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There was a ghost in the living room.
She was sitting on the couch, tucked between a corner next to the window, allowing for sunlight to bathe her. Allowing for her to look divine.
Her legs were crossed, one over the other. She had the decency to take her shoes off, which he could have imagined she would have done if her divinity graced her when she was still breathing. She was polite like that.
Denji knew better than to be afraid of something he knew to be false. His job sat firmly in reality, focusing on here and now, rather than what if or if only. Being afraid, being caught in the midst of seeing someone that he knew wasn’t there, it held no purpose when you’re a Devil Hunter.
And he wasn’t afraid. Three months ago, his heart was turned into something inhuman. It was no longer a vessel for blood and rhythm, but now more like a chain-linked fence holding a dog behind it. The cord on his chest was the key to open it if he wanted. He couldn’t be afraid with a body like that.
Denji wasn’t scared, but seeing Reze with her unlaced boots sitting at her feet, with her hair down, and eyes half-closed, it made him freeze up. It wasn’t a matter of fear, or a matter of vessels.
When faced with a ghost, there only seemed to be one option: to catch the sight between his teeth and swallow it whole. To try and grasp it between his fingers, to try and make it last just a little while longer.
Sometimes, he remembered the years before his mother’s death. Denji was too young to take in her grace, or her laugh, so the images his mind gave him will never be enough to conjure up a ghost. No matter how badly he wanted it. He would probably drink in the sight if she were to appear, just like how he was doing now.
Sometimes, he wondered if she would have liked Reze. If Reze would have liked her. If their lives hadn’t been so intertwined with predestined fates, if everything wasn’t so fucking awful, it would have been different.
If only, he thought sometimes, knowing it wouldn’t do him any good.
Reze opened her eyes to see him better. Her eyes were a shade of green he could never find anywhere. He had tried. Like when they met, it was just as striking. Just as memorable.
She blinked, once, twice, then recognition unfolded itself. There was a smile, as if she was glad to see him. As if him and his inhuman body didn’t cause her death.
As if she hadn’t said run away with me.
As if his heart, loyal like a dog, hadn’t said stay.
“Hey Denji,” she whispered. Her voice was soft and low.
“Hey,” he said. The question ‘what are you doing here’ caught on his tongue. Slotted neatly between his teeth were the statements, ‘I miss you,’ and ‘Fuck, please, please don’t leave again.’
“Hey,” he repeated, because a ghost could only grace him with her presence only when necessary. Because asking her to stay would be like asking to start again. It wasn’t an option.
Her laugh was warm. It bubbled up like seafoam, spilling outwards. It was pretty.
“You already said that, didn’t you?” Reze asked.
Denji nodded, then swallowed the thickness in his throat. It made the inside feel raw, as if he had swallowed glass. As if he had been cut by it.
“Yeah… Yeah, I guess I did.”
“You miss me?” She asked next.
Even like this, her choker was still wrapped tightly around her neck. Dark and pretty. The pin that was built to destroy, to take and only ever take, glinted in the early morning sunlight. She didn’t have to tug at it to detonate the trigger. The sight, her voice, was enough. More than enough.
The wires were crossed, there was the smell of powder. One, two, three, boom. And suddenly, Denji’s heart wasn’t an unholy thing after all, but a table ready to hold a shrine.
Ready to grasp whatever he could remember of Reze and never let go.
“Yeah,” she said. She sounded so sad. “I miss you too.”
– –
His first relationship began when the rain wouldn’t seem to let up. It seemed as if there was only one telephone booth in the world. Against the glass, the water tapped endlessly. And there was Reze. Her hair. Her clothes. Her human body was completely drenched.
It took him three days to fall in love. Their time together lasted two weeks. It was pathetic in terms of grand schemes, and not at all deserving of the word serious. It was clumsy in nature, a first for both of them. It was nothing. It was everything.
He had been given the news after the Darkness Devil. After being spit out by a deity that lived in the lowest parts of humanity. Aki was never delicate when it came to grief. He had known it so long it was a part of him, known it to the point it felt like a limb. He told Denji because he thought he should know.
Because he thought he should be given a chance to mourn.
He had seen his mother choke on her blood, then watched as his father grew apathetic and dull.
He was ripped apart once, then given a burial in a dumpster where no one would be able to remember him. Then he was haphazardly resurrected, only to be told to live immediately after. He had lived such a life that he was never taught how to be a person, let alone taught how to grieve.
Because how was he supposed to know?
He didn’t know, but he was still sixteen. And like any sixteen year old boy who grew to be caught in the tide, cursed to remember a first love for all eternity, he ran to the bathroom to throw up. Then he curled in on himself, in his bed, and sobbed for the first time in who knew how long.
For a moment, he wasn’t a hybrid. He wasn’t a Devil, or a deity with a chainsaw for a heart, or anything that was built to harm. He was just himself. Just a boy, still cursed to be consumed by his love.
– –
The first witness to this sight would be Power, at least in the early days. They had split his room a week earlier.
They had each taken a side on the bed because the nights weren’t easy anymore, and the mornings were to be considered a victory. Right side for Denji, left for Power, a spot in the middle for Meowy. It was a part of their lives now, a part of the routine.
Power was in his room, sitting on the edge of the bed. After the confusion had been cleared, she didn’t seem to have any snark inside her. She didn’t seem to have anything to say.
She just sat there, with her dark red horns and sharp teeth. She was wearing the band shirt she had stolen from Aki weeks earlier. She had her cat in her lap. Her friend was curled up, weak and vulnerable and human. The opposite of her.
And yet, she laid down next to him. Ran her fingers through his hair, then let him jump into her arms when he was ready.
They were cursed beings, both of them. Neither of them were taught how to comfort or what it meant to be comforted. They were given bodies destined to fall apart, but it was the bodies they had at their disposal. If they could use what they had to hold onto each other, to keep one another in their grasps tightly, then so be it. Curses were worth it. These bodies were worth it.
– –
The next witness was Aki, who knew too much about both heartbreak and grief. When he was younger, those were the only things he could carry with him. His life had been labeled by the word fleeting, not eternal. He learned that at the age of ten. And as he grew up, it was the one lesson that he was reminded of the most.
Reze also lived a life destined to be categorized by the word fleeting. In hindsight, it was clear that their time together would also be destined to fit perfectly into that label. She was tied to so much, and her only request was for him to go and force some kind of an eternity with her.
It wouldn’t be perfect. Reze was a year older than him, but she hadn’t been taught how to be a person either. They would have to learn together. They would probably fight along the way. Not just with each other, with the world too. With everyone that wanted them dead.
It wasn’t ideal, this makeshift attempt at happiness, at being together. But who was to say that there wouldn’t be happiness? That there wouldn’t be peace? At least for a little while?
“You couldn’t have gone with her,” Aki said eventually, during one of the mornings where it was the hardest. Where Denji couldn’t find it in himself to eat, no matter how many times Aki made him his favorites.
(Later on, he’ll look back on those memories. He’ll think about those mornings where Aki spent however many hours trying to make something just for him. Then he’ll be filled with regret and thankfulness. And it’s funny, it’s so funny that those emotions can exist in him.
Just like how grief and love will have a reserved space in his mind.
Those feelings will be eternal. Because that was what it felt like for Aki. Fleeting moments when you thought about it, but the weight would always be there.)
“I know,” he said as he sat at the table, picking at his pancakes. “But I wish I had-”
“Done something different?” He asked.
When Denji looked up to meet his gaze, Aki’s hair was slipping out of his usual ponytail. If it were a normal day, the three of them would be seated at the table. Him, Power, and Aki. Power would have made fun of the sight, and Denji would have laughed and gone along with it.
But it wasn’t like that. It hadn’t been like that in weeks. Power, although she held him tight and would mutter stupid stories to him until she saw something like a smile, had no idea what to do with him.
He experienced something she hadn’t discovered yet. She knew absence. She knew love. But to know someone she had loved and for them to be gone in a way she couldn’t understand?
But Aki, on the other hand, knew this. He had been a big brother once. He had been someone’s son once. He knew what it was like to live with the lack of those comforts.
That was why they sometimes sat at the table, just them. It was always when the mornings were the hardest. When Power had to grab him by the hand and force him out of their room. When Aki had to make him eat.
Power would stay in the living room. She would play with her cat and pretend not to listen. Aki would sit across from him. He would make Denji’s his favorites and pretend that it didn’t scare the hell out of him that he wasn’t eating, even if he knew what was happening.
And Denji would try to seem like any of this felt normal. He had to try for them. They were both scared in their own ways, and the last thing he wanted was to be the cause of that. To them though, he wasn’t a curse. He wasn’t a plague that brought nothing but death.
And they loved him for some reason. He couldn’t let go of that.
– –
He did eat eventually. His body could only go so long before it started fighting for itself. It was only natural.
When it was just him and Pochita, they would be huddled together in a shack never meant to withhold a boy and his dog. He would go days where his body would fight for whatever was essential. Back in those days, there weren't such experiences dealing with grief or first loves or knowing an apartment filled with warmth.
Was it selfish for him to want those days back, just because it seemed easier?
A thought like that would emerge during the nights where he couldn’t sleep. It would make him a little sick and endlessly guilty.
His life, the one he had stumbled into, was one some people would kill for. He knew this because during those days he would kill someone if it meant never going hungry. If it meant he could feel like a normal kid for one second.
And now he had it. And he had people that loved him. Who was he to desire for simplicity when it was so much worse back then?
He turned on his side. There was Power, sleeping with her mouth open and her teeth exposed. He watched her fall apart once, back there with the Darkness Devil. Ever since then, he would reach for her wrist, just to check for a pulse. Just to check if she was still there.
He was someone who was just barely understanding grief. He was also someone that had watched so many people die that he couldn’t count it on his hands anymore. If Power were to join a chorus of people that were bound to never return, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.
Denji counted her breaths. He held her hand.
He was glad to have someone like her. He never wanted to return to those days because it meant her absence, Aki’s absence.
– –
“I have a question,” Reze asked one morning. She was in her usual spot. Legs crossed. Hair loose. An angel. Fuck.
“Yeah,” Denji said. “I got one too.”
Reze raised an eyebrow. “Oh really,” she said. Her voice was sweet and curious.
Denji’s ghost leaned back into his spot on the couch. She raised her arms, tucking her hands behind her head. She didn’t break her gaze like how he often did when he was in the process of being haunted. Ghosts were meticulous like that. Or maybe he was just this close to losing it.
He sat next to her, careful to keep his distance. How long would it be until another bomb went off? He didn’t know. Couldn’t muster up the courage to figure out the answer. He just knew there was a limit here. Reze would disappear any second now.
The time was ticking. Cross-wired. Ready for an explosion.
“You can go first,” he said slowly. “With– with your question, I mean.”
“What a gentleman,” Reze noted, her lips curling into a smile.
“You always liked that about me, didn’t you?” Denji answered back.
She laughed. Salt water filled the living room. Seafoam touched the hardwood floor. What would it be like to drown in this before the scent of powder filled the air?
“I did,” she said, snapping him out of it. “I still do…”
Reze turned her head to look at him. “Denji?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you believe in heaven?”
“I don’t know.” After a second, after an eternity, he added, “Why do you ask?”
Reze sighed. “I heard once that people tend to believe in an afterlife because it gives them, I don’t know- reassurance- that the ones that they love will be there when they die. I thought you’d believe in that, you seem like the type.”
“How so?”
“Because you’re clinging to someone whose body is buried in a place you can’t find. And even though you know this, you still want to see me. You still want to believe that somehow, I’m okay.”
“I’d like for you to learn how to let go of me,” Reze whispered, her voice starting to fall apart. The sound was cracked and frayed at the edges.
– –
The bomb went off, leaving Denji’s heart exposed and his lips cracked. His body was lit aflame. What did it mean to love? To grieve? Over and over, the question repeated itself. Echoing, always echoing.
“How am I supposed to do that?” He asked in response.
– –
He had heard that the Devil built from the fear of angels was a pretty thing. The compliment had first spilled from Miss Makima’s lips, her words dripping with something Denji couldn’t quite describe. He had heard the same sort of sentiment echo throughout the Public Safety department.
And honestly, Denji was getting sick of it before the Darkness Devil came and cut all that was familiar wide open.
For the record, he didn’t think of Angel as a pretty thing. He tolerated his presence when he appeared at the apartment, when he asked for Aki in a quiet voice.
“Boy,” Angel said during a warm afternoon that seemed to burn all that it touched. Power had taken up a spot near the air conditioner, while Denji remained in the living room. Remained at the sight of his hauntings, but just on the floor.
Angel didn’t ask why he was settled onto hardwood. He had lived long enough that the intricacies of humanity were a bit beneath him by now. Still, he nudged Denji’s side with his foot when he didn’t respond immediately.
“Boy,” Angel repeated, a little louder. He wasn’t sure if the nickname was an improvement from the previous title of Chainsaw or not.
“I dunno,” Reze giggled from the couch. “I think it’s a step in the right direction.”
“Shut up,” Denji muttered.
Angel frowned at him before cupping his hands around the sides of his mouth. “Aki! The boy is insulting my presence!”
“Denji, play nice, for god’s sake-”
“I am playing nice!” He turned to Angel. “And I wasn’t talking to you,” he added.
He looked. Reze was gone.
“I’m seeing things,” he said. It sounded so hopeless. He sounded insane.
Angel frowned again. Despite his halo composed of human souls and wings that left feathers everywhere, this Devil was nothing like Reze. He wasn’t divine, not even close.
He was nowhere close to enlightenment. He was more alive than the girl Denji promised his heart to, but his life was destined to stretch towards infinity until Hell would come to swallow him whole.
To put it simply, Angel didn’t ask for clarification in terms of Denji’s moodiness or his cryptic response. But he understood what he meant instantly.
“Mhm,” Angel said, nodding a bit. “Aki told me about it. Follow me.”
He started walking before the conversation could end properly, something Aki had trained him and Power to not do. It pissed him off. Reze appeared again just to giggle once more.
“What?” Denji said. “Why?”
Angel stopped and turned his head to him. “You think you’re the only one that’s been haunted by a memory?”
“Huh?”
He sighed. “Just come with me. Please.”
– –
Power had her hands slung over the back of Denji’s shoulders by the time he and Angel had made it to the balcony connected to the apartment. She wasn’t invited to the conversation by any means, but that didn’t matter to her. Her and Denji were practically bound together, connected at the hip. She wasn’t leaving.
And maybe Meowy had gotten under the bed and refused to leave, causing a permanent state of boredom for her. Either way, he accepted the company and they laughed when Power ignored Angel’s warning of “scram.”
It felt so nice. He wanted to hold the feeling close. Forever. For the rest of his life.
Angel sighed, but allowed Power to stay. He grabbed a carton of cigarettes from his pocket, shaking one out before lighting it up. His prosthetic arms kind of glinted in the sunlight.
That’s the thing about having limbs split apart, of having a body dismantled. There was an option for prosthetics if necessary. Angel took it the first chance he got. Aki was just happy he didn’t have to use gloves just to touch him anymore.
The smell of smoke filled the air. Angel took a breath.
“You’re seeing things,” he stated.
Power squeezed him a little tighter. He reached for her hand, held it tightly too.
Denji squinted. “Uh, yeah.”
“It’s not your job to grieve for eternity, boy,” Angel said. “I know that’s what you want to do, but human lives are nothing but a blink of an eye to me. It’s too short.”
He had seen enough to understand it. “I know.”
“Good,” he nodded. “That’s… That’s a better start than most people.”
“Where’s this going?”
Another sigh. Another inhale of the cigarette. “Let’s say I know where the Bomb Devil is buried. It’s a bit of a tradition for humans to visit these sorts of places anyway…”
“You wouldn’t go by yourself,” Power said for the first time since they started speaking. “I mean, if you do that’s fine- it’s just-”
“Did you know about this?” He asked.
There was a nod against his shoulder, followed by a squeeze. “Angel told Aki and he told me.”
“It’s definitely not a cure-all,” Aki called out since the door was open. “Believe me. But it’s there if you want to see it.”
Reze was sitting on the gate of the balcony. Her legs swung. She looked at him. She smiled widely, almost to the point it would have hurt her if she were here in a physical sense. It was a show of teeth, with love spilling between the spaces.
She used to look like that when they met. Denji reached for the memory, preserved it. It wasn’t his job to mourn for his entire life, but god, he was willing to carry what memories he could.
“I really liked you,” she said. Her words were laced with immaturity because she was a child when they held one another and she was a child when she died. And she wouldn’t grow to the point I love you could drip effortlessly from her mouth.
But that was okay. He loved her nonetheless.
– –
His parents were never religious people. In their eyes, it wasn’t a matter of a god forsaking or cursing them. It was just a matter of feeling forgotten, feeling as if their existence wasn’t worth divinity. Denji didn’t feel like he deserved such grace either, but Aki said it was up to him to decide if he wanted to pursue it or not.
They ended up taking a train that led outside Tokyo, and drifted towards the outskirts of Kyoto. Denji held the bouquet of flowers he had bought with the money he thought to bring.
The day she died, he had waited at her cafe. He carried similar flowers. Carried a similar weight. Carried a similar love too.
Power fell asleep on his shoulder. Aki took notice of the scenery, muttering observations to Angel while they went.
It was quiet. So, so quiet.
Denji shut his eyes and prayed to a god he was never sure of to begin with. He asked for something like peace, something like reassurance.
The train hummed. He clung to the flowers and tilted his head back. He didn’t see ghosts or first loves. For a second, there was none of that. It was just him and fragments of a life he wanted. Fragments that didn’t know what to do with themselves either. But they were there, they were there.