Clara Salem, King of Darkness, Manager of the Black Bank, Princess of the Undying, had many, many reasons to inspire fear in those who got near her.

Yusuf Grant seemed to ignore each and every one of those reasons, sitting across from Clara with one of those ‘I caught on shit’ smiles.

The two reasons the boy weren’t a smear across some floor, or exploded into a shower of gore, would be that Clara was a King, a figure of authority, if she casually started killing weak Sages she’d be undermining her own authority, until the point that the other Kings would need to step in to ‘deal’ with her…

And the other reason tied into that first point, the boy’s mother was sitting at the table as well, a cup of tea being sipped quietly…

Clara almost wished that she wasn’t good friends with Rabia. It would make it easier to hate her child for asking difficult questions.

“So? I waited until my mother arrived, my father spoke to you last night, let’s hear it. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone…” Yusuf asked, the grin on his face just begging Clara to kill him.

She wouldn’t obviously, but Clara was really considering it.

“…What do you know about the Anomaly?” Clara asked, but she didn’t look at Yusuf when she did so, instead looking to Rabia, King of Wind.

“…The Anomaly? Oh, you mean…” Rabia shared a glance with Yusuf, the boy raising his hands in appeasement as he closed his eyes, Rabia silencing the area around the boy, preventing sound from getting near him.

“The Dungeon generator… or whatever it is. I’ve managed to ask about, call in a few favours, and it seems that Null Sons presence seems to spike wherever that thing goes.” Rabia blinked, then narrowed her eyes.

“So the Anomaly might be supporting the Null Sons? That sounds insane, anything beyond baseline humans disturbs that group…” Rabia pointed out the fallacy, the Null Sons hated Fae, Sages, Mystic Beasts, they were all under the ‘hated’ category for Null Sons members, and those were the only powerful beings, not counting Elementals.

“That was my thought as well.” Clara gave a glance to Yusuf, and Rabia dispelled the silencing area around him, his eyes opening.

Yusuf knew there were things he was not at liberty to know, his power as a Sage, his trust, there would be things he should look away from, and he didn’t mind doing so.

“Ahem, ignoring that bit of subtext that you aren’t supposed to know, I was running an experiment of sorts…” Clara admitted, folding her arms as she leaned back in her chair.

“See, there’s something that is above your clearance, and it’s connected to the Null Sons somehow. I incited this situation to see how it would react. Would it protect the Null Sons? Would it attack the Rogue Sages I placed there? Would it even bolster their forces?” Clara’s explanation had Yusuf blinking before he placed a hand on the table and began tapping.

The tapping was consistent, a metronome of motion, a habit ingrained from Rabia, who had noticed Yusuf’s love of music and taught him to do the action.

It was a method to tell time, regulate his heartbeat, focus, it was such a small thing, but it was definitely important to Yusuf, to the point he did it subconsciously now, leaving Rabia smiling as she watched.

“So it’s an opening blow of sorts? But if the Rogue Sages were under your control, why the murders, why let them get caught?” Yusuf asked, realizing that the publicity for the murders was probably also because of Clara, what with her controlling the flow of money in the world of Sages, she was a person who ‘had a finger in every pie’ which included news and communications.

“Well Sages are beings who like doing one thing for many reasons. Think of a few.” Clara asked with a raised brow, and Yusuf’s metronome tapping continued in the silence as he thought.

“…I think, the murders had reasons, my father already mentioned that at least one of the Rogue Sages believed that they were doing the right thing, killing normal humans and hiding them as Sages… speaking of which, you added those people into the Sage registry, didn’t you?” Yusuf asked, Clara nodding slowly, motioning for him to continue with his words.

“So there were little to no actual Sages getting killed… and if they were, they did something ‘worth’ murdering them.” Yusuf’s emphasis on the word ‘worth’ showed what he thought of that, but he continued nonetheless.

“As for getting them caught, I would assume that it was because you got the information you wanted, or realized that this plan would not get the information you wanted.” Yusuf concluded.

“Yeah, a lot of your thoughts are right. I caught those Rogue Sages, told them to go pretend to be Null Sons members, and keep mention of my influence low. I had them murder criminals, Rogue Sages, and humans who were harming the future generation of Sages.” Clara said, looking to the sky from their spot in the garden of the palace.

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“Long term, the effects of this might be a bit small, but there will be long term effects. I’ve generated hate to the Null Sons, eliminated undesirables within the Sage community and some humans who were harming the Sages longer term.” Clara then sighed.

“That said, this definitely didn’t go as planned. The King of Lightning got involved slightly, along with the King of Water, both likely know something is up at this point, especially Kai. And as for the thing connected to the Null Sons, it didn’t do anything. There were no signs of it.” Clara leaned forward, resting her head on a hand.

“In the end, this was a bad move. There were better ways to go about it that I can see now, but at least I learnt that that thing won’t harm itself to protect the Null Sons, or it will remain quiet while focus is on them.” Clara complained, and then the three seated at the table heard footsteps, seeing Jonathan approaching…

The three still seated unanimously and wordlessly agreed that the rest of the conversation would happen another time.

“Jonathan, good to see you. Anything interesting happening with your class?” Clara asked, watching the man lean down to kiss Rabia’s head before taking a seat next to her.

Jonathan took a good few seconds to think, and then spoke two words in response.

“Teenage drama.”

So to explain that point, with the second year S-Class… well, Kazuya, Edward, Tony, and Vince were running around Regalia, fooling around and going out to eat while talking about the Null Sons raid.

Jade on the other hand, was visiting the Gardenia Corporation headquarters located in Regalia, apparently meeting up with a family member there.

That left only two members of the S-Class that were there when Jonathan left, and it was those two that Jonathan was talking about.

Liza and Leah both looked at each other, seated at a table in the corner of a diner, Leah with a cup of tea and Liza with coffee.

There was a silence, a tension to the table, and then Liza spoke.

“…I don’t hate you.” Leah blinked, slowly, hearing the words Liza spoke and accepting them, but raising a brow in curiosity.

“Seriously. I don’t hate you for dating Hiiro.” Liza said with a sigh, taking a sip of her coffee before continuing.

“Of course I’m jealous. Of course I’m envious. I’m not unfeeling… But for me, that person is more important.” Leah stared at Liza for a moment, and the weight of Liza’s love for Kazuya became apparent.

“If you make him happy, that’s good. I’d rather he be happy.”

It was terrifying in its own way… how willing Liza was willing to sacrifice, her own opinion, her own thoughts, her feelings, she was willing to give all those up, to suffer, so long as Kazuya was happy at the end.

It was…

“That’s wrong!” Leah growled back, Liza surprised at the vehemence in the normally soft-spoken voice of Leah.

“Liza… in everything you do and say, you show you care for Hiiro, regardless of how he feels… but…” Liza looked at Leah, seeing the sadness on Leah’s face.

“But… I’ve not once noticed you giving yourself anything close to the care you give him.” Liza blinked, still uncertain as to what Leah was getting at.

It was just more of a sign to Leah that she had to speak now.

“I… Liza… you are giving everything to him… but… do you think that would leave him happy?” Leah asked, and Liza blinked, clearly missing the point…

“Liza… if you gave your all to him, to the point where you have nothing left… that wouldn’t make him happy. That would make him sad. You need to care more about yourself. You need to have more self-worth.” It was a bit of ‘irony’ for Leah to say this, she realized, having had self-esteem issues for a large part of her life…

But it was the S-Class who had gotten her to talk more, to stutter less, to actually… feel that she was more than just a shy, clumsy girl.

And yet the strongest of their class didn’t seem to have the same lesson in mind.

“But… seeing him happy makes me happy.” Liza said, as if that was all the explanation she needed, but it truly wasn’t, and Leah frowned.

“Yes, seeing someone you care about be happy would normally make you happy… but the fact that you aren’t the cause of his happiness bothers you. You act like it doesn’t, but the signs are there Liza.” Leah said with a hint of vehemence in her voice, recalling the small frowns and shakes of the head that she had caught from Liza before.

“But you are my friend also. He chose you, and I don’t want to hate you. So I accept it.” Liza pointed out, clearly trying to take the moral high ground.

Leah refused this.

“So you just accept a bad situation, and keep quiet about it, rather than speak and seek change? What are we doing now?” Leah wasn’t one for confrontation on most days, but when she felt the need to speak her mind, she would be heard.

And now was a time to be heard, Liza staring at the uncharacteristically stern expression of the typically quiet Leah…

“Airing out our differences, so to speak.” Liza finally spoke, acknowledging the ‘intervention’ for what it was, and Leah nodded in agreement.

“Exactly. Now I’m going to say what I expect… you love Hiiro. I… I can’t say the same yet. And neither of us can control him.” Leah acknowledged and then, after a few moments of silence, punctuated with the occasional sips from either girl, she spoke once more.

“I… would not stop you, from pursuing him. You actually love him, and if Hiiro picked you over me, I’d know he would be cared for.” Leah admitted after a moment, and Liza raised an eyebrow, clearly asking if Leah was serious with her statement.

“You… would be okay with me trying to get him to love me?” Liza asked, a quiet whisper almost as she looked down to her cup of coffee.

“For you and only you. I mean, if some girl that I didn’t know just randomly showed up and started flirting with him, even I’d get mad.” Leah giggled a bit, Liza feeling a huff of laughter leave herself at the thought of Leah ‘defending her territory’.

“…Is this an acceptance of sharing?” Liza asked with a raised eyebrow, and Leah blinked… then flushed, beyond embarrassed at the idea.

The sight of Leah going near neon with blush had Liza laughing, wondering how the girl could have spoken about her relationship so calmly until the thought of polygamy got brought up.

“I-I… I don’t think I could do that... I’m… still getting used to the idea of d-dating one person.” Leah admitted, and Liza rolled her eyes, taking a sip of her coffee, the sip allowing her to hide her smile.

So… Liza could try and ‘steal’ Kazuya from Leah… and if Leah ‘got used to’ dating one person, well, then Liza would consider taking the chance to get Leah used to dating two people.

Liza wasn’t exactly bi, but if Leah’s presence made Kazuya happy… well, Liza could tolerate it, and consider it.

But for now, Liza would simply take a bit of enjoyment at making Leah squirm in her seat.