfect, but Adrien could see the tension in her fingers. She looked like someone trying very hard to appear fine.
'How very Sitri of her.'
Adrien stood up, lifted his chair, and carried it beside her desk. Then he placed it next to her chair and sat down close enough that their shoulders almost touched. Before she could say anything, Adrien raised his hand and placed it gently on her head.
Sona froze. When she turned to look at him, she saw the same warm smile he had shown her during the Demon Youth Social.
Tears gathered at the edges of Sona's eyes.
She noticed them almost immediately and tried to wipe them away with the back of her hand, lifting her glasses in the process. It was a small, clumsy movement, very unlike her. Sona Sitri, who always kept her posture straight and her voice controlled, suddenly looked like a girl trying to stop something that had already slipped out of her hands.
Adrien watched her in silence.
The first tear became another. Then another.
Sona's breathing shook, and before she could force herself to recover, the quiet tears turned into full crying. She leaned forward without thinking, her forehead and face resting against Adrien's chest as her shoulders trembled.
Adrien froze for half a second.
'Ah.'
This was bad.
Not because she was crying. Crying made sense. Losing in front of the Underworld, failing to prove her dream and watching her entire plan collapse under one trained Red Dragon Emperor — anyone would break a little after that.
The problem was that Adrien had absolutely no idea what to do with a crying person.
He could dismantle magic formulas, kill harrowing mythical beasts, assassinate an heir, and ruin a noble family's reputation before breakfast. But emotions? Yeah he didn't know what to do with that shit.
He raised his hand and patted her head gently. It was awkward, but not cold. His fingers moved through her dark hair.
"To be honest," Adrien said after a moment, "I didn't watch the match."
Sona's crying paused for half a breath. Then she slowly looked up at him, her face wet with tears and her glasses slightly crooked.
"Did…" Her voice cracked, and she swallowed before trying again. "Did you expect that I… would be destroyed like that?"
Adrien looked at her.
There were many answers he could have given. A soft lie. A careful excuse. Something warm but unfortunately, Adrien was Adrien.
"Yes," he said.
For a moment, even her crying seemed offended.
Adrien blinked, 'Wrong answer?'
He sighed through his nose and continued before she could fully process whether she wanted to cry harder or hit him.
'What did I say to Akeno and Mahiru? No I can't repeat the same thing to everyone.'
Plus there was a difference between Sona's case and their case. For them it leaned more into accepting themselves and what they are, and that was in Adrien's domain of expertise. But Adrien had never lost until now so he had no idea what to say to the Sitri Heir.
"I'm not good at this," he admitted. "Comforting people, I mean. I'm actually terrible at it. So I'm just going to be honest."
Sona lowered her gaze again, her fingers curling weakly against his shirt.
Adrien kept patting her head, though now the motion was a little smoother.
"In other circumstances, I would have bet on you every time," he said. "You're smarter than Rias. You would have read her strategy, and outmaneuvered her peerage piece by piece."
Sona's shoulders trembled again, but this time she was listening.
"The reason you lost wasn't because you were stupid. It wasn't because your dream is impossible either. You were just unlucky, to be honest. You could have never expected Issei to improve that much in just one month. Painful development, I know. No one expects the pervert to start using his brain."
A slight chuckle escaped her.
"And that part is my fault," he said. "I pushed him hard enough that he became something your plan wasn't built to handle. You probably already knew that, though."
Adrien sighed softly.
"You have to stand back up, Sona. Nothing is over."
Sona stayed against his chest, her fingers still holding his shirt her. Her breathing had started to steady, but the tears had not fully stopped.
Adrien looked down at her and continued, "Actually, this is still the beginning. Your dream hasn't changed. It didn't move farther away just because you lost one Rating Game. You're acting like the door closed. It didn't. You just got hit in the face before reaching it—"
Then he stopped.
A short silence filled the room.
Adrien's expression slowly went blank.
'What the fuck am I talking about? Damnation.'
Sona stared at him for a moment. Her eyes were still wet, her glasses were still a little crooked, and her face was red from crying. But then her lips trembled, she lowered her head, one hand covering her mouth, but the laugh kept escaping anyway.
Adrien watched her, slightly offended.
'It worked I guess, go me!'
After a few seconds, Sona finally looked up at him. There were still tears at the corners of her eyes, but the crushing heaviness from before had loosened.
"You're so bad at this," she said.
Adrien scratched the back of his head and looked away. "Give me a break. I'm improvising."
Sona let out another quiet laugh, softer this time. Adrien sighed, then gently fixed her glasses with two fingers.
"Anyway, You lost one match. That's all. Your dream didn't disappear. Your school didn't become impossible. Your peerage didn't stop believing in you. Actually, they probably need you more right now than they did before the match."
Sona followed his gaze.
Beyond that door, her servants were waiting. Her friends. Her peerage. The people who had fought for her plan, lost with her, and were now quietly watching to see whether their King would stand again.
Adrien placed his hand on her head one last time. "So cry as much as you need. But after that, stand up. Whenever you fall down, always stand up again and you can count on me to help you win your race."
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Yo guys I'm taking a break for a while till I finish everything I need to do, I'll return someday.