Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

When Aki moves to Himeno's apartment, there's a gap of coldness and discomfort between them.

Not like it could be otherwise, for two people who barely know each other and who are suddenly forced to share spaces and routines.

At first, it's hard to keep a distance: Himeno still has an arm in a cast, bandages that need to be changed periodically, and a half-cut vision to get used to. And Aki has no choice but to assist her. He doesn't really know how to do it, though.

He's not good at taking care of people... not yet, at least (he'll learn with her). He lacks patience, proper warmth in his voice and gestures, and – above all – he's overly, deeply, focused on himself.

The first night he sets foot in her place, she calls him from the bathroom, and it's for taking off her bra.

He didn't expect anything like that.

He's not sure she's serious until he reaches her, moving hesitantly through a house that isn't his, and finds her with the cast caught in the shirt that dangles from her arm.

His hands move awkwardly, untangling the cast from the sleeve. He has never seen or touched women's underwear before, and it takes him longer than he would like to figure out how the clasp works. Doing everything not to touch her, his entire being is tense with effort. But his knuckles end up brushing her bare back anyway. He immediately pulls away, leaving the hooks open.

He's annoyed and embarrassed beyond measure, and becomes even more so when he realizes that she isn't at all.

Himeno keeps her gaze fixed on the mirror, her mind lost inside itself. She mutters a thank you in a toneless voice.

Aki leaves without answering her.

It doesn't happen again. He doesn't ask for explanations, but the next morning he sees her using Ghost's arm to get sugar from the cupboard, and he assumes that she helped herself with it to get dressed as well. The hypothesis immediately relieves him.

From the third day, a silent alliance begins.

They both commit to talk to each other only when necessary, and avoid spending too much time in the same room.

They try to keep the bathroom as neutral as possible, with separate sections for towels and products, and two different baskets for laundry. Aki carries his toothbrush back and forth from his room so as not to leave it in the same glass as hers, and Himeno makes her clothes disappear from the shower glass.

She initially insists on eating out, at least until she'll become familiar enough with Ghost to cook again. But Aki has no way to repay her every time she offers, so he takes the lead and starts cooking for both of them.

He thinks it's fair, actually: he's the invasive presence in a place and life that have existed without him so far, and he feels like he deserves the greater effort.

However, he knows less than ten dishes, and they're all pretty mid. Himeno never complains, and his pride keeps him from asking her, so he starts collecting recipes from magazines and cooking shows she stumbles upon at lunchtime.

He irons her clothes, she commissions his uniform. He changes her bandages, she makes sure to smoke only outside the balcony.

They start watching TV together, occasionally. And just occasionally, Himeno comes with him to the grocery, and Aki goes to wake her up when the alarm is not enough. When she buys beer for her, Himeno brings home a case of soda for him, so they can both drink something different on Saturday. She learns his favorite brand of coffee, he learns she only drinks it sugared.

Aki doesn't know when they stop learning each other's habits and start sharing them.

Doesn't know when they start looking for each other even when it's not necessary, when they start commenting on cooking shows together, and the house starts filling with their late-night talks. And the simple alliance becomes something else.

Or maybe he does.

He vividly remembers a moment, before Himeno took off her cast, before she offered him his first cigarette and he started smoking.

Headquarters had called him to confirm his employment (since he was a minor, bureaucracy had been slower). Back then, Aki was still afraid of not being taken seriously due to his age, that one misstep could cause Public Safety to revoke his eligibility and kick him out.

He wanted to make a good impression, prove himself worthy of respect… Showing up in uniform sounded like a good idea.

Himeno poked her head through his open door, asking him what he wanted for dinner. She found him in the mirror, a silent growl on his lips, handling his tie like a cat's cradle thread.

For an embarrassing minute they stared at each other in silence. Aki thought she would scoff at him, instead she lowered her chin and said:

"Oh. I see…"

She stepped in the room and approached him, cautiously, like dealing with a wild animal.

"Come here. Let me help you."

Aki was thinking of a not so rude way to refuse, but before he could, Himeno's fingers were already working around his neck.

She folded and wrapped the fabric with smooth, quick movements, and Aki was sure she wasn't even using Ghost's hand, because the touch he felt was one, and it was warm with life.

"Here," she said. The tie perfectly knotted on his chest in a few seconds.

Aki couldn't believe she had managed to do better than him with one arm and one eye out, and his seventeen-year-old pride pricked his skin.

He should've probably been grateful, instead he felt annoyed. He almost wished she hadn't helped him at all.

Then Himeno did something, something trivial, really. She raised her head and smiled at him.

Which wasn't new itself, he'd seen her smile a few times before. The new thing was that she was smiling at him, not at something she had absently heard on TV, or at a phone call from Kishibe.

And there was a wrecking tenderness in that smile, not just in the way her lips curved, but also in her gaze, soft and affectionate like a mother's. And it was for him. Him, who was about to jump back and hiss like a cat.

Annoyance melted away from his chest. He slowed down his breathing and lowered his shoulders. 

Himeno moved away from him, cautious as before.

Aki called her before she left. 

"Himeno-senpai.”

She turned, a surprised look on her face. It was still unusual for him to talk to her first.

"...yes?"

Her voice a hesitant whisper.

He looked at her, and the words came out of his mouth with a spontaneity that startled him.

"Thank you."

Himeno stood still for a moment, holding his gaze, then smiled at him again.

Aki thought he saw her shoulders slightly lower as well.

When Himeno takes off her cast and a leather eye patch replaces the bandage over her right eye, the first thing she does is take him out with her coworkers.

"To celebrate my recovery and your entry in Public Safety," she tells him.

Aki will learn that devil hunters like to celebrate even without a reason and that they need it, because otherwise they'd become insane.

But it's the first time he sees Himeno drink, and he can't help but judge her for the number of times she refills her glass. The judgment eases when he realizes everyone is doing the same.

They raise a glass to him, to Himeno, and a whole series of blessings and tragedies mixed together, that Aki soon loses the thread.

"Hey Aki! Have a sip. You look like someone who needs it."

Mr. Fushi, a sand haired man in his thirties, holds out a bottle and starts to pour the contents in his glass. Himeno stops him, waving her arms across the table.

"Get that thing away! He's a minor!" she mumbles, slumped against the man's side.

He takes the bottle back.

"Whoops! My bad."

Himeno has no longer physical boundaries, neither with him nor with others, and is completely different from how he's seen her before. She's extremely talkative, giving hugs and caresses left and right, swinging her weight between him and Fushi, giggling and talking too loudly.

Her head lands on his shoulder. She squints, trying to bring him into focus.

"Aki," she says.

He freezes. He doesn't know how to deal with this new version of her, and wonders which of the two she's shown him so far is the real one (they both are).

"Your tie's undone," she states, drumming fingers on his neck. Aki wants to point out that her tie's undone too, that her shirt is hanging out of her pants and he can see a piece of her stomach, but he realizes that'd be pointless.

She fixes his tie, and Aki feels uncomfortable that she does it in public. But no one's watching, and when they do, no one comments.

She gets on her feet when she's done, using Fushi as a support.

"I'm gonna smoke," she announces. "Save me a shrimp skewer." She stretches and makes her not-so-straight way to the exit.

Aki keeps an eye on her. Through the glass, he sees her figure leaning against the wall and lighting up a cigarette.

"Skewers?" Fushi offers, showing him the tray with tempura fish.

He's about to decline, then thinks about it and takes two of them. He leaves one on his plate.

Another hunter stands up and raises an odd early toast to "everyone who'll be alive to drink at this very table next month!"

Someone glares at him, someone laughs, but in the end they all clink their glasses and drink with him. Aki stares at his glass and, just for something to do, takes a sip of water.

His gaze falls again on the windows. Himeno is not alone.

There's a person next to her who wasn't there before: an imposing man, with a beard and formal clothes, whom Aki has never seen. He's smoking too. He sees them exchange a few glances and few words sporadically.

Maybe she knows him, he tells himself. Maybe Himeno hangs out with other people besides her coworkers. Maybe she's dating someone...

Time passes, the dishes begin to run out, and the shrimp skewer still lies untouched on his plate.

He looks out again and watches Himeno from behind. There's another head next to hers and fingers in her hair.

It's hard to see much else, with dirty glass and staff constantly going back and forth with trays and bottles in their hands. A strange unease pervades him.

"Mr. Fushi." He asks him because he's the nearest person and the only one whose name he can recall.

"Do you know him?" He motions to where he thinks Himeno and the stranger are still standing.

Fushi cranes his neck past the waiters.

"Hm? No. I don't think she does either," he replies, getting casually back to his plate.

Aki, on the other hand, is more tense than before.

"Shouldn't someone... go after her?" he asks.

Fushi shrugs.

"Well, it's none of our business, is it?"

Right. It's none of his business.

The man guesses his concern and tries to reassure him.

"She'll be fine. She has plenty of ways to defend herself, trust me. You'll see her come back home in the morning, eventually."

"But she's been drinking," Aki replies, trying to outline the problem.

"Yeah. Maybe he should go after her," someone from the other side of the table chimes in. "But not for her, mind you! I'm more worried about the guy."

The others laugh or blush behind their glasses for reasons Aki doesn't know. Even Fushi suddenly looks embarrassed.

A waiter takes the plates away along with the shrimp skewer. Aki doesn't care anymore. He excuses himself and gets up to head outside.

Unexpectedly, Himeno is alone.

She's sitting on a bench with an unlit cigarette between her lips, her hair slightly messy and her shirt more wrinkled than before. His eyes fall on the red mark that stains her neck.

It takes her a while to notice him. When she does, her eyelids open wide and she stiffens.

"Aki..." She nervously pulls up the collar, avoiding his gaze.

She's not laughing anymore.

She stares at the street and hugs her elbows. She has a blank, tired expression, like that first night before the bathroom mirror.

Aki parts his lips. The question pressing on his tongue.

Are you okay?

"Do you want to leave?" he asks instead.

Himeno moves slowly. Without looking at him, she takes out her wallet and hands him two bills.

"Can you call a taxi?"

He takes the money and does as she asked.

The ride home is quiet.

Himeno doesn't talk to him, she seeks closeness with his body: slips a hand into the space between his hip and arm and starts playing with the buttons on his cuff.

Aki lets her, because he doesn't know what to say either, and that seems to help her.

At home, he brings an emergency bucket to her room.

"If you need anything at night... call me, okay?"

Himeno mutters something undefined and turns under the covers.

Aki retires to his room, not quite soothed yet. He lies down unable to sleep, his senses on alert and an unsettling confusion on him.

He thinks back to when Himeno asked him what his favorite color was to 'help mutual knowledge'. He dropped the question that time, because he thought was pointless, and that asking it was silly and childish... Now he regrets it.

He thought the information he already had was enough, that the idea he had of her perfectly matched reality, and there was nothing more for him to know or investigate. Their relationship was a working one, after all. Yet, Himeno hasn't taught him anything about how to kill a devil so far, and now Aki finds himself longing for a knowledge that has nothing to do with what he's here for.

He thinks about the winking laughs of her coworkers and the abyss in her gaze when he saw her on that bench, and suddenly the information he has feels not enough.

It must've passed an hour when he hears knocking at his door.

Two seconds later, Himeno shows up on the threshold. She looks around with a lost expression, as if she had never been there before. Aki notices that the eye patch is still tight around her head. He realizes he has never seen her without it, not even in her sleep.

"Himeno-senpai..."

His voice draws her gaze to him.

"Can I stay here for a while?"

She asks that like a child, like Taiyo would've asked him after a bad dream.

Aki feels a pang in his chest when he thinks that, and perhaps that's what makes him accept.

Himeno approaches him and he backs away towards the wall, thinking for a second that she wants to lie down beside him, instead she sits at the end of the bed.

He doesn't like the idea of ​​lying under the sheets while she's there, glancing at him and torturing her tank top. So he gets up, grabs a blanket, and covers them both with it.

Himeno curls up against him, her hands leaving the fabric to run frantically over his chest, searching for a heartbeat.

Her touch trembles and Aki tenses under it, but he lets her. Because he knows she's hurt somewhere, that there's something bleeding where he can't see it and that can't be treated like he's done so far, by pressing a bandage on it. 

The moment her palm finds his sternum the trembling stops. His heartbeat slows in response. Aki lets her because he's bleeding too, and somehow it hurts less this way. It hurts less for both of them. This kind of touch... is tolerable.

Himeno leans forward and it kinda feels like a request for a hug, so he bends an arm behind her and attempts one. It's been a long time since he's hugged someone, and he's probably just making her uncomfortable, but Himeno closes her eye and doesn't move. Right when he thinks she's fallen asleep, he hears her whisper:

"Let's talk a bit."

He has no objection; sleep is a long way off for him.

"About what?"

"Whatever you want."

Aki thinks about it. He concludes her mind's not clear enough for any of the conversations he has in mind, so he adjusts the blanket over their legs and asks:

"What's your favorite color?"

And every wall finally comes down.

Aki has never held Himeno to a high standard in the workplace.

He doesn't like to think so, but the fact that all five of her previous partners died, well... that has to mean something, right? Maybe she's just not cut out for the job (he'll learn that no one really is).

That's why he's caught off guard when he finds himself flat on his back for the third time in a row at the hunter training facility.

Himeno holds an arm bent on his windpipe and his wrists pinned above his head with the other hand. He tries to use his legs, but she pins them down too, crossing her ankles behind his calves.

"You're good," she pants inches from his face, "Looks like Kishibe's done his job."

She's not being ironic, and Aki doesn't understand how she can't be.

"You're... using Ghost," he blames her, even though he knows she isn't.

He's gotten better at sensing a devil's presence since his first contract.

Himeno approved the conclusion, but spent the rest of the day sulking and grumbling about how many better options he could've chosen if only he'd waited a little longer. Yet, no matter whom he talked to about it, Aki had received pats on the back and envious looks, being told that a contract with Fox Devil was the least worst that could happen to him.

He didn't know who to believe, but he knew that Public Safety would never give him an assignment without a contract, and he needed to pay his share of the rent.

Himeno shakes her head, and a chuckle rises from her throat.

"You really are a sore loser, aren't you?"

Her hair hides their faces (it's the time when she still wears it long) and Aki can feel her body against his in places they've never touched before. He clenches his teeth and struggles beneath her, frustrated in more ways than one.

It doesn't help that Himeno keeps panting in his ear.

"And don't frown at me like that, I gave you a compliment. You should be content with it."

Aki turns his head and sighs.

"Senpai... you're kidding me," he says.

"Huh? I swear I'm not."

She frees his limbs and offers him a hand to stand up.

"Close combat is pretty useless against most devils. You don't have to stress about taking down a human."

Aki refuses the hand, but eagerly accepts the bottle of water that comes after.

"So what's all this for?"

The question seems fair to him.

Himeno throws a towel over his head.

"For training your stamina. Fights can last hours, and your body has to get used to chronic stress, to always be ready to run away and shield itself, ten, hundred times."

"What about the offense?"

"Just summon Fox when I tell you to. Your contract is your best weapon," she replies. "But if you really insist, we can give you a gun or something."

Aki knows she said it in good faith, and that firearms are objectively more effective and easier to use, but the idea of ​​holding something with that name makes him sick.

He watches the slew of weapons displayed on the wall.

"I'd like a katana," he says, "my father taught me how to handle it. When I was a child, we often practiced together, before–"

Taiyo got sick.

Himeno looks at him intently, but he swallows his brother's name like bitter bile.

"It's what I'm most familiar with," he ends.

"Alright," she replies after a long pause. "I'll give you a katana. Next time we'll train with that."

Aki finds out that it's not much different than before with a katana in his hand.

Himeno keeps showering him with praises and encouragements, and even if Aki's not so blind to deny his progress, he's still weaker than her. And maybe that's his problem.

He hates that he underestimated her. Hates that he was wrong about that too. Hates that her portrait keeps changing before his eyes, and that pity and disapproval mix with admiration and attachment.

As messy as she is, Himeno is not a bad person. She's not a bad hunter, and she's not insensitive either, and he's not as much better than her as he thought he was.

He wonders how it happened, then…

He doesn't have to wait long for his answer.

Himeno works on the battlefield with surgical precision: she moves fast on the rubble while her ghost arm throws away obstacles, pushes civilians aside, traps devils and strangles them in a silent and lethal grip. And all the while she stays before him, so that every strike passes through her first and reaches him tempered.

Every time he tries to take an action, she precedes him – mind and body always one step ahead.

"Aki! Fox!" she shouts.

Aki joins three fingers, and a moment later the devil she's pinned down is a rat ripped by feline jaws.

No misstep, no slowdown, no outward mistake.

And yet there's a mother crying for her son beneath a white sheet, and Aki can't explain it.

The truth is that people die without explanation sometimes. And devil hunters, no matter how trained, are still people: made of extremely fragile fleshes and minds, against creatures fed by an unlimited straight's source, old like the world itself. That's why they're nothing without a contract.

Helplessness hits him all at once.

Aki watches Himeno. She drags on a smoke, her nose bleeding on her shirt, and he wonders how many scenes like this she must've witnessed in her career.

A few days later a woman stops her in the street. He catches the insult she addresses her with even from afar, but it's the sound of fingers hitting cheek that triggers him.

He rushes to her, disobeying her previous order, but by the time he gets there the woman's already left. He learns she was her fifth partner's girlfriend.

"It's nothing." Himeno covers her red cheek and looks at her shoes. "It happens a lot: issues with family members or friends of deceased partners... They can't take it out on devils, so it's normal they take it out on me," she explains simply.

A lot. How many times is a lot?

'Don't die, Aki.'

How many slaps did she have to take to make up for strangers' grief when no one made up for hers?

Aki feels anger building. He's mad at Himeno for her passive acceptance, at that woman for laying hands on her, and at himself for having blamed her in the same way.

He makes his way through the crowd at a brisk pace. He spots her. A hand rummages in his pocket, a tissue unfolds, and suddenly he's eight years old again, watching Taiyo walking before him in the hands of their parents, and a stick of chewing gum as his only weapon.

When he comes back to Himeno's confused stare and tells her what he's done, she bursts out laughing. He sees the exact moment her expression cracks: her eye widens, lids flutter, and a first breathy note escapes her lips. She laughs like never before, so hard that she's clutching her stomach, her knees bent and tears in her lashes.

Her voice blends with angry horns and starting cars, and airs a vibrance that Aki would've never made her capable of. 

It's… satisfying. Extremely. More than feeling gum stick to cashmere fiber.

"L-Let... let's–" The aftermath of her laughter keeps her from speaking.

"Eat out!" she finishes with a smile.

Aki follows her to a restaurant with warm and cozy lighting. They order and chat more than usual, and Himeno smiles at him the whole time. It hurts less this way.

The miso soup warms his throat, and her voice arguing – again – why he should start smoking too is a welcome distraction from everything else.

He doesn't need to smoke, he thinks. Right now, this is enough for him.

Of course, another mental construct that Himeno brings down in a few months. Just enough time for him to come of age.

"Aki, have you seen a packet of Wild Ravens anywhere?"

Of course he has, and she knows it.

"No," he answers. "Have you checked the table outside?"

His shamelessness brings a smile to her lips.

"I have. And also the couch, the shelf in the hallway, the kitchen scale and my jacket pockets."

Aki shrugs. "It must've ended up in the washing machine with the pants."

"Oh, c'mon! Nitpicky as you are, didn't you empty all the pockets first?"

They haven't done separate laundry in a year by now, and yes: he emptied the pockets. That's where he got it from.

"I didn't find anything," he keeps lying.

Usually he's more subtle than that – he takes a cigarette or two out of a full pack, so she doesn't notice the difference. But this time the pack dropped right into his hand without him looking for it. He didn't mean to keep it... not all of it, at least. At the right time it would magically reappear in one of the aforementioned places, and Himeno would complain about her faked distraction.

Like they both don't know exactly what they're doing.

Himeno never changes the usual places where she keeps her cigarettes, and when she does – to give the appearance of trying – she does it bad. The underwear drawer is the most predictable hiding place she could've chosen. If she had really wanted to hide them, she could've tucked them in some daring lace, instead Aki always finds them on display on her folded panties, blue on white. Which... well, it's basically like throwing bait in his mouth.

So Aki takes them, even though he could buy them himself. Because he likes this game, just as he likes Himeno's smile when she teases him with questions she already knows the answer to.

It stops being funny when someone other than her catches him in the act.

"I didn't know you smoked," Kishibe observes, sitting on one of the sofas in the break room.

There's a faded sign on the wall that forbids it, which the man is deliberately ignoring. Aki quickly puts out his cigarette.

"I just started," he answers casually.

Kishibe exhales and, without looking at him, says:

"Himeno convinced you, didn't she?"

The insinuation is like a stab in his back.

"No," he replies, "it was my decision." 

Even if it's not the whole truth.

"Hmm…"

Kishibe sinks into the scraped leather of the backrest.

"You always turned up your nose when I mentioned it to you." 

He's not wrong. 

Aki doesn't understand why he can't deal with Himeno the same way he dealt with Kishibe before her. He can't impose the same detachment, the same division of lives, ideas and emotional states.

Maybe it's because he's shared too much time and space with her at this point. Maybe because Himeno seems to need him so desperately at times... or is he the one who needs her and benefits from her attention? Does he subconsciously think of her as a replacement for Taiyo? Or his mother, perhaps?

Maybe she's just better at taking his brain apart and putting it back together as she pleases.

And cigarettes are just one of many bricks.

"Have you ever thought of getting your ears pierced?" she asks one day, while a star chef sets fire to a pan on TV screen.

Aki looks at her questioningly.

"Why?"

She munches on a handful of peanuts and sways her head.

"Just because. For aesthetics."

"No, I've not," he replies honestly.

Accessories like that had no appeal for him: they were of no use and would've affected the sobriety he had forced himself to show off.

"I think they'd suit you," she says confidently. "Not that I've anything to complain 'bout you, obviously. I mean... Fox didn't agree to your contract for no reason, that sly bitch."

He's too puzzled by her speech to realize that she's just made an implied appreciation of his looks. His cheeks redden when he does.

"I just think it could be a nice extra-touch, that's all."

Aki starts chewing on a mint (he's been consuming them compulsively since he started smoking) and makes a skeptical sound.

But Himeno knows how his mind works by now.

"Let's make a bet," she begins. And damn, there's no way he's going to turn down a bet.

She grabs a pair of empty Asahi cans off the floor and hands him one. "If I hit the wastebasket, you get your ears pierced. If you hit that, I'll do whatever you choose."

Aki lifts a bag of paprika chips from under her legs.

"If I hit that, you'll have to get up and clean the whole living room."

Himeno blinks and stares at him like he's grown a cactus for a head.

"Seriously?" she says, huffing a short laugh. "I gave you the power to make me do anything, and you choose this?" 

"Yes."  

Himeno clicks her tongue.

"You crazy neat freak."

Aki ignores her, takes aim and throws the can.

The very moment the aluminum leaves his fingers he realizes Himeno would never get up from that couch.

Aki hasn't celebrated his birthday in years, so he's taken aback that Himeno ordered him a cake and even got him a present.

"You don't turn eighteen every day, y'know?"

"Especially in this sector," Fushi adds, pouring him a drink of whiskey. "Guess I can do it now."

With everyone's eyes on him, Aki sips from his glass and quickly hides a cough behind a napkin. He still likes beer better.

Himeno playfully bumps his shoulder.

"C'mon! Unwrap your present!"

He does as she says and pulls out a key that isn't a door's one.

"You gave me... your car?" he asks in confusion.

Her tipsy laughter rings in his ears. "Oh well, aren't you acting a bit pretentious right now? My my, young people these days!"

She reaches out to take the key from his hands. "I had you there for a sec, didn't I?"

"Not at all."

But she starts laughing again, convinced she's just pulled the most hilarious prank in the world.

"The car is mine," she elaborates, "that just means you're allowed to use it from now on... and don't sulk at me! Of course that's not the actual present, it was just for show. Look closer at the package."

Aki rummages through the bundles of paper mache and finds a pocket size book. The front cover says: 'Driving License. Theory test and highway code.'

"You said you needed one."

It was a random bit of information, thrown out in one of their half talks at night. Aki is surprised she remembered it. He looks at her and she smiles, her eyes bright and hopeful, waiting for gratification.

He puts the manual back and raises a corner of his lips.

"Thank you."

Himeno lights up.

"Aaah, so you know how to smile!" she says, pulling him into a hug.

They cut the cake, and Aki blows out her lighter because they have no candles.

Another round of drinks is the final shot for Himeno, who drops her head in his lap halfway through the night in a dozing state.

Aki leaves her there like a familiar weight and continues to chat with the others, until he feels something slightly tugging at his tie.

Himeno's looking up at him.

"You need the toilet?" he says, which is his most subtle way of asking her if she needs to throw up (he's a bit worried she might do it on his pants).

Himeno doesn't answer. She tightens her fist around his tie and tugs harder than expected. Aki hits his forehead on the table before a groan of pain crashes on his partner's lips.

The world falls into chaos.

A mix of laughter, cheers and boos tangles in his ears, but it's hard to focus on what's happening outside when his inner self has tilted axis.

Himeno's mouth moves on his, opening and closing as if to eat him, her tongue grazes the seam of lips, leaving a taste of vodka and strawberry shortcake, as well as an air pocket between his lungs. A boa constrictor swoops into his stomach and starts hissing on its fleshy walls.

Before he can name the feeling, it fades, as does Himeno's mouth on his.

The axis slides back to its place and the world makes sense again. Kind of.

"You okay, boy?"

He feels a pat on his back. Fushi looks at him with a mix of apprehension and discomfort.

Aki doesn't know how to respond. He stares at the man with wide eyes, looking for a logical explanation of what just happened. What he gets is a nervous laugh.

"Well... it was to be expected," he begins, "You were the only one here who hadn't had this happen yet. It was a matter of time by now."

That doesn't explain anything and only makes him more confused than before.

"Himeno makes out with anyone she can get her hands on when she's drunk," the woman sitting in front of them snaps. "Fushi was the last one, that's why he's acting so dumbly shy about it."

Fushi avoids his gaze and pours himself a drink.

"Don't think too much 'bout it," he says, "There's a good chance she'll forget tomorrow.”

Aki slowly lowers his eyes. Himeno is still lying on the pillows with her head on his lap, eye closed and steady breath.

She could've forgotten about it, but no alcoholic blackout would've come to his aid.

Physical contact with Himeno had stopped bothering him a long time ago; he was used to hugs, hair strokes, and sudden caresses. But a kiss was different. It was something intimate, something lovers did...

He has no idea how he should feel about it.

He thinks about the unknown man with whom he saw her through the glass way back and the words he just heard, and a thought starts to eat up his brain.

He begins to think that Himeno never needed him like he had believed. He's not special, she behaves with him as she does and has done with everyone else so far. Himeno is not afraid of losing him, only of losing a sixth partner. Himeno doesn't seek his closeness, only a warm body to cling to.

Because apparently that's what physical intimacy is for her: the same thing as a drink after work or a cigarette.

He can't really blame her, because he knows – though to a lesser extent – that he's done the same. He's basked in her hugs and leaned in her outstretched hands more times than he'd like to admit.

It wasn't affection, then? Is that really all they are? Sedatives for each other's suffering?

She got you a birthday present, a voice in his head reminds him. She pays attention to you, remembers your gestures and words. You have a favorite restaurant, usual seats on the couch, matching cups, games with rules only you know, life details shared with no one else...

"Aki... Aki…"

Himeno repeats his name like a lullaby she sings to herself. "Don't die."

Aki tries to lay her down on the mattress, but her limbs refuse to let him go.

"If you die, I die."

She sounds so serious when she says it, her arms wrapped around his shoulders and her nails digging into the folds of his shirt, as if her life really depends on it.

And despite everything, Aki believes her a bit. Just a bit.

Ryoichi Sato was the only other hunter of his age who Aki had ever met so far.

His sister worked in Public Safety and died on a mission that involved the Gun Devil.

"She was great, all toughness and lofty ideals. She actually believed that protecting people from those monsters was her calling... Me? Nah, I'm here just because I'm sick of studying, and because they pay me well even without a degree."

He said so, but Aki always saw him with his nose buried in old newspapers and files that talked about the Gun.

They had trained together a few times, with Himeno's consent ("It's good for you to have a guy friend!"). Though Aki was reluctant to consider anyone other than Himeno a friend. She was already the exception to the rule, and he had no intention of widening the circle any further.

But his inner child, the one so easily prone to hatred and affection, had already failed that aim.

Ryoichi had died after just a month on the job. Not time for an initiation drink, or a kiss from a drunk Himeno. Not even time for Aki to enjoy the fact that he was no longer the youngest of the team.

His skull had cracked under a beam like a walnut shell, its contents splattered across the asphalt and his still intact body, dressed in his hunter suit. It's been a week, but Aki still has the scene before his eyes every time he closes them for too long. And his inner child cries.

He cries through gritted teeth, washing away every new tear that dares to slip from his eye sockets. He hates that he's crying. He's never seen Himeno cry a single time, not even when they first met at the graveyard.

He rubs his eyes and curses his heart, unaware that there's someone who deeply envies them both. Someone who's secretly watching his crying, and for whom every tear is worth its weight in gold.

When he reaches the kitchen, Himeno quickly puts down her cigarette and looks up at him. Aki turns his head, hoping his loose hair will shield him. She tucks it behind his ear.

"Your hair's gotten longer than mine," she comments, "it's not fair..."

Aki mirrors her gesture to measure the length of hers, and to have an excuse to touch her. The contact, even if brief, distracts him. No point in hiding any longer.

"Are you gonna cut it off in my sleep again?"

She frowns.

"You're still on that?" she protests. "It was a century ago, I was drunk, and I've apologized three hundred times since then!"

She's puffing out her cheeks and inflating numbers on purpose, and Aki knows she's making a fool of herself for him. It's not working, but he decides to force a smile anyway. He appreciates that she's trying.

Himeno relaxes her face and turns serious again. 

"Okay. I got it," she finally says. "Let's go out."

Aki sighs.

"Actually... I don't really feel like it."

"I do. Summer's coming, and I want to buy a dress." She takes the car keys and ties his hair in a hasty ponytail. "And you'll come with me."

Aki doesn't have the energy to stand against her, but he finds some to at least redo his hairstyle in the rearview mirror.

Himeno insists they buy some ice cream before shopping. To an outside eye, they might almost look like a school-age couple, walking around the mall with ice creams in their hands on a Saturday afternoon.

A few girls huddle up and point at him as he waits outside Himeno's dressing room with her bags. He surprises himself by realizing that he doesn't mind.

"What you think?" 

Himeno slides the curtain. She wears a turquoise dress, sleeveless and with a flowing skirt, a deep plunge on the back and crossed laces to hold it together.

He's not used to seeing Himeno in something other than her uniform or her homely combo of panties and a tank top, and the sight feels kind of… weird. It's not the dress itself; he'd seen it on the hanger before, and it didn't do anything to him. It's something about the way it fits her, the way it tightens and flows around her body with every shift, that elicits an unidentified response from him.

He realizes he's been quiet for too long.

"So?" Himeno asks again, doing a little twirl.

Aki opens his mouth to answer.

You're gorgeous.

And she really is, he knows she is: people turn to look at her along the street, their eyes intrigued by the leather eye patch, then widening at the sight of her face, and then wandering deliberately to other parts of her… But it's for his eyes that she's putting on the show right now, sober and conscious, and Aki stumbles again in the presumption of being special.

"It's fine," he says instead, "it matches your iris."

Himeno lights up.

"Then I'll take it!"

He waits outside while she pays at the till. When she comes out, she's holding two bags instead of one.

"For you," she hums, handing him the smaller one.

Aki pulls out a polka-dot tie that's the same color as her dress.

"We can wear them together and match."

He carefully puts it back in the bag.

"You know I'll never wear it, right?"

Himeno turns and waves a hand nonchalantly.

"Of course you will."

He purses his lips and follows her in silence, because deep down he knows he will. Ryoichi would've made fun of him until the end of his days.

He had managed not to think about him all afternoon... it becomes harder now.

Himeno must have noticed his change in mood, because when they get in the car, after a long pause, she asks him:

"Would you like to go see him?"

Aki looks ruefully at her.

"We have to make dinner," he says. "I don't want us to lengthen time just for getting there, and I don't want you to wait alone."

Himeno shakes her head and puts the gear. "I'm coming with you," she says resolutely, "I've sent back some visits too."

They arrive at the graveyard in the evening. The grass stained field is a scorched earth under sunset light. It shatters the illusion of a teenage date.

He and Himeno part their ways, both carrying their own bouquet of flowers and weight in their hearts.

Reading the name of Ryoichi Sato, Aki clasps his hands and closes his eyes, trying to put a prayer together. The outcome is rather poor. His head full of intrusive thoughts.

It could've easily been you.

Not an epiphany.

Aki has always known the risks of this path: he didn't care about dying, he just had to hit the target he had set for himself before doing it. It's not like there was anything precious left in his life that made it worth preserving it, anyway…

Or so he had thought.

'Don't die, Aki.'

Himeno is a few rows away.

He sees her walking between five gravestones, running her fingers over each one, as if counting them, as if the number could suddenly change. Back and forth. One, two, three, four, five. Five, four, three…

Aki thinks about her plea – which sometimes is an order, sometimes a threat, and sometimes a mantra, and he wonders how much truth there's behind it.

What if Himeno counted to six one day?

If her words are true... then it'd break her. If they aren't, she'd probably move on, finding something or someone else to hold herself up, until she'll be consumed with her last support.

The second prospect scares him as much as the first. Even if Himeno were just using him, the child inside him stamps his feet at the thought of being replaced.

He wants her just like he wants her to want him, and he can no longer deny – despite his efforts – that a bond has formed. And whether symbiotic or parasitic, he doesn't want to cut it.

He doesn't want to think of a future where Himeno has to experience his death. But neither one where she's the one who dies.

In a utopian future they would die together, in the same circumstance and at the same time.

No…

In a utopian future they would die of old age, after a long life made of trips to the seaside, ice creams and unpretentious restaurants, movie nights and songs in the car, endless hugs and peaceful nights.

Himeno approaches him.

Aki clenches his jaw and kills those thoughts, imagining tearing them like paper or setting them on fire.

"Himeno-senpai," he utters, "can I have a cigarette?"

It's the first time he asks for one, instead of stealing it.

Himeno smiles fondly at him and reaches into her pocket.

"Sure."

She puts it between his lips and lights it up.

Nicotine calms him down. The sight of the burning stick strengthens his mental image, and thoughts turn to ash in his brain.

Ash is easy to sweep away.

Makima is... something.

Something deadly and fascinating at the same time, like an erupting volcano. Something you can't look away from, despite the threatening feeling in your blood.

The first time he finds himself in her presence, Aki sinks in a type of awe he's never felt before.

He's in her office just to put a signature, but she stops him and makes him sit in front of her desk. He doesn't plan to stay too long alone with her, much less talk with her. Yet she tears the words from his mouth as easily as she breathes.

He doesn't know how they end up talking about the Gun Devil, his family, Taiyo, and everything that comes with that. He doesn't even know why she cares or why she held him back in the first place, but for every question she asks him, he can't help but answer.

There's a trust he doesn't know where it comes from that fights with warning.

"At times, I think I killed him," he confesses about his brother. "Maybe his death was the punishment for all my resentment."

Makima has her eyes fixed on him. Like a statue, she hasn't moved an inch since they started talking.

"Do you feel guilty?" she asks him, smiling.

A thin, graceful smile. He can't help but think she's a beautiful woman.

"Yes."

Silence follows. Outside the building, the sky's covered with dense and gray clouds. The light above their heads flickers.

"Imagine if the Gun Devil had never existed," she continues. "Imagine a world where no devil that could've hurt him had ever existed."

Aki bows his head. He wants to say that he's been dwelling on 'what ifs' for far too long, and that's never changed things. But Makima beats him to it, keeping him anchored to her reasoning.

"In a world like that, do you think Taiyo would've died?"

"Taiyo... was ill.”

"But your parents weren't," she argues. "Taiyo would've had more time, he might have even healed. And you could've made amends with all three of them."

Her words are so evocative that Aki can almost see them. He and Taiyo chasing each other in their snowy yard, snowballs crashing on coats, innocent throws – children's ones – and no one gets hurt, because it's all a game and not a war. Their parents lovingly watching over them on the house's steps.

"There can't be a world without devils," he ends in a low voice.

Makima's smile widens.

"You have a quite long trail of devil blood behind you for someone your age," she says, diverting her speech. "No need to suppress your rage; it's very useful, if well directed."

Aki finds himself drinking in her praise like a thirsty man. His ego soaks it up, swells like a cotton wad, and he wants more.

"Give me your strength, Aki Hayakawa. Join my division and help me kill what killed your brother."

The statue steps down from her base for a second, leans forward, and laces her fingers on the desk.

"And I promise you that nightmares will stop haunting your nights, that guilt will disappear from your shoulders, and your family will find eternal peace."

The first raindrops start to tap the windows. There's a distant roar of thunder, then a burglar alarm.

The storm rises behind Makima like a sublime painting, her voice is glowing honey, and Aki believes her a bit. More than a bit.

"Miss Makima has offered me a new assignment."

Himeno sighs in annoyance. She closes the door behind her and hands him his jacket, both of them ready to leave Headquarters.

"Another one? Don't we already have a full schedule for the whole week?"

Aki clenches his fingers nervously.

"It's… just me."

He found that he can no longer lie to her since he stopped smoking in secret.

"It's a solo one."

At these words she stops her walk and glowers at him.

"Why would she ask you something like that?" she inquires.

The way she does it, as if she estimates the thing beyond his reach, slightly upsets him and causes a sharper response than intended.

"Maybe because she trusts me."

Himeno picks up on the dig. She looks him straight in the eyes and says:

"I trust you."

"You never let me go alone."

"Because solo missions suck! There's a reason state hunters work in pairs or teams, Aki."

"Miss Makima says I'm qualified..." he retorts, though less fiercely than before. "She says I'm one of the best ranked hunters of this generation.”

Himeno makes a dismissive sound.

"Oh, really? She tells you that?"

Aki changes his approach, wanting to leave the warpath.

"Himeno," he begins, "You know I'm capable, and I've never failed to prove it to you."

She's back to briskly walking down the hallway and it's getting hard to keep up.

"Why don't you let me put the skills you gave me to use?"

"You mean put them on a show."

She stops again and Aki almost bumps into her.

"Pride's always been your weak spot," he reproaches him, "and that's exactly where Makima is pushing right now. What do you want to show off for? So that she'll praise you again? Does my opinion mean nothing to you anymore?"

A sudden guilt clings to his heart. Aki pushes it away. He's had enough of those, and this one seems undeserved, because Himeno... is wrong.

Is she?

"Listen, can we leave Makima out of this for a sec?"

Himeno crosses her arms and lowers her chin, which is usually her attack pose. A summer storm in her left eye.

"Okay. Let's leave Makima out and talk about you."

The tone is cold and pragmatic.

"You're not ready for a solo assignment. You need me on the battlefield, and come hell or high water, I'm coming with you on every single mission this week. Over my dead body, I swear."

Aki looks at her, bewildered. Himeno has never tried to belittle him or deter him from doing something before... quite the opposite, if anything. Somehow, hearing her speak like this sounds conflicting, and her sudden lack of support like a betrayal.

He doesn't hear the worry undertone – a flickering flame among rushing winds of anger and greediness.

He's about to wield his reasons again and counter, but the sound of footsteps entering the hallway catches their attention.

Makima's eyes intercept them.

The contact only lasts a second. A second where they're two mice in front of a snake. Aki feels blood freezing in his veins. He should be ashamed, say something, greet her cordially, they both should do it... Then suddenly a hand on his jaw forces him to look away.

Himeno stands on her toes, the distance between their faces is a sheet of paper.

"Let me fix your tie," she whispers.

Her breath breaks on his neck. She grabs onto his shoulder for purchase, holding him, surrounding him.

Aki stands still, his muscles tense and his heart pounding in his chest for the wrong reasons.

He hears the footsteps resume in a slow, steady pace on the floor. A red braid crosses his sight and gets past them, vanishing behind Himeno. She waits for the sound to fade before falling back onto her heels. 

"Let's go home," she says after pulling away.

Aki silently follows her out of the building. He's still short of breath and cold on his back. His parasympathetic system inexplicably hampered.

Once they're alone in the car, he lights a cigarette. Watching him smoke makes Himeno loosen up as well.

She looks calmer now, and Aki hopes to bring up the subject again once they're back, but she pulls out a bottle of sake after dinner and the mood flips like a coin. An hour later they're slow dancing uncoordinatedly in the middle of the living room.

She twirls in his arms, smiles, throws her arms around his neck and kisses him on the mouth. She's so charming when she tries to distract him, and so damn good at it, that Aki temporarily forgets about Makima, the week's assignments, and everything else.

The song ends and the radio plays an ad, but they keep swaying to that too. Sober enough to keep a balance, not sober enough to remember the things they should be talking about. Not sober enough to keep their lips from seeking each other again.

The fact that he's getting used to this upsets him.

He remembers thinking it all would change when they stopped living together, that the bond would loosen and that they would both detach themselves from such habits. He'll find out, for the umpteenth time, that he was wrong.

When Aki gets his own apartment, they'll continue to eat and drink together at least twice a week, invade each other's places with their stuff, and lick each other's wounds after a mission gone bad.

From then on, Himeno will start asking him to leave Public Safety.

Over time, Aki learns that devils aren't all the same.

They have different ways of thinking and different manners, real and actual personalities.

Fox is picky.

Which is a problem, because it's for their appetite that he pays them. They inspect the devils he shows them as if they were desserts plated for their tasting, just like they do with his body when it's time to pick the piece they find most luscious.

Their rejection in a fight means working twice as hard to get out alive, and Aki's tired of watching Himeno act as his human shield every time. 

No better time for Makima's suggestion to happen.

"The Curse Devil is the only one currently held in our strong rooms," she casually informs him. "No one has made a contract with them yet. Looks like the fees are quite high."

Before Aki can say anything to show his interest, she adds:

"But they'd probably like you."

"It's not like with Fox... how can I be sure?" he hesitates.

Makima gives him a friendly smile.

"Because I'm telling you."

"Himeno will never approve this…"

"I am the head of your division," her hand slides a signed authorization on the desk, "And I do."

Once in the strong room, Aki knows he won't have much time to think, so he does it days before. He weighs all the possible requests that such a name could make, and when the time comes he deludes himself that he's ready.

The price is high. Very high.

As the devil makes their proposal, all the thoughts of that evening at the graveyard with Himeno come back to him.

He thinks about her, about alcohol, smoking, decadence and self-destruction.

'Devil hunters die young anyway, you might as well smoke.'

'Don't die, Aki.'

The only precious thing left in your life that's worth preserving...

Devil hunters die young and Aki knows he'll die too, but from now on he'll have a conscious and controlled way to do it. From now on he'll be the one to decide how many steps closer to death he wants to take. 

And he'll make sure that Himeno stays away from it.

She knows.

He doesn't know how she did it, but the moment Aki steps into her apartment, he realizes Himeno knows everything.

Despite what people might think of her, when alcohol isn't involved, Himeno is a quite composed person. She rarely loses her temper or shouts out her anger, punching tables and banging doors in the process.

But seeing her smoking on the railing, silent and with her back to him, Aki knows she's furious. He can feel it in every breath, in her posture, and in the teeth marks on the cigarette butts in the ashtray.

He picks up a cigarette himself and reaches her, hoping that'll set the stage for a good conversation. The lighter she hands him bodes well.

"I wanted to tell you," he begins slowly.

"Bullshit," she blows along with the smoke, "If you wanted to, you would've done it."

Aki clenches his jaw but doesn't look down. He doesn't regret his choice.

She lets out a long sigh.

"It doesn't matter, anyway. 'Course I knew you were going to bargain, with or without my consent... cause you're fucking stubborn."

"I'm sorry," he dares.

"No, you're not."

She's right.

"And I'll tell you: I even have a good idea of ​​the reasoning that went through your pretty little head before coming to this."

Aki wants to say something, but realizes that it would be – again – something he doesn't really mean, so he opts for silence. The conversation gets bogged down.

Himeno finishes her cigarette.

Aki turns, and she looks him in the eyes for the first time since he came in.

"Just... promise me one thing," she begins. Her gaze pierces his soul like a pin, holding him still on a corkboard of lies. "That you'll never summon Curse unless it's your life at stake."

And Aki feels it now, her worry. He feels it burning strong, drowning out the anger in her voice and trembling on her lips.

"You won't do it to save a desperate mission, not to save someone else," she continues. "Only and exclusively if your life is at stake. Did you hear me?"

Aki nods.

"Your word," she urges.

For a moment he thinks of hugging her; he knows that physical contact works with her... but he feels that just one step beyond the line could make them both collapse.

"I promise," he says, limiting himself to answering. "You have my word."

The tension in Himeno's posture eases slightly.

"Good."

She drops her cigarette in the ashtray and bends down to pick up a watering can. Then she comes with the last proposal he'd ever expected.

"Can you help me water plants?"

The request is so innocent and so far from their usual way of resolving conflicts, that Aki is taken aback. For a few seconds he stands still and watches her, as she moves and relocates the pots along the terrace, following arbitrary laws of light and temperature.

Neither of them has a green thumb, actually, but Aki recognizes the rewarding effect the challenge of keeping something alive has. Even if quite clumsy, plant care had always been part of their routine when they lived together.

There aren't plants in his new apartment. Maybe he could buy one, he thinks, approaching Himeno. Something undemanding, maybe an orchid...

She looks at him expectantly, her expression a mixture of longing and mistrust.

He holds out his hand.

"I'll fill it up," he offers, pointing at the watering can.

Himeno hands it to him, and it's like an olive branch. As he turns on the tap, Aki tries to picture himself in his apartment, pouring water into his lone, dying orchid.

He can't.

The Needle devil is exactly what you would expect.

A sort of giant and living pincushion, with hundreds of poisonous spines on its back that glint silver in the light. No eyes to see with, but its other senses are as keen as a bloodhound's, and its reaction speed ignores its size.

Aki strives to control his breathing, to make as little noise as possible, while holding his partner with one arm. Himeno is breathing hard, her skin sweaty and paper white, blood and poison slowly dripping to the ground.

A two-meter needle sunk in her left side.

"Aki," she utters in a faint voice.

"Shhh. Don't talk."

"You promised," she continues, "you promised..."

Aki feels urgency pressing on his lungs. Only two holes in the flesh through that sharp forest. 

Just one more.

"Aki…"

Himeno's lips leave a crimson kiss on his shirt. So much blood… The sight feels unreal.

"Don't talk," he says again, holding her a little closer.

The sun beats down hard outside the warehouse. The air inside is sweltering, filled with rust, dust, and moisture. Oxygen stolen from their lungs with every breath.

How long has it been since he called the headquarters? Half an hour? An hour?

The flip phone lies at their feet with a shattered screen. They've no time left.

Himeno's eyelids are half lidded, her shirt now soaked in blood and sweat, and there's a bad trembling that wasn't there before.

Aki has never been so scared in his entire life. He's been killing devils in cold blood since he was seventeen; no emotion has ever affected his actions other than measured anger and a subtle loathing. And Himeno, she…

He's been so used to seeing her get hurt and heal in a fast and constant loop, to the point of convincing himself that nothing could really threaten her life outside of herself. Seeing her like this, completely defenseless and anchored to each breath, a cold dread grips the base of his skull.

He bends an arm behind his back and wraps his fingers around the sword's hilt.

'How much you want?'

'I don't have to tell you how much I take, just how much you have left. And not when the job is two-thirds done. You might take your word back.'

He's not really breaking his promise: there's a piece of his life in hers. The only piece worth preserving.

Any price.

Aki pulls the sword from its scabbard. The sharp sound reveals their position, a hail of needles strikes the junked car that shields them. Quick, heavy footsteps pound the ground, and at the exact moment Himeno closes her eyelids, the sword is thrown at the paw. Smooth, the nail sinks into the flesh, piercing it from side to side.

Any price…

That time Himeno knocks on death's doors, and Aki slams them closed.

Makima never sits down to talk to someone just for the sake of it.

Kishibe knows this well, and immediately goes on alert when he sees the young woman taking a seat in front of him. She leans back in the wing chair and crosses her legs, making it clear that she has no intention of leaving soon.

And all he can do is stay and watch as his precious half-hour break goes to the devil. 

Literally.

"Alright… what do you want?" he resigns, resting elbows on his knees.

She smiles at him.

"And good evening to you, Kishibe."

"Good evening."

A glimmer flickers in her eyes. She's caught his annoyance and that seems to amuse her.

"There's no need to get uptight," she guesses, "I'm just here for… an exchange of views, so to speak."

Kishibe narrows his eyes. If it's not about him, he already has a guess who the other candidate is.

"About what?" he asks anyway, feigning ignorance.

"Aki Hayakawa."

That's it.

"He's still there, isn't he?"

"He is," she confirms. "He renewed his sick leave for another week today, and yet his health conditions have long since recovered. Besides, I have to say that his absence is proving to be quite a problem."

He shrugs.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, but it's not like I can do anything about it."

"He's not answering my calls."

"If I'm not mistaken, his phone broke. Probably he still doesn't have one."

"You know what I like about dogs, Kishibe?"

He looks intently at her. If it were anyone else, Kishibe would've already stood up and walked off what sounded like a joke. But it was Makima, and Makima never used her words without a purpose.

"Sure, dogs..." he says, pandering to the absurd logic of that conversation.

"How many you got in that penthouse of yours? Five? Fifteen?"

Makima keeps talking as if she hasn't heard him.

"Their loyalty," she says. "Give them a feeding hand and a slightest bit of attention, and they'll be devoted to you for life. They're never ungrateful."

"I like cats better."

She ignores him again.

"But no dog would approach a hand that couldn't feed, would it?"

At this point he gets that she doesn't really want an answer from him, not yet at least. So he keeps quiet and waits for her to lead him to the point, to the primary reason for her approach... 

It seems to work.

"Himeno is unsteady," she asserts, breaking the silence, "she's a hand that likes to take rather than give. She's greedy and reckless, vicious, addicted, chaotic, irremediably corrupt," she lists. "And yet she has a devotion from Aki that I, currently, do not have.”

She rests the chin on her intertwined fingers and fixes her eyes on him. Eyes of a curious predator, one that likes to prod its prey before devouring it. The fact that he's not the prey doesn't help to peace his mind.

"Why?"

Kishibe exhales through his nose.

Well... it took her less time than he thought.

Makima watches him expectantly, and despite her face of calm detachment, the man has a feeling that she craves the answer more than she's letting on. With that in mind, he takes his time to give it to her, fiddling with the seat tilt knob. A little revenge for the stolen break.

"I'm afraid you already know," he responds frankly.

Makima's smile fades. Her lips now a thin line.

"Don't talk to me about romance, Kishibe, love is a silly and overrated thing."

"Just because you don't understand it."

"There's nothing to understand," she argues, "Dogs go into heat and so do humans, and neither kind likes loneliness."

"You're talking of lust and attachment. That's different."

"Why should it be? Isn't love an addition of the two?"

"It's... more complicated than that."

"No, it's not."

She states her reply with confidence.

"I've seen many stories like that before. Himeno is hungry for affection and Aki is hungry for violence. If they keep circling each other, they'll just find empty palms to lick, until the pangs of hunger will become unbearable and they end up biting one another until they'll bleed.”

Kishibe rests his temple on a fist. His head suddenly feels too heavy to support itself.

"People aren't dogs, Makima," he points out. "Sometimes they don't look at full hands, and they approach wounds similar to their own rather than the cure. Sometimes they manage to find beauty even in what's corrupt, and outwardly useless, and that someone else would've thrown away."

He pauses briefly and then adds:

"That you would've thrown away."

There's a new moment of silence, in which Kishibe takes the opportunity to reclaim his flask and take a sip. Perhaps more than one. He's careful to count them, though: he has to board a train to Shibuya, and it's better not to have too much brain fog; if not for the job, at least to not get off at the wrong station.

But damn, heaven knows how many he'd need to keep up with this talk…

Makima doesn't do anything to reproach him. She patiently waits for him to finish and then gives her response.

"There's no reason to be for a dog that doesn't obey and a soldier who doesn't fight."

Kishibe leans into another, tired, sigh.

"Why did you come asking me, if you don't really care what I say?"

"Because I was hoping to hear something different from you. Apparently, I was wrong."

"Apparently."

"Well, it doesn't matter, in the great scheme of things," she concludes, "it was just personal curiosity."

The man feels a wave of relief as she stands up and retrieves her trenchcoat. The brief exchange had exhausted him like nothing else. Thank good she hadn't taken all thirty minutes.

"In the end, every smart dog comes back to the hand that feeds it and knows how to stay away from pain," she says at the door.

He raises his eyes to give her a final glance.

"The boy will come back to me."

There's a firm belief in that final statement, which Kishibe knows – however – not being unfounded.

"Yeah. He probably will..." he confirms, holding her gaze.

"But good luck getting him out of that hospital room in the meantime."

Makima simply smiles. Then she turns and walks out the room, leaving him with an odd and upsetting thought buzzing in his head.

Makima's kind doesn't like loneliness either.

It takes a week, five days of breakfast from the fancy bakery across the street, a packet of Wild Ravens escaped the nurses' checks, and a new plant on her terrace to get Himeno to talk to him again.

And even so, Aki knows she hasn't forgiven him yet. Maybe she never will… and maybe he had it coming. But he'd rather have her alive and furious with him than two meters underground and at peace with the world.

He keeps telling himself that, as he clumsily kisses her in the backseat of a taxi. Right now, all that matters is her pulse beneath his tongue, her voice in his ears, and her body twitching, warm and reactive, against him. It pushes away memories of blood, drips, and hospital machinery.

It's not often that he drinks that much. Usually it's Himeno who ends up drunk, while he ends up being, well... everything else (driver, moral support, hair clip, painkiller blister, and all). It must be weird for her, seeing him drunk. And he knows he is, because his tongue is notably loose and the words roll off it like marbles from a torn sack.

"I like your eyes," he says, cradling her head in his hands.

Himeno watches him like a rare and curious phenomenon.

"My eye, you mean! Man, if you see double, then it's worse than I thought."

Aki doesn't move away. He can't stop touching her. His thumb reaches the arch of her eye-patch and, without really thinking about what he's doing, he tries to lift it.

Himeno snaps back, as if suddenly burned.

His hand tries to follow hers, but she stops it, intertwining it with her own.

"What you hope to find there, hm?" she whispers.

If he were sober, he'd probably lie.

"The spot where you're hurt."

For a moment he sees astonishment spread on her face, then replaced by a wistful smile.

"Hayakawa Aki," she solemnly says. "You'll be my death and my salvation."

Aki frowns.

"Can't I just be the second one?"

She kisses his knuckles.

"Well… I don't think you're trying too hard on that, you know?"

He catches her lips in a resentful kiss.

Can't she see his reasons? Can't she understand how afraid he was? Can't she see him right now, kneeling at her bed, desperate to feed on her lifeblood?

"Don't look at me like that…"

A hand runs through his hair, her nails deliciously grazing his scalp.

"I might've some dirty thoughts."

Aki tilts his head, his mouth seeking her skin. The words land on her thigh.

"Don't you always have those?" he points out.

She tugs lightly at his hair, forcing him to move away. She smiles at him, vaguely amused now. They're playing, and this relieves him: it means that things between them haven't really changed.

"You're quite talkative tonight," she says, as if she's just noticed.

His response is a scandal, something beyond his courage, and that he would've never dared to utter under normal circumstances.

"Engage my mouth then."

Despite their bold words, they both fall pathetically asleep within ten minutes – Himeno with an arm draped over his chest, and Aki with his head resting on her breast. The rhythmic rising and falling of it reminds him that he made the right choice.

He doesn't know that they'll fight again, many more times, for the same reason.

There are times, when work and Makima are distant thoughts, that Aki thinks he loves her, instead.

And maybe in another life it wouldn't sound as wrong as it does now.

"What is that?"

"Flour."

"But I already put flour in there."

"Not enough. The dough is still too runny."

Himeno glances at the recipe.

"It says: 350 grams. That's what I weighed in the bowl…"

"The one you put on the cigarettes, the lighter, the keys, the bills, and the aluminum humbugs packet?"

She opens her mouth, then bites her lip.

"Okay, but it could've been, what, 30 grams difference?"

"And did you weigh the milk?" he insists.

"There's chicken broth in the measuring jug. I used a glass."

Aki brings the flour bag on the table. He watches Himeno with the corner of his eye as she melts the chocolate.

Baking Halloween cookies was her idea.

'For the kids who come trick or treating,' she said.

That was new too.

"They never find anything when they knock here," she comments.

"And they won't find anything this year as well if you keep chopping the squares in your mouth instead of using the cutting board."

Himeno doesn't care and takes another bite of dark chocolate.

"No worries," she licks her lips, "cause here's the good little ghost Aki, keeping the most evil chocolate-stealing witch of the neighborhood in check.” 

He smiles despite himself.

"Why do I have to play the ghost?"

"According to the Ghost here – the one with capital G – I'm not quiet enough to be one. But you are, and you look good in white. They didn't say that, though."

"And you're a witch because…?" he asks distractedly, watching her bend over the oven knobs.

The oversized sweater she's wearing follows the movement, sliding over her pelvic bones. She catches him staring at her. A smirk tingles her lips.

"Because witches are sexy."

The flour bag explodes with her response.

Aki clenches his jaw at the mess on the table and his clothes, but Himeno chuckles. And it feels like ages since he last heard that sound.

More like a succubus, he thinks.

He puts on a frown, but lets her hands dust the flour off him.

"You look good in white," she repeats softly. She wraps her arms around his neck and presses her body against him.

He waits for a kiss that is not far off.

He holds her waist. Sweet chocolate replaced the bitterness of cigarettes in her mouth; smells of cinnamon, sugar, and cloves flutter around, and Aki feels like wrapped in a blanket. A warm, cozy one, that he never wants to get out of.

The cookies come out of the oven slightly burnt and more than slightly misshapen. They manage to save most of them with chocolate decorations, and put the worsts on a plate for themselves.

It seems so easy in moments like these… to leave everything behind, give into her pressure, say yes to her, grab this daily routine tightly, tightly to the chest, and never let it go.

There's a crow perched on the electrical pole, watching them through the window. For some reason Makima's face intrudes on his mind.

She'd be... really disappointed if he left Public Safety.

Something happens when he ends that thought.

It happens so fast that he doesn't even realize: his voice and his breath fail him, as if his trachea is knotting on itself.

'Quiet.'

He doesn't know where the command comes from, but it's there, branded in his mind, and his body obeys. 

'Sleep.'

An instant tiredness hits him, weighing down his tongue, his eyelids, and his blood. His body feels like lead, sinking down somewhere, and for a moment he fears everything will collapse under his weight.

He fights the feeling for a while. He can hear Himeno's voice reaching him through muffled eardrums.

"...Aki? Are you sleeping?"

He can't speak. He can't keep his eyes open. It's becoming painful to resist, so he stops.

Sleep forces him into silence.

He doesn't even remember what he wanted to tell her.

When a bond breaks, you feel it.

One end pulls too hard, material gives in, and suddenly you find yourself holding your part and not knowing what to do with it. It lies there, waiting for a grip from the other side that's always been there.

The card stapled to the bouquet paper is blank.

"Could you add some daisies, please?"

The middle-aged woman smiles at him and asks him to choose from the ones exposed. Aki points to a light pink shade.

"It's nice to see there are still boys who show this kind of attention," she comments, handing him the receipt. "Your woman is a lucky one!"

Aki folds the receipt into his wallet without answering.

"Want to write something on the card, dear?"

He stares at the small square of paper with the shop's stamp. Such a little space…

He writes three words.

"Did you love her?"

"I did."

Aki nods. He's not surprised.

"Like a daughter?" he asks more carefully. "Or like a lover?"

Kishibe turns slowly.

He crouches down and blows smoke on the marble, right where her name is.

The act shouldn't look so intimate, yet it does, and it bothers him.

"Not like it matters anymore."

Aki looks at the grave in front of him and thinks that it'll never stop mattering to him. Even though neither he nor she knows what to do with all the love that's left in his chest.

"Kishibe-sensei."

The man pats him on the shoulder and walks away, implying that he doesn't want to stay.

"Do you believe there's a resting place after death? Some sort of heaven, for those who earned it?"

Kishibe stops. With his hands in his pockets and eyes down, he answers.

"I wasn't raised in a religious household," he says. "But in our job, we know there's a hell where devils reincarnate. In turn, I think it's not far-fetched to think there's a… resting place for us humans too. Those who earned it."

He drops the cigarette on the ground and stamps it out with his sole.

"Listen… don't think about this stuff too much. The more you'll do it, the more you'll want a way not to, and I don't want you to lose your mind before time."

"I've got two years left."

Kishibe looks at him seriously. Aki doesn't flinch. His eyes look back, tired, bearing the weight of judgment. For a long moment, no one says anything, then the older man sighs and shrugs.

"That kid, Denji, and the little devil-girl have made great strides since they've been living with you. And I'm not talking about fighting."

The memory of Denji and Power arguing at the chilled display makes his heart ache. It's still hard to think about this new daily life, one where there's Denji and Power, and there's no Himeno.

Kishibe resumes.

"I think at least one of you in that house should keep their sanity."

Aki stares at the cigarette butt flattened on the ground, holding himself back from picking it up with a tissue.

"I'll do my best."

The answer seems to please him.

"Sounds already like a good plan for the next two years."

He lets his gaze linger one last time on Himeno's gravestone, then turns back to him.

"Meanwhile, take a word from your brainless, old sensei. Would you?"

Faced with silence, Kishibe goes ahead. Soft tone and straight words.

"Have a cry, Aki," he says, "It'll do you good."

Aki thanks with polite apathy, because that's what he's supposed to do with the advice of a superior. He pretends to need it, refusing to admit that he's already fallen into that kind of weakness.

Unfortunately, Kishibe knows him well enough to spot the lie, but also well enough to pretend to buy it. Yet, there's a hint of cheeky pity there, seeping unwillingly in a final greet.

"See you around."

He walks away, this time for good.

Aki takes the chance to pick up the cigarette and tuck it in his bag. He doesn't have a pocket ashtray. He always used Himeno's.

He doesn't cry. He's already given her a lake of salt water, poured drop by drop on his pillowcase, and a bag of sleepless nights collected on the shore like precious stones. He had made his room the temple of his pain and devoted himself to her.

It's so strange... He thinks of her constantly when he's at home, but now that he's here, in front of her gravestone, his thoughts run to who's waiting for him to come back.

They run to Denji's terrible nutritional values, ​​and to the glimpse of fear in Power's eyes when she stops him from turning off the light in her room. 

He feels too young to be a parent, but maybe a big brother is something he can try. Maybe this time he'll be a better one.

But the Gun Devil is still out there, and he can't shake the feeling that there's something bigger going on, something Makima isn't telling him.

A crow pecks at the dirt at his feet, and Aki scares it away with the toe of his shoe.

He'll do his best, hoping that it'll be enough.

When a bond breaks, you feel it.

But this time it doesn't hurt that much.

Future had warned him of a horrible death, yet the last memory he holds is of a snowball fight between three kids.

In that memory, a younger version of Denji is crying, despite having won the game, and Aki doesn't understand. It's a pleasant memory to him... or maybe a dream.

In that case, he's sorry to wake up.

He can't understand much of what happens next: his mind feels numb, as if he hasn't thought in years. He senses a familiar voice calling his name, a gentle touch on his face, the scent of daisies, and someone taking his hand.

Aki doesn't know where they're heading, but as his sight clears he recognizes a turquoise gaze, and suddenly he knows he's safe. He knows he's happy.

She smiles at him, he strokes her salty lips as they stand in a doorway. 

And then, they make a step forward. 

Together.