Sureiyazu

Episode 29: The Summoner

They seemed to know she was there.

Aya stood, frozen, the feelings of the past crashing over her. The mixture of fear, of guilt, of shame. And yet, of some kind of twisted power.

Move, something in her told her. Distantly. But she couldn't move. There it was - the monster that separated her from the life she could have - no, should have - had. 

"Hey," a voice behind her said. But she didn't turn around. 

The voice waited a moment before asking, "You're one of those Sureiyazu people, aren't you?"

Finally, somewhere in her, Aya found the strength to look at him. It was the demonslayer, the one who had so dramatically broken through the wall of the ballroom. 

"Yes, I am," she said slowly.

"Good, I thought so," he replied conversationally. "If you weren't, I'd yell at you or something for not hiding but . . . Are you okay?"

Aya realized she had been swaying slightly on the spot and not really hearing him, her head still swimming with memories that had leaked out of the special place in her mind that she had stored them for so long . . . so vivid . . . so terrible . . .

She was being shaken. It was him, that demonslayer. "Hey! Are you okay?!"

"N-no . . ." Aya managed. "I can't . . . not okay . . ."

"You want me to help you down -"

"No!" The words had left Aya's mouth before she had realized it.

"Yeah, tough luck, though," he said, moving towards her to prop her up, "'cause you're gonna faint, and then I'll have to carry you, and then you'll be even harder to get down all these stairs."

"B-But," Aya stuttered, "th-th-them." She gestured vaguely to the demons, still visible in the sky.

"You are one of the Sureiyazu, right?" he asked skeptically. "I'm pretty sure you've seen demons before. C'mon, let's go . . ."

He helped her, though she protested much, back down the stairs and back into the ballroom, where he sat her down at a table.

"Wait a sec," he told her, "I'll get your team."

Aya blinked, unsure what to do. The initial feeling had left her, but now that it had, she wasn't sure what she should think. There was a part of her that had gone into panic mode, knowing that a certain demon had been able to come back to Sekai, even after everything, but some part inside her felt some kind of elation that it had. She had done that - she had been the one to -

"Hey!" Kasai burst into the room. "Demonslayer Dude told me what happened. You okay?" Soon, Akuma followed, then Yuri, and then the "Demonslayer Dude" himself.

They all brought up chairs around Aya, even the strange demonslayer, with some prompting from Kasai.

"You okay, Aya?" Akuma asked after a moment of silence.

Aya sighed. "No, n-not really."

"Do you wanna talk about it?" Yuri asked quietly, placing her hands over Aya's, clasped tightly in her lap.

"No," Aya smiled wearily, "but I suppose you all deserve to know."

"I don't, actually," the demonslayer man said, "but go ahead."

Aya sighed again. "It started . . . I don't even remember when. My parents both died of the Demon's Kiss when I was very young - too young to remember them very much at all."

"I'm sorry," Akuma whispered.

"Don't pity me," Aya told her, shaking her head. "It doesn't hurt me at all to say that. The rest of the story is the painful part."