Yusuke

The school bell ringing announced that it was time to go home and relax, much to my relief. 

“Yuu-kun. Do you want to have dinner at my house tonight?” asked Emica, a beautiful girl with long blonde hair and blue eyes whom I had been fooling around with since the year before. “My dad is traveling, which means we’ll be alone…” She trailed off, flirtatiously batting her eyelashes.

I shot her a small smile. “Thank you for inviting me, but I can’t tonight.” I rose to my feet after putting my textbooks into my shoulder bag, ready to get the hell out of there because I was annoyed at myself. 

“Why not?” she pouted, scowling deeply. “You never turned down an opportunity to be alone with me before.”

I pursed my lips and headed to the door without looking back, deliberately ignoring my other classmates’ attempts to speak to or charm me. As much as I enjoyed my status as Mori Senior High School's most handsome and popular student, I just couldn’t deal with anyone right then. 

“Yuu-kun, wait,” exclaimed Emica, running after me. 

I dashed down the stairs and through the hallways, only stopping when I reached the shoe lockers. 

“Oh, it’s you, Yusuke. What’s up with the scowl?” Tonkatsu patted me on the back. “I still can’t get over the fact that we’re not classmates this year.”

“The new girl is in your class, isn’t she?” I asked out of the blue.

Tonkatsu gaped at me in surprise as he confirmed, “Yes, she is. Her name is Nami Fukuyama, and she’s super cool and chill.”

I grumbled, “Why do you look so surprised?” 

I reached for my shoes in my locker, which was filled with notes from girls—either asking me to meet them or straight up confessing their love for me. I was not amused, though, as this type of occurrence had been happening daily for the last seven years. I stuffed the notes in my bag, intending to throw them into the trash can at home.

Tonkatsu laughed. “I’m surprised because it’s the first time you have shown any interest in a particular girl.”

“Yuu-kun, why didn’t you wait for me?” Emica panted, struggling to keep her pace as I stomped out of the building with Katsu. “Yuu-kun. Yuu-kun.”

Suddenly, I stopped in my tracks, my heart drumming against my ribcage.

“Yusuke, what is it?” Tonkatsu frowned at me before following my eyes to the school gate, his lips curving into a sly smile. “Ah, I see.”

I stared intensely at the most beautiful girl I had ever seen as she left the school, a grin spreading across her face when she reached the pathway, where the cherry blossoms were in full bloom.

“Wow,” I whispered, my eyes fixed upon the new girl’s figure. “She is stunning,” I breathed out, unaware that my friends could actually hear me. 

“What?” barked Emica, enraged. “What do you mean she’s stunning? Are you talking about the ugly new student?”

“So you really are in love with Nami-chan,” commented Tonkatsu, looking even more shocked than he did at the shoe lockers. “That’s definitely a first, and I never thought I would live to see this day.” He laughed.

“Hey, guys. Why are you all here?” Aimi approached us, my frozen state catching her attention. “Whom are you looking at?” she asked me while following my gaze, her expression mirroring Tonkatsu’s when she found the new girl in the distance. “Nami-chan, huh? I knew it.” She placed a hand on my left shoulder. “She doesn’t talk or smile much, but she’s cool.”

“This is bullshit,” yelled Emica, slapping Aimi’s hand away from me. “Tell them they are wrong, Yuu-kun. Tell them you don’t care about that ugly friend of theirs because you’re my boyfriend.”

I glared at her, my voice stern and cold as I stated, “For the last time, I’m not your boyfriend.”

She winced. “But, but—”

“I’m going home,” I grumbled before walking away from my friends without saying goodbye.

As I headed toward the car where my servant was waiting for me, I kept thinking about the new girl with long black hair and dark eyes whose delicate face reminded me of an ethereal being.

When I first laid my eyes upon her, her unmeasurable beauty took my breath away. However, as I gawked at her, her hair turned white, her eyes turned light blue, and majestic light blue wings emerged from her back. For a moment, I wondered if I was losing my mind and seeing things that weren’t there, but somehow, I felt in my heart that I was before an angel—a real angel from the Kingdom of Angels. 

“Prince Yusuke,” my driver greeted me when I sat in the back seat of the vehicle. Like myself, he was a demon disguised as a human in Tokyo. In fact, all the staff in my mansion were servants from the Kingdom of Demons whom my father ordered to serve me in the human realm.

“How was your day, Your Highness?” the driver, whose name I never bothered to remember, asked me.

The new girl’s face popped into my head immediately. “It was interesting,” I replied, wishing that I could just fly to my mansion without going through all the work of sitting in a car through the busy streets. However, I couldn’t grow my wings in the human realm, and on top of that, my magic didn’t work there either, which was both disappointing and annoying, considering that my life would be much easier if it did and if I could. 

“Your father would like you to have dinner with him tonight at the palace,” the servant informed me out of the blue.

“Thanks for letting me know,” I sighed, leaning my head against the seat and closing my eyes.

I hope Orochi won’t be there.

* * *

The mansion I had been living in since I first came to the human realm belonged to my parents, who didn’t bother hiding their wealth and need for comfort and luxuries. However, despite our lavish lifestyle, we didn’t become a bunch of snobs who only cared about power and money. As the Royal Family in the Kingdom of Demons, our devotion lay with our subjects, who looked up to and depended on us to lead happy lives. 

“Welcome home, Your Highness,” the servants greeted me as I entered the foyer. 

I nodded lightly in return and went straight up the stairs and into my bedroom, locking the door behind me to enjoy some alone time before dinner. I dropped my shoulder bag onto the carpet and jumped onto my bed, lying face down against the soft pillow. 

I should turn around because I can’t breathe.

I rolled on my back and looked at the white ceiling, the new girl’s face appearing in my head once again without notice. 

“An angel, huh?” I muttered, linking my hands behind my head. 

Never in a million years would I have imagined that I would meet an angel at school—a gorgeous one, for that matter. As far as I was aware, unlike demons, angels were not fans of the human realm and avoided it as much as possible for safety reasons. Although some of them did come to Tokyo to study and learn about human life, they returned to the Kingdom of Angels the second they were allowed by the king.

I personally had never visited their kingdom, but as the Demon Crown Prince, I met the Angel Royal Family when I was a kid, thanks to my dad’s insistence and my mom’s nagging. If my memory didn’t fail me, both families had coffee in Tokyo because it was viewed as a neutral ground where everyone had to behave. I talked briefly to the Angel King and Angel Queen at the time and their two sons. The former mentioned something about having a daughter my age, but she wasn’t present.

“I should inform Dad about the angel and ask for advice as to how to deal with her from now on. I’ll try to avoid her, but I doubt I’ll be successful, considering that Tonkatsu and Aimi have taken a liking to her, and they are two of my best friends. I can’t simply stop hanging out with them, nor do I want to,” I told myself, refusing to admit out loud that I was interested in getting to know the new girl better and completely smitten with her.

It wasn’t like demons were forbidden from being friends with angels, as, according to the Peace Pact formed centuries before, peace should reign between the two kingdoms for the rest of eternity. Although it was the reason why angels and demons developed a polite relationship, it came at the cost of many lives lost to wars, greed, and thirst for power. 

A knock on the door, followed by one of the servants appearing before me, snapped me out of my thoughts. “I am here to prepare your bath, Your Highness,” she said, her head low.

“Go ahead,” I responded, noticing her blush from the corner of my eye.

She practically ran to the en-suite bathroom, smiling shyly. 

I went back to staring at the ceiling, her reaction not affecting me at all. I was used to people ogling me wherever I went, and although I did understand that I was considered handsome in the human and demon realms, sometimes it was tiring and irritating, especially when they didn’t leave me alone. I had been dealing with those kinds of situations since I was a child, and one would think that I wallowed in it all. Spoiler alert—I didn’t.

My smartphone pinged, prompting me to fish it out of my pants pocket. As expected, it was a text message from Emica whining that I was too cold toward her that day, which I didn’t bother replying to.

I sighed, “Perhaps I should stop hanging out with her altogether because she is too clingy.” 

Emica and I had been having a sort of friends-with-benefits thing for the last year, which had been fun and all. But… 

I’m going to end things with her tomorrow because I don’t have intentions to date her; I never did. Besides, it’s not my fault if, at some point, she has started to believe that we’re serious, mainly because I’ve never hidden the fact that I’ve been going out on dates with other girls occasionally.

Like most seventeen-year-old boys, I enjoyed having fun with those I found attractive—no strings attached. Why would I want to commit to someone when love wasn’t what I was looking for? If my future hadn’t already been written and I got to decide what I wanted to do, it would be a different story. However, as the Crown Prince, it was pretty clear that I would eventually have to move back to the Kingdom of Demons to sit on the throne. My dad might have been the king at that moment, but he was a lazy bastard—a loving and caring one—who couldn’t wait to put me in charge so that he could retire and live the rest of his life peacefully with Mom.  

The servant from before reappeared in the room, still blushing. “Your bath is ready, Your Highness.” She fidgeted with her hands.

I jumped out of bed without uttering a word. 

She swallowed dryly and suggested, “If you wish, I can… take the bath… with you….”

I let out a deep sigh while heading to the en-suite bathroom. “No, and don’t suggest that again, or I’ll send you back to the demon realm,” I warned her in a cold voice. 

She trembled, visibly terrified and embarrassed. “Ye-Yes, Your Highness. My apologies.” She darted out of the room, crying.

“Since when have my servants become so bold and ill-mannered?” I shook my head in disapproval and took off my school uniform.

After thoroughly rubbing and washing my body and hair in the shower, I slipped into the bathtub, relishing the warm water. It felt so good that I could have slept for hours in there.

A part of me wanted to skip dinner with my dad and stay put at home to relax and do nothing. However, even though my parents weren’t strict or anything, I knew them well enough to anticipate an important conversation ahead, which was already giving me a hell of a headache as a result. 

“I wonder what they want to talk to me about,” I muttered, my eyes closed. “If only they had another baby to relieve me from the throne.”

Suddenly, I saw a vision of the new girl on the other side of the tub, smiling at me broadly. An unfamiliar sensation ran through my entire body, unburying feelings that I had never experienced before.

Nami Fukuyama, who are you?

* * *