Reze hated, hated, hated Asa.
Hated the way she would stick her nose up at everything Reze had been deprived, hated the way she would look at the silver plate she was handed with disdain and walk away from it, hated the way she would act so pitiful in spite of this.
It wasn't fair. Reze had no choice. She'd tried, had she not? Tried to default from the mission safely, to run away from everything she once was and steal all she had ever craved in the form of the boy-devil, tried to return to him even though she had known of the wolf waiting around the corner to wrap it's jaws around her neck to keep it's pup, come back from the very end of life just to return to the city. She had come back for the city mouse.
But the city mouse, the pup, the boy-devil, Denji, had found someone else. How Reze loathed it.
The first time she'd seen Denji since everything had happened was on a date with the new girl. Reze didn't know how she should feel. Betrayed, proud, angry, jealous? She needn't approach him until she had figured that out, she thought, and so she followed him and the girl right to the school.
'He's going to school...?' Reze had smiled at that. 'Good. He needs to.'
Then another thought. 'Could he... Could he get me in too, somehow?'
The very thought powered Reze through the rest of her journey in pursuit of her city mouse, right to the apartment of the girl. Asa. Denji had kissed her, and he had looked so loving, so gentle, so warm during it that Reze felt the pit in her stomach from when she had noticed him on a date grow into a gaping hole.
She kept up the pattern. She wasn't sure why. Follow, follow, follow. She had learnt a lot, maybe more then she could in school. Denji seems happy, Denji loves Asa, Asa.....
Everything Reze had learnt about Asa had turned the gaping hole into an all-consuming rage. She went to school, yet she bemoaned the experience constantly. What does it matter that she was bullied? Reze had never gotten an opportunity like that! Asa had also confided to Denji feeling jealous her peers, of their relationships, of the community and affections so casual amidst them. Denji had sympathized. Reze had not. Asa spurned social interactions, spurned her peers, spurned her desires. She had no right to complain.
And yet, when Reze went to sleep in her nearby apartment each night, all she could think about was what Asa's face must look like lying next to Denji.
Reze hated Asa.