The keyboard sitting on the desk was wrong. It had no letters or numbers, just clean tiles etched with ancient glyphs that glowed a faint amber when her fingers kissed them. Orientation had drilled the set for weeks. The stroke order, the thumb rolls. Two glyphs made a verb, three made a command, six a function. No one explained why they had to learn it, only that certification required fluency. 'Private, read, then repeat. Solve, and solve again.' The instructors never used her given name, like everyone else. No one here did.

She continued to type.

Two tickets sat open on the left slate. Each spun a diagram like a slow, coiling puzzle; sigils revolving through diagnoses. Her job was simple and endless. Find the solution, find an alternative, then submit the results. She found the pace insulting. They simply wanted a clever fish to swim through the data. She performed regardless, because rent was a mouth and money was food, and because research was the one thing that never argued with her. She was skilled in that aspect.

She logged the first pair. The screen stamped her entry with a square seal that meant received and under review. She rolled her wrist, flexed the ache from her knuckles, and leaned back until the chair sighed from the weight. It would have been satisfying if the sigh had been louder than the air vents filling the room.

Then a second chair rolled into her space without warning.

"Damn, jefa, you done already? You didn't cheat, right?" the person grinned.

She blinked at the woman who had invaded her armrest. Short, pigtails knotted with cheap ribbons, eyes like trouble trying to be a smile. The chair's wheels bumped the side of her boot. The woman peered at the slate as if peeking under a lid.

"Jefa?" The red demon said, her voice flat.

The pigtails bobbed. "It's an ancient tongue for the word 'boss'. Hahaha. Cool, right? I think a southern vernacular fits you."

The red demon grimaced. She was a colleague, not a superior. The woman had been trying titles on her for weeks now, switching languages like earrings.

"Miranda, stop calling me that. Using dead languages doesn't make it any better."

"I told you Mimi is fine!" She slapped her shoulder. "Everyone calls me that. Miranda is a milf's name."

The red demon rolled her eyes. "And what's wrong with that?"

Mimi feigned shock and held a hand to her chest. "Jefa, I'm only twenty-six. I got four good years of youth left. I'm not gonna jump the gun!"

The vents hummed. Somewhere in the bullpen a printer clicked with fresh diagrams and theories across the room. The red demon turned back to the slate and began to type the summaries that would make her solutions simple for someone who would never see her face. Mimi shook her head like a tutor losing patience with a gentle idiot.

"See? That's why you can't get a date, jefa. You're the same age as me, but you don't grab your youth by the tits! You're gonna wake up with aunt status and you're gonna just look like a creep hitting on guys when you go out. Put yourself out there a little."

She ignored her. Clubs were loud. Men in clubs were louder. Also ruder and paid for nothing. Silence paid better.

An elbow nudged her. "Yo, jefa, what do you think of the new guy?" Mimi pointed her chin at a cubicle across the room. A tall, skinny demon, bent over a worktop, his face gave off a bookish bloodline, his setup neat as a shrine. "Tall drink of water, right?"

She looked, because Mimi wouldn't stop grinning at her until she did. Sure, he was tall. Taller than she was by an inch or two. 6'3 maybe. Much taller than Mimi, a 5'9 femlet.

"Yeah. He's tall. Probably a little taller than me. Way taller than you." the red demon said without a care.

Mimi's grin went crooked. "Right? You ain't interested? I heard he's single too."

"No."

Mimi laughed loud at the instant choice. Loud enough to make three heads turn. She turtled down in her chair, cursed herself and continued. "Welp. If you ain't gonna appreciate him," she leaned in, hand making a crude stroking gesture in the air, "guess I will."

The demon almost laughed, a real one, not the office version. But she held it in and kept her face steady instead.

"Those kinds of gestures are offensive in a setting like this. Don't do that at the office." She used her responsible voice.

"Oh please, stop pretending," Mimi said, canines in view. "You know it was funny." She leaned closer, voice down. "Wasn't it, ShotaShield?"

The red demon's chair snapped upright. Her fingers missed the home row and lit a useless cluster of glyphs.

"Miranda, you… how?"

Mimi wiggled her fingers, pleased with herself. "Don't worry, your secret's safe with me, Jefa. Since I'm in that research forum too." She said with a wink. "Same thread. Different time zone. Nice bouncer by the way, I still have a shitty vpn."

"Forum?... You are?"

Mimi chuckled. "Hell yeah, sis. It's a long story, but I also found one of those fragments. That was the only place any information was-"

But suddenly, the alarm bit into the room in a loud, unapologetic tone. Red lights at the corners began to pulse, nothing like the soft amber of the keyboards glyphs. The doors at the end of the room groaned in their tracks. A ranker in gray plate burst through the bullpen entrance, sweating, glowing visor up, hair pasted to her temple.

"We're in lock-down! Heretics incoming! Technicians head to the bunker on basement level-"

BOOM

The floor jumped. The sound arrived a moment later, a blunt punch from above. Ceiling dust sifted down in a gray veil that made everyone cover their mouths and blink. The red demon's chair skidded an inch. She reached for the desk, the desk moved away. For a second the room rotated around her, all at once, as if the building had decided to roll over in its sleep.

"B-basement three!" someone yelled from the corridor. "Breach on basement three!"

The ranker's mouth kept moving, instructions following the script she had been drilled to say, but the words fell apart under the next tremor. Then the lights died. The red emergency strips along the baseboards caught, then stuttered in the near pitch black bullpen. The world tilted twenty degrees in a violent sway.

Mimi's hand tried to grab the red demon's shoulder and missed. The chairs collided, they fell like a handful of dominos. The demon tried to stand and her boot caught in a tangle of cords. She went down and the slate came with her, the arm pivot throwing the screen into her face. The glyphs rapidly filled her vision and then stretched thin to a bright smear.

She thought, absurdly, of the instructor from orientation, voice like dry paper. 'Private, when the alarm sounds you don't think, you follow. Private, your path is marked.' The screen kissed her brow hard enough to ring light behind her eyes. The red strips went white in the same breath.

The slate slid off her and hit the floor. She didn't feel it.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Everything went black after that.

~~~

Hannya's eyes snapped open. Cold sweat collected at her brow, then broke and ran along her temple. She watched in a daze and tried to hold the fragments of memory before they slid back into the dark of her mind.

A keyboard without letters. Glyphs that glowed when touched. 'Private'. The word sat on her tongue like an order she had obeyed for years. She reached for more and felt the shape of them drift away.

DING

[

Memory Integrity Check Triggered.

Devil Recall: near perfect

Exception: flagged

Note: Caution! Recurrence pattern matches a prior lapse. Tampering suspected!

]

Her chest tightened. This has happened before. First time could be ignored, but a second? A devil's memory was supposed to keep everything. A body made to hold a life without gaps. Yet here was a new hole, crisp at the edges. Same as before.

This wasn't fantasy. She knew that much. It had been her. Not a made story, not a playful nightmare. It was something she had done, in a life that shouldn't have left her, but had left a few rooms unlit regardless.

Suspicion grew where comfort should have sat.

She rolled, meaning to look up to the ceiling and slow her breath. But instead of the pavilion ceiling she found a face filling her world. Short white hair cut to the line of the jaw. Golden eyes lit like an altar. A white maid dress, clean lines, clean gloves, posture without apology.

The woman was looking down at her. Close enough that Hannya could count the tiny shadows at the base of each lash.

The maid smiled once, small, like a courtesy lapse offered to a fussy child.

Hannya's hair stood on end. She pushed down the bile threatening to come up and scowled instead, rolling away from the maids lap pillow so quickly her horns lightly whistled through the air. She grit her teeth and jabbed a finger at the benign maid as if it were a blade, ready for action.

"Pedophile, you dare!?" She shrieked righteously. Another maid taking advantage of her sacred body in her sleep. She was sure now. Maids in this world had a loose relationship with boundaries. Predators, the whole lot!

The word hung in the white air. The maid tilted her head by a measured degree with a blank expression. She didn't look offended, just confusion moved under the surface of her expression.

Almost like she didn't even know the word used.

But before Hannya's righteous outrage grew further, a chuckle came from behind them. The pitch too wrong to be kind, texture too wrong to be hateful. Performative, would be the most accurate assessment. Hannya turned.

The room was a lounge carved from opulence and restraint. White everywhere except where gold shone. Mirrors without reflections. Paintings framed in heavy gilt, each one a blank field of white that refused to become anything else. No windows. No doors. One white love seat. One singular chair opposite it. A short table between them like a stage block.

On the love seat sat a young man with white hair and golden eyes. The same eyes as the maid, but playful where hers were stoic. He leaned forward with his elbows on the table. His fingers were interlocked in front of his mouth. Only his eyes watched her. The pose tried to be grave and only managed to look theatrical.

"Yōkoso…" he said, and his eyes widened with manufactured fire. "Shōnen!"

"..."

"..."

The words meant nothing to her ear, but the voice reached past meaning to recognition.

DING

[

Your Supreme blood has flared due to unexpected encounter.

Senses gathering information…

[Cold Reading] and [Method Actor] are cooperating…

Tone match: prior encounter

Identity probability: > 0.98

]

"Left!?" she said, enraged and incredulous.

He chuckled again, bright and pleased. "As expected, a buddy always recognizes a buddy!"

She sat up fully from the floor, took in the entire room, and cataloged it with the ol' devil glance. White and gold. No exits, no seam. Opulence that tried too hard to pretend it was modest. It reminded her of a jewelry box for a god.

Left smiled as if he felt the thought. He adjusted his cuffs in a way that managed to be both real and performed.

"Homunculus suits are currently trending in the family," he said. "Thanks to our trend setter, the eldest, Forwards P. Direction." He waggled his finger in the air and shrugged. "But that's not important."

He bowed from the waist while seated, palm to chest, one eyebrow raised like a man full of mystery.

"Welcome to my pocket dimension," he said. "My name is Left. I am delighted to make your acquaintance."

He was preening. Undeniably pleased with his staging. But Hannya's eyes widened with a different feeling entirely.

"You… You velvet roomed me?"

Left's laugh softened as he continued his script. He turned his palm toward the maid, who had stepped back from Hannya's side.

"This is Elizabeth," he said. "She is a resident here, like myself-... Wait, you know this place?"

Next to him, the maid's face didn't change. But Hannya felt the urge behind the stillness anyway, the minute press against an eye roll that didn't happen.

[

[Cold Reading] is analyzing …

Subject: 'Elizabeth'(?)

Inferred impulse: embarrassed eye roll

Suppressed: yes

]

Hannya's teeth ground, a quiet fury rose without a run-up. Velvet roomed. He had taken her from sleep and wrapped her inside a space between dream and reality. Another room in the Inbetween Worlds. Why he had the authority to do this was beyond her understanding, he should be barred from doing so since his sentencing.

What's worse, she hadn't been asked, she hadn't been warned, and there was no way out.

"What am I doing here?" she hissed through her teeth. She didn't lift her voice, the anger alone carried her words.

Left rubbed his chin with two fingers and looked at her as if she were a puzzle, curious about how she knew of his secret base. He ignored the glare, this was buddy time!

"You couldn't have learned it from my old buddy…" he said, almost to himself. "Well, I suppose it doesn't matter how you know. I trust you'll keep it a secret, buddy."

He straightened his collar by a hair and cleared his throat. His smile climbed back onto his face with what he felt should be 'warmth'.

"I wanted to do a wellness check for a buddy," he said in a professional tone. "I haven't heard from you in a while. We agreed to meet again in a month or so… Well, you didn't say no, and it has been three months already!"

He lifted both hands in a helpless shrug. "Schedules, schedules."

Hannya said nothing. She stared at him the way a blade looks at a throat before choosing its next move.

Left coughed in the awkward silence. Elizabeth's eyes shifted a fraction his direction. He noticed and continued to speak.

"Haha, I-I figured you would contact me sooner," he said, accelerating his own confession. "Since you left before I explained the mechanics of your boon. I let you go without saying anything because I thought you might come back to… to ask… naturally…"

He stopped. He had heard his own words. He had noticed how ugly they tasted leaving his mouth.

Elizabeth shook her head to the side. Left glanced at her, then away, with a sheepishness that tried to be disarming and came off as practiced.

He looked back to Hannya.

She was sitting in the chair across from him now. He didn't remember her crossing the room. But she was shaking. Not from fear or anything like that. From pure, barely contained ire that wanted to break loose and flip the table in front of her.

'Observer's gaze,' Left thought. 'Buddy isn't looking too good.'

He cut his eyes to Elizabeth in a small plea. The maid lifted her chin and turned her face away, the butlery version of 'you made this bed'. He looked back to Hannya with a grin that was ten percent apology and ninety percent stall.

He then thought of the 'bait'. He didn't plan to use it now, but he had no choice it seemed.

"Present!" he blurted. "Young Hannya, I brought you here to gift you a present, of course. Not just to chat." He lied.

He sat up straight as if the sentence had bought him a throne. He clapped twice, brisk and clean. He turned to the maid with the pompous air of a petty noble.

"Emily, go hither and get our guest her present." he commanded.

Elizabeth stared at him, her face deadpan. An entire poem of long-suffering in a single blank look.

Left sneakily cut his eyes to Hannya, then back to Elizabeth. He shaped 'please, just this once' with his mouth without letting any sound escape.

The maid just sighed quietly. The sigh had the dignity of a no that had chosen to be yes, this once. She then blinked, then she blinked again. The space on the table between the love seat and the chair enfolded a red glow and birthed an object without fuss.

A red box sat whispering power into the white room.

Hannya turned toward it, mouth suddenly parted. She didn't like that it had, but who could blame her? She was a devil. Energy gathered around the box like a storm, but kept steady within the square orbit. Her fingers rose without asking her. She felt a soft pull in her blood, its own tiny gravity moving her closer to the red cube.

"What is this?" she asked.

Left smiled with relief that didn't bother to hide itself. He had avoided a break. For now. He glanced at the maid triumphantly. She ignored him, keeping her face forward.

"A gift from the Master," he decided to answer. "I'm not completely sure why. He has expressed that you should wear it at all times if possible."

She looked up. Her brows knitted. "The Observer? And at all times? Why?"

"It seems you have a uniquely high affinity with the Charm Law," he said. "And it will cross a threshold after your evolution is what I assume." He leaned in over the table, elbows close, voice lower. "The kind of threshold that is a curse rather than a boon."

Hannya tasted a familiar bitterness. The novel loved this trick. A gift that's also a trap. Power that asks a tax you can't refuse. Typical. And of course she had to be one of them.

She thought of Gula, one with a law affinity that also broke a threshold. It nearly killed her over and over again. The only reason she was alive today was due to luck, Hans, and an artifact that held her together.

Left clasped his hands and made the words formal again, as if polishing them would change their weight. "Wearing it would be… most beneficial. The Master's recommendations are quite accurate."

The anger settled into focus. She nodded and reached out, setting her hand on the lid. Her palm felt the hum that lived in the cube. It was warm, patient, certain.

She lifted.

The lid rose on steady hinges. The red glow climbed the walls.

Hannya craned her neck and looked inside.

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