Chapter 126 — The Night in Her Room

Rias

For a few seconds after Yuuto asked me that, all I could hear was the wind.

The breeze passing over the balcony was light, only enough to stir my hair and cool the heat that had gathered under my skin over the course of this conversation.

But as I looked at her my thoughts moved quickly over what she had said.

Her question had settled between us so heavily that everything else seemed to fall away around it.

Would I be able to help with whatever happened between you and Yuki-san?

Yuuto stood a short distance from me next to the railing. 

She was patient now and maddeningly steady.

She had been angrier with me just moments earlier.

It had been surprising how mad my normally cool and composed [Knight] had become.

That went to show how poor of a job I had been doing recently.

She wasn’t glaring at me like she should have been.

She wasn’t accusing me of being a poor excuse for a [King] and a worse friend.

She wasn’t even looking at me with scandalized curiosity.

Those things somehow made it worse.

She still should have been angry with me for how I treated Yuki.

Even if I hadn’t meant to hurt her, I had ignore her after shoving her away.

I had started this conversation by trying to avoid it completely instead of listening to her worry about Yuki.

That had only made her frustration with me worse. 

But now, she was simply waiting.

And after what she had already told me, that Yuki thought all of this was her fault, I couldn’t keep hiding behind silence and say that I needed time.

My fingers tightened against my own arms.

I had never meant for it to become this.

Not that night.

Not the days after.

Not Yuki taking the blame for herself after I couldn’t figure out how to face her.

I had a responsibility to her, and my other servants.

And I had been neglecting it to the point that Yuuto, of all people, had looked as though she wanted to yell at me. 

I lowered my eyes for a moment and forced myself to breathe.

“If I tell you,” I said at last, my voice tighter than I wanted, “you can’t speak about it to anyone else, including Yuki.”

Yuuto’s expression shifted with understanding, then she nodded. 

“This stays between us?” I repeated.

“It does,” she said quietly.

I searched her face anyway.

That should have been unnecessary. 

Yuuto was one of the last people in the peerage whose word I would normally question.

She was reliable in a way that made most things around her feel steadier.

Right now, I still needed the reassurance.

“I asked because Yuki-san is hurting,” she said. “Not because I want gossip.”

That tightened my chest all over again.

I shouldn’t have needed someone to tell me I was hurting her.

But I had been too much of a coward, and now it had to be said.

I looked away from her and out over the grounds below.

Lamps were beginning to glow here and there, turning the paths and hedges below into warm islands of light beneath the Underworld’s darkened purple sky. 

“All right,” I murmured before hesitating 

I hated how impossible it felt to begin.

There was no version of it that sounded good, even in my head.

Yuuto, at least, was kind enough not to rush me.

So I forced mysekr to speak. 

“It happened that night,” I said. “After the bath we took together once we got back from the young Devils gathering.”

Yuuto only watched and let me speak.

I swallowed once.

“She… Yuki had offered before. To teach me how to kiss.”

Even saying it aloud made heat rush straight into my face.

I hated how childish it sounded when I said it aloud.

How humiliatingly small it made everything feel despite the fact that, at the time, it had felt embarrassingly important.

Yuuto didn’t laugh.

She didn’t even blink.

I went on before I could lose what little nerve I had gathered.

“I didn’t forget that she’d said it. And after the bath, after…” I exhaled once. “After everything that day, it stayed in my head.”

Yuuto’s eyes remained on me, steady and attentive.

She spoke calmly, without any judgment yet.

“So you went to her room.”

“Yes.”

The answer came out quieter than I intended.

“Why?”

That should have been a simple question.

And it was, but the answer I had was sad and ugly.

“I was jealous,” I admitted.

The words tasted bitter.

Yuuto didn’t interrupt.

“Ise has been getting more attention from everyone,” I said. “Asia is sweet with him without even trying. Akeno knows exactly how to tease him and how to draw his eyes where she wants them. Xenovia has already offered to sleep with him multiple times. Yuki seems to try and grab his attention occasionally. Even you’ve been looking at him more.

I laughed once under my breath, with no humor in it.

“And me?” I said. “I’ve been in love with him since before he saved me from my engagement. But there were more and more girls taking his attention, because I haven’t actually made anything real between us.

Yuuto’s expression softened faintly.

“I kept feeling behind,” I said. “Behind the other girls. Because Ise won’t even say my name. To him Asia is Asia and Akeno is Akeno-san. But I’m Buchou... I don’t want a wall placed between us by my title as his master, but I can’t just tell him to ignore it, or it won’t mean anything.” I pressed my lips together. “I was feeling petty, jelous, and scared. And Yuki had offered something that might help.”

“And you trusted her,” Yuuto said.

That was part of it too.

I trusted Yuki.

She hadn’t given me a reason not to.

“Yes,” I said quietly. “I did. I still do.”

I looked back out over the gardens.

“So I went.”

The memory rose too easily once I let it.

The quiet corridor outside Yuki’s room.

The way my feet had nearly turned me around twice before I reached her door.

The embarrassing awareness of my own heartbeat when I knocked.

The flicker of surprise on her face when she opened the door.

“She let me in,” I said. “And she took me seriously.”

The heat in my face deepened.

“She didn’t laugh at me. She didn’t tease me. She didn’t make me feel childish.” I smiled faintly, bitterly. “She had questioned it because of how we had reacted to it in the bath. We talked it over, and she agreed to it, as long as we kept it simple and didn’t let it change anything. I may have convinced her to do it. Now that I look back I may have pushed her into it, even if she seemed to agree.”

Yuuto gave the smallest nod, encouraging me to continue.

“It was awkward at first,” I said. “Very awkward. I was embarrassed. She was calmer than I was, which only made me more aware of myself. But she…” I hesitated, then forced myself on. “She tried to make it simple. Distance. Breathing. Not rushing. Where to put my hands. That sort of thing.”

Memory tugged at me more sharply then.

Yuki’s quiet voice.

The way she could sound patient, calm, and slightly teasing all at once.

At first, that had helped.

At first, it really had felt like practice.

“I kept telling myself that was all it was,” I said. “It was to help with Ise. It was just… something instructional. Something I could use later. Something that would help with my jealousy.”

Yuuto’s gaze sharpened slightly.

“But?” she asked.

I sighed deeply.

“But it stopped being that.”

Yuuto did not speak.

I was grateful for that, because I didn’t know if I would be able to continue if I had to stop to answer a question.

“It stayed careful for a while,” I said. “It was awkward, but deliberate and controlled. She was treating it like teaching.” I swallowed. “I was too. At first.”

Yuki hadn’t been the one to blur it first.

She had teased me when I had questioned her, but she didn’t push it further than that.

But I had

The memory made my pulse jump.

“Then I relaxed,” I said quietly. “Too much, maybe. I stopped feeling so painfully aware of every tiny movement. I stopped thinking so hard about how foolish I might look. And because Yuki was being patient with me, because she wasn’t making me feel ridiculous, because she…” I stopped and looked away. “Because she was being gentle, I let my guard down.”

Yuuto remained silent.

I could feel what I was about to say pressing against my ribs.

“I was the one who got lost in it first,” I said.

The sentence came out almost flat, but I felt my stomach twist with shame again.

Yuuto’s expression changed very slightly.

Maybe she was surprised that it was me who pushed too far.

I went on before I could lose the nerve to say the rest.

“I… I kissed her first, instead of waiting for her to show me what to do…. And when we broke apart, she was still trying to treat it like practice.”

The memory sharpened cruel as I said it.

 The way something had changed in me before I consciously realized it had changed.

At some point I had stopped thinking about what I was learning.

At some point I had stopped measuring it against some future kiss with Ise.

At some point the fact that it was Yuki, her mouth, her hands, her voice, had become the center of it.

And once that happened, I had leaned into the moment instead of pulling back from it.

“I got caught up in the moment,” I said, my face burning again. “Not because she changed anything first. Because I did.”

Yuuto was watching me very carefully now.

“I stopped treating it like practice,” I said. “I stopped treating it like she was only teaching me. I think…” I shut my eyes for a second. “No. I know I did.”

It felt horrible to admit.

My voice had dropped almost to a murmur now. “And when I kissed her again, she kissed me back.”

I had moved it past a lesson first, despite our agreement that it would not be anything more than that.

And when Yuki noticed that change, she had answered it instead of pulling away.

The memory of it sent something warm and humiliating through me all over again.

“She responded to you,” Yuuto said carefully.

“Yes.”

To the way I had leaned into it.

To the way I had stopped kissing her like someone being taught and started kissing her like…

I looked away sharply.

“At that point,” I said, “it wasn’t practice anymore. Not really. At least not to me.”

The quiet around us deepened.

“Is that where things went wrong?” Yuuto asked.

“Yes.”

The answer came immediately.

Because that much, at least, was simple.

I had panicked because I suddenly realized what I was doing.

Because I had gone there because of Ise, and then in the middle of being kissed by Yuki, I had stopped thinking about him completely.

The realization still made shame and confusion twist together under my ribs.

“I noticed how far I’d let myself get pulled into it,” I said. “And the second I noticed, everything hit me at once.”

“What things?”

The question was gentle.

It didn’t make me like it any more.

“Guilt,” I said first. “Toward Ise.”

Yuuto’s gaze softened.

“I’d gone there because of him,” I said. “Because I was jealous of the attention others gave him and I wanted him to look at me, not the image of Buchou he has in his head. But in that moment with Yuki I wasn’t thinking about him at all.” My fingers tightened against my sleeves. “That felt wrong. It felt disloyal. It felt—”

I cut myself off, then forced the word out anyway.

“Like I was betraying him.”

The silence after that was awful.

Yuuto only watched me with quiet sympathy, as she waited for me to go on.

It was more difficult to bear than if she had looked disappointed or repulsed by me.

“There was more than that,” I continued. “Confusion. Embarrassment. And more guilt. The realization that if I stayed there even a little longer, I would have to admit that I had been the one who broke the agreement the two of us had made. We were supposed to only treat it as practice. We weren't supposed to let it change anything between us. And I had been the one to convince her that it would be fine.”

“And Yuki?” Yuuto asked softly.

I exhaled through my nose and looked down at the stone beneath my feet.

“That was part of it too.”

“How?”

I hesitated.

Then I said it.

“She had tried to get it back into practice, instead of what I was pushing it to, but then she responded to me and it changed from two friends practicing to… to us making out on a bed.” I hesitated before continuing. “And I was confused and scared by what I was starting to feel.”

“How you feel about Yuki-san, or about what you were doing?” Yuuto-san asked gently.

“…. About Yuki.” I quietly replied.

Yuuto-san gave a small, slow nod.

“And now that you’ve had time, do you still feel something do her?”

“I… I still don’t know how I feel, exactly. I just know that things between Yuki and I are… different. And with those feelings, the guilt, the confusion and my fear, I couldn’t bear it,” I admitted. “So, I panicked.”

So I had done the stupidest possible thing.

I had pushed her away.

“I shoved her off me and left,” I said.

The words came out harshly now, because there was no dressing them up.

Yuuto’s face tightened with concern, and reproach.

It was the first time she had looked truly upset with me as I had explained everything.

And she was right to be angry with me.

“I didn’t stay to explain,” I said. “I didn’t give her any real answer. I didn’t even let her say much. I just…” I shut my eyes for a second. “I ran.”

The memory of Yuki’s face after that hit me all over again.

Surprised.

Worried instead of annoyed or upset.

I had seen it and I had still left.

My throat tightened.

Yuuto let the silence sit for a few seconds before asking, “And afterward?”

I laughed weakly.

“Afterward I didn’t know what to do. I told myself I only needed a little time to calm down. That if I waited, I’d sort myself out. That I’d know what to say to her once I wasn’t in the middle of feeling…” I made a frustrated motion with one hand. “All of that.”

“And instead you avoided her.”

I nodded.

“Instead every day I avoided it, it became harder to fix the next day. And I didnt get any closer to a real answer.”

Yuuto nodded once.

“And Yuki-san assumed the worst,” she said.

Why wouldn’t she?

From her side, what had happened?

I came to her room.

I asked her for help.

I convinced her that it would be fine and we had agreed to do it right.

I was the first one to lose the shape of what we were doing.

She noticed and tried to rein it back in before I pushed again and she answered me instead of stopping.

Then I panicked, shoved her away, and ran.

After that, I barely managed to look at her properly.

What else was she supposed to think except that she had overstepped somehow?

The thought twisted guilt through me so sharply it nearly hurt.

“She really said it was all her fault?” I asked again, quieter now.

“Yes.”

The answer came without hesitation.

Her voice was colder as well.

“She cares about you,” she said.

That only made my chest ache harder.

“I know,” I said.

I knew Yuki cared about me.

Of course I did. 

But hearing that she had turned all of this inward and still asked the others not to trouble me made it feel sharper and more painful than anything I’d let myself sit with before.

Yuuto was quiet for a few breaths.

Then she said, “I understand now why it would be awkward.”

I let out a small, humorless laugh.

“Yes. That’s one word for it.”

“Complicated, then.”

“That’s too gentle.”

That almost earned a smile from her.

Almost.

Her expression hardened instead.

“But awkward or complicated doesn’t change what she believes right now,” Yuuto said. “You don’t have to have every part of this sorted out. But you can’t leave her thinking she alone crossed a line.”

She was right.

Painfully, and infuriatingly right.

I looked down over the balcony again.

The lamps below had brightened.

Shadows stretched darker between the hedges and paths.

Somewhere farther away, a servant crossed the grounds with a hand-lantern, the light bobbing gently through the dark.

“You’re right,” I said quietly.

“And you shouldn’t have convinced her to do it in the first place.”

I looked away from the garden and at Yuuto.

“Yuki-san is too willing to accept the requests of others. She still carries part of her mindset from her past, where her main worth is determined by usefulness and obedience. I’m not saying that she can't make decisions on her own, or that we can’t ask things of her, but you need to realize that she may not always think about things in a healthy way.” Yuuto paused. “I don’t think that you did something wrong, but I think that Yuki-san’s mindset makes it hard for her to say no to us. So when you told her that it would be fine to practice together-”

“She might not have thought to say no.” I finished.

I felt my stomach drop.

I held onto the railing to steady myself.

“I-I didn’t- she didnt have to- I… I Yuuto, I did something horrible to her, didn't I?” I asked in a small voice.

I was her [King], and I came into her room at night and asked her to do something physically intimate with me.

From what she had told me of her past, it sounded like something she would have experienced before.

I felt sick.

“I don't think so, Buchou. She’s her own person and can still make decisions for herself. I.. I think you need to have that discussion with her and make sure that everything really was alright, on top of making sure she doesn't blame herself.”

“You-You’re right.” I said after letting out a shuddering breath. “I need to talk to her about what happened when I ran and why I was avoiding her, and then we need to talk about her boundaries.”

I folded my arms more tightly around myself.

My stomach still felt twisted in knots.

Yuuto nodded once.

“At the very least,” she said, “she needs to hear that she didn’t force something onto you. That you didn’t pull away because you were disgusted by her.”

Just hearing the possibilities of what she could be thinking spoken aloud made my stomach turn again.

“No,” I said immediately. “No. It isn’t that.”

“I know.”

The sincerity in that should have soothed me. Instead it only made the urgency worse.

Because if Yuuto could believe me that easily, then Yuki should have heard it from me days ago.

I turned back toward the gardens and exhaled slowly.

I stared at nothing for a while until I had relaxed enough to continue. 

“I don’t know how to talk to her.”

Yuuto was silent for a moment.

“You don’t have to explain everything perfectly.”

I gave a short laugh under my breath. “That’s easy for you to say.”

“Yes,” she said calmly. “It is.”

That almost made me let out a laugh.

She went on before I could answer.

“But I mean it. You’re trying to solve all of it before the conversation even starts. You don’t need to. The first thing she needs to hear is the most important part.” Yuuto said, “Tell her you panicked. Tell her that you handled it badly. Tell her she isn’t the only one responsible for what happened.”

My throat tightened again.

“And afterwards?”

Yuuto tilted her head slightly. “After what?”

“After I tell her that.” I looked back out over the grounds. “Where do you think that leave us?”

That was still the part I could not figure out.

She would know I hadn’t fled because she repulsed me.

But then what?

Would that ease anything between us?

Would she look at me differently?

Would I look at her differently?

Or would she act like nothing had happened?

Yuuto considered for a long moment.

Then she gave me the only honest answer there was.

“I don’t know.”

I glanced at her.

She gave a small, helpless aheig.

“I’m not saying that to be unhelpful,” she said. “I really don’t know. But not knowing where it leaves you is still better than leaving Yuki-san alone, blaming herself.”

I sighed and tipped my head back slightly, staring at the dark purple sky.

“I hate this.”

“I assumed you might.”

“I hate that you’re right.”

“I assumed that too.”

Despite everything, the corner of my mouth twitched.

It faded quickly.

I lowered my gaze again.

Yuki.

The name came into my head before I could stop it.

Yuki’s room.

Yuki’s hands.

Yuki’s mouth on mine.

Yuki not stopping when I pushed.

Yuki’s face after I pushed her away.

Yuki, days later, still thinking all of it rested on her alone.

My chest ached.

“All right,” I said quietly.

Yuuto looked at me.

“I need to speak to her soon.”

Yuuto watched me for a second, as though making sure I meant it.

I did.

“I’ll try and find her tonight. If I can’t. Ill catch her tomorrow.”

Yuuto inclined her head once.

“Good.”

I turned back toward the gardens.

After a few quiet breaths, I said, “Thank you.”

Yuuto was silent for a second, perhaps surprised.

Then she answered, “You’re welcome.”

I almost told her not to mention any of this again.

Almost asked whether she thought Yuki would hate me once she understood the truth.

Instead I stayed quiet.

So did Yuuto.

We stood there together a little longer while the estate settled into evening around us.

The silence wasn’t comfortable, exactly. But it wasn’t awful either.

At last, Yuuto pushed lightly away from the railing.

“I’ll leave you to think,” she said.

She gave a short nod and took a step toward the balcony door, then paused.

When I looked at her, she said only, “Buchou?”

“Yes?”

She had a slight frown in her face.

“You messed up. Badly. You need to make it right by her. She cares about you, and about all of us.”

My throat tightened and I couldn’t answer right away.

By the time I found my voice, all I could manage was, “I know.”