Raziel and Lialah’s ability to stifle their laughter did nothing to change the reality of what they heard Jason say behind them. The teacher, mouse that she was, said nothing about Jason’s uttered words, looking away as if to say, ‘I heard nothing.’

‘She heard it. She saw it.’ Lialah realized, and likely so did the others. And with that she turned her mind elsewhere. To why. ‘Lisa did nothing when Albaer was attacked outside her home. And the ones who attacked him did it as a group. The ones who attacked him while Raziel was in possession of his body attacked him together as well. No duels, no ‘one on one’.’

Only one word could come to mind for them.

‘Cowards.’ Lialah mouthed the word while looking at the teacher at the head of the class, and the bright blue eyes of the angel in disguise loomed like moons of blue, intense enough that the teacher didn’t look at Lialah again.

Instead the woman coughed, cleared her throat, and then pointedly turned her back to focus on the board behind her where a shaky hand wrote things Lialah didn’t care to read.

The more the angel thought, the more sense it made. ‘Albaer’s mother killed herself, so did his father, leaving their son to fend for himself…’ As she followed this train of thought, Lialah began to wonder more about their unexpected host. ‘Is he just… afraid to deal with her death? Is he utterly mad? Deluded? Lying to himself about the corpse in his house?’ No clear answer came and yet she couldn’t let go of the questions.

She was so focused on her inner thoughts that she noticed nothing until her sister poked at her several times. She then blinked and refocused, the teacher was repeating Lialah’s assumed name several times. “Isabella? I said please borrow a book from your neighbor, and then read the passage on page sixty-six.”

Lialah blinked her eyes several times and then extended her hand to the nearest person, a chubby young girl flashed Lialah a weak little smile, blushed, brushed back her loose brown hair, and handed the book over.

Lialah returned the smile and her neighbor flushed red with embarrassment and looked away, down at her now barren desk, and Lialah stood up after turning to the proper page.

The disguised angel cleared her throat and just before she began reading, an impulse overtook her. ‘I’ll never be able to be in a play back home, never again… but hey, why can’t I perform a little while I’m here?!’ It was a singularly delightful warmth that burst in her breast when she felt the eyes of the students on her, and she didn’t ‘read’ the passage.

She performed it. She read it once in silence, measured the tone, and thrust one hand out into the air as if reaching to grasp the sun in the sky outside and called out her woeful lines with the full force of an angel of judgment. Gentle fingers soft and tender, now hard as steel, one foot back and one before her, she barely glanced down at the book, keeping her eyes fixed at the far end of the class. ‘All pity choked with custom of fell deeds, and Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge, with Ate by his side come hot from hell, shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice cry, “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men groaning for burial!’

She snapped the book shut with a clap of thick bound paper and dropped it on the empty desk, a slamming thunder to cap off her routine, as Lialah were back home again on the stage, she lowered her hand, bobbed at the knees and quietly took her seat.

The student body of her class was quiet, silent, and for a long moment not even the teacher who called on her said anything. From somewhere in the class, which Lialah took no notice of, somebody said, “How do we follow that? Were you in the drama club back home?”

Lialah handed the book back to her neighbor, whose blush now deepened ten times over. Lialah answered the unnamed voice saying, “No, I just used to do plays… it wasn’t a club… I guess.” She shrugged.

Her neighbor’s fingers shook like they were freezing and were sweating as if they were too hot, and when she tried to take the book back, she lost her grip. The book fell to the floor with a second slap to the ground, and someone piped up…

“That’s not how encores work!”

Amidst a flurry of brief laughter, the chubby brown haired girl let out an “eep” and said, “S-Sorry!” Then hastily bent over, snatched it up off the floor and set it back down on her desk. She then flipped it open to a random page and began to read, or pretend to.

“Ah… that was good… a good reading, Isabella.” The teacher said with a wan smile and a faint red tinge to her cheeks.

Raziel couldn’t keep the grin on her face when Lialah lost herself in the brief performance. ‘So… they have plays here too… that’s fantastic. And a club for it…’ Raziel looked down at the skin on her hands, she blended in perfectly with humans, nobody would know her for a demon, let alone a succubus. ‘Maybe we should try that together? If I want to perform, I can do it without being relegated to the sex temptress who dies every time.’

Then it hit her.

Her eyes widened as the obvious beat her about the brain with its potency. ‘I’m not a demoness here. I’m not a succubus. Neither of those are real in this world, I can be… do anything… As long as I stay in disguise I am completely free. Nobody will assume I’m just a… what were those advertisements for? Blow up toys? Sex dolls? Nobody will just think of what I can do for them. No, not quite true, bastards still very clearly exist here. But I won’t be prejudged as long as I keep myself hidden.’

A world of possibilities opened up to the demoness and her smile spread out over her face like butter on hot cakes.

‘Even if my world is safe… even if they’ve summoned and sacrificed a hero, or made one and sacrificed them, even if Albaer or we come up with some way to get back, I don’t think I want to go.’ Raziel realized it almost out of the blue. ‘Between endless opportunities to be whatever I want here, and… that, back home? Oh yes, I will definitely stay.’

Neither paid that much attention to the lesson, though they did pretend a fair bit until the bell rang and they watched the students rise to go to their next class.

“You two,” Jason said as he stood up, he rubbed his head once, then reached out to touch Raziel, she glared daggers at him, stilling the outreach of his hand, he then asked, “you were shadowing that guy, so you don’t know your way around why not come with me?”

The glare went on, and Lialah turned to give him the same withering stare, his hand slowly lowered.

Like they shared the same tongue, the pair said simply, “No.” Then when the class began to file out, Raziel snatched up Albaer’s backpack, and they left the room with only one place in mind to go.