Chapter 99 — Memories of Flames

Xenovia

“What happened that day, Yuki?”

Akeno-san asked the question quietly.

Even so, it changed the room.

Not because the question was unexpected.

All of us had been thinking the same thing.

Yuki had led us there herself, one careful piece at a time, as though she were picking up the shards of a painful memory one piece at a time

No one had been surprised by the question.

But the air had still gotten more tense after Akeno-san asked it. 

Now it was either to be answered or refused.

Yuki stood at the center of all our attention and did neither immediately.

She had been composed throughout the conversation.

Too composed, perhaps. I

 was a kind of control I respected and distrusted at once.

Respected, because it took discipline.

Distrusted, because the people most determined to remain composed were often the ones closest to breaking.

For the first time that night, I saw a visible crack in it.

Her voice had broken when speaking about her parents, but now I could see her composure crack.

It was very small.

Her shoulders lowered by a fraction in fatigue.

Her eyes lost focus for one instant, like she was still caught in a memory and had to pull herself out. 

Her fingers curled into her palms hard enough to turn white. 

Then she drew a breath.

Before she could speak, Buchou cut in.

“You don’t have to answer that now.”

Her voice was calm, but the concern beneath it was easy to hear.

Yuki looked at her.

Buchou kept her gaze steady.

“You’ve already told us enough,” she said. “If this part is too much, then stop here for tonight.”

Asia nodded at once, turning toward Yuki with wide, wet eyes.

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Please don’t force yourself. You can tell us later. It does not need to be all at once. It doesn’t have to be tonight.”

That was a sensible offer.

It was also, I thought, an unnecessary one.

There was a difference between listening to someone and cornering them.

But Yuki had wanted to have this talk and I don’t think that she is the kind of person to stop after beginning something like this if they thought it was important.

Even if continuing was painful.

Yuki looked from Rias to Asia.

The crack in her composure deepened for a moment.

Her throat moved once.

Her gaze lowered.

Her face did not collapse, but it came closer to doing so than I had seen before.

No one tried to push her.

Ise remained seated, but his whole body had gone tight with his helplessness to change the past.

Yuuto’s expression was controlled, though I could tell she was watching Yuki more carefully than before.

Koneko looked like she wanted to move closer to Yuki. 

Akeno-san had gone quiet again with a complicated expression on her face.

Perhaps regretting being the one to force the next turn.

Buchou looked as though she regretted many things at once.

Yuki took a second breath.

Then she straightened.

It was not a dramatic recovery.

She simply pulled herself together and forced composure onto her face. 

“I want to finish telling all of you tonight,” she said.

Her voice was softer than before.

Not weak.

Just more tired and hollow sounding.

Asia’s brows drew together. “But—”

Yuki shook her head once.

“I want to finish tonight,” she repeated. “If I stop here, I’ll only spend the rest of the night deciding whether I can begin again tomorrow.”

That was logical.

It was also familiar.

I knew the shape of it from.

From discipline, training and the wounds received from both.

There were things easier to survive by continuing through than by pausing in the middle and giving fear time to grow larger.

Rias studied her for a moment.

Then, very carefully, she nodded.

“Alright,” she said. “But if you need to stop, you stop. No one here is going to demand the rest.”

Yuki’s eyes softened by a fraction at that.

“I know.”

No one interrupted after that.

No one moved.

The house around us seemed unnaturally quiet for a moment.

No creak of wood.

No sounds from the kitchen.

No ordinary noise from the outside world.

Only the shared stillness of seven people waiting for one person to decide how much of herself she could allow to give voice to.

Yuki looked down.

When she spoke again, her voice had changed.

It was distant, like she was talking while reliving the memory. .

“On the night it happened,” she said, “I woke because I smelled smoke. There wasn’t any in my room yet. My window was closed, so I knew it hadn’t come from outside.”

Everyone was silent.

All attention was on Yuki, but she didn’t seem to notice our stares.

“I thought at first it was a small fire. A cooking accident. Something outside blowing through an open window. Then I heard shouting.” She paused. “Too many voices for it to not be serious. Too loud to be anywhere but right outside.  And angry in a way that didn’t belong inside a village that deep into a night.”

Her gaze remained lowered as she stared at the coffee table without seeing it.

“I got out of bed and the room was already bright from the fire outside the shutters.”

Asia drew in a shaky breath.

Yuki continued.

“I remember being confused first. Not frightened. Only confused.” A pause. “Then frightened.”

Her fingers tightened once against her skirt.

“By the time I got into the hall, my room had begun to fill with smoke. The hallway was filled with smoke already and I could hear the fire burning inside the house. I called for my mother. Then my father.” Her voice flattened further. “Neither answered.”

I did not miss the way Akeno-san’s hands clenched slightly at that line.

Yuki kept going.

“The front of the house was already burning. It had started there, I think. It was large enough already to block the easiest way out. But it was too large already to be from some small spark or a forgotten candle. It was enoughthat even at that age I understood it wasn’t an accident.”

She paused with a sigh.

“I was young enough that I still thought if I found my parents, they would know what to do. I searched for them inside first. I thought they might have been hurt. Or trapped. Or trying to put out the fire. I couldn’t see well. The smoke was already thick, and I had never… I had never struggled so hard to breathe before. I had been around plenty of fires before, but it was so different when it was making me choke and gasp for air. I started to get frantic with my calls for them.”

That made me imagine the scene more vividly in my head. 

A child who knew smoke from hearths and kitchens and spells, but not from her own house set on fire while she was still inside.

Shouting for her parents as she rushed from room to room while struggling to breathe.

“I found one of the back rooms already caught,” Yuki said. “Then part of the ceiling gave way near the hall. That was when I understood if I stayed inside looking for them, I would die before I reached them.”

Koneko expression did not change.

But one of her hands had closed over the fabric at her knee so hard I could see the tension in it.

“So I ran outside,” Yuki said. “Through smoke. Through the back of the house where the fire was the smallest.”

Her mouth tightened slightly.

“And when I got outside I ran to the front of the house, and I found them.”

No one spoke.

I could see the moment before she said the next part hurt her more than the others had.

“They were being held down in front of the house.”

Asia covered her mouth.

Issei went pale.

Yuuto lowered her eyes for a second, then raised them again, as if forcing herself not to look away.

Akeno-san looked lost in a memory of her own for a moment.

Yuki’s voice remained quiet.

“There were enough of them that I didn’t recognize every face at first. I knew some. Not all.” She paused. “That may have been worse.”

That, too, I understood.

 A crowd made of people who had once watched you grow, greeted your parents, accepted food from their hands, and then chosen to do what she was describing.

It would be hard for someone to accept.

Especially a scared child.

“My parents must have heard them coming or ran outside when the fire first started. They probably tried to get them to come to their senses and leave peacefully. Whatever had happened, all I knew was that they were already there, surrounded by the mob when I arrived.”

“My father saw me first,” she said. “He shouted at me to run.”

Her composure slipped again there.

I saw how she set her jaw harder.

Saw the way she blinked once too slowly, like she was pushing back tears, before continuing.

“My mother did too. B-Both of them. They… they kept telling me to run.”

Her voice almost failed on the last word.

“And you didn’t,” Rias said softly.

Yuki shook her head once.

“No.”

Her voice sounded dull.

“I tried to get to them. When I saw them I couldn’t help it. They had been beaten and bloodied by the mob. My… My father had a deep gauge across his face that went over one of his eyes. It looked like he couldn’t open it anymore. And one of his hands… it looked like one of his hands had been mutilated and was missing some fingers. My mother… she had been beaten just as badly. One of her arms was limp as she struggled against those holding her.  And one of her ears was missing. H-Her left fox ear looked like it had been torn or cut off roughly.”

Pain entered her voice as she spoke about the state of her parents.

She stopped to take another breath and try to compose herself before continuing. 

“I attacked the people nearest to them first,” she said. “I had power at that age already. Enough to hurt someone. And I was scared and angry enough not to worry what would happen to them as I got them away from my family.”

Issei’s gaze went down slightly at that. 

Yuuto’s too.

Yuki did not look at either of them.

“But I was too young,” she said. “And there were too many.”

She said it in the same tone someone might use to admit making a mistake in a game of chess. 

Coldly.

As a conclusion reached too late.

“I remember thinking,” she said quietly, “that if I just free them, I could get one of them loose. Or both. That if I managed that, we could escape.” She drew in a breath. “But it wasn’t enough.”

The room felt colder.

“I hurt and killed the people in my way until I was surrounded and they caught me.”

No one asked her to describe it further. 

Still, she did.

“One of them hit me from behind. Then another. I fell. Someone stepped on one of my tails to pin me. More hands grabbed me after that. The crowd started cheering that the monster had been stopped.”

The sentence made Koneko’s eyes sharpen suddenly.

Buchou’s jaw tightened.

Issei muttered something too low to make out.

It sounded like a curse.

Yuki did not look at any of us.

“I was still trying to get free when they dragged my parents up. ” Her voice had gone eerily level again. I suspected that was the only way she could keep speaking. “I thought they were going to move them away from the fire.”

A pause.

Yuki’s eyes looked haunted as she quietly spoke. 

“They didn’t. Instead they forced them back into our burning home.”

Asia gasped.

“They were still alive?” Akeno-san asked.

Her voice was barely audible.

“Yes.”

The answer came with no softness at all.

I have seen death.

I have caused it.

Prepared for it.

Accepted it could happen to others and to myself as something that could become necessary in the service of a greater cause.

What Yuki described was not that.

There was no dignity in it.

No reason or mercy.

Only a crowd deciding their fear justified an atrocity.

My hands had clenched without my noticing.

I made myself loosen them.

Yuki continued.

“I was screaming by then, I think.” She looked faintly irritated with herself for not being certain. “I assume I was. I don’t remember everything clearly. I remember the fire. Their hands holding me. My father trying to twist back toward me. My mother shouting something to me that I couldn’t make out. Then they were forced inside and the entrances were blocked. 

She swallowed once.

“And then the crowd began moving.”

“Moving?” Issei repeated.

“They dragged me through the village.”

The silence that followed felt heavier than before.

She did not hurry after saying it.

I appreciated that, in a way.

It would have been easier for her to skip through the worst of what happened.

But then we wouldn’t have fully understood what had happened to her.

“They were angry,” she said. “But also…” Yuki searched for the word. “Excited. They were shouting and cheering about how they were saving the village from a dark future. About how they were removing a dark omen from their homes. Some people were shouting about curses, some about me being unnatural, and sime about how it should have been done sooner. The worst were the ones saying that my parents had brought this on themselves for having and then protecting me.”

Koneko flinched at her words.

Akeno-san muttered something quietly while watching Yuki with concern.

Asia was crying.

Yuuto’s face had gone pale.

Rias was watching Yuki as if she wanted to remember every moment of this, so that she could better understand the pain of one of her servants. 

“They beat  when I tried to pull away,” Yuki said. “When I stopped struggling, they hit me anyway.”

Her voice was flat and controlled again.

“Some burned me with torches as they dragged me. Some cut and stabbed me with tools. They only did enough to be cruel, not to kill me.”

Yuki looked at none of us.

She was no longer standing in the room with seven fellow devils.

She was somewhere else.

“It is harder to remember everything by clearly after that,” she said. “I remember the dirt path away from my home. Stones of the main road. Someone laughing. Someone else being sick nearby. The smell of smoke following us through the whole village. I remember trying once to twist enough to see my house again.”

Her voice thinned.

“It was still burning.”

It was said so quietly I barely hear it

“They dragged me out beyond the edge of the village,” she said after a moment. “Far enough that the others would not have to look at me when I died. When we stopped moving one of the elders of the village began speaking then. By that point I couldn’t hear anything that was being said around me. They continued to torture me as he spoke. I couldn’t feel either of my legs and one of my arms. I knew one of my tails had been cut off and the others were mutilated. My ears were cut apart as well. I was getting colder and colder as I layed there.. Eventually the crowd began to thin and less people were watching me die in the dirt where they had dropped me.”

Yuki paused again before finally looking up to us.

Face was calm and composed, but her eyes held such deep pain and weariness.

“So in the end they left me there. Burned. Bleeding. Unable to stand.”

Issei stared at her with naked horror now.

Buchou had shifted like she wanted to move to comfort her.

Koneko’s gaze had not left Yuki once since the story began.

She looked at the verge of breaking down herself.

“And your house?” I asked.

I did not know why I asked.

Yuki’s eyes lifted to me.

“It collapsed while I was watching.”

She nodded once, almost to herself.

“There were still parts standing when they left me. Not many. The roof gave way first. Then one side. The flames had already eaten through enough of the frame that when it finally went, it was…” She paused. “Quieter than I expected.”

That detail stuck with me for some reason..

A child learning the sound of her home’s destruction and being disappointed by how little noise it made.

“I watched until I couldn’t keep my eyes open,” she said.

Then she looked down.

For several heartbeats I thought she might stop there after all.

No one interrupted.

No one urged her on.

And after a moment, she forced the final line out.

“That is everything that happened before I was reincarnated as a Devil. After that, I was reincarnated by Orutho Raim and then moved between peerages until I needed up here. 

When she finished, the room did not react all at once.

Asia moved first.

Of course she did.

She was up almost before Yuki’s last word had settled, crossing the room with tears still on her face and no hesitation left in her.

Koneko moved at almost the same moment, much quieter but somehow just as fast.

Koneko was wiping the few tears she had let spill off of her face. 

Neither asked permission.

Neither needed to.

They reached Yuki together.

Asia wrapped both arms around her first, gently, as if afraid she might hurt her.

Koneko stepped in a half-second later and held one of Yuki’s hands in hers with that same quiet certainty she used when she had already decided something and no one else’s opinion mattered.

Yuki went rigid at the contact before almost immediately relaxing into it.

She had frozen under another’s touch. 

Then she recognized them.

Asia and Koneko.

Not people taking anything from her.

People holding her because she had finished saying something no one should have had to survive, much less carry alone for so long.

“I-I’m fine Asia, Koneko-chan.” Yuki said.

Her voice was strained.

“Yuki-senpai, you can stop. You’re safe right now.” Koneko said.

Yuki looked at her and then to Asia who was giving her a teary smile.

Her composure broke then.

Her head dipped. 

Her shoulders shook in one short, violent movement that she clearly tried to suppress and failed.

Asia only held her more carefully.

“It’s alright,” she whispered, though that phrase was too small for what had just been said. “It’s alright. You don’t have to hold all of it alone now.”

Koneko said nothing at first.

She just held on.

Then, very quietly, in a voice flatter than Asia’s but no less certain, she said, “We aren’t going to leave you Yuki-senpai. You can trust us.”

Yuki made a sound then.

Not quite a sob.

She had cut it off before it could become one

Rias took one step toward them and stopped, perhaps because Asia and Koneko were already there.

Perhaps because she understood that someone she was responsible for was carrying such a wound that she had almost failed to see.

If their relationship had recovered after their argument over Gasper’s room, she might not have been in the room when Yuki told us her story.

Issei looked furious and helpless and close to tears himself.

Yuuto lowered her gaze briefly, before looking back to Yuki.

“You’re one of our comrades Yuki. You’re our friend and I’m sure that each of us wants to do everything we can to ease your pain.”

Issei stood up at her words.

“Y-Yeah! Most of us have had a pretty rough time before becoming Devils.” He said glancing at Asia while holding his hand over his stomach absentmindedly. “We all heard from Yuuto-san about her past and Asia and I were both killed by Fallen Angels because of our Sacred Gears. So we understand some of your pain. And like Yuuto-san said, we are comrades. We’re here for you.”

Akeno-san was silent.

She was watching Yuki with a concerned look.

I simply nodded in agreement with Yuuto and Issei. 

There are moments when speech is useless.

This was one of them.

I had listened to many confessions in my life.

I had heard people name sin, failure, regret, fear, impurity, crime.

This was not like those.

And the most obscene part of it was not merely that such cruelty had existed.

It was that she had held it for so long that she was able to recall it for us without breaking till the very end.

As Asia and Koneko held her, Yuki tried once more to compose herself.

I could see it in the way she drew in a breath, stood more straight, and squared her shoulders as if to reassemble the composure she preferred.

It did not fully work.

I was glad.

Not because I wanted her to break.

Because some things should not leave a person looking untouched.

No one in the room mistook her tears for weakness.

After a long moment, Buchou finally spoke.

Very softly.

“Thank you.”

Yuki did not answer.

She may not have been able to.

Asia kept murmuring small, useless, kind things against her shoulder anyway.

Koneko remained steady and close, moving closer to Yuki’s side as she held her hand.

And the rest of us stood in the quiet of the Hyoudou house, understanding that the girl we had known as Yuki had just given us the last memory of the person she had been before devils, seals, owners, and chains took hold of the rest.