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Even though Sawatari Akane didn’t know his name, she hated watching him bleed. If she knew who this man was before he became “Katana Man,” she never would’ve made the arrangements to turn him into the thing he was now.
She hated looking at what he turned into when he transformed. Not human, fiend, or devil. Just a lipless, eyeless humanoid horror with swords sticking out of its face and arms.
She didn’t hate the man underneath, though. The grandson of a gangster, yes, but tall and handsome. He kinda reminded her of a young Toshiro Mifune in Drunken Angel with his constantly furrowed brows, though minus the iconic white suit and plus longer sideburns. He was a bit sad in his grief, though he fixated on his gramp’s debt slave much too often. No one else gave a shit about that brat except him.
That being said, Akane found that he had other positive qualities besides his looks.
When they first met, he greeted her with a firm handshake, warm smile, and solid eye contact. Unlike most of their compatriots, he wasn’t freaked out by the new slit-pupiled eyes and intense red stare that she’d recently obtained as part of her new devil contract. He treated her like a normal person. She was touched by that.
Though he was officially referred to in their network as “Samurai Sword,” Akane secretly nicknamed him “Rai” in her own thoughts and musings. Why did she do this? Probably because he deserved to be treated like a human being too.
During their first and only training mission together, Akane caught Rai at midnight in the parking lot with a brand new bag of dog food in his hands when she went out for a smoke. He was feeding the three flea-bitten emaciated mutts that ran around their fleabag motel. He let them jump up on him as he happily scratched their ears and praised them in a high pitched baby voice. His explanation when he caught her looking?
“Why not? They ain’t hurting anyone.”
There was also the time Rai first killed a zombie. It was only for practice, for him to get comfortable with his new form, but Akane remembered the sleepless nights afterwards. He cried over a corpse of all things.
Still. It showed that he wasn’t a completely heartless creature.
Rai was especially endearing in those early days when his body was getting used to the blood loss he experienced after he shifted back. Akane liked how his personality changed from brash and bold to needy and gentle. He came to her for comfort then.
The first time he did so a few nights after their first real mission began was especially sweet.
Akane had already changed into her sleep shirt and leggings. She was trying to sneak a last minute cigarette out the cracked window when she got a tentative knock on her motel room door. Peering into the door’s peephole, she saw Rai standing in the hallway in only his pale blue boxers. His hair was wet and his chest was covered in blood.
She opened the door just wide enough to pull him inside.
“What’re you thinking, walking around like that?” she hissed as she squeezed his wrist as tightly as she could. “We tried to find you for a whole hour before we had to abandon the location. Where’ve you been? Is that your blood?”
Rai fell to his knees in front of her.
“Miss Sawatari… ” his face twisted into a weird amalgamation of comfusion, embarrassment, and pain. “I…I think I died just now?”
“Hah?”
“I was fighting that Future Devil…and it cut my head off? Everything went black for a second, but then I woke up in the nearby motel’s swimming pool with my head reattached to my body?”
Akane didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t feel empathy for that many people anymore—a practiced trait from eight years of devil hunting—but she felt her shriveled little heart crack open just a bit for this man.
“...Thank you for answering your door,” Rai continued, changing the subject. “No one else was answering theirs. The front desk won’t let me get a replacement key like this.”
Akane knew what it was like to be a tool, but she at least had the comfort that death awaited her if something were to go awry. She’d heard the rumors about Rai’s kind. How they didn’t age…how they fought until they had no more blood left in their bodies…how they could bounce back from normally fatal injuries like it was nothing…
Shit. He doesn’t have the luxury of death, does he? Akane realized. He might be a tool until the sun explodes.
Rai looked down at the floor in shame when he couldn’t get a response from her.
Kinda pathetic, isn’t he? Did he even know what he was getting into when he agreed to his contract?
Akane was startled by the sudden urge to run her hand through his limp hair.
Poor thing.
“Chin up,” Akane grunted as she offered her hand and helped pull him to his feet. “Go use my shower. Scrub yourself off really well. You’re staying here tonight.”
“Huh?”
“I’m your senior. Go do it.”
Rai obeyed and reemerged twenty minutes later in an itchy motel room bathrobe. Akane was already in bed.
“Come on. You get the half with the lumpy side of the mattress.”
Her junior didn’t protest. He sheepishly crawled into bed and rested on top of the coverlet.
“Under the sheets with you. What’re you doing, trying to catch a cold?” she griped, turning over to face the nightstand.
Akane felt his side of the bed shift.
“Miss Sawatari?”
“Hah?”
“Thanks.”
“Whatever.”
And so it went. Whenever Rai bounced back from a severe wound, he came to her. He never wanted anything from her. It seemed like he just wanted to be in her presence.
Weirdo.
Akane held Rai once, when she was stupidly intoxicated after a night of solo binge drinking, but nothing intimate ever happened between them.
As much as she hated to admit it, Akane grew feelings for the fool. She cherished every time Rai patted her on the back after a successful skirmish. She also liked when he took the time to bandage her fingernail-less digits after she had to use the Snake Devil. Every touch from him, no matter how mundane, was precious to her.
“Akane!”
The door to her motel room opened with a bang.
Akane extinguished her cigarette stub on the dirty provided ashtray and glanced over her shoulder at her junior. Excitement danced across Rai’s face.
“Our mission got greenlit. We're gonna kill the brat once and for all.”
“Oh? Cool. Come here.”
Rai ambled over closer as she stood. She stuck her hands in her hoodie and pressed her chest to his stomach.
“Bring your face closer.”
Like the reliable tool he was, Rai did as she commanded.
Akane kissed him. It was little more than a peck to the corner of his mouth. As she pulled away, his mouth dropped open in shock.
“...What was that?”
She turned away before Rai saw the tears in her eyes. She hoped this day would never come. There was no way in hell they’d be successful in a fight against Public Safety Devil Hunters backed by Makima. Her fingers trembled as she went to light a fresh cigarette.
“A celebratory kiss. This is what you got into this line of work for, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but—”
“Go notify Mishima and Inoue about the news. We have to move quickly now.”
“Ak—Miss Sawatari—”
“Did you not hear me? Get back to work.”
“…Yes, ma’am.”
Akane waited for the door to shut behind him before she permitted herself to let out a single sob.
Maybe, just maybe, Rai would miss her when she was dead.
Remember me, she silently implored him. Please? If you can?