Archive of Our Own ^beta

this world wasn’t made to be kind to you. take your pills.

it’s not like he said that to be kind, either. but out of everything he had said, that’s what denji hears again and again. it’s not what he would’ve liked to remember, but given that this is the one thing that repeats daily—he thinks that guy would’ve made a tight satisfied face knowing it. if he was still around to see how much of a hold he still has over the space in denji’s skull.

take your pills.

alright, alright, he gets it. the meat is frying on the stove. he looks away from the bottle to flip the cut bits onto a plate. the soggy watercress is thrown in immediately. the meat was already dripping oil across the pan, but the watercress starts burning on its own anyway. its edges curl and crisp. black salt and red pepper stay at the bottom of the pan. denji dumps in more oil he had saved from last night’s dinner and finishes cooking breakfast.

don’t forget. sometimes it feels like you’re pushing me to the very edge on purpose. take your pills.

okay, okay. he will. he just wants to sit down and eat breakfast first. the watercress is burnt, no other way around it. he shoves it into his mouth, followed by a chunk of the meat. it’s completely charred on the outside, but he has to cook it to this limit or else the inside will still be raw. he chews, swallows. the green bits scrape across the plate. they fold dry inside his mouth. crumple, chew, swallow. the last of the meat goes with a swipe of his tongue. still, the drops of oil must taste good when they’re bitter.

denji, take your pills. don’t make me say please.

he sets the plate in the sink and wets the sponge. at least he knows when his mind is tricking him. aki wouldn’t ever say please, wouldn’t ever even threaten to say it. when aki was here, he’d take the two pills per day, one in the morning, one in the afternoon.

he has to go to school now, and after breakfast, he’s already pushing late by the half-hour. the pan sits on the stove, clean above the faded grill. a bowl and plate collect what’s left of the water in their center. the faucet is lined with still drops. denji eyes the bottle on the counter.

you don’t need to say it again. click-click. he swallows with the bare amount of water in his cup, and then he’s leaving the bottle behind. off to school, the one pill left like a glowing worm waiting for his return.

at lunch, denji watches yoshida peel a set of oranges. his hands are large in the way that his fingers are long. pale and spindled and odd. like he can adjust the skin to sit however he wants over a set of large bones. he watches the peel separate from the orange meat with white pulp pulling in-between. it’s a very easy task for yoshida to do: the first nick of his thumbnail breaks skin and he holds the orange in place with one hand, the other sliding and pulling back with an arched thumb. the use of muscle is entirely restrained. besides the initial break, the peel falls away as one whole thing. the entire fruit sits at the point of yoshida’s fingers, like a flesh ball on four spindles that twitch, a monster experiencing a momentary wind.

“here,” yoshida holds one to him, an ambiguous smile on his face.

denji takes it like he’s snatching food from a pit of birds. a pit filled with hungry birds and sharp beaks peeking up at him from a nest of grass. his foot is pressed at the edge. he doesn’t think twice.

he bites into the first slice. the sound of mouths eating squished fruit follows.

“denji-kun,” yoshida says curiously, “do you eat an orange by the slices or do you bite into it whole?”

denji looks up with his index finger and thumb between his lips. a slice rests on his tongue.

he swallows whole and regrets it. “slices, duh.” he wishes he could have tasted the juice instead. if he eats the orange in slices, it’s like he’s getting more than if he just bit into it whole. making more from its parts than its total sum. that goes against some basic law in physics right? in that case, he should get a nobel prize for his way of thinking alone.

the other boy smiles. you have the most amusing thoughts, denji-kun. he’s smiling, but denji doesn’t think he finds it that funny.

power was the one who wanted the prize in the first place. they’d have to go through all her ideas first before they ever get to his. and if he ever did win the nobel, it’s a prize so it must come with a reward right. he’d add the money to aki’s savings and that way it wouldn’t just be what aki left. he’d use it up eventually anyway, but at least it’d be like he paid aki back. at least a little bit.

“you like to lick the juice too, huh.”

denji looks up, a finger smacking free from his tight lips. he nods.

yoshida turns to his lap, peels a slice, and turns back to him. squeezed between his pale fingers is the single-pieced orange.

“for me, it depends. here, denji-kun. you can have mine too.”

at that, denji reaches for the rest of the bunch, but yoshida pulls away.

“you said you like to eat it slice by the slice right?” his hand holding the single piece approaches instead, a pointed pale beak in the air. the rind stings the inside denji’s nose. he’s never liked oranges that much, but his discovery today gives them a new shine to their wet taste and sharp smell. “here,” yoshida stresses, “ah,”

denji takes it by the teeth. yoshida’s fingers remain, pinched, his mouth still pulled lightly at the corner.

“denji-kun,” pressed between his thumb and index is the leakage from the orange. at noon, on his pale skin, it stains an intense color. he’s squeezing so hard, a splatter remains from something squished open. most of the orange sits safely in denji’s mouth, chewed into pulp and skin.

“don’t you want the juice?”

without thinking, denji’s tongue flicks out.

this time around, he doesn’t think he can tell anything from yoshida’s expression. it’s always this guy who follows him around after all, and denji can’t ever see his face with his back turned.

he comes home from school and drops into bed. by the time he rubs his face awake on the sheets, it’s the evening, drowned in a sea outside his window. the whole room is seeping with low light. he never knows what time it is, only that he’s hungry. he makes dinner in that half-haze of dark, the swollen area beneath his own eyes.

denji, take your pills.

his head jerks as he washes the dishes. he shuts off the water and follows the sound of his feet, pat-pat-pat, from the dark. water drips slowly, loudly. the pill clatters against the plastic, and then, a soft wet sound molds around it. the bottle goes, tap, lightly, empty back where it sat. he takes the pill with a mouthful from the sink, and the faucet is back on in full force. he goes to finish the rest of the dishes.

aki didn’t nag even half this hard when he was alive. he’d tell denji to do it, twice a day, a firm face right before breakfast, a low murmur with the running water. that was it. but still, he’s slipping now.

the sound of sirens in the neighborhood, cycling louder and softer, as if the police cars were drowning in the sunset too.

on the weekend, he gets called to come over by kishibe. the girl greets him at the door with her ringlet eyes and a pointed finger.

“doggy. woof-woof.”

he leans down and bats her tiny hand away with a great effort. “not doggy,” he says in her face, “denji.”

she doesn’t blink. “denji. woof.”

“close enough,” kishibe calls from further inside, nodding.

kishibe asks him about school, and denji tells him if he eats the slices of an orange individually it’s like he’s getting way more out of it than if he just bit into the thing whole. kishibe tells him that’s a stupid thing to learn with the same expression, so denji thinks he could be praising him, if he looked close enough. he squints for a while. kishibe smokes and drinks his mud-coffee.

the strange girl crawls up his legs and latches her hands around his neck at some point. denji doesn’t pay her any mind, except to shift his legs so that she doesn’t fall through. kishibe stares at him until he rolls his own eyes and latches his hands around her waist. he bounces her with his knee for a bit. she doesn’t make a sound.

he’s preoccupied by the bottle behind kishibe’s head. orange with the ridged twist-cap. inside is packed full of white pills, their bug shapes lodged head-to-tail to one another.

kishibe stubs his smoke out. the table is ringed with the ashed remains. “you’ve been taking your pills.”

denji’s instant response is to say, “you’re not aki,” to which kishibe replies, “it’s what he would’ve wanted if he was here.” after that, there’s no way to argue. it’s not like he’s actively defying it, or being stubborn at all. he’s just, forgetting, and that’s what scaring him. how the reminder of it can even slip from his mind when aki is hammering around in there so much all the time.

something like nails press against the thickest part of his neck. denji looks down to the girl.

she’s grabbing at both sides like she wants to pull the skin around her like a blanket. “mommy,” she says.

“—i’m not your mom,” denji says. “i don’t even look like a girl.”

“denji,” she switches, with the same sure tone. quick shit.

“her name’s nayuta,” kishibe says. “that’s probably not what she means.”

denji turns his frown to the other side of the table, but by then kishibe is up. he sets his coffee in the sink. he grabs the pills on his way to the door. denji scrunches his face back down at the girl. nayuta. her eyes bore into him.

“sorry.” he grabs both of her tiny hands off him and squeezes before letting go. she’s small and very warm. to the point his palms prickle when he stretches them. “i gotta go.” whether or not those eyes show any sign of comprehension, she climbs off of him after that. no other words. not denji, woof, or even mommy.

“here,” kishibe tucks the full bottle into his uniform pocket. his other heavy hand squeezes to ache through the bone of his shoulder. he pulls at the neck of denji’s jacket collar as if he knew how to adjust it properly.

“don’t forget,”

denji closes the door behind him. he frowns at the railing before him. it’s a long bar scraped unevenly from rust and pockmarks bending it in and out of shape. it’s a twisted thing that won’t stop a single kid from climbing over it and falling through.

“i won’t forget,” he says each word, each step down, the hollow echoes ringing out, “i-won’t for-get to-take my-pills.”

good. say it out loud more if it helps. that way you won’t get sick.

“i won’t get sick,” he recites, “i’ll take my pills.” all the way home, all the way to sleep, i won’t forget, i’ll take my pills, any more than this and i won’t get sick. promise, aki, i won’t get sick. i won’t get sick.

no smell. he holds the white tip near his nose. no taste. it’s a smooth roll down his throat and somehow very unpleasant. it has started raining since he fell asleep and the weather actually brightens the sky, washes everything out with grey light. he shifts onto his stomach and rubs his nose into the sheets. sniffs down the crook of his shirt. he can’t smell himself. he’s never been able to.

that’s not all true. he remembers what his mom smelled like, and he knows he doesn’t smell anything like her. his old man who stank of rot especially as he lived. aki, like rain and ash in the alleyway. power, like blood mixed with cherry cough syrup. he yanks his shirt over his nose and rubs it around a few more times. what he smells only reminds him of the pool, that rare day in summer where they, and the rest of tokyo, had crowded limb-by-limb into the same soup of hyper-chlorinated water. he had come out, clogged, sneezing, as if he were sick. even after the warm shower, aki drying his hair, forcing him to take down a teaspoon of vinegar for his act of drinking pool water, that smell had remained in his nose. even after, when the plate of cut fruit had been set in front of him, apples in the shape of rabbits, he had only smelled the wet lining of his skin. chlorine. he pulls his shirt back down. that’s the only thing he can tell for sure right now. honestly, it makes him feel sick.

he rolls out of bed to cook dinner. he dumps all the potatoes in as half-cut slices and after a moment, dumps in even more salt. he throws in segments of shrimp soaked in seasoning too. when he tastes a bite of potato, there’s the bitter clumps that make his tongue curl without really knowing why. saliva fills as a reflex, but he doesn’t spit the grit of skin out. he sniffs, nose clogged and numb.

“did you bring any oranges today?” denji peers into the black space of yoshida’s lap, the two pale cradles of his hands. by habit, he looks at the tips of those fingers when they twitch.

it was cut fruit that day, after the pool, when the apples that had stung so crisply against the top of his mouth. last week, the slices of orange had burst too and made it unbearable to keep his mouth totally closed. he had tasted, smell, something.

yoshida opens a container. “nah, but i have strawberries.” the whole inside is lined, row-by-row, with tiny points of red. their seeds stand out like pops of hard pimples. denji thinks he can smell them, deep and watery and sticky. it’d be better if he could taste them, he thinks out loud.

yoshida’s pale fingers are already touching the red when denji throws open his lunch first. he tossed in a bunch of the same potatoes and shrimp from last night, dipped in salt and oil. it’s all congealed now, and a hard mold is left behind by the wedge of potato. he holds it out to yoshida. hard flecks scatter like fine hair in the wind.

“here, eat this first.” denji frowns and doesn’t give the boy’s placid face any chance for refusal. he shoves the piece of food onto yoshida’s mouth until it opens. there’s oil shining on his upper lip like he forgot to wipe his nose. there’s potato mashed across, all the way onto the sides of his thin lips. denji beams wide. yoshida looks good like this, visibly messed up and blinking slowly back at him.

“how's’it,” he asks as yoshida works his mouth. he’s chewing and no longer quite smiling.

yoshida looks like he’s deliberating for a moment, and denji watches him. in his mind, he dares him to say anything else. in the end, yoshida swallows, a lump bulging his throat behind the uniform and silently going down. 

his smile is back, but his long bangs are twitching from his brows, “denji-kun eats salty, huh.”

denji shrugs, “guess so,” and steals a strawberry before yoshida can pick one to feed him with.

it’s so strong his teeth ache. they’re cold too, a bite that shoots straight through his nose. he thought, with the way they looked, shiny and glistening, it’d be like a bite of hard caramel. but it’s the first time he’s eaten a fruit and tasted, raw.

yoshida watches, leaned over his lap. his fingers clutch around the lip of the container. his mouth is back to reaching towards his eyes. his lips shine, pink, cleaned of oil. he must have licked his mouth into a closed seam, a sight denji did not see.

“how’s’it?”

denji gulps down some water. even that taste changes from the lingering strawberry. he can tell that without his smell.

yoshida leans a little closer. his hands are clawed around the container as if he’s holding himself back from upending every single fruit in his mouth. all depending on what denji says.

“does denji-kun like the taste of strawberry?”

denji makes the choice for him. he grabs another fruit and shoves it past his teeth until he can swallow it whole. the taste blows up inside his nose.

“mn—” denji chews, chews, chews. the more the flesh bursts and grinds between his teeth, the more he can’t stop his expression. the feeling of his own cheeks confuses him. he wants to grab his face with both hands and hold it in place so that the twitching sourness will be more controlled. it’s like, he’s fighting to keep his own mouth in place. 

yoshida smiles winningly. under the sun, he holds his untouched food in his lap, as if he’s only beginning to learn the taste of his own satisfaction rolling around on his tongue.

strawberries. oranges. fruits that taste strong enough to be pungent. what do fruits go well with? he was used to eating them on their own, whenever they were cut and set neatly before him. a lazy movement of his mouth to match his eyes, stuck on afternoon tv.

the more denji thinks about it, the more he recalls. dried orange slices, hardened and coated in sugar. when he bites in, it’s like eating gum. strawberry mixed with chocolate. those taste like soft leather. orange creme cake. he says that out loud, creh-meh. strawberry cake with whipped toppings sounds even better. even perfect.

he jumps out of bed and goes padding to the kitchen. in there, he finds bags of frozen meat that he’s separated from the original packaging. potatoes. the vegetables that are always wilting. eggs. but no fruit. he only has rice. no flour.

it’s a small miracle, just for a moment. but it’s as if the evening outside shifts the sun like a dial. his life could change, absolutely. he realizes he could make cake if he wanted. if he had the ingredients, and if he knew how.

denji, pills first.

he grabs the bottle, shakes out two and crunches them down without another thought.

he sheds his jacket and gets to cooking for the night.

denji sets his lunch in front yoshida. “here.”

he’s used up the last of his potatoes. he cut them into skin-thin slices and fried them on an oil-coated pan for less time than usual. curls of ground beef were tossed in along with green peppers. it must be the saltiest and mealiest thing he’s made. just opening the box made him taste the smear on his tongue.

“open, open,” and before yoshida can say anything, the boy’s mouth is filled with a dripping chunk of food.

denji watches the pretty face twist and when it swallows, he follows the lump down the pale throat before it disappears under the buttoned uniform collar. it satisfies him. he’s not able to say why, but his hand scoops into the mix of potatoes and rice, ready again.

a longer pair of fingers pushes his hand back down. it’s not mean, it doesn’t smack or hurt his knuckles. but yoshida is firm. he wipes his mouth with the other hand, and as he looks at denji, his black eyes are rolling with thoughts. that’s what it’s like to look at yoshida now. he’s always thinking like he’s planning. denji’s head is often empty. he waits for yoshida to figure it out on his own.

“less salt,” the dark-eyed boy eventually says. those are the words he’s chosen, and they come out with the clean sound of his tongue, perfectly spoken. then, with the effects of his meticulous brain, he smiles and gets to his point.

it’s not healthy for denji-kun to eat so much salt.

why not?

it drains the water from your body when you pee. you’ll dehydrate like a worm in the sun.

i’ll just drink more water then.

you’ll tire your body out like that even more, denji-kun.

his spindly hand is still over denji’s, a fork dug into the pre-made lunch.

denji-kun, he says, don’t you know how to take care of your body like it’s a precious thing.

a precious thing? what d’you mean by that.

he tosses the fork aside and what was left of the food on it gets jammed when he closes the lid over the box. half-bits of rice dry up on the floor.

loudly, denji announces, “i want to make cake.” it’s suddenly the one and only thing blooming inside his mind.

yoshida looks as surprised, as much as a slack opening of his mouth and hidden brows will show. he makes this face when denji resets the conversation. black eyes start spinning again.

“shall i teach denji-kun how to cook?”

yoshida has a personal computer at home. com-pew-tah. somewhere aki’s voice had spoken up again, not the same words but basically. it might as well have been. it’s like how adults will say many things, but they all mean one thing in the end. listen to me, denji, because it’s one of the good things about you.

you can’t just go to his house alone, denji.

are you an alpha?

yoshida had blinked at that, put on an instant smile. blindingly obvious, well, yes, i am.

he was met with blunt refusal: then i can’t come over, even if you have a com-puter.

then, can i come to yours. denji had racked and racked his brain, but there was no echoing voice to beat worries into his skull. that’s, fine then.

oh, really? yoshida had grazed his nose across denji’s jaw and came away confused by the elbow in his throat. denji hadn’t let him try again. lunch was over without any fruits that day.

with another palm butting against yoshida’s chest, he had told him, i’ll let you walk home with me today.

and yoshida had been so pleased, he couldn’t even figure how to pull his face out of the confusion before he smiled.

for the first time, what a sudden expression. it’d almost be ugly if it wasn’t being worn by that face. 

ah, ouch, denji-kun, he had clutched at his starched uniform jacket, but he had kept smiling all the same. i can’t wait, he had said and made an even stranger expression. it was so immediate, giddy, denji could have pinched his thin mouth to stop it.

he hadn’t. but the next time, if it happens, he tests his fingers. he thinks it’d be his right to do so.

because denji doesn’t have a personal computer, they stop at a convenience store on the way back. tucked between porn mags and gossip columns is a cooking spread.

denji sees the photo of the cake and points to the scrawl of kanji beneath. patiently, yoshida recites it and denji writes what he can correctly and spells the rest phonetically.

edited by a neater hand, a recipe for vanilla cake with strawberry found next to a gossip column, emphasis on strawberry, with explosive scratching around it.

• 370 g white shug-ur sugar
• 226 no salt (unsalted) butter
• 4 large eggs
• 300 g flower flour
• 12 g baking powder
• 240 g milk
• 2 tsp vanilla eggs-trak extract
• 8 large strawberries

denji has none of that fancy stuff, not to mention no strawberries.

let’s go then, yoshida said. the cashier had been eyeing them suspiciously, so he had paid for the magazine and tucked it into his schoolbag. he had kept his fingers around the edges, to keep them from wrinkling at the bottom, like it was a very precious thing. he smiled and said he’d give it to denji later.  

that was the first thing he bought that evening. having yoshida read off the label on every item, denji had looked back and forth eagerly, before he scratched them off the list.

the strawberries, he picked out himself with much consideration. in the end, he chose the ones that filled his nose with the strongest smell.

yoshida reads him the instructions as he’s taking off his shoes at the door.

on your stove, yeah, there’s a huge thing you can pull open, you haven’t used your oven, have you, denji-kun. we have to pre-heat it so it’s ready when you are. how hot? well, pretty hot, it’ll burn your fingers, so be careful.

i get it already, denji grumbles and grumbles. he makes sure to use his elbows in the kitchen, just like aki did when he’d try and keep them away from the food. i’m going to do this on my own. just shut up and read me the instructions.

a voice comes breathing over his ear.

“how can i read to you if you want me to shut up?”

shuh-sh, he claps his hand full of flour over yoshida’s mouth. a movement over his shoulder surprises him. yoshida’s eyes arch until even his heavy lids blend under his black hair.

i’m going to make this cake and it’s going to be the best thing i’ve ever smelled. denji declares this, mashing his fingers through flour and butter. right now, it oozes dry and wet worms, but he believes the magazine with its ultimate recipe next to the porn display and a gossip column.

smell?

yeah, that’s right. my nose is all stuffed up. if i can smell it, then i’ll definitely be able to taste it.

yoshida leans in again before denji can stop him. a second breath pulls across the top of his hair.

hm. hmm.

denji makes sure to aim his elbow this time, and it hits the sound of yoshida’s breath out of the way, hard.

when he looks over, his hands carefully around the edge of the burning tray, yoshida’s ass is sticking out of his fridge like some weird tall horse that wears the pants of a school uniform.

hey—the tray goes sliding, an emergency clatter, “hey! what’re you doing,”

the boy emerges, and every time he stands up from the waist, he’s always taller than when they’re sitting together. it makes denji blink and look down at his feet. socked, grey, and even there, the shape of his long bones is apparent. he’s not growing somewhere else just because denji isn’t looking, is he.

in his hands, are bags of vegetables. yellow juice drains to the bottom and smears of leaves have already begun to dissolve against the plastic. it looks bad, but denji knows it can’t taste half as bad. he’s left them to rot for much longer in the past, and any extra time spent over the toilet was time he spent catching up on manga. he’ll be able to add yoshida’s cooking-porn-gossip magazine to the collection too.  

yoshida sticks his nose into a bag and his smiling face crumples. this is, pungent, he says, mouth fixing unhappily on the last word.

bluntly, denji sniffs, i don’t smell it.

indeed, denji-kun can’t smell much, huh. then it’s a good thing i’m here. the soggy greens are dumped into a separate bag, the bag into the trash. yoshida fans his nose delicately. phew, good riddance. he smiles again, as if planned.

what a waste. denji frowns down at the smears of vegetable on those long hands. the oven buzzes and he jerks back. the flat batter hasn’t moved, but swear on it, he can hear it groan.

when he looks up again, yoshida is in fact tying up his trash. taking the entire bag out. his hand pauses over his mouth as if to tell a secret. i want to make sure denji-kun doesn’t hurt his stomach.

tch. since you bought me the ingredients, i’ll let you do what you want.

yes~thank you very much.

the oven muffles a pop and he jumps back to it. his cake is going to rise soon, isn’t it. he’ll have to watch it like a kid who won’t get out of bed on her own.

the only thing he lets yoshida do is cut the strawberries. his long fingers curled right against the flat of the knife, he’s so close it’s like he wants to add the taste his own blood, but he avoids cutting his skin when he brings the edge down. harsh, quick, if practice makes perfect, then how much has yoshida practiced. an hour a day equals . . . chop-chop-chop. eight big red ones split in halves means sixteen pieces in total. any more than that, and he’ll, lose the number in his head. 

a flat cake sits in the pan with red pieces scattered across it. the juice has already smeared across the white frosting, and it makes it look like they hurt themselves in the attempt of assembling a cake.

“eat it,” denji urges with his mouth, wet. yoshida is glancing at him, paused over his shoulder, but denji can’t explain it. he’s already pushing at yoshida’s elbow, knocking a knee inside his calf. quick, eat first, so i can take my turn.

what does it taste like? hurry, is it any good? tell me, what’s the smell?

yoshida’s cheek is bulging around strawberry and cream.

he swallows, the sound of his whole throat, gulping down the entire room. he says, “that’s so sweet,” winces, and denji can hear his tongue wrap inside his mouth.

my turn. he lunges over yoshida’s shoulder and snaps up the fork from him. it’s only basic decency that his teeth catch on the metal, and he closes his mouth as he swallows. there isn’t so much to chew, it all fills up and goes down.

yoshida watches him, dark eyes darker when the sun is pressed right outside the window. if you could make shadows in the night, then denji would be able to play shadow animals with yoshida’s eyes as the backdrop. it’s so ridiculous that he wonders if that strange girl, nayuta, would like it just as much.  

“how is it?”

denji can taste the texture, how the crumbles squish between his teeth. frosting is light on his lip. he licks it and a coolness wafts beneath his nose. his throat is still working, where the chunks of cake are followed only by a dried sort of stickiness.

despite that, “i can’t smell anything.”

the fork goes clanging in the sink, a sound that rings out for the rest of the evening. it’s everything that’s there and everything that is missing, the cake wells up, and he’s angry enough he might cry. he blinks and finds his jaw hurts from the back of his teeth.

yoshida’s mouth shocks him out of it. “we’ll try again, denji-kun,” was whispered against the top of his ear so that, for the rest of the night, even when the door had closed and the trash was gone, denji couldn’t forget it. his skull was truly empty because it had become an echo chamber for the sound of yoshida’s voice. closing his hands to his temples, the low words had spiraled down and landed somewhere solid, a butterfly of a sound. then, it had burst into so many ribbons that had filled him, wrapped him to the top of his nape. it was a sensation so strong he wished it was something he could smell instead.

in bed, beneath the covers, he was possessed. he could have taken his head off the joint and shaken it to hear something rattle free. 

what he had left out for the first time in many nights, was his pills.

he took them the next morning, four breaths of panic, one gulp after the other, but there was no making up for a missed day. 

denji,

denji-kun,

we’ll try again, won’t we?

don’t forget.

denji scratches his head hard for the next few days, and each pierce and poke by his nails ingrains the words onto the surface of his skull. he won’t even have to think about it. he takes them, two by two, day by day, and dinner tastes as stale as usual. he’s running out of salt, pepper, miso paste, but everything might as well be tasteless trash at this point. the leftover cake goes down his throat the same way, and he wants to think it’s because he’s angry at yoshida telling him that it was too sweet. that he got to taste the smell of the oily frosting. he said what he said because he could mock denji, and make sure that his mocking would stay in his head so that denji would do something as stupid as forget his pills. for that night, it was almost like he had forgotten aki.

he finishes the last bite. the spoon rests on his bottom lip and the inside of the metal is smeared with spit. rather, the empty gulp strikes him like the oncoming symptom of a sore throat, he wants yoshida’s mouth instead.

on saturday, kishibe punches once on the door as warning. to open it invites immediate attack.

denji nudges aside his line of shoes and prepares himself for the surge of huge wolf dogs.

what he doesn’t expect after kishibe lets go of the entire pack, is what he’s got clutched in his other hand. the girl with her spinning eyes. she points at him, her mouth moves, and as if she’s been practicing, “denji,” shoots right out with a bang. he falls with the next winding body of hot, heaving fur.

kishibe barely glances at her raised finger before letting her go. she doesn’t even stumble on her way in, over the genkan, and the toppled pile of dogs and boy.

“brought the little miss this weekend. take care, alright?”

denji is vigorously prying tiramisu’s jaws off with a two-handed head rub. “i ain’t your personal babysitter!”

“of course not.” kishibe rubs his fingers succinctly. the door is already closing on him. “you’ll be compensated.”

“hey—wait, with what?”

the last movement of his mouth says, “some company.” click. the heavy foot stomps follow directly along the wall as if daring denji to open the door and follow.

nayuta stands there in her black dress, fists loose against her sides. “denji,” she says again with pure conviction. then, a rumbling growl emanates from her. she doesn’t even blink before she lifts a foot from the genkan. black shiny leather, the tops that curve like turtle shells, with soles most likely stuck with dog shit.

“hungry.”

denji wrangles another husky under his armpit. “hey, shoes off before anything else.”

she glances down. she sits like she doesn’t know how to fall without getting hurt and splays a foot out. it’s a long time of just watching her rub her fingers wrong against the tiny buckle. to be fair, no one is good at undoing those kinds of fancy shoes. power would’ve hated them enough to tear them apart on sight. nayuta is beginning to do the same with her tiny fingers tensing, white stretching the black leather. her impatience is strong in an alarming way.

careful. i don’t know who bought those for you, but s’probably too expensive. the dogs crowd around his neck as he squints and hums with his fingers working. his nails are blunt over worn skin. he digs a little harder and holds his tongue between his teeth. if only his hands were slimmer or something. fingers longer, paler, like hands that would be suited to holding a large knife, peeling fruit. shit, he’d like to have yoshida’s hands too. or for that guy to be here instead, or not.

the buckle finally pops. he releases his tongue and, in his surprise, ignores the tang of blood that slips down his throat.

nayuta nods down at her one freed foot. a white sock wiggles. “denji, thanks.”

“you—” he ducks down to concentrate on the other buckle. it’s getting harder the more he tries to avoid looking, thinking. “the next time, wear sneakers or something.”

yoshida often gets called up to the front of the class for problems. it’s usually math, with the starting line written at the top and the rest that doesn’t exist demanding whoever is stuck up there to fill in below. to denji, it’s an exercise of pure imagination. you might as well write gibberish in that empty blackboard space. yoshida must be good at math then, at always filling that head of his with clouds, because he’ll take the piece of white chalk between two fingers and naturally his long fingers will run along the board and pieces, numbers, signs, symbols continuously flow out after, until he reaches the end. sometimes, he’ll draw a little box, close the corner with a blunt tap, and smile like he’s had a good meal. QED, whatever that means.

if it’s one serving, then that’s 85 grams of shrimp. denji eats more than any single person, and nayuta clutches at her stomach with a rigid face, hungering. that means, for the two of them, he’ll need . . . what’s 85 times two and then some?

the whole bag of shrimp gets dumped into the pan. their skins peel away from the shells, which denji hasn’t bothered to remove. it won’t make a difference to him, what layers there are between his mouth and the meat. the pool of oil circles and jumps right into his face.

glancing down at nayuta, her yellow eyes spin in agreement.

“how’s’it?”

she chews without spitting out the shells either. it reminds him of power.

“salty.”

that’s what yoshida said too.

if he had leftover cake, this would probably work out. her tongue is too salty, so give her a sweet, cold spoon. they’ll neutralize each other like equal parts of acid and base. by then, she’ll be left with nothing but salt, huh.

not only is cake expensive, but so are all the parts that lead to its white, frosted assembly. kishibe had only promised company, which wasn’t anything that could turn into solid food or paper money. as for yoshida, he follows denji around like he’s waiting, wanting for one specific thing. whatever it is, he won’t just come out and say it. before then, denji will have to wring as much out of him as possible. he won’t feel guilt, not a single ounce or milligram of it.

“do you like strawberries?” he asks nayuta in the bath. she sits between his legs, a small mountain of black hair plastered to the tops of her shoulders, and the water pools around them, enough to warm their blood.

she bats her palm slowly across the top of the bath. the ripples cascade out, and before they can disappear smoothly, she dips into the center again. “strawberries,” she says, “what do they taste like?”

denji thinks about an answer. strawberries, seeds and strings which he had gotten caught in his teeth. they were deep red in the center and faded to dry yellow at the tip. the tops were pale pink, almost white, like the beds of yoshida’s fingers. that was the only place about him where denji would notice such a bright color. “like a kind of meat,” he decides, “if it was sweeter and wetter when you bite into it.” 

she nods and suddenly grabs his hand from the top of the tub. denji understands the look in her eyes, so he holds still as she fits an index finger into her mouth. he doesn’t touch her tongue or any other part of her mouth. his finger bathes entirely in hot breath before her teeth close at the root. she lets him yank her away.

“like that?” she says, gazing at her reflection. another ripple distorts around the peek her bare knees.

“i wouldn’t know.” casually, he tells her, “it’s not like i can taste myself. you can tell me how strawberries taste yourself.”

cupping her tiny palms full of contemplation, she licks the water quickly from her top lip.

the dogs insist on taking up all the bed space and most of the floor. denji would give up and sleep in the cavern of meringue’s stomach, but he wakes up with a blocked nose and it’s not the reason he’s struggling to breathe. the wide window of the living room is still bright from the moon’s spill. blinking, the sky is filled floating strings, like what remains in a pot from a badly poached egg.  

nayuta has wrangled herself out of the futon and onto his stomach. she’s latched around him like she wants to come closer, snuggle herself in deeper.

he struggles for a gasp. as his lungs balloon, his palm finds the bow of nayuta’s spine. he counts down to what should be the lumbar, and pats her, as much as he can.

she can’t be awake, but her nose digs more into his body. in her sleep, she’s seeking for that one thing too that can be plucked right out of him when the right time comes.

i wonder if you’d like cake as much as me.

she snuffles with her mouth open, an extreme heat soaking into his shirt.

when kishibe comes sunday morning, his face is no different when he says, “you forgot, didn’t you.” of course, he spent his night drinking and his lean attitude has already been showing bones for years.

denji is still yawning, still recovering the ease of being able to breathe in big, exhale out low, “forgot wha’?”

the answer strikes the back of his neck. “your pills.” his eyes bulge to the floor.

nayuta’s eyes roll slowly as the word passes between them. as suddenly as he brought it up, kishibe tosses it away. his hand descends on denji’s head, patting hard enough to wrench his neck back. denji is forced to gasp out loud.

“so, it was only for one day. won’t kill you, will it.” kisihibe’s black eyes watch his, as if he could read the entire week there. once might not kill him. so what about twice. thrice to mark the devil, they say?

he keeps watching, as he takes nayuta by the hand, as they step out the door. fancy little dress shoes jump and make a racket with the buckles undone all the way across the thin stairs.

“you had a good weekend, didn’t you.” he says through the slit of the door before it closes.

“denji,” her voice intones through the echo of metal, and he imagines he can see her eyes. the two yellow yolks of them. “bye-bye.”

denji can’t lie. she was a strange little nightmare that ate every single shrimp and gnawed on him like he was a piece of cake, which was to-be promised next week, and they had slept so fitfully tight together he had forgot.

aki, he racks his brain with a fist as he searches for the bottle. he pours a great glass of water to flood his gut within seconds. as yoshida said, something about drinking too much water and peeing it out. that will leave the pills in his blood then, thick and heavy enough to sit around to make up for the lost day. somehow, the voice doesn’t come.

yoshida knocks on his door the next weekend, and denji is surprised enough to open it. he never gave him the address, and despite visiting once, he didn’t think the other boy would remember it so exactly. the street, the turn, the stair and railing, and the exact same door to stop in front of. knock, as if invited. 

“yoshida? whaddya want,”

yoshida tilts his head and minces his eyes into a smile, “surprise, house visit!”

“wait, wait—” his long fingers are wiggling like worms in the crack, “ouch, denji-kun.” he has bones, right. so maybe his hands are weirder, closer to tentacles than a set of joints. a creep like him could certainly become an octopus when it suited him.

denji presses down harder on the door, and yoshida’s fingers only stretch further like they’re being tickled. 

“you’re trying to break my fingers, aren’t you,” yoshida says from the other side with a stunning smile, “i just wanted to see if you were eating well.”

“you could’ve jus’ asked me on monday. ask me if you can come over, dumbass.”

“alright, can i come over—” he’s made it too far. he stretches his palm out and butts the heel of it against the frame. strange veins and muscles bulge and tighten in places rarely used. ever since denji learned that an octopus can snap a shark’s spine, he’s re-thinking the ways of the world. he could have a dog in his panting chest, and yoshida is most certainly an octopus, hardly disguised.

it’s only the thoughtless motion that makes him try and slam the door closed again.

yoshida emerges whole from the crack with a smile, “--today?”

denji snorts air up at him. there’s nothing to eat.

is that so? a bag or two drops with a shuffle of plastic at their feet. there’s the sound of various things rolling about.

firm tomatoes, fancy looking cabbages, and fresh eggs. the type of eggs that are brown and rough on the outside, so aki would look at them with his pinched face and nod approvingly. those are the freshest, and he’d poach them to make the yolk run when you cut perfectly down the center. not through the entire egg, but a slit on the surface, like giving it a mouth to breathe.

denji-kun, yoshida stands in his same grey socks. he has his hands in his pockets, pulling his pants slightly above the jutting bone of his ankles. denji squishes his mouth against his knuckles and looks at that bone. the light of the fridge floats out with the cold air, and at the back of his nose, a slightly wet placid smell pushes.

yoshida waits with his bare ankles as denji squats there. aren’t you hungry?

how th’fuck am i supposed to cook with these. the grumbles escape his knuckles, and he points at the row of fresh vegetables like they’re splatters of paint left inside his fridge.

one bone hooks around the back of an ankle. i’ve got a good recipe in mind. 

denji’s mouth falls half-open. then you cook it.

it’s not my kitchen to use, is it, yoshida’s smiling face says with a certain look in his eyes as he helps denji up.

it’s a recipe on yoshida’s phone, a video that denji watches over his shoulder. he makes the other boy sit, so he won’t keep looming, so his eyes won’t keep watching denji when denji isn’t looking at him. the lady talks annoyingly slow, but denji has a feeling she’s nice. he knows, he does, when she keeps relating the recipe back to her family. my son gets up late, so this is something quick enough to make and eat even when he’s slept in. my daughter is picky, but she’ll drink the whole bowl down clean. the nutrients from the tomato and cabbage are simple and fulfilling, so i worry less about what my husband eats at work when he has this for breakfast. i hope you can enjoy this dish too, and please adjust the ingredients to fit your family size.

yoshida looks back and his cheek brushes denji’s. what do you think? can you make this?

denji blinks. i don’t know how much.

hm, the imaginary numbers must be flying quick over yoshida’s eyes, and he only says, as much as you want. i’ll run out to buy more if you need.

enough to fit a family. she had four people, including herself, and she cut, three huge pieces of cabbage, or was it four? the tomatoes all became even slices in the end. he dumps everything yoshida brought into the steaming pot. the steam clouds around his face like a pair of palms. smears leave the corner of his lashes. two eggs, cracked, swirl yolk eyes-up.

yoshida insists on sitting together so that their knees bump, rigid and head-on beneath the table. the steam holds a color from the chives and especially, the luxury of a few drops of sesame oil. the bottle now sits on denji’s counter, courtesy of yoshida too.

without being asked, yoshida hides half his face in the bowl until it’s only the black top of his hair glistening with steam. he says, “denji, this is lovely.”

denji digs his knee in, their bones grinding. say that again.

“denji,” yoshida emerges, his mouth soaked and forming the words slowly, “this is lovely.” without being asked again, he leans in and instead of bumping knees, their thighs line up in one hushed press. without being allowed, he touches their cheeks together again. rubs, hums.

denji-kun smells lovely as well. he does it for a while, enough that denji notices things. yoshida’s eyelashes scratch, longer and harsher than any girl he’s ever imagined, and his low voice occasionally falls into unexpected tremors that entirely mess up the image he was cultivating. whatever it was.

he makes a sound like a whining cry, and only then does denji feel like he should smack yoshida as warning.

he does, and so yoshida takes to it kindly, standing, wincing, waving with a hand holding his bleeding nose in the night beyond the door.

you can come over, denji picks his words carefully, when you bring everything for a strawberry cake on saturday.

yoshida smiles and his shoulders twitch back so that he stops slouching so slightly. if he stood up like that and looked straight through his bangs, he’d really tower. but as it is, he’s always rolling his eyes down. fluttering his lashes like he’s got hair in his eyes, but he won’t cut it anytime soon. he’ll twist a strand around his finger and smile more, gazing downward.

denji opens the door saturday with nayuta wrapped around his wrist.

yoshida’s eyes almost drop into his cheeks looking at her. his pupils are black all the way, but the edges are shinier, faded like the grey yolk of century egg.

“hello.”

“you . . .” nayuta cocks her head and her tiny finger shoots up with the conviction of her words. “daddy.”

totally wrong, but it hits.

“hahahaha!” yoshida laughs from beyond the doorstep and looks immensely pained. his face doesn’t change, but denji can tell, the tightening gives him away too easily. you could go on about how this guy is a mystery through and through, but if he’s only got one usual expression then it’s always obvious when something wrong leaks through. he thinks so now.

denji pushes her unwavering hand down. someone’s got to teach her manners at this age, and it isn’t kishibe if he goes to sip fancy coffee during the day and drain bars dry at night. “definitely not your daddy,” his index finger darts out too, “that’s yoshida, a creep that follows me around all the time. a stalker.”

“yoshida, creep,” she repeats with hypnotic obedience. “stal-ker. denji’s stalker.”

she puts it all together. yoshida’s plaster smile only rips a bit more when she says it. denji cackles around her shoulders.

he can hear them argue behind the kitchen. the cake has to be rising if the oven is glowing like a firebug’s belly. he soaks the heat into his cheeks, his eyes, and watches, unwavering.

“yo-shi-da.”

she makes a long noise, like a tv breaking. a growled static warning. “cre-epy.” feet thump abruptly onto the table.

hey! it’s a bark that leaves his mouth. i’ll call kishibe if you don’t quit!

yoshida’s bony ankles come stepping around the counter. nayuta jumps down and pads along.

denji-kun, i was only teaching her my name because she won’t say it properly.

denji, nayuta says, denji, denji, as she drags her hands around his neck and locks her elbows. denji, she mouths the shape and sound into his neck, on her tiptoes. her entire weight drapes down his spine, and denji grunts, sagging back before the oven.

so, is it done?

denji shushes him between his teeth. yoshida mimes a zipping motion and crouches before the oven too.

he cuts the strawberries again with his large hands. this time the skins are more red, the juice squeezed full of sugar and stickiness. they eat cake and cake for dinner, dessert, and yoshida doesn’t say anything about the taste. in fact, he smiles with his eyes welling up, like he’s much more than what satisfied could describe.

a wiggly piece of strawberry is stuck over his lip, like he cut himself there on purpose. denji throws him a towel from the rack and closes the bathroom door. he strips with his back to it, and the hallway is still.

“so,” he tries casually, and then plops fully into the tub. nayuta hunches to make way for his legs.

“how was the cake?”

she blows bubbles, and denji scratches his palms through her hair until the strands are stuck in whorls with foam. the more he looks at the top of her head, the more it resembles some junji ito shit. she blinks her swirling eyes back and reaches for him.

“hey, that’s not going to taste very good.”

she stares at the soapy palm and licks a stripe up to the tip of his middle finger. she leans her head back, her tongue soaked in the filmy light, “yummy.”

yoshida steps neatly aside when the steam rushes out, but not without brushing his nose across denji’s cheekbone.

out of the corner of his eye, there’s still the red straggling over his lip. denji picks it off and puts it in his mouth. it struggles over his tongue a little before he can swallow it down. he can see yoshida’s brows do the same dance beneath his hair.

denji-kun smells, nice.

he scoffs and pushes nayuta along. if anything, if yoshida stays here, his palms over the old table, his back propped against a couch, if he sits with his pale skin in the bath, he’s going to start smelling like that water. shampoo and soap and what is rubbed tender from the creases of his wrist, his knees. behind the ears, beneath the chin, and down the neck. he remembers, faintly, shoving his nose into aki’s sharply scented hair when it was down and wet. power would do the same thing to him and mock nibble on the topmost bone of his spine.

surely, yoshida will come to smell like denji if he’s wrapped around him. denji didn’t allow him in but he fell asleep with his back turned, and nayuta has rolled her way out of bed too. she makes her nose a home in his collarbones, and yoshida’s chin and cheek gouge out a hot, damp space on his shoulder and neck. she wraps a leg around his stomach, her foot poking yoshida, and he slides his arm up, closer around denji’s chest. between the syncopation of their deepened breaths, denji pants shallowly.

he’s sweating from his half-asleep struggle and somewhere, from the top of his brows, it finally feels like his nose is unclogging. something like a trickle of bathwater leaks through.

the moon cuts through the slats of the window, and he closes his eyes.

in the morning, he spends minutes rolling out of yoshida’s grasp. then, he remembers kishibe, and drags yoshida fully into the bed. covers him to smother, and with a quiet nayuta in hand, he closes the door.

kishibe greets him and denji makes motions to yawn loud, stretch wide. he ruffles nayuta’s soft hair down her cheeks.

“good weekend, huh.”

some good meals between him, a creep, and a kid. it’s easy to recreate the family he had. “sure thing, just me and nayuta,” he responds.

kishibe cocks his head. his nose twitches.

“i forgot,” denji says simply. he crosses his arms, and in one of his shirts, nayuta stares up and does the same.

“alright,” kishibe says, disbelieving. his eyes stare at the closed door down the hall, but, it’s not like kishibe mean any malice. he had promised company as recompense after all.

after nayuta leaves, denji goes to wash his face. the water runs up his nose and out both nostrils, so that he’s left spluttering a little, choked up and clear. the face wash aki used stings when he scratches his cheeks. his reflection stares back at him, and they’re both surprised at one another. he’ll let yoshida stay. on sunday morning, it’s so warm.

it’s become the spring heat before he’s realized it. before he’s realized it, he can smell it in the air. from the cracked window, leaves, fresh like the earth turned over from a rotten winter. sweat rushes past his skin. a petal spins down and he watches it for a while. pink? they have something like cherry blossoms here.

“denji-kun.”

a hand around his wrist. yoshida’s fingers were always this long, huh. there are a faded marks around the thickest joints, cuts that have faded into scars that could be rings. pinker, more tender than the falling petals. it’s not like denji would ever slam a door closed on flowers. he wouldn’t have, in the first place, if yoshida had just asked. the classroom door closes behind them, and yoshida pulls him along, shielding his fingertips from the harsh rattle. still, the windows inside are burst open. denji’s head spins like he might throw up.

denji,

are you still listening

“yeah,”

“yeah,” his voice roars, shrieks a little, and then he’s rubbing his entire sleeve past his nose, “yeah—whaddya fuckin’ want!”

yoshida sits with his legs propped out from beneath the desk. he slouches against the window and lays both palms flat on his thighs. he’s only smiling with the oncoming breeze.

denji curses as he chucks his jacket and climbs on.

he’s as warm as nayuta at night and monstrously larger. yoshida strokes up his spine and then the hand goes down to cup his ass, like he’s holding a very precious thing. denji struggles, rips a button off the uniform when his teeth catch. yoshida lets him close to his neck. he lets him, he lets him.

on the peaks of his collarbones, dots of pink darken to the sweetness of strawberries.

laying against him, denji doesn’t think that the school uniform actually fits yoshida. he’s giving off a heat like his body is going to expand with it. denji clutches at an arm and winds tighter over the beat of yoshida’s chest.

if he eventually blows up, then he thinks it’ll be fine. at least in the end, he’ll have filled himself with something good.

“are you still taking these?”

yoshida holds the orange bottle up between two fingertips, swinging it like it’s a particularly amusing thing he’s got in his grasp.

denji snatches it away. tosses the pills in a drawer. “none of your business.”

they’re having breakfast for dinner, eggs sunny-side up in a pan and another set poached in a simmering pot. the taste of salt, cracking between his teeth. the outside of the egg, chewy and oozing. the smell of the yolk, so deep with center spilled, almost-raw.

mm, yoshida flicks his tongue over his mouth. now there’s too much pepper.

i can’t cook in a way that’ll taste good. denji sniffs, and the scent of the spice shoots up his spine, i can still barely even taste.

aki left all these spices, he points to the rows upon rows of small shakers, bottles. jars and jugs. he has to peek over on his toes to see how the ones lined up in the back are even different from the ones pushed to the front. aki left all of them so i just toss everything in.

but, everything just tastes of salt.

instead of laughing at him, yoshida nods. i can’t cook that well either, he says. but, he adds, i like bringing you food. fruits. slowly, he says, unfurling his hands to stretch to the extent of his pink nails, i like peeling them and feeding you.

denji’s mouth is wide open, hungering. for once, he knows what taste is at the back of his throat.

what’re you tryin’ to say.

yoshida stares into him like what he’ll say next will pour into denji and fill him up forever. i want you to eat well.

huh?

i want to be the only one you trust with your mouth when you’re hungry.

huh??? denji cups his ear, come again, wha’.

yoshida flinches at this. he sounds as if he’s despairing when he tosses his shaggy hair out of his eyes, laughs falsely and says, ah, denji-kun, are you really that fucking stupid?

yeah. denji puts a foot between them. in the outline of his eyes, yoshida is shaking, and it reminds denji of a hurt dog. then, he knows exactly what needs to be done here. he corners him and spits: so spell it out for me already, chicken-shit.

with that yoshida stops trembling. his eyes gloss over like fruit pits and his hands shoot out. those hands, long fingers, strange and lightly scarred, hold him hard and they don’t pull him any closer.

it means, denji, i’m going to be your alpha. there, scared?

his face isn’t changing, but denji sees nayuta, the rigid set of her cheeks that don’t know how to soften and pout, but it’s certainly a tantrum, a childish clinging when she won’t let either of them easy out of bed. yoshida probably wouldn’t do the same thing, not outright, not so blatantly, but if denji got up first, if he started breakfast burning on the stove, he’d eventually find yoshida right at his shoulder with a tight smile. he’d be able to tell then, not so obviously, but black eyes would slightly ease the longer they lingered together. tangled with the steam, the scent would melt them down like burnt brown honey.

you’re just as much of a child, aren’t you.

denji cringes at the sudden warmth. yoshida draws back, his mouth gleaming vindictively. 

don’t say something so fucking obvious. actually, you’re being the stupid one right now.

is that so.

yeah, very fucking so.

yoshida snorts brutally. his hands slip away and his face replaces the distance. what say you, denji-kun, what should i do about that?

huh? his mouth parrots slowly, uh, you say, i say, and yoshida’s mouth is opening faster to shape a bite out of air before he commits to solid flesh.

the oven beeps its little song. ddu-du-ddu, all finished. if anything, it has to be cake for dessert. 

yoshida straightens, and denji jerks after him with a little pang. the smell of something satisfying twists between their wrung out guts. they’re still eager, to nip closer, a taste of teeth, here’s an instance to know the real scent of flesh, but, 

first, should we eat dinner?

yeah, i’m always hungry after all.