Opinions

The Disaster

(Sorry this is a day late, I ended up super busy yesterday. Anyway, I have one more class left on Tuesday then it's just working on assignments at home. Not sure if I'll need to take a short hiatus from writing but it's possible so I'll keep you guys updated. Onto the next one-shot~!)

He was terrifying at first.

Such a young, innocent-looking face. So unassuming. She had hardly even noticed he was standing there and walked right into him. But when he opened his mouth and started speaking, Chiho could tell something wasn't right about him.

When those wings sprung from his back, she was rooted to the ground with shock and fear, she had never seen anything like it. She couldn't believe any of it was real at that point. He didn't waste any time in knocking her out with a spell and hiding her away out of sight, where she couldn't see, hear, even think. She didn't have time to ask questions before she fell unconscious.

Eventually, Chiho was jostled awake to find herself in Miss Yusa's lap. She tried to figure out what was going on but it was all happening to fast. All she knew was that whoever the boy with the black wings was, he was a threat. And a powerful one, at that. She was stuck in a daze, staring up at the fight taking place above her.

Her image of him soon changed though, plummeting down almost instantly. Once he was subdued, looking up at them from the ground with his face swollen and bruised, he seemed harmless. And his conversation with the others was so casual, you wouldn't think they'd just been battling it out in the sky mere minutes ago. From what she could pick up, the boy was Lucifer, a fallen angel, and was clearly the lowest of the low. Stealing Miss Yusa's wallet was enough evidence of that, as far as Chiho was concerned. He no longer seemed like someone worth being afraid of.

Still, she kept her distance, at least for a short while.

She was too embarrassed to say so, but Chiho actually was still frightened of him, even when he was living the sad, simple life of Hanzo Urushihara. She struggled to come to terms with how Maou accepted him into his home so easily, even if he was a former general of his army. And all this talk about armies and demons and angels and other worlds was a little too much to take in all at once. She could believe it, of course, she had seen it for herself after all, but it was a wonder she never suddenly woke up and discovered that the whole thing had been a dream.

Despite everything, Chiho never questioned Maou's decision directly. She trusted him; she trusted that he knew what he was doing. She learned to accept Urushihara's constant presence in room 201 at Villa Rosa. Eventually, she realised it was starting to become strangely comforting to know he would always be there. Something else she didn't care to admit to. After some time, she was used to his lazy lifestyle, his technology addiction and his snark. She felt enough at ease around him now to make her own snide comments towards him. It could be entertaining sometimes.

Urushihara was an annoyance, a worthless leech, there was no doubt about that. Not as Chiho saw it, at least. She wasn't exactly happy that he was there, taking up space and getting in the way when she could be enjoying her time with Maou. But soon she began to notice little things about him. He didn't help out around the apartment, but he did help Maou with getting magic. He didn't show any signs of regretting the way he acted now, but he did show signs of regretting things in his past. He didn't seem very humble or respectful, but he did seem... insecure.

She never said anything, though. She didn't feel it was her place to, and anyway she couldn't really be sure about it without confronting him directly. And the thought of that was enough to make her flinch.

He was a mess, in so many ways. Literally, for one. The area around his computer desk was always littered with empty bags, bottles and boxes and he wore the same clothes day in and day out. Figuratively, too. It seemed to Chiho that Urushihara had no direction in life, not since he came to Earth. He was clearly content to stay inside and waste all his time on junk food, video games and surfing the internet. And on top of that, if she was right, he had some kind of internal problem as well. Most likely multiple problems.

She still found it hard to forgive him.

But some things, she had to admit, made her feel just a bit more sympathetic towards him. He did plant those trackers on Miss Yusa and Miss Suzuno, but it was because of his quick thinking that Maou could get the magic to save them from Sariel. He did screw up and land his roommates in hot water with that scam ordeal, but he had only been trying to make up for spending so much of their money on those trackers.

And anyway... it was sort of because of him that she had even learned about magic in the first place.