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Shu Itsuki was a man with high standards, highly curated aesthetics, and an ever-increasing tolerance for existential madness that had been systematically reinforced over years of cohabitation with one Kagehira Mika.
He loved Mika.
He had even married Mika.
He had vowed to cherish Mika in sickness and in health, but those vows had notably failed to mention anything about sharing their blessed marital bed with a three-meter-long catastrophe that looked like it had been coughed up by a Lovecraftian deity that had a fun little Etsy sewing hobby on the side.
“Kagehira,” Shu started, his voice thin as paper. “What. Is. That.”
He pointed a trembling, manicured finger at the offending object currently occupying three-quarters of their 100% pure Mulberry silk sheets.
“’s a body pillow, Oshi-san! I made it myself!” Mika chirped with a bright smile, his mismatched eyes sparkling with the kind of terrifying, unadulterated pride usually seen in mad scientists or toddlers showing off a particularly vibrant smear of finger paint.
Shu stared.
To call it a ‘body pillow’ was a generous, perhaps even treasonous, use of the word.
In reality, it was a chaotic tangle of many individually hand-sewn on tentacles to a long, cylinder body with an unnerving abundance of plastic eyeballs that seemed to track Shu’s every movement in cold judgment.
“Kagehira,” Shu’s pitch climbed in unadulterated despair. “It has sixteen eyes. I just counted. I had to count because they are all staring at me. Why, in the name of all things sacred, does it have sixteen eyes?”
“So it can watch over ya while ya sleep!” Mika explained, unabashed. He lunged forward, hugging one of the lumpy, stuffed appendages with enough force to make the plastic eyeballs rattle like a bag of teeth. “Ritsu-kun said it was ‘avant-garde,’ an' ya always say we gotta be bold with our art, right? It’s got a 360-degree field of vision. Nothin’s gonna sneak up on us now! Not even a ghost!”
“If anything sneaks up on us, it will be because they are trying to rescue me from this monstrosity!” Shu snapped.
At this, Mika's bright smile fell from his face. He threw his arms over the monstrous pillow’s fat, lumpy head to cover its non-existent ears. As he squeezed, the creature emitted a high-pitched, piercing squeak like a dog toy being murdered in a trash compactor.
“Oh no! Don’t listen to him! Oshi-san is just cranky 'cuz he hasn't had his bedtime tea! Don't let his mean words hurt your feelin's!"
You love this boy, Shu reminded himself, inhaling deeply through his nose. He is the light of your life. He is your partner in arts.
“...Don't ya at least like the silhouette?” Mika ventured to ask, tilting his head to the effect of a wet puppy in a cardboard box.
“The silhouette-the silhouette?!” Shu hissed. He lunged forward, grabbing a fistful of lumpy plush. “That’s it. This aberration is spending the night in the closet.”
Shu wrestled with a tentacle, attempting to heave the three-meter mass toward their closet door. “Move it. Move it now, or I am calling that damned Ibara and telling him to fund a company bonfire. I will personally throw the first match.”
“Aw, don't be mean to Mr. Tentacruel!”
“You named it?” Shu whispered, aghast. The horror was complete. Of course he had. “We are not keeping a third tenant in our bed, Kagehira. It’s him or me. Choose. Choose now and live with the consequences.”
Mika looked at the pillow.
Then he looked at Shu.
The pause lasted exactly three seconds too long.
“Oshi-san,” Mika said, his tone dropping into a low register with sudden soul-crushing gravity. “If I have to choose, does that mean Mr. Tentacruel has to sleep in the living room? ’s cold there, Oshi-san. He’s got no skin, Oshi-san.”
“That thing does not have a nervous system!” Shu shrieked, his eyebrows raised so far they must have kissed his hairline.
Fed up, Shu attempted to pivot away with the thing bundled in his arms, but his foot caught on a stray tentacle, tripping him and sending him stumbling backwards onto the mattress. He landed with a soft oomph directly into the sixteen-eyed plush pile.
It was... alarmingly comfortable. It felt like being hugged by a very large, very fluffy cloud that just happened to be peering into the depths of his soul from every conceivable angle.
“See?” Mika’s face appeared over the top of a fuzzy appendage, grinning widely like a complete idiot. “It’s got a weighted core! Like one of those fancy anxiety blankets, but with more personality!”
“I would hardly call what it has a ‘personality’,” Shu grumbled, though he did not immediately get up. “And it smells like... is that ginger?”
“I put a scent sachet in the brain-sack!"
“The brain-sack. Of course. How silly of me to assume it was hollow and devoid of sentience.” Shu closed his eyes, accepting the utter defeat of his dignity. “If this thing smothers me in our sleep, I am blaming you entirely. I’ll haunt you relentlessly, Kagehira.”
“Don't worry, Oshi-san,” Mika whispered, shuffling closer and flopping half of his body over Shu and the pillow alike, creating a sandwich of human and fluff. “Ya don't hafta be jealous, yer still my one and only. Mr. Tentacruel is like a son t' me.”
“How reassuring,” Shu muttered, his hand reflexively reaching out to stroke Mika’s hair, but instead, his finger brushed against a cold, plastic eyeball. He shivered. “Disgusting. Truly. We are burning this at dawn.”
"Love ya too, Oshi-san," Mika mumbled into his neck, already drifting off into a blissful sleep that only the truly insane were capable of.
Shu sighed, his fingers tangled in Mika’s curls and his legs tangled in between multiple ginger-scented tentacles—it felt like he was being slowly digested by a large starfish. He stared back at the nearest eye, a silent challenge between man and monster.
"If you even blink once," Shu whispered into the dark, "I'm getting matches."
The pillow, naturally, did not blink.
Shu, exhausted by the sheer audacity of his own life, finally let his eyes drift shut, cocooned in a nightmare entirely of his own making.