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They come to awareness in a crisis, a figment of a child’s mind.
Ikki is small, so small that the demon can hold him easily. He’s strong, though. Strong enough to create the demon.
The demon holds him for a moment, because they know he will be their everything, and then they turn to the monster.
They look like the monster, on the inside. But Vail was ripped from his host, forcibly turned against his family. The demon is made for family because Ikki Igarashi is full of love .
(Sometimes it makes Yukimi wonder, wonder if Junpei had parents worth avenging, wonders if any part of the broken man she first fell in love with could be justified.
At the end of the day, even Kagerou loved his family. At the end of the day, the only one he ever wanted dead was Ikki.)
The demon is just born. They do not know how they attack, just that they do, and that they manage to rip Vail from Ikki’s father.
“Why?” The demon asks. “Isn’t our job to protect our host?”
“That’s what I’m doing,” Vail says. “His family has changed my Junpei into a weak willed man.”
Ikki loves his dad, so the demon loves Genta.
“No,” the demon says. “You’re the weak willed one for not allowing him to change!”
“You have no idea what prison I dragged myself from to be here.”
The demon doesn’t care.
The demon is powerful, in the right moments. This is the right moment.
Vail screams. He is put back where he belongs, though the demon does not know where that is.
The demon returns to their host.
“Ikki,” the demon says quietly. “I’ll always be there for you.”
Ikki’s favorite Disney movie is Little Mermaid, and he loves soccer and his family.
Ikki’s turning four, and he has a baby brother and a soon to be baby sister, and Ikki loves them, so the demon loves them. Ikki will do anything for his family even the time it means he almost falls off the playground five times to reach where Daiji got stuck. And then gets stuck himself.
(And the demon still doesn’t know how Ikki’s awkward nerd of a dad successfully gets them down. Maybe some of Vail’s strength was Genta’s.)
Ikki is the most wonderful person in the whole world. Except the demon themself.
And for every caring thing Ikki does, the demon can’t help but question. Is this right? Is this what Ikki wants and deserves?
And Ikki always says yes. Always wants to put more of himself into others.
The demon accepts it. Because it’s Ikki, and everything Ikki does is what the demon will know. No one will see them again.
Or so they thought. The demon begins to become aware of something. Some presence beyond them is watching the Igarashis. The demon worries at first that it’s malicious, but it seems… almost positive.
The demon likes it, starts rambling to the watcher whenever Ikki is asleep. They don’t want to bother Ikki, after all.
Time passes in this way, and the demon assumes this will be their everything. So they accept that Ikki is their life, and really, they like it.
Sometimes, Ikki talks to them in private.
“Hey,” he says. “Do you think this is all of me?”
What do you mean? The demon asks. Ikki shrugs.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I just wonder if I’m missing something.”
The demon thinks about Vail. Maybe Ikki is missing something. A one-time cost, surely. This is all they are.
It’s not bad, though. Ikki’s cool!
I think you’re just you. The demon says. They needle Ikki plenty, because it’s kind of frustrating being just a voice, but not here. Ikki does all the work himself when he looks at a mirror. Still, they think this isn’t enough.
Ikki needs answers, and the demon can’t give them.
The demon is supposed to question him, constantly. Support the things he represses.
“I don’t know…”
Well, what is it you want?
“I don’t know that either,” Ikki says. “It isn’t us in the mirror.”
Sometimes he does that. Uses “us”. The demon likes it.
Well, No duh, the demon says. I’m a part of you.
The demon learns they can search the internet. Slide inside and talk to themself without Ikki hearing. On there, too, they begin to suspect Ikki’s problem.
They’re not a man, that they’ve always known, so why had they ever assumed Ikki was a boy?
And they wonder… They can tell Ikki the hard truths, but will Ikki listen?
More importantly, they learn about the fourth wall, about borders between fiction and reality. They find a popular show they’ve only caught in passing.
(Ikki does not like to stay still, prefers games outside or even chores, because Ikki is wonderful, is a busybody like Ikki’s mom, likes to help others. Because Ikki is someone worth protecting, in the demon’s eyes. The demon prefers more casual things, video games and stories because it is all they can do, and they learn to delete search history, too.)
It is called Doraemon, and because they remember a voice that sounded like themself, the demon is curious.
They find Kimura Subaru, and it confirms their suspicions. A strange sense of familiarity, and an even stranger sense that they don’t like this, though when they whisper the words, it struggles to come out. Something controlled by the watchers, though they were only strong in small moments. The demon doesn’t care. They shouldn’t be a person at all, and it means they’re worth watching.
They think: they like being worth watching.
Have you considered you could be a girl?
“Wh-what?”
I’m just saying.
“I can’t be a girl,” Ikki says. “I’m Ikki. I like being Ikki.”
Ikki can be a girl, if she wants.
The demon feels the slight excitement of the other at their words. But Ikki just shakes Ikki’s head.
“No,” Ikki says. “I have to be a good big brother.”
The demon sighs. This might take a while.
The demon is there for the injury. And the aftermath. Ikki is clinging to Ikki’s legs.
“Shouldn’t I think it’s my fault?” Ikki asks, “Voice in my head, you’re being awful silent.”
Well, it wasn’t your fault, says the demon. Not really.
Doesn’t that hurt far more to hear? Isn’t that so necessary?
“It was,” Ikki says. “It was, so I have to do what he asked.”
Ikki doesn’t say his deepest thoughts. That’s the demon’s job.
You never really planned to go pro, the demon says for Ikki.
“I did,” Ikki says. “I wanted to.”
Did you?
“Why do you always ask me that?”
…because the demon is a demon, and in Ikki’s center is something repressed, like everyone else. But Ikki pushes back Ikki’s own needs, and Ikki loves soccer, even though Vice knows Ikki knows women leads as much as men’s but will never acknowledge any of it.
Do what you want, I suppose. Go all in!
Ikki trains and trains, and inside Ikki fades, and fades, and the demon watches.
Stop .
“No,” Ikki says. “This isn’t about me.”
But it’s breaking Ikki, and the demon can only watch, and when Ikki gives up, the demon is silent.
Ikki pushes identity lower and lower inside. The demon becomes louder and louder to compensate. It hurts.
But the demon can do nothing.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
“What… what if I were a girl?”
“Well, you’d still be my wonderful daughter,” says Yukimi. “But I like Ikki just as he is. You’ll always be my wonderful son.”
She doesn’t know. The demon tells themself that she doesn’t know, that Ikki’s hidden sufferings from the family because it’s easier. That she thinks her son is strong, that she thinks her son will tell her things, and sometimes, Ikki does!
But not all of it. Ikki doesn’t say quitting soccer was despair and guilt. Ikki doesn’t talk about feeling broken inside since a child. Ikki never talks about the demon, the strange voice.
The demon tells themself it’s not her fault. She couldn’t have known. Ikki loves her family, so the demon loves their family.
But then, they aren’t quite Ikki, either.
“I don’t really mind,” Ikki says, as though it’s at all true. “I love the bathhouse. I love the family. I won’t ruin my dream this time.”
You can take for yourself.
“I already took,” Ikki says. “Never again.”
But inside, she’s hurt, and she’s much worse than when the demon first met her, and they just want to take her pain away.
But they can’t. This is all there is.
Ikki can see them. Ikki can see them, and the watchers are at their strongest, and the demon knows something is different, this time.
Maybe… maybe things can change, after all.