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There were many things Aki Hayakawa hated about devils, but his least favorite thing was that there were so fucking many of them.
And they could pop up from anywhere, at any time.
Of course he’d been suspicious to see someone lying in the back alley. But he thought she was hurt, that she needed help.
If Himeno hadn’t been with him, Aki might have seen the human-shaped devil’s eyes flash crimson.
Tunnel vision. Hindsight. If only he had.
The creature ripped out of its skin, bursting a neck as long as a building, an overlarge jaw splitting open. Its misshapen limbs, tipped with gigantic claws, swiped at Himeno before she could activate her power.
“Himeno! Get back!” Aki called, grimacing as he saw her stagger, clutching her face. Blood spattered onto the pavement. The devil twisted its neck to lick the dark pool.
Stumbling, one hand clamped over her right eye, Himeno swore under her breath as the ghostly tendrils appeared, wrapping around the writhing neck.
“I’ve got it,” she shouted, biting her tongue to stop from crying out at the explosion of pain, “you’ll have to kill this thing, Aki!”
Aki didn’t need to be told. He ripped the sleeve off his left arm, baring the flesh. The trapped monster let out a gurgling shriek at the sight, straining against its invisible bindings, pinkish saliva streaming from its parted jaws.
On the other side Himeno was bent over, a puddle of blood slowly growing under her.
Making the sign and closing his eye, Aki called out the fox’s name. The vast white head erupted from the ground in an instant, her jaws snapping shut with eye-blink swiftness.
Clouds swirled around the huge beast and she vanished in an instant, taking all of the sounds of struggle with her. Once again the alley was as still. As if nothing had happened.
Ignoring the pain of missing flesh from his arm, Aki got to his knees in front of Himeno. Her face and hands were white and shaking, slick with sweat.
“Let me see it,” Aki said as gently as he could through his own pain.
Himeno did not lift her face. She was making an irregular gasping that Aki thought was a sob, until he realized it was the opposite.
“That’s it. That’s the end of it for me. I’m fucking hopeless now.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Aki started, but he already knew a second before he saw.
The devil had torn halfway down Himeno’s face, leaving a deep wound. Layers of skin had been stripped away. The raw patch was leaking, dripping blood like water off ice in the sun.
And where there had once been a deep blue eye, alive and shining with teasing light, was nothing but a gaping hole encrusted in scarlet.
“Himeno…”
“It’s gone, Aki,” she answered his unspoken plea. “It got my eye. I can’t see a fucking thing. I can’t see you. I can’t see my fucking hands.”
Her speech was too steady. Too clear. Aki could only take her hand, carefully, a signal that he was still there.
-
An hour later, Aki waited in the hospital. He was no stranger to this place of bright lights, hushed whispers and the sharp smell of cleanliness. He was used to it all.
He sat in the empty exam room on the edge of the uncomfortable seat. It had been hours since his last cigarette. He’d wanted to smoke the moment the doctor cleared him to leave, but he didn’t know if Himeno was awake.
She’d lost consciousness back in the alley. From pain, shock, blood loss. All three. Any combination.
“Yes, you can see her,” the doctor said, his face inscrutable behind a mask, “are you family?”
“I’m a friend. We’re coworkers.” Aki almost added, partners.
“She’s out of surgery, so if she’s awake she might be groggy. Don’t say anything to upset her.”
Aki nodded, and was left alone in the dim, quiet room. He couldn’t stall any longer.
There were no lines connecting Himeno to chiming machines, no mask pushing oxygen into uncooperative lungs, and she’d never looked so helpless.
She was very still under the thick white blankets, arms stretched out beside her. She’d always slept ungracefully on her side, blankets twisted around her or piled on the floor.
Aki watched her for a long time, his mouth tight. Her eyepatch had been taken off and was on the table alongside her. Aki grimaced- he’d seen her empty eye socket before. It was one thing she liked to scare newbies with.
The other side of her face was swathed in gauze. Aki thought of making a gentle gesture- touching her hand or brushing back her hair- but remembered a moment later.
“Himeno, it’s Hayakawa. Are you awake? Can you hear me?”
He heard a groan, and she tilted her head in his general direction.
“Yeah. To both. Sort of.”
“That’s good,” Aki answered, wanting to smile, “are you… in pain, at all?”
“Oh, stop it, Aki. You might as well just say it. The eye’s gone. I’m fucking blind. Can’t see a goddamned thing ever again.”
“But you’re still alive. You’ve got all your limbs still on. And you could tell it was me the moment I spoke, right?”
“Lucky guess. You think Chainsaw Boy or the horned freak would drop by to check on me?”
Aki had to share in her stiff chuckle. They were silent for a while, the air full of tense questions and grim answers.
“Have you thought about your plans once you’re out of here?” Aki said.
“Huh? What’re you talking about?”
“I mean you’re not seriously thinking of staying in the agency.”
Himeno snorted, lifting a hand over her empty eye. “What else am I gonna do, a nine to five?”
“This isn’t a choice. It was bad enough when you-”
“No,” she interrupted, and to Aki’s shock she pushed herself into a half-sit, turning her face all the way to his. “Blind or not, I’m still a devil hunter, and you’re not gonna stop me.”
“I don’t want you to die! You’re in so much more danger now.”
“Never knew you had so little faith in me.”
Her answer wasn’t sullen. She sounded earnestly angry, and Aki swallowed his anger.
“Himeno, please, just listen to me.”
For a moment Aki was silent. He hadn’t spoken of this part of his history to anyone.
“I lost my entire family when I was a boy. My mother, my father, my little brother. They just… the Gun Devil. Right in front of me. There was nothing I could do.”
Himeno’s lips quivered and she drew in a shaking breath.
“And I promised myself, I would never watch anyone else that I love die. I would do anything to stop it. Anything I can. Even if I have to feed both my arms to the Fox Devil. I would do anything to not be that helpless ever again.”
A long silence followed, and Aki was horrified to feel a single tear in his eye. He rubbed it away with unnecessary force.
“Well, that’s really good of you and all,” Himeno was saying, slowly, “but dying kinda comes with the territory of being a devil hunter, y’know. Why else would I be getting plastered every weekend? Gotta enjoy it while we got it, right?”
Talking this much had clearly tired Himeno, because she sank back to the sheets with a heaving sigh. She muttered, “God, I need a cigarette right now.”
“Himeno,” Aki was about to try again, but something on her face, something about that cool sarcastic smirk underneath the bandage, made him change direction mid-word. “...I’ll come see you tomorrow. Get some rest until then.”
“Bring a pack with you,” came the groggy response, “and don’t forget the lighter again.”
For the first time that night, Aki’s smile was genuine.
-
She lived for another year.
Impressive enough for a devil hunter, especially one who hadn’t died quickly. Himeno had lost little pieces of herself along the way, one eye and then the other. She’d smoked and drank so much that the inside of her was rotting.
Aki’s phone never rang, so he knew something was wrong when her name appeared on the screen one night.
“It was a good run, Aki. It was a good run. We had a good time together.”
She’d said it so many times. The words blurred into each other until they became formless noises. Hopelessly drunk, as she had been so often.
By the time Aki had got to her apartment, the paramedics had covered her body with a sheet. The room smelled of liquor and vomit and despair. Her body was so weakened from the substance abuse that one bottle of sleeping medication and half a dozen pain relievers had done it.
He’d saved her last message. It was awful, but he couldn’t just erase the last part of her that he could hold on to.
He always knew that one of them would go first.
In the silence of the night, next to her cold body, he wished it could have been him.