Chapter Text
On a quiet, uneventful Saturday evening, Yosuke once again found himself alone in his small, dingy apartment. He was playing videogames with his headphones pulled snug over his ears, volume cranked at full blast to drone out the voices of the arguing tenants next door.
He sighs loudly and drops his controller onto the floor, glaring at the GAME OVER flashing right back at him. Yosuke turns off the PS3, not even bothering to deal with the game more than he already has, and drags himself over to his laptop. He quickly takes it out of sleep mode, immediately being greeted by the past few days’ research.
It’s so stupid, he thought, closing out all the tabs. It’ll never work.
But he’s already bought the stupid scented candles, looked up the proper symbol, and even memorized the Latin incantation. He knows there’s no backing out now, not even with the screaming voice in the back of his head telling him that trying to make a deal with the god of the Underworld is a bad idea.
He’s desperate, okay? Embarrassingly so.
So he draws the symbol on the kitchen tile, using a bright red washable marker, and turns off all the lights while putting the candles all around the room. He lights all of them carefully, sits down with the old, dusty grimoire he uncovered at one of the many local antique stores, and opens it to the page that reads DAEL-MAKING WIETH A DAEMONIC BEING in all capital letters.
Yosuke personally thought that was a little over-dramatic, but he supposed anyone in the business of grimoire-making would have to be. He read over the rules again and winced at the last one, the one that had left him wondering if it was truly such a good idea after all.
Yosuke carefully grabbed the knife and awkwardly held his hand over the middle of the circle, cutting into his arm shallowly; it was a big knife that he had chosen and it left an incision spanning the length of his entire forearm. It immediately began to well with blood and he quickly leaned his entire body forward, making sure all the blood stayed within the carefully drawn lines.
As it dripped into the center of the circle, he began to recite the Latin words of the incantation. He spoke clearly, each word precise and giving no room for mistake, eyes darting around the room nervously as a chill rose up his spine.
With the words said, he pulled his arm out from the center of the circle and wrapped a rag around it. Yosuke looked back down at the book, read the final rule (with a lovely warning written in red ink right beneath it), and said, “Come to me now, Hades, god of the Underworld, for I wish to make a deal!”
Nothing happened for a couple moments, but there was an unusual lifelessness to the apartment that left Yosuke uneasy. It was completely silent, so quiet that the only sounds he could hear were his own breathing, and Yosuke felt very, very cold. He zipped up his jacket, retreating into its warmth and shivering at the sudden chill that had overcome him.
Before his eyes, the area around the symbol began to… die, to wither, to age beyond any possible, reasonable passage of time. The floorboards rotted, the wallpaper peeled back to expose the wood underneath, and there was the stench of death permeating the air, so nauseatingly clear that it made Yosuke’s stomach churn.
Holy shit, I’m screwed! So incredibly, unbelievably screwed, Yosuke thought, eyes darting wildly about the room as he tended to his arm. The bleeding had stopped, but he didn’t want to tend to it with a demon right in his fucking kitchen.
And then a figure appeared in the middle of the circle, his eyes a bright, inhuman canary yellow and skin ashen white, paler than any fictional vampire Yosuke had ever seen. He wore a crown around his head, gnarled, blackened twigs twisted to encircle his skull, and his hair was unusually grey for one that seemed so ageless, so otherworldly and strange. His eyes were empty, glassy like that of the dead; when he finally spoke, that growing tendril of dread in the pit of Yosuke’s stomach spread further and further, unease dripping through his pores.
“You called me, mortal?” the being, Hades, asked him with an almost curious voice and those wide, lifeless yellow eyes staring straight into his own. He looked at him like he saw an interesting specimen, something curious and unusual. Yosuke thought he also looked like he was prepared to squash him under his boot, as if he were simply an irritating bug.
“Y-yes, I called you to make a deal,” Yosuke said, curling into himself and staring up at the god with wide, horrified eyes. He was shaking minutely and tried to stop it, but there was a cold seeping deep into his bones and so, so much fear. “You are… Hades, r-right?”
“…Hades?” He mumbled, as if speaking to himself, before realization seemed to come over him. With an amused smirk that still didn’t reach his eyes, the god said, “No, I go by Souji. Humans have made up many, many names for me in the past. I’ve been called Hades, Satan, Robin Thicke, Narukami… I’ve almost lost track of all of them, honestly.”
Yosuke stared at him. And then stared some more. Then, he finally shook it off and asked, “Did you just make a joke?”
“Yes,” Souji said, smile widening and showing off his pointy, sharp teeth. Yosuke laughed nervously at the sight, backing even further away. He inquired, “Was it any good? Human humor still seems to evade me… I have a cousin, she goes by Nanako now, who is much better at understanding the way all of you little creatures work.”
“It was okay… Kinda American, though,” Yosuke pointed out before realizing that he was talking with the god of the Underworld. Please don’t smite me to death, he thought worriedly.
Souji shrugged his shoulders, but then his gaze fell on the circle that he was still trapped in the middle of. He frowned, the temperature in the room dropping another few notches. Yosuke shuddered at the sudden drop, rubbing his hands together for warmth. Souji didn't even seem to notice the thin coat of ice forming on the kitchen floor. He said, “You still need to state your terms for our agreement, mortal. As a warning, the agreement always ends in me taking your soul to the Underworld a couple years early.”
“Oh,” Yosuke said, weakly. He bit his lip, trying to remember what he had planned out; his mind had blanked suddenly under the pressure. “Just… I know this sounds pathetic. I mean, it totally is, right? But I wanted to sell my soul for you to be my friend.”
Souji stared down at the cowering young man, eyes widening minutely. He paused for a moment, as if to gather his words, and said, “I’ve never heard that before. Usually if you bring something up with me, it’s because you want world domination. It’s never something like killing your annoying neighbor or bringing back your dead dog with me. I’ll take your soul in… hmm, how does five years sound to you? I usually stick to one or two, but this is a very different type of deal.”
“F-five years?” he whispered, failing once again to stop trembling. The shaking wasn’t just from the cold now and he could be very sure of that. But then he remembered all the nights he spent alone, waiting for his phone to light up with a text, and all the times that his friends didn’t include him in their plans…
What did he have to live for? All of his friends would be better off without him. His mother would never have to worry about how he wasn’t doing anything she wanted; his father couldn’t yell at him for shaming their family by not taking up the mantle of the business. No one would care. He was just a pathetic, lonely guy.
Sardonically, he thought, The only ones that’ll miss me are the stray cats I feed.
“Yes,” he agreed finally, mouth set in a thin, unhappy line.
Souji seemed to see something in that gaze that made him soften imperceptibly. He gave a nod of agreement and coolly said, “Then, we have a deal. I’ll be back in a day or so, if you would be so kind as to let me out of this trap.”
Yosuke hurriedly wiped away part of the symbol and with that, Souji had gone.