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Shingo's body isn't his. It hasn't been in a long time. At first, he fought it, fought and screamed and cried in his own head, desperate for any sign of mercy from the creature possessing him. But there was no response. He suspected the Greeed didn't even notice his presence. The way it speaks about their situation implies as much, but he can’t be sure if that’s the truth.
He stops struggling and the horror fades, dulls. Soon he finds himself oddly okay with the whole situation. It's not okay, a part of him knows that. But another part of him knows that there's nothing to be accomplished by hanging onto the horror. He can cry and scream and resist becoming complacent as long as he wants, but it's exhausting and it's pointless.
So he settles into the situation. He watches through eyes that weren't his own as a stranger takes over his life. It's an interesting show, he has to admit. The creature wearing his face is interesting. Standoffish and cold at times, but always, always interesting.
Shingo grows used to the sensation of his mouth moving against his will, of food swallowed without his control. He grows used to the strange new diet, the strange new posture, the strange new words coming out of his mouth. Greeed and Yummi and Kamen Rider and a hundred new words that Shingo never said out loud when he was himself.
And he grows used to the way the Greeed's eyes move. The way its eyes dart around when entering a room, the way it focuses on seemingly innocuous things while ignoring far bigger problems.
He sees the things it pays attention to and the things it ignores. It ignores Shingo's sister, for the most part. At first, that was devasting. Shingo loved his sister, he spent his life taking care of her, protecting her whenever he could. She could protect herself from physical harm, but he'd always been there for her emotionally. And now she's struggling after losing him, and the creature in his body doesn't care.
Shingo struggles to catch glimpses of her out of the corners of the eyes he can't control. Every time he sees a sign of her sadness he seethes in his cage. But over time the creature softens to her. It pays attention to her, if grudgingly.
But the one thing that doesn't change, is the person the creature does pay attention to. The young man, thin and worn from hunger. Even after months of living in a restaurant, the gauntness of malnutrition hangs on his frame. But he smiles, and he encourages others.
Shingo can admire him, despite everything. That might be the influence of the lens he sees the man through. He has no choice but to see the line of the man's jaw and the curve of his lips and flashes of bare skin when his ill-fitting clothes hung off his shoulders.
What a Greeed wants with a human, Shingo can't know. He can't read the creature's thoughts. But he can guess the intention by the way its eyes sweep over the man's body. He can feel his own heartbeat increase when the man gets too close. He knows what attraction feels like, but it's strange to feel it without experiencing the actual attraction.
Well, maybe experiencing some of it. Maybe it's his own deranged way of coping. Shingo’s never been interested in men before, but now that he sees everything through the monster's eyes, Eiji is the most beautiful man in the world.
And he sees Eiji’s returned interest. He sees it long before his possessor. He sees it out of the corner of his eye when the creature isn’t paying attention. It doesn’t know what to pay attention to. It doesn’t know how humans work.
It doesn’t lean in when Eiji does. It doesn’t respond to the hints, to the flirtation. It doesn’t even respond to touching, the closeness, the way Eiji barely swallows kisses as he realizes that the Greeed isn't about to reciprocate.
That drives Shingo insane. He was never the confident, flirtatious type, but this, this is too much. If he had control, even for a moment, he could fix all of this. He could lean in when Eiji does, meet the man in the middle. He could voice the horrid clinging longing that wracks his body when Eiji acts distant.
But he can't. He's forced to sit and watch the horrid clumsy dance. Forced to pine and yearn and ache. Whether the attraction is his own or a byproduct of the creature inside him no longer matters. It's all he has and all he feels.
And there's nothing he can do about it.