I Tried to Summon a Succubus, but She Took Me to the Demon World Instead...

Chapter 4 - Boundaries, Breakfast, and Other Weapons

Getting through intake did not make the day kinder.

It only made it longer. By the time Seraphina walked me back across the bridge toward her domain, my body felt like it had been argued with by architecture, law, and gravity in equal measure. The academy behind us still hung in the crimson haze like a threat with school funding, all black towers and impossible spires and the kind of atmosphere that suggested learning was a side activity people fit in between power struggles. The sky above it remained aggressively unfamiliar.

"So," I said as we crossed the midpoint of the bridge, "how bad was that?"

"Bad."

"That answer lacks the rich detail I was hoping for."

"You embarrassed Kael, cracked academy intake equipment, triggered a house-line reading in front of witnesses, and forced me to make a public protection declaration before noon."

"When you say it like that, it sounds productive."

Seraphina looked at me.

I became interested in the bridge again.

"It was not productive," she said.

"That feels unfair. I also remained alive."

"Bare minimum."

Still, the corner of her mouth shifted, tiny and brief enough that I could have missed it if I had blinked. I counted it as emotional profit anyway.

"Can I ask something without you making that face?" I said.

"No."

"Harsh. Anyway, if I'm apparently one bad decision away from getting claimed, studied, or killed, why am I being walked around by Liora?"

Seraphina's gaze slid toward me. "Because she knows the academy."

"That's not the part confusing me."

"Then ask better."

"You told me to be careful. You told me not to die. You looked one sentence away from personally strangling half the room." I gestured vaguely back toward the academy. "So why let her guide me? Do you trust her?"

"Enough."

"Enough is not very romantic."

"Nothing about your schedule is romantic."

"Strong disagreement there."

That earned me another look, so of course I kept going, because apparently getting through intake had inflated my stupidity.

"I'm only saying, if the issue is whether or not I stay alive, assigning me to a girl who looks like she apologizes to doorways feels strategically questionable."

Seraphina's expression went still. "Protective instincts."

"Also," I added, because death was clearly not enough to slow my mouth, "she's cute in that dangerous 'quiet people notice everything' kind of way, so obviously I'm going to be attentive. That's just efficiency."

The silence after that was excellent, cold, and educational.

"You are speaking very confidently for someone whose continued breathing still requires supervision."

"I didn't say I was acting on anything. I'm just observing the battlefield."

"Is that what you call it."

"I am a student of beauty."

"You are a public nuisance."

"Those are not mutually exclusive."

For one second I thought she might actually leave me on the bridge out of principle. Instead she exhaled through her nose and looked ahead again.

"Liora notices details," she said. "She is quiet where others perform. She prefers facts to attention, caution to ambition, and unlike her cousin, she does not mistake curiosity for entitlement."

"So you do trust her."

"I trust her to value caution over theater."

"Mine or hers?"

"Both. In that order."

"That is almost touching."

"Do not become sentimental because I selected competent help."

"Too late. I'm moved."

"Then recover quickly."

We walked on in silence for a few steps. The bond tugged under my ribs every time she got more than a little ahead of me, subtle on the way there, clearer on the way back, like my body had already started cataloging her pace and disapproved of distance. I hated that realization. I hated more that it was true.

When the gates of House Valdros closed behind us, I felt relief so strong it was embarrassing. Relief was stupid. Relief meant I had already started sorting locations into safe and less safe, and somehow the demon noble's castle had won. That said several unflattering things about my day.

Dinner should have been better.

The food was incredible in the same insulting way everything in her world seemed to be incredible: roast meat glazed with something sweet and dark, bread still warm enough to steam when I tore it apart, wine-colored fruit that tasted like cherries, smoke, and very expensive bad decisions. The problem was that I had to eat all of it under observation.

The dining hall was long, vaulted, and lit by floating lanterns that pretended they were candles. Servants moved soundlessly between courses. Silverware existed in quantities that felt accusatory. Seraphina sat at the head of the table like she had personally invented hierarchy. I sat three chairs down on her right because apparently even seating arrangements here did political work.

I picked up the wrong fork immediately.

"That one is for the fish course," Seraphina said without looking up.

I froze. "There is a fish course?"

"There was. You are currently holding its fork."

"Why does fish get its own fork?"

"Because standards exist."

"Not in my world, apparently."

"That has become very clear."

I swapped forks with as much dignity as I could recover, which was not much, while the servants pretended not to notice with professionalism that felt personal.

For a while only cutlery moved. Then I made the mistake of looking at my hand again. The mark had settled since intake, but it had not become friendlier. Crimson traced over the back of my hand in elegant lines. Gold threaded through it. And if I looked too long, I could almost believe there was a darker structure under both, some unfinished shape crouched beneath the visible pattern like a title trying not to show itself.

"House-line," I muttered.

Seraphina's gaze lifted. "You remember words that frighten you."

"It's a defense mechanism."

"Then keep it."

I put the fork down. "What is it?"

The room seemed to thin slightly around the question, not because anything dramatic happened, but because Seraphina's expression changed by a fraction, which in her case counted as weather.

"Not tonight," she said.

"That means it's bad."

"It means I do not explain unfinished structures as though they are facts."

"So it's unfinished bad."

"Eat."

"That is not an answer."

"No. It is instruction."

I bit back what I wanted to say, which was mostly something about how noble demons weaponized sentence structure, and returned to the food. It tasted incredible. That was honestly making resentment harder.

Halfway through the meal I tried again, just with a different disaster.

"My parents."

This time she did not tell me to eat.

Good sign? Bad sign? Impossible sign?

"You said I would return in controlled intervals," I said. "How controlled?"

"Controlled enough that you do not vanish permanently from human memory and controlled enough that the bond does not tear you apart in transit."

I stopped moving. "The bond can do what in transit?"

"At present, it dislikes uncertainty." She took a measured sip from her glass. "You entered this world through violence, not design. The line between us has not stabilized."

"Line between us" sounded way too poetic for something medically concerning.

"So when can I go home?"

"When the bond proves it can tolerate separation and return."

"And how does it do that?"

She looked at me over the rim of her glass. "By not failing tonight."

I stared.

"That sounds like a setup line before disaster."

"It is simply accurate."

Which, translated from Seraphina, meant yes, absolutely, this was a setup line before disaster.

When dinner ended, she walked me back to my chamber herself, without servants or escort, just us and the wrong quiet of demon nobility after dark. At the door, she stopped.

"You will sleep here."

"Your confidence in that verb worries me."

"I am full of difficult confidence."

"I noticed."

Her gaze flicked to my hand, then to my face. "If the mark grows hot, if your chest tightens, if you feel the urge to be brave, do not indulge it."

"I feel attacked by the phrasing."

"Good."

"And if I need you?"

She considered that for exactly one breath.

"Say my name."

That should not have done anything to me, which did not stop it from doing something anyway.

The bond answered with one quiet pull under my sternum, as if agreeing this was now an available feature. She saw it, of course she saw it.

"Sleep, Ren."

Then she left.

The door shut with a soft finality that felt far too symbolic.

I lasted maybe twelve minutes before panic started building. At first it was normal human panic: my phone was gone, my mother had definitely checked my room by now, and my father would pretend to be calm, fail, and start checking train lines like somehow I had gotten on one and forgotten how to use communication. Maybe they had already called my friends. Maybe those idiots were currently telling my parents that yes, Ren had looked weirdly intense about summer break lately, but no, none of them had expected interdimensional consequences.

I sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed both hands over my face.

"Great," I muttered. "My missing-person case is going to include ritual porn motive."

That did not help.

Nothing in the room helped. The curtains held back crimson night. Shadows pooled in corners and stayed there like they paid rent. Every surface was too still, too polished, too ready to notice me unraveling.

Then the bond moved, not with the little tug from before, but with something sharper.

A tightening under my ribs, sudden enough to steal my breath. I sat up straighter.

"No."

Heat spread from my sternum in thin lines, following paths through my chest I had never wanted direct knowledge of. The mark on my hand pulsed once, then twice, then started glowing faintly through the skin.

"No, no, no-"

I stood too fast. The room tilted. The pull sharpened again, but now it was mixed with something worse, a pressure that felt like distance had become physical and had decided to crush me for being rude about it. I took one step toward the door.

Pain lanced through my chest so hard my knees hit the carpet. Air would not come right; I could not get enough, could not keep enough, and the bond was no longer tugging.

It was rioting.

I hit the floor with one hand and tried to breathe around the twisting heat under my ribs.

"Seraphina," I managed.

Nothing answered. I swallowed and tried again, louder.

"Seraphina!"

The room answered first, not with sound but with presence. The air changed all at once, like someone had yanked invisible hooks out of the walls. The door opened.

She was there immediately, not fully composed, but fast.

"Idiot," she snapped, crossing the room in three strides. "I told you-"

"In my defense," I rasped, "I am currently losing."

That brought her close enough to laughter that I would have counted it if I were less busy dying.

Instead she dropped to one knee in front of me and caught my wrist. The mark on my hand flared bright crimson at her touch. Her expression changed. Actually changed. The color left her face for half a second.

"That much?" she murmured.

"Comforting phrase. Big fan."

"Save your sarcasm."

"It is how I die with dignity."

"No. It is how you irritate me while I keep you alive."

She pulled me up with alarming ease and got me onto the bed before I could argue that being manhandled by an elegant demon noble was doing highly confusing things to my self-respect.

Then things got worse, or better, or whatever category involved a beautiful demon noble climbing onto the mattress beside me while I was actively trying not to die.

She climbed onto the mattress beside me, one knee sinking into the coverlet, one hand braced near my shoulder, the other pressing flat over the center of my chest.

Heat exploded through me.

I arched off the bed with a sound I hoped never to hear from myself again.

"Hold still."

"That is easy for you to say!"

"Of course it is. I am not the one disintegrating."

The mark on my hand blazed. So did something behind my ribs, a second pattern answering hers. I could feel it now with awful clarity, not one line between us but many, braided, crossing, pulling. Every beat of my heart tried to sync to hers and failed by a fraction, then tried again, and again.

Seraphina's jaw tightened. Up close, she smelled like cold smoke, ink, and something warmer underneath.

I should not have noticed, which meant of course I noticed.

My gaze dropped without permission. Her blouse had shifted just enough in the motion to make the edge of her collarbone and the upper curve of her chest very visible.

It was incredible, unfair, and possibly fatal.

"Ren," she said.

"I know how this looks."

"Do you?"

"No. Not really. But in my defense, if a beautiful demon noble climbs on top of me in bed and puts her hand on my chest, my body is not going to pick this exact moment to become morally disciplined."

For one full second she simply stared at me. Then, against all reason, she made a sound halfway between a laugh and an offended breath.

"Unbelievable."

"I am also in great pain, if that helps."

"It helps very little."

Her hand pressed harder. The heat changed, not gentler, but directed, like she had forced open a floodgate and was grabbing the current with both hands. The wild rhythm under my ribs started to slow, matching and missing by turns, closer each time.

I dragged in air and nearly cried from relief.

Then I looked at her face and realized she was paying for it.

The gold in her eyes had dimmed. Her breathing was too even to be natural. A bead of sweat ran from her temple into her hairline. Her free hand had tightened so hard into the blanket that the knuckles showed white.

"Wait," I said, voice rough. "This is costing you."

"Do not get sentimental in the middle of a crisis."

"That is not denial."

"No."

She closed her eyes for one second, concentration sharpening every line of her face.

"The bond is overreacting to separation," she said. "It was manageable while you were conscious and moving. Once you were alone and the line began to drift, it tried to pull harder. Your body answered by panicking. The panic fed the line. The line fed the pain. Idiot loop."

"That sounds structurally flawed."

"Yes."

"Can it kill me?"

"If ignored long enough."

"Can it kill you?"

This time she did not answer immediately.

That was answer enough.

"Seraphina."

"Stabilizing you draws power through me," she said quietly. "Doing it this directly advertises the resonance if anyone sensitive is listening. I would prefer they not be."

I stared at her. "And you're still doing it."

"Obviously."

"Why obviously?"

At that, she opened her eyes and looked down at me with the kind of expression that made words feel underdressed.

"Because if my bound human tears himself apart on the first night, I will be annoyed beyond measure."

"That is the least reassuring nice thing anyone has ever said to me."

"Good. Then you are recovering."

The pain receded further. My pulse stopped trying to invent new religions in my throat. Her hand was still on my chest, warm and steady and way too memorable.

"So," I said after a moment, because apparently I had no instinct for silence in intimate near-death scenes, "when you said say your name if I need you..."

"Do not."

"You definitely knew this looked romantic."

"Ren."

"You climbed on the bed."

"Because walking around it would have wasted time."

"Very practical of you."

"Unlike you."

I exhaled, shaky but alive. "Thanks."

She looked annoyed with the word. "Do not thank me yet."

"Very demon response."

"Very earned demon response."

Still, she did not move away. After another minute, the heat under my ribs finally settled into something tolerable. The mark on my hand dimmed from active threat to expensive curse.

Seraphina drew her hand back slowly.

The sudden absence of contact was almost as noticeable as the pain had been.

That was a horrible realization, and I planned to ignore it completely.

She sat back on her heels and very carefully pretended she had not spent the last several minutes half over me while forcing our bond not to eat my organs.

"New rule," she said. "Until I calibrate this properly, you do not sleep alone."

I blinked.

"I'm sorry, what."

"Distance during unconsciousness is the problem."

"That explanation was technically clear and emotionally catastrophic."

"You will manage."

"That feels optimistic."

"It is practical."

She started to rise, stopped, looked at the bed, and then looked at me.

"Move over."

For one full second, my brain ceased all respectable function.

"You cannot say things like that in this situation."

"I can. You, on the other hand, will make this tedious if you continue speaking."

"In my defense, beautiful demon noble ordering me to share a bed with her is not a thing my body was ever trained for."

"Good. Then it will learn quickly."

"You say that like I am attending a seminar."

"If that helps you endure it, imagine a seminar."

"Worst seminar of my life."

She gave me a flat look that somehow communicated both impatience and the possibility of murder.

"Ren."

"Moving. I'm moving."

I shuffled to the far side of the bed with all the dignity available to a teenage boy whose heart had just been informed that tonight's sleeping arrangements were going to become permanent memory damage. Seraphina removed her shoes, sat on the edge beside me, and for the first time since I had met her looked very slightly unsure of where to place her own hands.

That lasted maybe half a second before she chose composure again.

"This is for stabilization," she said.

"I absolutely understand that. My problem is that understanding it does not make you less beautiful."

"If you say something idiotic after that sentence, I will throw you off the bed."

"I wasn't going to."

A pause followed, because honesty had apparently survived the near-death experience.

"I was thinking something idiotic, though."

"I know."

That was worse somehow.

She lay down on top of the coverlet, not under it, leaving precise distance between us as if the gap itself had been measured and witnessed. The bond answered immediately, not with riot or pain, but with a deep, undeniable settling under my ribs, like some invisible thing inside me had finally stopped clawing at the walls.

I exhaled without meaning to, and of course she noticed.

"There," she murmured.

"That is unfairly effective."

"Try sleeping before I regret kindness."

"This does not feel like kindness."

"No," she said softly. "It does not."

The room went quiet, not empty but held. I stared at the ceiling and became extremely aware of everything at once: the faint scent of smoke and ink in her hair, the warmth radiating from her side of the bed, the fact that if I turned my head even a little I would see a girl so beautiful she had already ruined both worlds for me in under twenty-four hours.

"Seraphina," I said into the dark.

"What now."

"If I wake up dead, I want it on record that this was still a pretty good way to go."

She was silent for long enough that I thought I had finally said the one thing that got me murdered.

Then:

"Sleep, pervert."

That might have been the gentlest insult I had ever received.

I smiled despite myself. The bond settled one degree deeper, and my body, having apparently reached its limit for catastrophe, shut down completely.

***

Seraphina woke before dawn.

For a moment she did not move. The room was still, the bond quiet, and Ren was breathing evenly beside her, finally asleep in the heavy, graceless way only true exhaustion could produce. Good. That much, at least, had worked.

Then warmth pulsed across the back of her right hand.

Her eyes opened fully.

Slowly, without waking him, she turned her hand into the dim crimson light.

The sigil had surfaced during the night.

It was not her family crest. Not exactly. The lines bore Valdros shape in places; she could see that instantly, the old geometry of her house still present like blood memory. But they did not close as Valdros. They branched wrong. Recurved wrong. Joined themselves around a core she did not recognize because it should not exist.

A founding pattern, a family mark, and she was inside it.

For one cold second, she understood exactly how catastrophic that was. The mark did not match his perfectly; it answered his.

The sigil had named her as a member rather than a source, attached instead of inherited, which should have been impossible.

Her jaw tightened. If the academy saw this version clearly, yesterday's intake scandal would look merciful by comparison. If her house saw it -

No, she decided. Not yet.

She drew one measured breath, then another, and by the time she stood from the bed her face had become unreadable again. She pulled on a glove. Then she crossed to the window table and poured tea into two cups instead of one.

When Ren woke, she intended to be exactly where she wished to be seen, and nothing more.

***

Morning came in red and black instead of gold.

I woke to quiet and immediately knew something was wrong. Not bad wrong, which would have been easier, but the more dangerous kind: confusing wrong.

The bed was too warm on one side. The pillow beside mine had a slight indentation. And I had absolutely no memory of anything after "move over."

I sat up too fast, looked around, and found Seraphina exactly where she had been yesterday morning, by the window at the small round table, because apparently my life now came with repeated visual motifs designed to destroy me.

But this time there were two cups, steam rising from both, and she was not already drinking. She was waiting.

"Good," she said without looking up from the teapot. "You woke before I had to decide whether to insult you or let you sleep."

I looked from her, to the second cup, to the bed, then back to her.

"Did we-"

"No."

"You answered that way too fast."

"Because your question was obvious and offensive."

"In my defense, I passed out while you were in my room, woke up with suspiciously warm bedding, and you are now having dawn tea with me like this is a domestic arrangement."

"It was a medical arrangement."

"That somehow sounds less believable from a distance."

She set the second cup down across from her. "Drink."

"You really want me functional before I go home and ruin my family's blood pressure, huh."

"Very much."

I got out of bed slowly, half expecting my chest to punish me for existing. It didn't, which was new. The bond was still there, still unmistakable, but no longer trying to peel me open from the inside. I sat across from her and took the cup. The tea smelled sharp and dark and expensive.

"You slept," she said.

"Apparently."

"Without screaming."

"High bar."

"For you? Very."

I took a cautious sip. It was infuriatingly excellent.

"So," I said, watching her over the cup, "am I allowed to know exactly how much dignity I lost overnight?"

"All of it," she said.

"Honesty. Cruel."

"Necessary."

She held out her left hand, bare.

"Ready?" she asked.

"Absolutely not. But yes."

Something at the corner of her mouth shifted. I took her hand.

The gate opened in my room mirror without dramatic chant or thunder, only a ripple across the glass and then my own bedroom on the other side, dim with early human morning and familiar enough to hurt.

I stepped through first and almost laughed from sheer relief. My room, my desk, my bed, my stupid relay trophy, and my phone on the pillow flashing with enough missed calls and messages to qualify as evidence.

"Oh, I'm so dead."

"Not yet," Seraphina said, stepping through behind me.

Her hand was still in mine, which should not have been the detail my brain chose to focus on.

Unfortunately, my brain had a long and distinguished history of choosing the least useful possible detail in moments of crisis. Seraphina Valdros was in my bedroom at dawn, holding my hand. This was not helping my structural integrity as a person.

That was when we heard my mother's voice from downstairs.

"Ren? Ren, is that you?"

My soul detached and went out the window.

"No," I whispered. "No, no, no, why is she awake this early?"

"Because she is a mother," Seraphina said, which was somehow both unhelpful and correct.

She gave a small pull, trying to move us fully clear of the mirror before the gate shut. I reacted one beat too late, not because the pull was strong, but because I was still, catastrophically, thinking about handholding. My foot failed to do what feet are traditionally hired to do.

Instead of stepping, I stumbled.

"Ren-"

My heel clipped the bedframe. Momentum made the next decision for both of us. I pitched backward, arms windmilling for purchase. My hands scraped the mattress, found the nearest solid surface, and closed.

My hand found something soft, warm, and unyielding beneath the fabric.

I'd accidentally grabbed her chest.

A faint sound escaped her, not quite a gasp and not quite a sigh, but a soft, velvety moan I'd never heard from a real woman outside the glow of my PC screen. It was quieter, warmer, and somehow entirely my fault.

Seraphina's eyes widened a fraction just before I hit the mattress hard. She landed first. I landed above her, one hand buried in the blankets beside her shoulder, the other still caught with hers, and my traitor hand still resting on her chest.

"Oh my," Seraphina murmured, and the fact that she did not sound distressed made it worse.

The bedroom door burst open before I could even decide whether hiding Seraphina behind the curtain counted as strategy. My mother stopped in the doorway and took in me, Seraphina beneath me, and my hand still resting possessively on her chest.

Then she made a sound no son should ever hear from his mother.

"Rennnnnnn?"

I snapped my hand up like it had been electrified.

"That's not what it looks like!" I yelped, voice cracking an octave higher than usual.

Seraphina, still catching her breath, sat up just enough to smooth her dress. A reddish tint had crept up her neck to her cheeks, though her posture remained infuriatingly aristocratic.

"Good morning, Okaa-san," she said, bowing her head slightly. "I apologize for the disturbance."

My mother blinked twice, and then, somehow, things got worse.

My father appeared behind her in the hall and froze too. He looked from me to Seraphina to me again.

"Ren," he said carefully, "who is this stunning young woman?"

"That phrasing is not helping me!"

Seraphina didn't let go of my wrist right away. Her thumb brushed lightly against my pulse point, and I got the distinct feeling she was already calculating exactly how much she could enjoy using that against me later.

"I am Seraphina Valdros," she said, inclining her head just enough to devastate the whole household. "A senior associated with Ren's current circumstances."

"Current circumstances?" my mother repeated faintly.

"That is not what you should focus on!" I said.

My phone buzzed again on the bed, one message becoming several in rapid, accusing succession.

My mother looked at the phone, then at me, then at Seraphina.

Something bright and dangerous entered her eyes.

"Ren," she said slowly, "did you spend the night with a girl?"

"No!"

Technically true, emotionally false, and cosmically compromised.

My father coughed into his fist to hide what looked suspiciously like pride.

"Let's all remain calm," he said, which was what fathers say when they are absolutely not calm.

Seraphina, because she was apparently committed to either saving or ruining me in the most elegant way possible, stepped to my side, close enough for my parents to misread everything.

"There is no need for alarm," she said. "Ren spent the night with me. His situation became unexpectedly complicated."

My mother made a tiny squeaking sound.

"That sentence somehow made everything worse!"

My father put a hand on the wall. "Complicated in what way?"

My mother's eyes widened with horrifying speed. "Complicated how?" she repeated. "Wait. Wait, no. Ren, you didn't-"

"What? No!" I said. Then, because my mouth was still dedicated to ruining me, I added, "How would you even know that just from sleeping together for one night-"

Silence fell, absolute and catastrophic, and I felt my soul leave my body, turn around, and point at me in disgust.

"That is not what I meant!" I said immediately. "I mean! Not that we- I mean even if people did- which they didn't! Obviously! Biologically, that would be a very fast report!"

My father covered his mouth with one hand.

My mother made a noise like a tea kettle entering a new religion.

Seraphina glanced at me, and I recognized the look of a woman deciding how much truth a room could carry.

"Ren," Seraphina said, glancing at me with that perfect false kindness she only used when she wanted to enjoy herself, "would you like to explain your summer plans to your family?"

Vicious woman, elegant menace, and apparently my assigned executioner in front of my parents.

I straightened on instinct. "It's a learning camp," I said.

Both my parents stared at me.

My mother blinked first. "You hate studying."

My father looked even more offended by the lie than she did. "You once called take-home assignments an attack on youth."

"A what," my mother asked carefully, "is a learning camp."

"A summer one," I said weakly. "Special study. Intensive schedule. Limited phone use. Senior supervision."

"Senior supervision," my father repeated, eyes sliding immediately to Seraphina.

"That is not what you should focus on!"

"He means me," Seraphina said smoothly. "I was asked to keep him from dying of poor judgment."

"That is somehow both untrue and extremely true," I muttered.

My mother turned to me with such total maternal devastation that I nearly folded.

"On the first day?" she asked.

"That is honestly fair."

My father straightened. "Is this school related?"

"In part," Seraphina said.

"Can he come home?"

"In controlled intervals."

"That is not normal school language," my mother said.

"No," I said weakly. "It really isn't."

There was a beat of silence, and then, to my horror, my mother's expression softened in the specific way mothers soften when they have understood completely the wrong thing.

"Ren," she said, voice thick with emotion, "if this is your girlfriend, you could have told us."

"She is not my-"

I stopped because Seraphina was looking straight ahead with a composure so perfect it looped around into cruelty. She was enjoying this, not much, just enough.

"You are enjoying this," I hissed.

"Immensely," she whispered back without moving her lips.

Traitor. Absolute traitor.

My father, meanwhile, had entered that deeply unhelpful male state known as trying to be cool in a family emergency.

"Well," he said, "there is no need to rush labels."

"Otou-san!" my mother said.

"I only mean-"

"He vanished overnight!"

"Because of a very stupid reason!" I said.

No one listened to that part.

My phone buzzed again. I grabbed it and found thirty-eight missed messages: two from my mother, three from my father, and eleven from the group chat.

The latest one from my friend Tatsuya read:

bro ur mom asked if u were with me

why did u vanish overnight

call me before she asks me more questions

I closed my eyes.

"My social life is dead."

"No," Seraphina said softly. "It is merely mutating."

That was not better.

We stayed just long enough for me to prove I was alive, eat half a piece of toast under my mother's unwavering stare, and build the worst partial truth of my life into something they could almost believe: summer learning camp, upperclassman supervision, advanced study schedule, limited phone access. My mother did not believe half of it. My father believed exactly enough of it to avoid asking better questions. And both of them absolutely believed Seraphina was some variety of impossible girlfriend, because the alternative required confronting words like gate instability before breakfast.

Then Seraphina ruined me one last time.

"You should pack," she said.

My mother's eyes widened. "Pack?"

"Lightly," Seraphina said. "He will need proper clothes, school materials, and whatever small belongings he cannot function without."

"That makes this sound even more like eloping," I said.

"Then pack faster so your mother has less time to imagine details."

Ten minutes later I came downstairs with a duffel bag stuffed in the rushed, chaotic style of a teenage boy packing under direct parental pressure and existential collapse. My mother adjusted my collar three separate times like I was leaving for war, marriage, or both.

"You will answer when I message you," she said.

"I will try."

"Not try. Answer."

"Yes, Okaa-san."

My father put a hand on my shoulder. "If this camp turns out to be a cult, blink twice in every photo."

"That is not helping."

"I'm being supportive in my own way."

Seraphina inclined her head. "I will return him in one piece."

My mother narrowed her eyes. "You return him in better condition than you found him."

I made a strangled sound. "Can everyone stop talking like I'm borrowed property?"

"Then stop behaving like an item with poor supervision history," my mother said immediately.

Honestly? Fair.

At the door I put my shoes on with hands that felt weirdly unsteady. This was ridiculous. I had crossed worlds, faced demon nobility, and almost died of magical chest failure, yet somehow saying goodbye at my own front door felt worse than any of that.

"I'll be back before school starts," I said.

It came out more earnest than I meant it to.

My mother softened instantly.

My father looked away for one second too long.

"You had better," he said.

Seraphina opened the door, and morning light poured in over a normal street, normal houses, normal summer air. Nothing about me felt normal anymore. I stepped out first, Seraphina followed, and I turned back once, lifting a hand because words had become unreliable.

"Bye."

"Answer your phone," my mother called.

"Do your studying," my father added.

"I hate this family," I muttered, because loving them too obviously in front of Seraphina felt strategically unsafe.

"No, you don't," Seraphina said beside me.

Infuriating woman.

We walked down the street together, my duffel bag over one shoulder, neighbors' curtains already threatening betrayal. We turned the corner, and only when the house was fully out of sight did Seraphina raise one gloved hand and draw a line of crimson light across the air.

A gate opened soundlessly in the morning shadow between two walls. I looked at it, then at her.

"You could have done that from my room and saved me the emotional damage."

"And deprive your family of closure?" she asked. "Cruel."

I stared. "You are impossible."

"Yes."

We stepped through.

When we finally returned to the demon world, I leaned against the wall of my chamber and covered my face.

"I can never go home again."

"You can," Seraphina said. "You will simply return to a revised narrative."

"My mother looked at me like I had suddenly become a TV drama."

"An improvement over missing person."

"That is... annoyingly true."

I lowered my hands and looked at her. "Did you do anything to them?"

"Nothing. Your parents are exactly as dramatic as they appeared."

"So they really think-"

"Yes."

"Amazing. Incredible. First day of summer break and now both realms have a file on me."

Seraphina's expression gentled by a degree, barely.

"Still," she said, and the smallest smile touched her mouth, "I did not entirely dislike the detour."

I stared.

"You enjoyed watching my family destroy me."

"A little."

"Now you understand," she said, "why carelessness is expensive."

I looked at the mark on my hand and thought about the pain from the night before, my mother calling from downstairs, and Seraphina standing in my room like she belonged there as much as she belonged under the crimson sky. It took a moment before I could exhale.

"I'm trapped in both worlds now, aren't I?"

She met my gaze.

"Yes."

There was no comfort in it, no lie to soften the edge, just the truth.

And somehow that was worse than the pain had been.

***

At the front door, Ren's mother stood with one hand still resting on the frame long after he had turned the corner.

"That girl is too beautiful," she said at last.

His father, beside her, folded his arms. "That is your first concern?"

"It should be yours too."

"My first concern is that our son disappeared overnight and came back with the kind of woman men write songs about right before losing wars."

She looked at him sharply. "So you noticed."

"I have eyes."

She sighed and leaned lightly against him. "Do you believe that story about a learning camp?"

He thought for a moment before answering.

"No."

"Me neither."

Another pause settled between them.

"Do you think he's in danger?"

This time his answer took longer.

"Yes," he said. "But I also think he would have looked more afraid if she were the danger."

His wife glanced toward the street again, toward nothing now.

"He looked embarrassed."

"That too."

"Like a boy who had done something stupid."

"That part I believe completely."

"Also," she added after a beat, "if he gets someone pregnant in one night, I refuse to hear it before coffee."

Her husband closed his eyes. "Please do not invent grandchildren before breakfast."

Despite herself, she laughed, but only once.

Then she wiped at one eye with the heel of her hand and drew a steadying breath.

"He's still our idiot."

"Very much so."

He slipped an arm around her shoulders and guided her back inside.

"Come on. If this really is summer camp, we need to pretend to be reasonable parents for at least another hour."

"And if it's not?"

He looked back once at the open doorway, the bright street beyond, and the empty place where their son had been.

"Then we wait for him to come home and explain what kind of camp requires a girl like that to pick him up at dawn."