Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The spirit is so hurt

It don’t know the body.

It looks in the mirror

And asks, who is it?

On/My/Aging-Carolyn Marie Rodgers

Aki had picked the apartment because it was quiet. No neighbors had knocked on his door to welcome him when he moved in and no birds sang him awake. Even his heater, nicked from the last family that housed him, did little more than shudder quietly in the coldest of winters. He could almost pretend the silence that dogged him was by design. That he liked how quiet it was in the mornings that bled far too quickly into evenings.

He stands on the balcony haphazardly attached to his apartment and tips the ash from his cigarette into the wind. Its embers get lost in the streetlights of the city laid before him. It’s quiet, the way he had always expected his life to be, the way he had always hated, but this time it beckons him back inside. Because the soft rumble of the television sinks through the glass door, its glow painting itself across his hands, lighting his veins up from the outside in, and Aki had turned it off when the sun still hung high in the sky.

Some cartoon is playing, one brightly colored and lively, anamorphic animals moving across the screen and he thinks it strange, though he has little to compare it to. He did not watch cartoons when he was younger. His childhood was never colorful nor cheerful and from the scraps he has managed to collect from Denji, neither was his, yet the boy still watches from the corner of his eye.

Most of Denji’s attention is on a kitchen knife, dulled and chipped because Aki could not in good conscious spend money on a new one when Power still wore shoes two sizes too small, sawing at the thick hair on the back of his head.

When Aki asks what he’s doing, Denji startles and whips around to meet his eyes, the knife turning with him to drag across the palm of his hand.

“Nothing!” he yells and tucks the knife behind his back and then his other hand when he notices the blood dripping on the countertop.

Aki stubs his cigarette out on the ashtray Power made, clay uneven and porous from being pulled from a kiln too quickly, and he takes a moment to temper his breathing with his back turned from Denji.

Denji still shakes when Aki stands tall and stern in front of him, though it happens less frequently these days. In the beginning, he had thought there no rhyme or reason to it. Aki was older and taller and stronger, and when they first met, he had not yet known how to hold himself as anything but. Aki had thought—foolishly, because there has always been more to Denji—that he was frightened by him. So he smiled more, wide enough that it wore grooves in his cheeks and long enough that it hurt, and still drew only trembles and short answers from the other boy. His face, he’s been told, is not built for smiles, and he thought Denji could smell the insincerity.

It had been months of frothy silence and unmet eyes, and he had begun to resign himself to it, to a quiet so unwelcome it ached with familiarity, and tried to make himself comfortable with the uncomfortable. Denji owed him nothing, not his smile nor his good nature, and though Aki wanted a companion more than almost anything, Denji was safe with him, and he made himself satisfied with that.  

Then Aki came home to the bitter smell of charred food, his fingers twitching around a phantom katana while dirt and sweat made itself at home on his skin, and in the middle of it all stood Denji.

Denji, who was bouncing in place to a tinny song from the radio, the one hidden in Aki’s room that he built with his mother, and suddenly Aki could not stand it a second longer.

“Turn that off,” he had snapped, because he had been so upset to see Denji, cozy in the home Aki had built, happy only when he was not there with him, that he forgot to speak quietly or walk softly or keep his long limbs to himself. When he reached for the radio to turn it off, Denji beat him to it and knocked it to the ground.

 Denji’s hands scrabbled after it, a second too late, and knocked the pot of soup to the floor with it.

When Aki thinks back, he does not remember being angry, or tired or frustrated. Instead, what sticks to his mind’s eye is the tremble in Denji’s voice, the longest he had spoken to him by far.

“Please,” Denji had wailed, kneeling in boiling soup and the shards of Aki’s mother’s radio, “please don’t send me back. They said they’d kill me if they saw me again.”

It had made sense then. Denji had not been afraid of Aki. This was Denji afraid; this was Denji so terrified his fingers slipped on hard plastic and twisted metal, cutting the tender flesh of his hands.

“It’s alright,” Aki had said and cradled Denji’s hands in his. “I won’t send you back,” he promised. “Not for anything.” And he realized the shadows that walked through Denji’s nightmares were not shaped like him.

So he knows Denji is not afraid of him when he turns back to him now, not eleven but seventeen, his hands cut not by pieces of a radio but a knife. Still, he moves slowly, speaks gently, because the image of Denji, crying by his hand, is not so easily slain.

“C’mon,” he says, pulling Denji towards the bathroom with little resistance. “Let me clean this.”

Aki washes his hands in the bathroom sink and the nicotine stains linger. He makes Denji sit on the lid of the toilet seat and takes his own spot on the bathtub lip.

“You can’t cut your hair with a knife.” He makes quick work of wrapping Denji’s hand, over and around and fast through his long fingers. If Denji had been luckier, if he had been fed and sated and loved from the beginning, Aki thinks he would have grown taller than himself. He has the long limbs and slender frame that lends itself to height. He wonders about that Denji. Wonders and loves and misses that one, too. “Dumbass,” he adds, because if Aki walks down the path of what ifs too long, he might never let go of Denji’s hand.

Reluctantly, he does.

“It’s always worked before,” Denji says. He’s admiring the bandages around his hands, and Aki takes the roll from him before he can wrap it around the length of forearm the way Denji’s comic book heroes do.

Around a pout Denji says, “I just got distracted. I was almost done anyway.” Denji stands, most likely to head back to the kitchen, but Aki pulls him back down.

“You didn’t even use scissors?” he asks.

Denji tilts his head. “Oh,” he says, like he hadn’t considered the thought. He probably hadn’t, Aki thinks. When your home is bare boned, stripped of anything lovely or kind or warm, scissors are probably a low priority. He knows little of what his father’s friends had him doing before he found Denji—knows enough that if he ever saw them again he’d wring their necks before they could explain the dark bruises on his hips that never really went away—but he thinks Denji would be more likely to have a knife within reach than anything else.

Denji stares at Aki, and he realizes he still has his hand around Denji’s wrist. The tips of his fingers overlap.

“I could cut it for you,” he says, and wonders how much meat he can squeeze from this week’s grocery budget.

“Sure,” Denji says and Aki leaves to get scissors from the kitchen. “But no stupid topknot!”

Aki comes back with a pair of fabric scissors and a bar stool from the kitchen counter. He places it against the sink and grabs a bottle of shampoo and conditioner from the ringed bathtub.

“I don’t need a bath,” Denji says, his hands coming to rise in front of him as he backs himself into a corner. But his eye is clear and dandelion-yellow, bright and unworldly, so Aki knows he is allowed to reach for him.

“It’s easier to cut wet hair,” Aki tells him. He wraps a towel around his shoulders and ties its ends at the back of Denji’s neck with his own hair tie, his fingers ghosting over the soft baby hairs. He has Denji lean back into the sink bowl and runs the water until it comes out clear, and more importantly, warm. 

For a moment Aki does little more than look at him. At his cheeks that have finally taken color, the smattering of freckles collected over his nose and up his forehead like a pond fountain. Then Aki gestures to the right side of his face. “It might be easier without—”

Denji takes off his eyepatch and sets it on the sink counter next to the jar holding their toothbrushes. Like cracked glass, Aki thinks.

Gently, he tips Denji’s head back into the stream of water and sets to rubbing in shampoo with the rounded base of his nails. He wonders what it was that traced scars across Denji’s face like lightning. Did they hold him down, Aki thinks, or was it quick? Maybe the pain lingered, maybe the nerves nestled beneath his skin broke beneath the strain and offered him solace.

He wants to know so badly he aches. He never wants to find out.

“All done.” It takes a moment for Denji to rouse, and he almost thinks he fell asleep. But soon he’s greeted with eyes of ethereal yellow and pale, icy blue. Both roll to meet his.

Aki throws a towel over his head and scrubs his hair dry.

“I thought you wanted my hair wet!” Denji’s voice is muted by the cloth and Aki is quick to put it away.

“I don’t need you dripping on me like a dog,” he says and Denji woofs quietly beside him.

He pulls Denji towards him by the ring of the stool. “Now sit still,” he says, and Denji gives one great shake, his entire body coming alive.

“Had to get all the movement out,” he says and places his hands on his thighs, relaxed. “I’m all good now. Like a puppet.”

“Like a doll,” Aki corrects and combs through Denji’s hair once. It comes apart easily, his hair like spun gold, and Aki threads his fingers around the comb when they want to grab the first strands before they flutter to the ground.

“Same thing,” Denji says.

“Not unless you want my hand up your ass.” From above he watches Denji stick out his tongue and sets to work on cutting his hair. Not too much from the back, because Denji hates wearing hats and the winters here are much colder than Aki remembers. He trims the sides short and tapers off around Denji’s ears.

He stops when he gets to the strands dusting past his brows.

“You can cut it,” Denji says, meeting Aki’s gaze through the mirror. “It gets in my eyes and Power won’t let me use her clips anymore after I lost the last ones.”

“We can buy you some,” Aki says, the scissors holding Denji’s hair between its blades like a guillotine. “So you’d have the option to wear it down.”

“Nah,” Denji says and reaches up to close the scissors for Aki. Final verdict: execution. “S’not like they hide anything.”

They don’t. Denji’s scars, chrysanthemum pink and jagged, flare out from even the soft fabric of his eyepatch.

“Good,” Aki says, and clips the other side, Denji’s fringe an upside-down ‘w’. “You have nothing to hide.” And he means it. Denji’s scars are not beautiful or a testament to his strength, they’re simply remnants from a time when he was young. Powerless. And Aki will always, always be grateful his autonomy is all they took from him.

Denji shrugs. “You don’t have to lie, Aki. They’re pretty ugly.”

He knows they are. Aki doesn’t like to lie. He’s good at it, though. Denji believed him when he said swearing was illegal in public, Himeno believed him when he told her he didn’t love her. Aki almost believed himself when he stood over her grave and said he missed her.

 He doesn’t like to lie, and he won’t to Denji. Not about this. He finishes cutting Denji’s hair, blows a few wayward strands off his shoulders and promises to clean them up tomorrow. There’s hay at Aki’s feet and flickering lights above him.

“Power likes to draw on it sometimes,” Denji says. Aki’s done cutting his hair, but he hasn’t moved. He’s watching Aki through the mirror. “She says it looks like a dragon.” He drags a finger from the edge of his jaw around the curve of his eye.

He can almost see it, if the dragon’s wings were long and thin and it had crashed to the ground under the weight of its own body. Aki thinks it looks more like Pangea, continents breaking apart across his skin.

“A dragon’s pretty cool.” He pauses. “The principal isn’t giving you trouble about it, is she?”

“Nah,” Denji says, running a hand through his hair. He grins with a shark-toothed smile. Aki smiles back at him, albeit smaller. “She says the dress code has exceptions for ‘people like me’.”

People like me. Aki wonders how many people are like Denji. Brash and rude and thoughtless. Obstinate and pigheaded for the sake of difficulty.

“Nayuta has a pretty nasty scar on her leg, so I can’t hate mine or anything. I gotta show her they’re not so bad.” And so fucking kind Aki wants to cry. The world is going to swallow him whole.

“Do you talk to her often?” he asks.

“Kind of. Sometimes I babysit for Kishibe when he’s got a lot of stuff to grade.”

“I thought you had soccer after school.”

“I quit,” Denji says.

“You loved soccer.” He used to talk Aki’s ear off about it, had him pouring over recorded games and sports magazines after Denji and Power fell asleep just so he could horribly misuse set piece and scoreline and watch Denji recoil in disgust.

“It’s not fun anymore,” Denji says. He grabs the scissors Aki put down and heads back to the kitchen. Aki follows.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” Denji says. “It’s just not.” Aki is still learning the bumps and winds of Denji’s happiness. He’s told Aki he was happy when he had little more than a dog at his heels and the possibility of a debt repaid hanging over his head, and where Aki doesn’t like to lie Denji simply can’t. Or maybe he won’t, maybe he sees little use in falsehoods when truth has sharper corners. Denji has been happy in the pouring rain because it meant he wouldn’t go thirsty, but soccer made him happy, Aki knows it did. Happy the way he is when not just his basic needs being met, but that voracious hole in his chest is sated. The kind of happiness he so rarely allows himself.   

“So, you quit just because?” he probes and even as he asks, he knows he’s playing a losing game.

“I guess so,” Denji says. There’s a nick in the tile above the stove, a little patch etched into ceramic that’s been there longer than Aki has and will be there long after they’re gone. Denji picks it into a heart.

He studies Denji, the new curve of his hair, the upward slope of his nose, the thinner, paler scars scattered across his arms and shoulders pulled high. “Alright,” he says, and thinks himself a coward. But Aki has never liked to push where there is little give, and so he lets it go.

Just for now, he swears to himself. Just for this.

“Alright,” he says again, and tries to mean it. They stand in silence save for the stuttered ticks of the clock. “I’m going to head to bed, you coming?”

“Nah,” Denji says, “I was gonna stay up a bit longer.”

“Alright,” Aki says. Alright alright alright. “Not too late though; it’s a school night.”

“Sure,” Denji agrees absentmindedly.

A couple stray strands of hair caress the tops of Denji’s brows, and he shakes his head to scatter them free. Aki brushes them away for him, and, with little thought on his part, bends to drop a kiss to the exposed skin.

Denji freezes and peers up at Aki with wide, wide eyes, his hands still over the television remote. Flushed pink paints itself across his cheeks and gets lost in Denji’s scars.

Aki wants to say I love you, or I hope you’re happy. I hope you’ll let me in even when you aren’t. I hope you’ll give me some of the weight you’re carrying and rest easy, because I’m not going anywhere. I promise. Instead, he stammers a quiet goodnight and escapes to their shared bedroom. He lies in his bed alone and watches the sun rise through the drapes and wishes he stayed in the kitchen.

When they wake, they don’t talk about it. Not the scars or soccer or the kiss. They burry it under the rug alongside Aki’s job and Denji’s father and eat leftover ohitashi over the lump it makes.

“C’mon,” Aki says and gathers his keys from the hollowed head of a lucky cat. Their entire apartment is like this: bits and pieces of each other thrown together. Power’s art projects and scraps of paper stapled to every spare corner of the walls, movie stubs and diner receipts Denji pinned up to fill in the cracks.

Little is Aki’s, not the color of carpet nor the placement of the television, but he likes it that way. Aki is Denji is Power until they roll off the tongue as akidenjipower. A matching set, do not separate. He did not hang the wisteria or hollyhock from the exposed pipes crisscrossing the ceiling, but he could close his eyes and still know which flowers had bloomed. The same way it’s not Aki’s apprehension that strikes nerves down his spine, but he still pinches the webbed skin between his thumb and forefinger and breathes deep.

“Where?” Power asks, her plate clear of vegetables, a trail of spinach runoff leading to Denji’s. She’s subdued this morning; the quiet of last night must have settled her blood, too.

“School,” Aki says and tosses Power her jacket. Yellow on the front and blue on the inside, perfectly reversable so she never has to pick a favorite color. Today is blue, and Aki finds it fitting.

“We have to go again?” Power moans. She hesitates by the genkan, one sock in her mouth as she hops on a foot to tie up the laces on her sneaker. Denji catches her by the leg before she tips over and undoes the knot, tying it simpler and looser so Power won’t cut them off when she can’t untie them. “We did that last week, too!”

And the week before that, and the month before them both. Aki is usually gone before either of them leaves, but he had assumed Power still went even if he had not been there to personally usher her through the school gates.

“Powy, school is every weekday,” Denji says. Denji wouldn’t let Power skip, Aki thinks. Either because he refuses to see her fall behind, or because he’d rather not suffer alone, Aki isn’t sure.

“For how long?” she asks. She inches away from the genkan, her back scraping against the wall, taking a square of their makeshift wallpaper to the ground. A small, cigarette-box sized photo of the three of them, akidenjipower, flutters to the floor and stares up at him. In it, Aki has his arms around them both, Power’s messy pink hair brushing the bottom of his jaw as she leans into him. Denji barely came up to his shoulder then. He had not yet hit his growth spurt—he had little energy for anything excessive and growing had been set on the backburner in favor of survival. It took his body long to unlearn that. Longer still for his mind to catch up. Even in the photo, which Aki thinks can’t be older than a few years, Denji shied away from him, from them both.

“Until we die.” Denji says. In one swift movement he swings his backpack onto his shoulders, swaying with the weight of three textbooks, and nudges Power back towards the door. Aki tucks the photo into his wallet alongside his work ID and an overcharged credit card. Because although Denji looks frightened, and he must convince himself again it is not of him, the tips of Denji’s fingers are wrapped around the bottom of Aki’s jacket.

“No!” Power yelps and jumps on Aki’s back, hiding her face in the hollow of his collarbones. She barely off balances him. Aki toys with the idea of falling anyway and tosses it just as quickly; Power has little self-preservation and would likely fall with him.

Aki points a reprimanding glare at Denji. “No, shut up, not until you die.” Denji cackles and races out the door, Aki running after him on unsteady legs as Power wraps hers tight around his waist. “Another year. Or two.” He side eyes Power, the tips of two small ponytails the only thing visible. “Three. Five at most,” he says. Aki could buy a GED, he thinks, if it came to it.

Power unwinds her legs when they reach the bottom of the rickety steel staircase, Denji triumphantly slapping the body of a dumpster.

"Thanks for breakfast, Aki,” Denji says and holds out a hand for Power. She latches on immediately and curls into him, two crescent moons curving together. “We gotta hurry or Aoki-sensei will mark us absent again.”

Aki clicks the button on his keys, a loud chime echoing through the parking garage. “I’m driving you,” he says. His car is small: silver and scratched with a deep dent on its bumper Denji swears wasn’t his fault, but it still works, and Aki loves it just a little bit.

Denji slides into the passenger seat, Power dumping her backpack in the back and stretching her legs across the seats. Aki starts the engine and a soft roar rumbles throughout the car. He turns to back up, one hand on the steering wheel, the other one swatting Power’s dirty sneakers off the polyester seats. They pull out of the parking garage and into a quiet street, traffic staved off by the early morning. An overcast paints the city in dull undertones, the stoplights ushering him forward in muted green.

“I thought you had work today,” Denji says. “I was surprised to see you at all this morning.”

When Denji points out his absence—unintentionally and gently, because Denji is never unkind on purpose—Aki feels the familiar trickle of irritation creep across his skin. It’s not his fault, he wants to say, that he has to rise before the sun, that he’s out their door early each morning, weekends and holidays running together in a terrific blur. It is not his fault, that even the cheapest parts of Japan are too expensive for a boy barely turned man and two teenagers with no assets or family to lean on. Aki keeps his lips pressed tight. Because he knows how Denji would take it. Aki would say we need the money and Denji would add his own because of you.

“I had a day off,” Aki says. He had all but begged for one, his voice hushed into his phone when he realized Denji would not come to their room at all, when sunlight had peeked through their window and scattered itself on his empty bed.

“I didn’t know you had those,” Denji says, his eyes lit in genuine surprise. In excitement.

Aki tightens his hands on the steering wheel. “I probably won’t get another one anytime soon,” he says, and keeps his gaze firmly on the widening road. From the corner of his eyes, he sees Denji’s shoulders fall in the rearview mirror.

The rest of the drive to school is quiet, too.

Aki idles the car behind a sleek Volkswagen. The high school grounds are well-kept and expansive, hallways winding in such a way Aki struggled to get from Power’s homeroom to Denji’s during parent’s week. Students flood the campus from all directions and Aki thinks he’d have trouble navigating its crowds. A girl in the car in front of them steps out with a smile thrown over her shoulder and Aki watches her fade into the crowd of students until she’s little more than a singular stroke in a painting.

“Thanks, Aki!” Power shouts and slams her door open, the thin metal hinges whining. She’s disappeared before Aki can tell her goodbye. Denji makes to follow her, one foot already on the curb, but Aki stops him with a hand on his shoulder. Power must have felt the sticky apprehension in the air and left before it could grab her.

“I wanted to talk to you, Denji,” Aki says.

Denji settles into his seat and fiddles with the radio knob, flicking through stations of static. He stops on a song Aki doesn’t recognize. English, or maybe Spanish, Aki never learned the difference. What need did he have for languages when he only left the prefecture with his katana strapped across his back? His job left little room for words.

Denji turns the knob so high Aki almost misses the hushed, “I knew you didn’t just want to drive us to school.”

Aki swallows around the lump in his throat and lets Denji keep the music loud. “I wanted to talk to you,” he repeats. “About yesterday.”

Denji doesn’t meet his eyes. Or maybe he does, Aki doesn’t know. He keeps his straight and unfocused, the license plate of the van in front of him blurring together.

"If the other students,” Aki starts, “if they’re giving you trouble about your—scars—or whatever—”

“S’not about them,” Denji interrupts. He plays with the loose ends of his t-shirt. Aki will have to buy him a new one soon. “Most people don’t get close enough to see ‘em anyway.”

“But they’re being—” little fucking assholes Aki wants to run through, “unkind to you?”

Denji squirms in his seat. He must dislike this train of thought almost as much as Aki. “I guess,” he says. Aki lets the quiet sit in the car. He gives it a seat and a name and welcomes it in. It doesn’t stay long.

“They’re usually worse about the rest of it,” Denji says in a rush. Aki does not need to ask what it is. “Aoki-sensei posted our ranks on the classroom bulletin a few weeks ago. Most people ignored me before it came out. They looked at me funny when I got the wrong answers and stuff, but lots of other kids were wrong, too, so I guess I didn’t stand out much. But after our ranks they started looking, really looking at me, not just when I came in late or ran into something. They said I walked and talked funny, or I ate weird, or called me names.

“Jokes on them, though,” Denji grins. This smile is for Aki, he realizes, because Denji thinks he is the one in need of kindness. “I don’t even know what queer means.”

Aki’s knuckles run white on the steering wheel. Of course he doesn’t. Fag, Denji might recognize. Aki doubts yakuza have warm words for people like him. Aki picks this trail of thought and boxes it away. Later, he promises himself and sets the key safely aside.

“What other people think of you,” Aki begins, “the awful things they say to you, do not, in any way, reflect the person you are, do you understand me?” Aki turns to face Denji. He looks at the crackled skin of Denji’s profile and needs him to hear this. He needs Denji to know that all the flaws he has, all the imperfections sewn into him, are triumphs and not setbacks. He is an amalgamation of all he has lived through, for better or worse, and Aki is so so proud of him.

“You’re incredible, Denji,” Aki says. You and Power are the best things that ever happened to me, he thinks. “You’re strong and you’re kind and you’re smart—”

Denji hums, like he doesn’t believe him, because he doesn’t believe him, and Aki places two fingers gently against Denji’s jaw and turns his face so he can see brilliant gold.

“You are,” Aki says. “Scores aren’t everything. They measure a fraction of what’s important. The rest is determined by the kind of person you mold yourself into. And Denji, no one has pulled themselves from the fire the way you have. You could have been distant and angry and cruel, the way you were raised. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to be kind, when the world has never given you a proper teacher?”

Denji shrugs. He won’t meet his gaze. Aki wants to shake him until he believes him, he wants to hug Denji so tight he’ll never have to let go. He wants to storm the school and find the kids who ever thought it fair to steal the light Aki worked so hard to nourish and bury them so deep the earth could never spit them out.

“Well for what it’s worth, I—” love you love you love you, little brother, “like you quite a lot.” Aki is a coward down to his bones. “So that has to count for something, right?”

“Maybe just a little.” Denji smiles, and this one is for himself.

He steps out of the car and onto the curb, and he towers over Aki. Denji looks distorted from this angle. Not like the child Aki is used to. When he turns to leave, Aki calls him back.

“Denji,” he says. He stops and waits for Aki, the crowd of students behind him keeping a wide enough berth that Aki feels he is cracking open a wall of silence with just his name.

“Denji,” he says again, when words fail him. He wraps a hand around the back of Denji’s neck and pulls him close, their foreheads knocking together softly. “I’ll pick you and Power up today, okay? I’ll make omurice for dinner.”

“And you’ll eat with us?” Denji asks, his voice dropping low. Aki has piles of papers taking over his desk, Makima’s penetrating gaze on his back even out here.

“Of course,” he says, because he has never been able to shy away from simple pleasures.

“So, is this job your only hobby?” Aki is less than fond of his new partner. Though it was difficult to work with Himeno, difficult to fall in love with her strength and beauty and determination and hate everything else, at least she let him have his quiet.

Aki can’t say he’s sad she died. Disappointed that she did not have the chance to outgrow the well of cruelty Aki knew she harbored, maybe, but his sadness is reserved for the people who’d never want it. Himeno had wanted everything from him. She wanted his pain and his sorrows, and for a while Aki was content to give them to her. But he thinks she chipped at his humanity, little by little, brick by brick, until Aki sliced jagged through a spine and mourned only for his clean shirt. He’s spent the past few years picking up its scattered pieces, and he knows it was not her death that spurred his search.

Aki does not know if Yoshida shares Himeno’s flaws, not yet, but he has no kind things to say for him either.

He’s conceited, Aki thinks, and ignores his question. He’s brash and irritating and fulsome. Yoshida slides a forearm blade through the neck of a man Aki did not see coming up behind him. He smiles when he kills, and Aki has only seen that expression once before.

Aki does not trust him.

“Makima said we should get along,” Yoshida says. “So how about we head to the bar on sixth after this?”

“I don’t drink,” Aki says. There’s no movement from the pile of bodies at their feet. Yoshida stabs into it at random anyway.

“Neither do I! It has amazing sushi. Open twenty-four hours, too.”

“I’m not hungry,” Aki says. His stomach rumbles. Aki ignores it and heads back to their office-issued SUV. He pops open the truck and changes into clean long-sleeved shirt and loose slacks. There is a small stain blotched in a splatter over his heart. The blood is not his.

“On me,” Yoshida says. He’s smiling as he slides into the passenger seat. Aki knows this without looking and hates that he can tell from his voice alone.

“I’m dropping you off at the office,” he says, and weaves between cars to enter the freeway. The clock above the radio says eight in the morning, but the stars still hang bright in the sky. Aki toggles with its settings as he settles behind a pickup truck.

“What’s the hurry, Aki?”

“Don’t call me that.”

Yoshida continues. “I heard you and Himeno used to spend the entire night after a mission together.” Yoshida lets the innuendo sit thick between them.

Aki’s never slept with Himeno. She was beautiful, the kind of beauty Aki only saw in magazines he never bought, and she spent days wrapped around him, staring up at him with wide brown eyes. But there had been something insidious about her, even from the beginning, so ingrained Aki had felt it even if he couldn’t give it a name.

“Got someone else to get home to?” Yoshida asks and Aki thinks of Power, curled up on her futon, Meowy nestled under her chin. He thinks of Denji alone in their room, a dinner the boy excitedly made that Aki promised to taste packed away in the fridge.

Aki ignores this question, too.

“Ah,” Yoshida says. “I suppose that makes sense. Someone like you must have many sleepless nights, huh?”

“I bet she’s pretty,” Yoshida continues. “You’ll have to let the rest of the office meet her; I’m sure anyone who’s charmed the stoic Aki must be incredible.”

“Don’t call me that,” Aki says again and turns the radio loud enough to drown out the patter of raindrops on the car’s roof. He can still hear Yoshida’s lilting laughter over the violins.

Yoshida smiled when Aki dropped him off, twenty meters from the gated entrance so he’d have to walk through the pouring rain. He knocked on the window, and though Aki had refused to lower it—lest the rainwater drench the polyester of a car he could never afford—Aki had been able to read the soft see you tomorrow from his lips.

He changes out his car in the underground parking garage, checking his keys with the security guard Aki has never seen leave.

The ride home is always quicker. Quieter, too, though Aki hardly turns on the radio by himself.

Aki grabs a double lined duffle bag from the trunk and takes to hand scrubbing the worst of the bloodstains out in the front office bathroom. It’s kept locked at this hour, but the receptionist writes the code under the loose peel of carpet. He throws the damp clothes in the washing machine and makes a note to come back in fifty minutes.

Aki navigates his apartment by touch. He pulls a soccer ball from the duffle bag and leaves it on their shared dresser. Then he joins Denji in the bed across from his and lets the rainfall lull him to sleep.

The desk across from Aki is empty. Larger than his, too. By about half a dozen centimeters on each side, smaller than the length of his palm, if Aki where to put their desks snug together and measure.

He doesn’t, but sometimes he thinks he wants to.

The lights above Aki turn off. He sits in the dark for a moment, toys with the idea of leaving now, while it’s still dark. He could crawl under the tunnel made by the rest of the desks, all the way to the stairs. He could.

Instead, Aki waves a hand towards the sensor and the lights trickle back to life, starting at the ones furthest from him until the entire room is bright again. This level has floor to ceiling windows, paneled in thick titanium. Aki is an animal in a glass cage.  

He shifts through the papers on his desk. They say inculpable and delegated and grey area. They say Aki can kill and kill and kill and come home bloody and not a thing can stop him.

Makima had offered him a pistol when she first found him. Short and dark enough it bordered on black. She placed a silencer on the table next to him, too.

Guns are illegal, Aki had said.

And do you believe, Makima had asked, that legality means morality? Are you, she had asked, sliding a small hand up Aki’s arm to brush back a stray hair behind his ear, afraid of getting your hands dirty for what’s right?

Aki hadn’t answered. He picked up the gun, because Makima was still looking at him. It was an awkward mixture of heavy-light Aki found unbalanced. He traced his finger over the trigger.

This, Makima had said, is the safety. And she flicked it off.

Aki held the pistol up to an eye. Aimed it at the middle of Makima’s chest. It’s not a rifle, Aki, Makima said, and she walked behind him to guide his arms straight in front of them both.

And this, she had said, is how you shoot to kill.

Aki leaves his katana unsheathed on his desk. He signs his name in blood and calls it a night. Tomorrow, his paperwork will still be here. Tomorrow, Aki will be here and not at home, and the desk across from him will still be empty.

Yoshida’s desk is on the floor below his, and Aki does not check to see if he’s still awake.

Aki doesn’t know for sure if he’s here, but when he calls “Angel,” a polished hand raises from behind the wall surrounding the receptionist’s desk.

Angel’s head is pillowed on his other arm, and he’s writing slowly in a bound notebook. “Makima makes you stay this late?” he asks.

“No,” Angel says, and strikes out a bottom line. “I’m writing erotica.” He looks up at Aki then, just a slow roll of his eyes to meet his. “You can be in it, if you can help me spell ‘aphrodisiac’.”

Aki sets his bag down by his feet and leans against the desk. “Like as a side-character? Or do I get lines?”

Angel’s pen pauses. “You can be the perv who flashes the main character. You can say ‘hey baby let me stick my—'”

“Okay, let’s get you home.” Aki rounds the desk and nudges Angel out of his seat.

“I’ll even describe it accurately,” Angel promises. “Thick and with a long vein wrapping around—"

“I’m begging you to stop talking.”

Angel waves his notebook. “I’ll have you begging for something else.” Quick like a strike Aki has the notebook in his own hands. Inside are rows of names and dates and numbers. Next to Aki’s name reads six-hundred and fifteen. He closes the notebook and pretends not to know what it means.

“Makima asked me to consolidate some files manually. It took me a while with this,” Angel admits. Makima had bought Angel the newest prosthetics available, after it all. New, even with all her money, must still mean slow.

Angel smiles with his eyes. “Besides, I don’t really have a way with words,” he says. “On the back though there is a drawing of you.” He makes a circle with his thumb and forefinger and looks up at Aki through the hole. “Photo realistic. Everywhere.”

And suddenly Aki misses Angel something ferocious. He misses Angel at his back, by his side, however he was able to have him. He misses Angel’s quick tongue and quicker blades. He misses feeling safe, knowing that the man fighting with him would just as easily fight for him.

Aki knows he’s lucky he got Angel back at all. He knows, deep down, that Angel would not have been on the battlefield if it weren’t for him. He takes in his metal arms, inhumanely limp by his sides, and adds another tally to his ledger. 

Can’t it be alright, he thinks, to let himself miss what could have been? The soft touches and smiles Aki selfishly thinks as his, tucked behind shared memories of blood and screams and pleas.

Aki wants Angel to be happy, and he’s selfish enough to wish it could be with him. But Aki is made of asphalt and charcoal; he is not someone who is loved easily. Sometimes he thinks he is not someone who should be loved at all.

“I think you’re done for the night,” Aki says, and hides his waning smile in his shoulder. Because Aki is still so so lucky to have any piece of Angel at all. Aki takes his benevolence and holds on tight. “You’ve got your keys? I took the train to work.”

Angel pats himself down then shows Aki his empty hands. “Me too,” he says. “I thought you hated the train.”

Aki gathers both his bag and Angel’s, so light Aki thinks it’s empty, and together they leave the building.

“I don’t mind it,” Aki says. The trains are crowded, and Aki’s stop is too busy for him to ever find a seat. It gives him quiet hours to think. Alone.

“Nah,” Angel says. “You hate it. What happened?”

They pass through a small park. On occasion, Aki used to image taking his brother somewhere like here. Trees kiss the edge of the paved route through the park and Aki has to duck to avoid a few overgrown branches. Cherry trees, devoid of their flowers, look a little like bones. Cracked open and porous, Aki could stick an entire arm through the empty branches.

“Power saw my change oil light and put—”

“Vegetable oil?

“I wish,” Aki laughs. “She had been hiding veggies in her room and put a whole bunch of them just right on top of the battery. They were old, too. She must have been saving them up for a while. I think she was upset I made her finish her math homework.”

Angel whistles, low and a little offkey. “That sucks,” he says. He used to sing when they worked together, something soft and sweet when Aki thought he couldn’t take it anymore. He never said anything, just began to tap his fingers on their car dashboard and croon loud enough for Aki to make out the melody but never the lyrics until he could breathe again. He wonders if he still does. Would it be pathetic, if Aki asked him to sing to him again?

“It’s alright,” Aki says, and this time he means it. “Denji tried to help me fix it, but that really just turned into me showing him how a car engine worked. We ended up having to toss the whole battery.”

Aki sits with his words for a moment. Rolls them on his tongue until they’re mild enough to come out. “I taught him how to ride a bike, too. How to shave so he wouldn’t nick himself and tie a tie—even if he doesn’t wear it,” Aki says. Angel stays quiet beside him. Aki wishes he would make noise, step a little louder, breathe a little heavier, so he can feel like he’s not speaking alone.

“Sometimes I feel bad, like I’m taking milestones I shouldn’t. I’m not—I’m not his family. Not really.” Aki wants to be. He wants brother to fit him again. He wants to show Denji how nice of a word it is. “Then I remember his dad was a piece of shit and I feel a little less bad but. I don’t know. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about any of this.”

“Overwhelmed?” Angel offers. “Tired?”

The problem is Aki wants too much. He wants to make Power and Denji dinner and be there to enjoy it with them. He wants to celebrate when they get into college or a promotion or married and he wants to be there.

“I guess,” Aki says, and feels like a liar. They stop at a road that diverges. “I’ll walk with you the rest of the way.”

Angel gives him a gentle shove with a prosthetic hand. Aki feels the cold sink past his jacket and to the skin of his back. “Go home, Aki. It’s late.”

Aki leaves and wishes he was brave enough to ask Angel to come with him. 

He almost doesn’t answer. It’s late enough that his eyes struggle to stay open, and he longs for nothing more than his warm bed. He’ll take curling up beneath his desk with his coat as a blanket, if he can get it. It’s well past midnight, and his floor is almost achingly quiet.

To stop the monotony, if nothing else, Aki picks up the phone.

He can’t make anything out, in the beginning. Just rustling and the sound of shooting wind and high whining. He pulls the phone from his ear and recognizes the number as home.

“Denji?” he asks.

“Aki,” comes the wailing response and Aki’s heart stills in his chest.

“What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” Aki’s on his feet in a rush, his empty hand brushing over his desk. He still when he realizes he’s searching for his katana.

“Aki,” Denji cries again, “please come home.” This is the first time Denji has referred to their little apartment as home.

“I will, I will,” Aki promises. “You’ve got to tell me what’s happened, kid. ”

“I’m scared,” he says. And Aki’s chest aches for him.

“Of what? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” he sobs, “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

“Okay, okay, I’m coming home right now, alright?” Aki throws open his drawers in search of his keys. He finds them in the third one he opens. “Do you want me to stay on the phone with you?”

“Please,” comes the shaking reply.

The keys are snatched out of his hands, and Aki doesn’t think, he simply turns swinging. Kishibe catches his hand before it gets anywhere near his face. “You’re not driving like this,” he says. And Aki is prepared to fight him on this. He has never, in the three years he has known Kishibe, spoken to him in anything other than awed reverence, duly earned, but Aki feels a snarl slash across his face.

“No,” Kishibe says, then he nudges Aki towards the stairs. “I’m driving you. Let’s go.”

Aki nearly stumbles down the three flights. “What?”

“I’m driving you home.” He nods towards the phone and Aki hastily holds it back to his ear. Denji is still sniffling softly into the phone. “It’s your kid, right?”

“Yes,” Aki says.

“Then what are you waiting for?”

He runs down the stairs, Kishibe keeping pace behind him. They slide into the car almost in tandem and Aki directs Kishibe home with distracted fingers.

Denji has fallen quiet save for staggered breathing and Aki talks about anything to fill the gap of silence. He tells Denji about the cat that curled around his ankles this morning as Kishibe takes a sharp turn around an empty corner. He tells him about the new sweet shop that opened a few blocks from their apartment and everything he thinks Denji would like.

They pull to an illegal stop in front of Aki’s apartment and he’s at the door in the span between two breaths.

He knocks gently, but loud enough to be heard throughout the apartment. He waits, counting each second, but Denji does not answer.

“Denji,” he says both into the phone and to the door. “It’s me. Open the door.”

Aki hears a dull thud from inside. “’m scared,” Denji says.

“I know, kid,” Aki says. “I’m just right outside, okay? Let me in.”

Aki hears only his heart pounding in his ears. He shares a steel look with Kishibe. They will break down the door, if the need arises. Aki gives to the count of twenty, and on nineteen the door creaks open.

A gold eye peers at him before the door is flung wide and Aki rushes inside.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” Aki murmurs into Denji’s hair. The boy wraps thin but deceivingly strong fingers into Aki’s shirt, stretching the starched fabric loose.

Gently, Aki herds him towards the couch, never more than a centimeter between them. Between his arms Aki feels Denji freeze and he pulls back to brush a thumb over his cheek, but Denji is not looking at him.

Over Aki’s shoulder Kishibe looms. Tall and dark and stern and Aki tucks Denji’s head back into his chest.

“That’s just Kishibe,” he whispers. “He’s a friend. He’s safe, it’s okay.”

Aki sits Denji on the couch and wraps a blanket around them both, never drawing both hands from him at once. They sit in tear-stained silence until Aki hears the calling of morning birds.

He threads his fingers through Denji’s sweat soaked hair and whispers, “what happened?”

Denji shrugs against his shoulder. He’s spent himself, leaning boneless against Aki and he holds him tighter in his arms. “I woke up and you weren’t there,” Denji says. “I know you told me you had work tonight but I forgot and then I couldn’t breathe and even when I remembered you’d be back I couldn’t catch my breath.”

“I’ll always come back,” Aki says and ignores the piercing gaze from Kishibe. Aki has someone else to fight for, someone other than himself that keeps his spine straight and his blade sharp.

“I know,” he whispers. “But I was scared and I couldn’t stop.”

Kishibe clinks two steaming cups on the table in front of them. Aki leans forward, taking Denji with him, and slips both of Denji’s hands around a mug. Chamomile tea with a hint of cream and honey.

Denji holds the mug but doesn’t drink. “I’m sorry I made you leave work,” he says. His voice warbles but ultimately keeps steady. “I could have handled it. I should have handled it. I just panicked.”

“It’s alright,” Aki says again. “You’re more important than work.” He’s more important than everything. “Call me for anything.”

Denji nods into his mug.

“Kishibe,” Aki calls, and is startled to find the man standing by his elbow. He tears his gaze from Denji and quirks an eyebrow at Aki. He gestures towards the television. “Could you…?”

Kishibe turns it on and presses the remote into Aki’s hand. He picks something long and calming, a movie Denji had recorded and saved, and turns the volume low.

It takes a few movies, but eventually Denji falls asleep, his head pillowed on Aki’s lap. He traces slow, smooth circles on Denji’s scalp.

“Thank you,” he whispers. “You didn’t have to stay.”

Kishibe shrugs. “He’s a good kid,” he says.

Aki smiles. “He is. He really, really is.” Denji turns in his sleep and burrows closer, and Aki tugs up the blanket that slips low.

“He seems…”

“Nervous?” Aki offers. “He’s been through a lot. I don’t even know the half of it. I’ve only known him for a year, and the man he was with before was…awful.”

“He trusts you,” Kishibe says. He adds, “a lot,” when Aki isn’t quite able to muffle his snort.

“Sometimes I close a door too loudly and he jumps a meter in the air,” Aki says. He can’t meet Kishibe’s eyes when he says, “he’s like a beaten animal and I—god I don’t know if he’s ever going to get past it.”

“Kids are resilient,” he says. “More than we are.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” Aki says. He looks Kishibe over. No ring, either on his finger or around his neck, and the few times he’s visited his desk it’s been nothing but primly empty.

“I’ve got one, thirteen, about Denji’s age,” Kishibe says. He clears his throat. “Had. Had a kid about Denji’s age.”

“I’m sorry,” Aki says, and is surprised at how much he means it. He has known Denji for eleven short, short months, and he couldn’t fathom returning to a life without him. He wouldn’t want one. Denji has done the impossible and beaten the aching quiet from Aki’s very bones. He’s worn smile lines and the beginnings of crow’s feet into his face. Denji has given Aki a happiness he never thought he’d have again—one he didn’t think he deserved, not after everything Aki’s done and continues to do.

"It was ten years ago.” Kishibe doesn’t say it’s alright. He doesn’t tell Aki the pain has dulled and passed. He looks at Denji and brushes a fleeting hand through his hair. “Don’t make the same mistakes I did, Aki,” he says. “Don’t take this for granted. Because you won’t get another chance.”

Lights leak out from under his apartment. Aki presses his ear to the door and hears nothing but loud, loud quiet.

His katana is at work, strapped to the wall boxing in his desk. But Aki has a knife hidden behind the high fabric of his boots, and he glides it out like water, a stream remembering the routes around the rocks in a river.

Early morning stars guide his hands, and Aki prays for whoever’s inside Denji and Power are still breathing.

Aki wastes no time with his key, cracking open his own apartment door. His knife finds a neck, presses hard enough to draw blood and a sharp gasp and then spills from his hand.

It clatters to the ground between their feet, a single drop of blood viscous smooth. More are quick to follow.

“Shit, Denji, I’m sorry.” Aki drags Denji into the kitchen and bundles a towel against his neck. Surrounding them is half-made breakfast, batter splatters around the stovetop and eggshells filling up the trash can.

Aki lifts the—now stained beyond saving—towel. The cut is thin, hardly deep enough for Aki to see. It won’t scar, Aki knows; the bleeding has already slowed. He puts the towel back to Denji’s neck. Presses harder.

“I didn’t mean—”

“Where did you get a knife?” Denji asks. He’s holding Aki’s knife close to his face, like a child fawning over a beetle that’s crawled across its legs. Aki hadn’t seen him pick it up.

He looks a little awed, a little impressed. He passes the knife between his hands like a toy. The bile in Aki’s stomach rolls.

“Stop—give that back,” Aki says much too harshly. He grabs the knife by the blade, the familiar metal biting into his own skin.

“Sorry,” Denji says, and his shoulders curl inwards. “I just thought it looked cool.”

“Don’t,” Aki starts. He wipes a hand down his face. Exhaustion tugs at his chest, his bones. He tries again. “Why are you up so early?” Wrong.

“You should be asleep,” Aki says and means a hundred different things. Something kinder, maybe. Something closer to the truth, but Aki is a coward only when it matters. “You’ve got school in a few hours.” Aki has never been able to find the right words, not with Denji.

Denji turns back to the stove. He grabs some pots and bowls from the cupboards and shifts them in his hands like he’s weighing them. He puts a couple back. “I’m making breakfast,” Denji says.

“At three in the morning?”

“Well,” Denji fiddles with a stove top knob. He snaps it back and forth until it clicks each time. “You never bring any food with you when you work nights,” he says. “I thought you’d be hungry.”

Aki killed someone today. Someone a little older than Denji, maybe a little taller if Aki had given them the chance to stand. Sliced clean through their neck, past bone and muscle and blood vessels to come quick out the other side. Aki doesn’t get their names or their ages or transgressions. Just a time and place, an executioner but never a judge or juror. He’s allowed to choose how, sometimes, when they’re small enough not to matter.

Himeno, when she got to pick, stabbed them through the heart. She told Aki once, when she was swaying in her seat and Aki’s lips had not known the taste of alcohol, that brain activity continues for a few moments after the heart stops beating. That was why, she told him, she lowered them to the ground. Gently, she would say. Gently gently gently, her hands pressing into Aki’s chest as if to show him how tender they could be. Aki remembers them being cold. He remembers her standing over them when she killed them, their eyes still open. Himeno, ethereal beauty, the last thing they ever saw. Aki remembers her smiling.

Aki has not eaten since breakfast the day before, Denji and Power beside him. There was food in front of the man when he killed him, something foreign and still steaming from the oven. Aki had forgotten to turn it off, after. He wonders if there is anyone left to mind.

“I am,” Aki lies. “Starving, actually.”

“Wait, okay,” Denji paces the kitchen. He picks up bowl of batter and uses it to back Aki onto the kitchen stool. “Give me, like, five minutes I’m almost done. I’m not used to these weird American breakfasts.”

Aki lets him fumble for ten, then joins by his side, a stack of charred pancakes on a plate next to Denji. Aki cuts one open, and batter runs smoothly out.

“Well, first,” Aki says, turning down the stove, “you’re flipping them too late, the outside is burning before the middle can cook.”

Aki moves the pan to the bottom right burner and dials up to a medium heat. He runs the tap and wets the tips of his fingers. Aki flicks his fingers towards the heated pan and the water balls up and scatters across it. He dips the ladle Denji hands him into the bowl and spoons out a generous amount, circling the pan so the batter covers it entirely in a thick layer.

Aki helps him with the rest of breakfast. He shows Denji how to flip the pancakes so they’re golden on each side every time, then leans back against the counter and watches him flip them high over their heads. Sausages and omelets are stacked in the oven, kept warm since before Aki came in.

His mother had handled the brunt of the cooking when he was growing up. He remembers his father trying, but Taiyo had needed near constant supervision, and his mother couldn’t spare the time to teach his father. Aki was still too young to watch his brother on his own. He remembers loathing the day he’d age out, the days he’d have to spend by his brother’s bedside in his parent’s stead. In the end, it was always his parents with Taiyo.

But the recipe for pancakes was on the box of pre-made batter, and Taiyo’s weak stomach often couldn’t stand anything so thick, so they were the only meal Aki ever bothered to learn. The day he woke up early and made them well enough for his parents, they smiled at Taiyo and him both.

They were too sweet for Aki, made sweeter still by the heavy syrup his parents bought. Sometimes, when the ache of his family digs a little deeper, when the gaping well of guilt Aki knows he more than deserves overruns, he makes them. Penance, Aki would call it, and think it too lenient. But Aki can only apologize to empty graves so many times, so instead he’d stuff his mouth with golden dough until he could hardly breathe.

“I’m sorry,” Aki says, when Denji has taken to licking his plate clean and Aki has only managed to cut up his food and shift it around; it is not his family’s forgiveness he’s asking for now. “About your neck. I—I didn’t know it was you.”

“Huh? Oh, it’s fine.” Denji lowers the plate, a smear of syrup coating his nose. He wipes it off with his sleeve before Aki can move. He stretches his head back, barring his neck. “It doesn’t even hurt!” The skin is pink, just slightly, but Aki can still see it when he rolls his head forward.

“Who did you think it was?”

“What?” Aki asks.

“If you didn’t think it was me,” Denji says. “Who did you think it was? You were trying to kill me!” Denji laughs then, a little snicker caught behind his lips. His clumsy attempt at comfort.

I wouldn’t have killed you, Aki thinks.  I would know. I would know it’s you.

“A thief,” Aki says. “Or something like that.” He gathers their plates and takes them to the sink. Their dish washer broke last month, but Aki doesn’t mind. The water, scalding when it finally moves past lukewarm, feels nice on Aki’s hands. They get cold, after he kills. And the cold lingers, long after the bodies grow stiff.

“I didn’t even know you owned a knife.”

“It’s just in case,” Aki says. “Just for protection.”

“Protection against who?” Denji asks. He takes to drying the dishes next to Aki. They stack up on a mesh sheet turned drying rack “Thieves? Aki,” he says. “I have two-thousand yen. Like, total. We should pin that to our door. ‘We’re poor as fuck, rob someone else’.”

Still, Aki’s worried. Not about thieves, but about the people he leaves behind. Aki knows what it’s like to be the last one standing, the rage that tears and yanks and settles in to stay. If someone came to him, a name he isn’t supposed to know on their lips, if they came with a vengeance strapped across their back and hatred in their eyes and told Aki to kneel, he thinks he would. He thinks he’d have to.

Aki knows when death sings for him, he’ll call back with a matching melody. But it is Denji and Power that frighten him the most. Denji and Power, the only weaknesses he lets himself have.

Aki’s ledger knows no limit, has no bounds but the ones he will never be allowed to set for himself. When the ones left behind cry for blood, they will not cry for his. And that scares him more than anything.

"There are cruel people in the world, Denji.” Cruel like me. Men with hands so red they stain everything they touch.

"Maybe I should get a knife then,” Denji says. He stands wide and holds his hands together, swinging them in slow, sweeping arcs in front of himself. His form is sloppy. If he held a weapon like that, he’d get himself killed. “Or a sword, a real big one so I can—”

“No,” Aki says and means never. “You don’t need one.”

“But you have one! And you’re right, Aki,” Denji says, quiet so Aki has to lean in to hear him. Quiet, the way he hardly ever is anymore. “There are bad people out there. Maybe if I was able to protect myself back then…” Denji’s hand comes to creep across the scars that trickle down his neck.

“You don’t need one.” Aki grips the dish rag tight in his fists. “Because I’ll be there,” he says, and hopes the universe won’t make a liar out of him again.

They finish cleaning in silence. The sun has begun to rise, little by little until Aki turns around and spots a robin on their windowsill. Small and red-bellied, Denji notices it too. He opens the window slowly, and to Aki’s surprise the bird doesn’t startle. It hops forward, almost into their apartment and seems to look up at Denji. Waiting.

From his pocket Denji sets a trail of unshelled sunflower seeds, leading the bird on a short path along the lip of the windowsill. It gets to the end and dives off, a seed tucked between its beak. Denji brushes the crumbs off his hands over the kitchen sink.

“Do you do that often?” Aki asks.

“Feed the birds? Oh yeah. This one—I named him Rocky, he’s the one with the grey feathers on his back—used to come with his mom, but I think Meowy might have got her. I haven’t seen her in a while,” Denji says. Aki doesn’t tell him that the bird was a female, her plumage a muted and tamer red.

“Every morning?” he asks.

“Most of ‘em. If they don’t come to me, I usually set some seeds out for them before I leave for school. We’re almost out of sesame seeds, by the way,” Denji says. “I was gonna go to the mall after school. Power ripped her uniform last week and I wanted to have it fixed before she gets back. Did you want me to grab you anything?”

Aki wants to ask when Denji grew up. When did he look away? And why did he ever think it was a good idea to take his eyes off the best thing he’s been allowed to call his.

One of these days Aki is going to put a knife to Denji’s throat and mean it. One of these days Aki is going to drag it clean through because he won’t recognize the man looking back at him.

"Do you want to play a game?” Aki asks suddenly and not soon enough.

“What?”

“A game my brother made up.” And begged Aki to join. He did, once. Aki thinks he had fun. He prays to God and hopes he did.

“Now? Aki, I have to get ready for school soon.”

“Skip it,” Aki says. He sets two mis-matched couch cushions on opposite sides of the kotatsu. Picks one up and moves it so they’re next to each other.

“You want me to skip school?”

“Just one day won’t hurt.” Aki never went to high school. He hardly even considered it.

He couldn’t do both; he couldn’t go to school and pull himself from the abyss his family’s death left him in. Some days he thinks he’d have liked to. But Makima had found him before the authorities had, before he could be lead down the path straight and narrow, the one for good boys and girls who harbored sorrow but never guilt. She had sunk her talons in and promised Aki that when she found who took his family from him, she’d have molded him strong enough to kill them himself. Aki did not tell her that he already knew who killed his family, that he knew who ran from his house with thunder in his lungs and left the door unlocked, who smashed the landline on the way out and thought, good. The angry, angry boy who knew their city was dangerous and spiteful and still left his little brother and parents alone in its darkness.

Aki did not say that once he found who shot his family the arc of his katana would not end with them. He thinks Makima knew anyway.

“I guess if Power can skip a week to see her aunt, then I’ve got to even up the score a bit.” Now though, now is different. Now Aki has something he can’t bear to lose. People he couldn’t bear to hurt. He won’t make the same mistakes again.

“How do we play?” Denji asks. He scoots closer to Aki when he sits down. His bare thigh brushes Aki’s hand, just enough that he can feel the goosebumps that riddle Denji’s skin. He reaches under the kotatsu and turns up the heat, Meowy waking from the intrusion. She leaps onto the couch behind them and curls against Aki’s back, her body an ocean’s shell.

Aki reaches into the basket on the table and shifts aside remotes and coasters to place a deck of cards between them. With practiced hands he deals half the deck to them each. He stops Denji when he tries to flip over a card from his pile.

“We each reveal a card from the top of our pile at the same time,” Aki says. “Whoever has the highest card wins that round and they get to ask the other person a question. If you don’t want to answer you have to forfeit a card and whoever has the most at the end wins.”

Aki nods and they both flip a card. He pulls a seven to Denji’s ten. “Fuck yeah!” he yells, and reaches out to grab Aki’s card.

Aki swats his hand away. “Ask me a question first, dumbass.”

Denji sits back on his heels. “What’s your favorite food?” he asks. “I thought it was pancakes, ‘cause you always make them when you get mopey, but I saw you throw yours away today. And don’t,” Denji jabs a finger into Aki’s chest, hard enough he’d think it would bruise if his skin wasn’t already steel-coated and used to worse, “tell me you didn’t like them, ‘cause I made them exactly the way you told me to. Even used your funky soy milk.”

“Bran flakes, with the little sweetened raisins in them.”

Denji makes a face. “Why?”

That’s two, Aki doesn’t say. Instead he mulls the question. Debates, foolishly, about lying. But Denji is always more astute than Aki gives him credit for. While his back was turned, Denji got used to reading the ticks and turns of Aki’s tells. Aki has never been able to lie to him when it mattered, so he doesn’t. “It was easy,” he says. “It was there.”

“Your parents didn’t—”

“Next round,” Aki says. He shows a two to Denji’s eight of spades.

“Can I ask a two part question?” Denji asks.

Aki hums. “Let me ask the council.” He turns and holds Meowy up to his face. She blinks slow, stone-speckled eyes at him. He drops her, gently, because Power would never forgive him, into Denji’s lap. The cat paces a short circle around his lap, then settles in to stay. “Council says yes, proceed.”

Denji drops a kiss into the spiraling discoloration of Meowy’s fur. “Okay! First one: have you ever been on a date?”

Aki’s gotten dinner with Angel, sat opposite him outside of a ramen shack at three in the morning while the downpour washed the blood and guts off their clothes. He remembers laughing and wanting to kiss him so badly he ached with it and thinks that has to count. He thinks Angel is the only who’s ever counted.

“Yes,” he decides on, because explaining him and Angel will take the rest of the morning.

“Really?” Denji asks, and Aki has half a mind to be offended at his surprise. “Was it fun? Was she pretty? Why didn’t you get married? Can I meet her? Oh my god you’ve never talked about her does she hate you? What did you do—no, wait. Those don’t count. My actual question: what was the worst date you’ve ever been on? Like so bad it didn’t matter how pretty she was you just couldn’t go on a second one.”

Aki thinks for a moment. He’s been on dates with women before, more frequently when he was younger and still unsure of the want he felt when he walked past strong men, bright and clever and pretty men. He likes both, he decided, when he realized he didn’t have to choose. Once he understood both was normal and fine and didn’t make him less of a man or any less worthy of his place.

“I was fourteen,” Aki says, and Denji oohs beside him, “and she was a couple years older. She asked me out.” She had probably thought Aki older than he was. And Aki wanted to be, so he pretended, and lied when she asked him which high school he went to and his plans for university. He made up a life, just for her. He was in his last year of high school, he told her, not hers though, the one in the prefecture over, he’s here to visit family. He told her he wanted to be a doctor, mainly for children, and she had cooed over him. Aki kept going until the ball of lies ran away from him.

“I couldn’t tell her I didn’t go to school, so—”

“Why couldn’t you?” Denji interrupts.

“It, most people have certain, connotations, about kids who don’t go to school—”

“Kids like me,” Denji says. He doesn’t sound upset or angry or much of anything, really. He’s stating a fact. Aki hates it.

“Not like you,” he argues. “You were a child, kids your age don’t make the decision not to go to school for themselves. When you’re that young it’s more a matter of neglectful parents.”

Denji hums and strokes a careful hand through Meowy’s fur. “That makes sense, I guess. What kind of ‘connotations’ do people have about kids like you then? If you had to lie to her?”

“Bad ones,” Aki summarizes. “Did that count as your second question?”

“No!” Denji shouts and nearly dislodges Meowy from his lap. “No, I’ll stop interrupting. Continue. Please,” Denji adds.

“So I couldn’t tell her the actual reason I was in Tokyo.” A job, Aki knows Denji will assume. What it entailed, Aki hopes he never finds out. “I said I was seeing a cousin in the area, but I didn’t really know anyone else, and I asked if she could show me around next week.”

“Smooth,” Denji says.

“Very. Anyway, we’re hanging out, at a park or a mall, I can’t really remember, and then Makima shows up, and—”

“The lady with the pink braid?” Denji asks.

Aki feels his blood run cold. “You know her?” Aki asks. He tries to hide his dread. Moves slow to fold his fingers together so Denji doesn’t see them shake.

“She’s talked to me a few times—”

“When,” Aki presses, sitting straight so suddenly Meowy startles and speeds off Denji’s lap. Aki doesn’t watch where she goes. “When did she talk to you?”

“Don’t worry, Aki,” Denji laughs. “I won’t steal your girlfriend. She’s real pretty by the way—”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Aki says and shudders at the thought. Makima, in any proximity to love, is not something he can imagine. He doesn’t think he’d be able to look her in the eyes again without her knowing. “Denji,” he stresses, “when?”

“She—I ran into her a few times outside of school. She said you mentioned me before,” Denji says. Aki had not. He would never, not to her.

“She was waiting for you?”

“I don’t think so. She said she was in the area and recognized me from the photos on your desk.” Aki has never known Makima to operate in anything close to coincidence. She wouldn’t trust anything she hadn’t orchestrated herself.

“What did she talk to you about?” Aki asks.

“You, mostly.” Denji shrugs. “She said something about a job, but I told her I couldn’t do a job and school and not fail all my classes. Besides,” Denji adds as Aki’s heart beats out of his chest. “Power would kill me if I worked anywhere other than her animal shelter.”

“Good,” Aki says, and promises himself Makima will never see even Denji’s shadow ever again. “Your English grade can’t afford to get any lower if you want to graduate with your class.”

“Hey, I seem to remember someone telling me ‘sitted’ was the past tense of ‘sit’ when he tried to help me with my homework so maybe shut the fuck up a little,” Denji says.

“I’m an adult, I don’t need to do homework anymore.”

“Sounds to me like you never did any homework at all, you hypocrite—”

“Oooh, big word. Looks like that tutor of yours really worked. I wonder if she’ll be free for midterms.” Aki could scrap together the money for her, if he needed to. If Denji decides to get mouthy again.

“Back to the story!” Denji yells and Aki is helpless but to laugh and concede. This is what he loves about Denji, one among a million of qualities he cherishes beyond belief. Aki sees a dark tunnel, stretching into oblivion and echoingly quiet. Denji finds the light at its end and pulls Aki towards it.

“Anyway, Makima,” and Aki’s voice doesn’t shake when he says her name, “saw me and started talking about some assignment she wanted me to take over. But I guess it didn’t really seem like that, to an outsider. So my date poured the rest of her tea on my head once she left. And when I chased her down to explain the situation she, uh. Kicked me in the balls. Hard.”

“Oh my god, it’s a pattern,” Denji says, not completely unapologetically. “Do they still, you know—”

“Yes, my balls still work, Denji. No thanks to either of you.” Aki looks at Denji, takes in the smile twitching at his lips. “I think she would have liked you. She was pretty nice, before the, whole thing. Had a couple of German Shepherds she raved about.”

“You should have married her,” Denji says.

Marriage isn’t for people like him. Aki doesn’t know how to explain that to Denji, so he flips over another card from his deck. A queen of hearts. He waits for Denji to play his.

Denji reveals a jack and his hands still. “Who wins here?”

“Queens beat out jacks,” Aki says. “In every game.”

Aki thinks about asking an easy question, dipping his feet in shallowly the way Denji had. Denji hates when Aki goes easy on him, when he plays with him lightly because Denji always thought it was because he refused to take him seriously, so he says, “your father,” and then pauses.

Denji isn’t looking at him now. He’s wearing his eyepatch, so when he avoids Aki’s gaze, it’s a bit harder to notice. But Aki has pushed past this too many times. He is a coward, always and forever, but not here. Not now.

“What did he do? To you,” he emphasizes needlessly. Who else has borne the brunt of a father’s ire as relentlessly as Denji?

“You don’t have to answer,” Aki backtracks, because Denji has stilled completely, because he cannot change the cowardice etched into his bones, “I don’t even have to take your card for this round either, you can just forget I asked—"

“I didn’t even know he was my dad at first,” Denji says. It’s ripped out of him, like barbed wire through skin, and Aki is powerless but to watch it rake. “He was just this guy who liked to yell at me and stub his cigarettes out on my arm. I still saw TV sometimes, in window ‘n stuff when I walked by. And I knew dads were supposed to pick you up and put you on their shoulders and buy you ice cream and hold your hand when you crossed the street, and mine never did any of that. He was just sort of there, in the beginning. He wasn’t so bad then.” He cracks a wry smile. “I almost liked him. He was funny sometimes, when he swore at our neighbors or passed out drunk on the couch. He’d fall asleep with his tongue out the times he had too much to drink, and I always thought he looked like a dog.”

Aki is content to leave it at that. He wants to ask Denji to stop, to keep his pain quiet and small where it can’t hurt him anymore. But Aki has let it fester for years, and he knows it was for his protection and not Denji’s. He continues, and it’s all Aki can do to listen.

"It got worse, when my mom died. She lived with a friend or a sister or someone like that, so I didn’t really see her. She was pretty,” Denji offers Aki, always for him and never for himself. “I remember that. I think my dad blamed me for her death, or maybe he just hated me at that point already. I don’t think it was my fault,” he rushes to clarify, as though Aki would ever think it could be. Aki’s hands burn to move, to comfort and soothe, but then Denji keeps speaking, and Aki finds himself frozen in the morning quiet.

“He paid more attention to me after that. Knocked me around a little more, ate food our neighbors dropped off in front of me and wouldn’t let me have any.” Denji stops then. His fingers are twisting in the loose folds of Aki’s shirt, and he doesn’t think he even notices.

“You don’t have to tell me anymore,” Aki says. He feels like he’s speaking to a wild animal, a single misstep and Denji’ll twist himself deeper into his net.

“I want to,” Denji whispers. “I want to know why.”

Aki’s heart is in his throat. “Why what?”

“Why didn’t he do anything?” Tears are bubbling over his cheeks, catching on his eyepatch and in a frantic spill of movement Denji rips is off. The elastic strands snap and come apart in his lap. “He knew what they were doing to me. How couldn’t he? He had to have heard me cry and tell them to stop and beg him to help and he turned around and left me there!”

When Denji slumps forward, Aki catches him against his chest. “What did I do,” he asks, “to make him hate me so much?”

“You didn’t do anything,” Aki says fiercely. He is glad his katana is at the agency, safe behind locked doors and strong glass. He wants, so fervently, to dig Denji’s father from his shallow grave and cut him to ribbons. He wants to drag his body to a dark and desolate hillside and watch with glee as scavengers pick apart what little remains of his heart. “You were a child. You didn’t do a goddamn thing.”

“Then why?” Denji cries. He’s begun to sob in earnest now, a river of tears Aki couldn’t hope to stall. But he tries. He gathers Denji in his arms, shaking to pieces in front of him, and presses fleeting kisses into gold-spun hair.

“I don’t know why,” Aki says. “Some people are just rotten to their cores.” Some people see kindness as weakness, some see children with hesitant smiles and small hands and seek to crush them beneath their heels. 

“I don’t know why. I don’t know how he could ever have a kid like you and not love him with everything he had.”

Denji leans deeper into Aki’s arms and howls, years of pain and heartbreak finally setting itself loose. Aki curls over him and lets his own tears be caught in Denji’s hair.

It’s Aki’s first time in Nagano. Though he is not a religious man, even he feels the pull of Zenko-ji Temple. Tourists crowd the front, their bright, snapping camera flashes reflecting off the temple’s porcelain lanterns. They don’t enter. They boarder it in safe, almost perfect circles. The tourists stay away because to them the temple is holy and uninviting, sacred and untouchable the way their Western gods are.

Aki doesn’t enter because there’s still blood under his fingernails.

The katana on his back is clean and freshly polished, assumed to be granted legality by the government. It is, in a way. He has the proper documentation for it. In the five years he’s had it, he’s never had to show it. It garners a few odd stares, fleeting and embarrassed when Aki turns to meet them. He is given a wide berth he never asked for.

He is newly twenty in a prefecture he has only heard of in passing and even hundreds of kilometers from home he cannot shed this terrible skin and join the crowds.   

He picks a random direction away from the temple and starts walking. He’s not due back in Tokyo until Tuesday and mountain air calls to him quite lovingly. Maybe there, where the clouds kiss the earth, he can forget the sight of light fading from terrified eyes, a hand reaching out for sympathy and only finding Aki.

Deep green Mongolian oaks line the base of the mountain and Aki spots shining patches of snow winding up the path. He’s not dressed for mountain snow, was barely warm enough in the tittering crowds of the temple, but the first hints of what he thinks he could call excitement prickle somewhere under his ribs. He’s not sure where he’ll sleep, has nothing on him but a tamahagane katana and bloodied soles, but he is alone and he just killed a man and he shakes with the desire to be anywhere but here.

Something speeds in to him at chest height, and Aki, trigger fingered and already missing mountains tops he knew he’d never reach, steps back and feels his lip curl. The weight dips forward at his lack of support and a small, blond head peers up at him.

“Sorry,” a boy mutters somewhere below Aki’s face. He looks at him with only one eye. A thick, too big black eyepatch wraps around his face, encapsulating nearly the entire right side. It does not cover the ragged, bright pink scars peeking out. 

“Cool sword!” the boy says and Aki realizes he’s been staring. His singular eye is an arresting yellow, almost wolf-like, and when he smiles up at Aki, he’s greeted to two rows of razor sharp teeth. The boy is nigh animalistic and Aki fights the urge to reach for his katana. Aki kills people, not the myths of monsters. 

“Are you a samurai? Or a ninja?” He reaches a hand towards Aki and he takes a jarred step backwards. No one has touched him intentionally in years. “Can I see it? Please,” he adds like an afterthought.

“No. It’s not a toy,” Aki says. His voice sounds gritted, even to his ears. When was the last time he said anything other than yes ma’am? Gentler, because the boy is small and weak and wearing only whicker thin shorts and a shirt that gets stuck halfway up his forearm, Aki adds, “it’s sharp. It would hurt you.”

It feels awkward the moment it is out of his mouth. From the—distressingly large—amount of bare skin Aki can see, the boy must be well aware of pain, of sharp things that cut and tear and decorate his arms and legs and neck with horrific pink.

The boy lowers his hand. “Are you a soldier?” he continues. “Or a policeman?”

"No,” Aki says.

“Why’ve you got one then?” the boy asks.

Aki shrugs, a short, jerking spasm of his shoulders. “Where are your parents?” Aki asks instead.

The boy mirrors his shrug, though his is smoother. “Don’t know,” he says. He doesn’t seem too worried. He doesn’t look particularly cold, either, and Aki wonders if he lives nearby. Maybe on the very mountain Aki had been fantasizing about.

“I’ll help you find them.” Aki contemplates offering the boy a hand. But he cannot be sure they’re clean, not completely, so he burrows them deeper in his pockets.

Aki turns back the way the boy ran from, somewhere slightly west of the mountain’s base. He ticks his head forward. “C’mon, they’re probably worried about you.”

They walk in almost silence for a few minutes. The boy is a storm of soft noise, his feet finding every dry scattering of leaves, his fingers tapping the rough bark of trees and snapping twigs that come across their path.

They come to a fork in the road and Aki looks to the boy for direction. His head hangs like it’s been snapped quickly at the neck and his shoulders pitch forward.

“They’re dead,” he says, and for a moment Aki freezes. This boy, this mountain sprite, has broken into Aki’s soul and pulled its darkness to the surface. Can he see the blood on his fingers, painting them crimson and immoral? Or is it written on his face, deep in the marrow of his bones for all to see?

“My parents are dead,” the boy says. Ice cold air pricks Aki’s lungs and he can breathe again.

“I—is there anyone else? A guardian or sibling we can get you to?”

The boy shrugs. “Kind of,” he whispers. “I usually just—”

“Denji!” A man comes crashing through the thick brush and Aki almost pulls his katana on reflex alone. His hair is mudded brown and sways past his shoulders when he whips his head towards the boy who must be Denji.

He’s muscular, taller and broader than Aki, and his hip is padded with a hidden gun. His clothes, although torn from below the knee and filthy where mud has splattered, are clearly expensive. Chunky rings, ghastly even from a few meters away, shine golden in the late afternoon sun, and Aki has no doubt they’re real. He knows what yakuza looks like, and he removes his hands from his pockets just in case. 

The man ignores Aki entirely and slaps Denji across the face hard enough to rattle Aki's teeth. He kept his hand closed, his knuckles leaving red rashes stretching from the protruding edge of Denji’s cheekbone past the bridge of his nose. His eyepatch’s been knocked skewed, and Aki is greeted with blinded blue before the boy drops his gaze to the man’s wide feet.

He clamps a thick hand on Denji’s wiry arm and hoists him on to the tips of his toes. “If you ever,” he hisses, and it sends shivers down Aki’s spine, “run from me again, I’ll make you wish I killed you.”

He yanks Denji back on his well-trodden path, and the boy moves with him easily. He makes not a sound though Aki can see bruises bloom beneath furious fingers.

“Who the fuck are you?” the man asks when he finally spots Aki. He eyes his katana and raises his chin, cocking his hip forward. The gleam of his firearm peeks past his jacket.

“No one,” Aki says, and backs away so the man can stalk past him. He was being honest before—Aki is not a samurai or a policeman or a soldier. He is a dirtied man who has no place playing hero.

Denji doesn’t spare him a glance as he’s dragged deeper into the forest. His shoulders begin to shake, minute little tremors that rack the entirety of his small frame. The man hits him again and Denji stumbles into a bushel of thorns. His face is shiny with tears, and he rises quickly to his feet when the man advances. His hands are dripping with blood. “Sorry,” Denji whines, “sorry, sorry, sorry, I won’t do it again.”

“Kazuya’s been on my ass about you since morning. You think there’s anywhere you go we won’t find you? Anywhere he won’t find you?” The man laughs and starts walking again, his voice dimming with each step. Denji follows, defeat writ into every line of his body. “He’s gonna put you out of commission for weeks with this little stunt of yours. I’m almost looking forward to it.”

“How much?” Aki asks and begs himself to stop talking.

The man stops abruptly and turns on his heel. “How much for what?”

Stay quiet stay quiet stay quiet, you fool—“For the boy.” Aki rakes his eyes over Denji, from his wire thin ankles to his unwashed blond hair, from the fear nestled dark in his chest to the sorrow sew across his shoulders. Denji takes a small step backwards and bumps into the man.

“Out of your price range, kid,” the man snorts.

“Five million yen,” Aki calls when the man begins to walk away.

He waves a hand behind his head and drags Denji with him.

“A hundred million,” Aki shouts. He can hear the desperation in his own voice. He doesn’t care.

The man slants a probing look over his shoulder. “A hundred and fifty,” he tests.

“Alright,” Aki says. He makes three million a year. Everything in his name, from the boots he wears to the trading cards tucked beneath his bed, can’t be more than twelve.

“Shiori,” Denji whispers. He pulls at the hand clenched around his forearm. He won’t look at Aki. He isn’t sure if he wants him to. “Please don’t—"

Shiori whacks him across the face, lighter this time, just enough to daze. “Quiet.” He stares at Aki. “You got that kind of money?”

"Yes,” Aki lies.

“In cash?”

“Yes.” He will.

"Fuck it,” Shiori snorts. “If you can get me the money by tomorrow the little fucker is all yours.” He grins at Aki, a joke the two of them can now share. Two degenerates laughing over the bodies at their feet. “I heard he feels amazing. Not really my thing, but if it was dark enough—”

“Are we meeting here?” Blood rushes in his ear. He can hardly make out his own voice. Good. Aki doesn’t want to hear anymore.

“Nah,” Shiori says. “I’m not risking an ambush.” He lets go of Denji’s arm and scribbles onto a scrap of paper. It’s a receipt for alcohol wipes, and when Aki turns it over, he sees a messy address.

"Here,” Shiori says. “An hour before sunset.”

“Shiori, what about Kazuya?” Denji pleads.

“For a hundred fifty I think he’ll get over it.” To Aki, he says, “If you’re fucking with me, if you show up with anyone else, I’ll take out his other eye and shove it down your throat.”

Denji is dragged away in the echo of his own silence.

Aki calls the moment he returns to the center of Nagano. “Ten years?” he asks.

“And six months,” comes the smooth reply.

Ten years ago Aki was living with his parents, he was safe and warm and content if not always happy. He looks ten years in the future and sees only a blur of weapons and blood and stilted conversations. But he has nothing else to barter.

"Alright,” Aki says.

He can hear the smile through the tinny phone. “The money will be transferred into your account by morning.”

"Thank you,” he sighs.

"Aki,” Makima says. “I hope your future was worth it.” Aki hopes so, too.

Aki arrives at the address Shiori wrote him when the sun is in the middle of its descent. He hides in the thick of bushes that surround the shack, dark berries bursting beneath his shoes. Calling it a shack feels generous. It is wood and nails and twine wrappings and not much else.

Next to the little shack is a much nicer building. Older but well-repaired and iron casted. It looks impenetrable. Aki knows that is not the building he is to wait by. That is not where Denji is.

From the bushes he watches a tall, spindly man enter, a Cheshire grin on his face that almost looks handsome. It’s a little too sharp, a little too many teeth peeking out, for Aki to be anything but wary. If he saw him on the street, sans a shark’s smile, Aki thinks he’d warrant a second glance and a hint of wanting.

The man enters and Aki wishes the shack was soundproof. After thirty-three minutes, Aki counts, he heads back to the older building, languid in every step and a self-satisfied, if slightly wistful, pull to his shoulders. He taps a long code into a small pad and slips behind heavy doors.

He makes himself known then. Backtracks a bit and makes it look as though he’s just come through the edge of the forest. He left his katana at the hotel he’s been staying at, and his fingers twitch for it.

Shiori meets him after the sun’s set. “Got the cash?” he asks.

“Where’s the kid?”

Shiori tuts and steps closer until they are near enough to touch. “Ah,” he tuts, “that’s not how we’re playing this game.”

Aki thrusts a briefcase into the man’s chest. “One hundred and fifty million,” Aki says. “In cash.”

“Don’t get testy with me,” Shiori growls and Aki dips his head in apology to hide the teeth that have begun to peek out in rage.

Shiori counts it, all one hundred and fifty in neat, even bands. He looks at Aki then, a hint of smile pulling at his lips. He thinks he’s gotten the better end of the deal. He thinks Aki is going to regret this.

“Denji!” he shouts without taking his eyes from Aki. “Get out here!”

Aki sees brilliant yellow first, then the muted colors of Denji’s clothes, the same from yesterday, come into view. The boy is uneven on his feet. He looks to be in pain with each step.   

Denji hovers near Shiori’s arm. He barely reaches the middle of his chest. “Shiori,” he tries, and even Aki knows it will not work. “Please don’t do this.”

Shiori shakes him off. “You’re not my problem anymore.” To Aki he says, “good luck,” and heads towards the steel building without a glance back.

Standing in front of a terrified child, Aki has no idea what to do. He takes a small step forward and Denji startles back so suddenly he nearly falls over. Aki extends a hand to catch him, to offer a consoling touch, he’s not quite sure, and Denji flinches like a wounded animal. Aki realizes that he is, in a way.

“Can I,” he starts. “Do you want to come with me?” He holds out a hand, tries to make it look as unassuming and patient as possible.

Denji takes a cautious step towards him, then a few more. There’s a certain kind of resignation in the air as Denji falls in line behind Aki, never quite walking in stride with him.

Aki stops in front of a ramen stand. Denji, his gaze permanently fixed on the ground in front of him, stumbles into his back and bounces off. Quickly, Aki whips around and grabs him around the arm. He lets go of him slowly. “We’re here,” he offers almost pitifully.

Denji looks up then and his eye widens so comically, the night lights brilliantly reflected back at him, that Aki almost laughs. He allows a smile to slip through, and hopes it’s gentle. “Are you hungry?”

Denji sucks in a sharp breath and when Aki pushes past the tinted doors, he follows right behind.

The hostess sits them in the back near the kitchen, the warmth of the grills seeping through and warming Aki down to his bones. He wonders if it sinks into Denji’s skin as well. He wants to offer him his coat, his shoes, the shirt off his own back, but the boy looks so overwhelmed by the slow music and dimmed lights Aki doesn’t want to frighten him with anything more.

He hands him a menu instead. “Pick anything you’d like,” Aki says. Then, going out on a strike he thinks will find its mark, says, “I’m paying for everything, so get as much as you want.”

Denji takes the menu slowly, but he takes it, and Aki will count his wins where they come.

He’s not hungry, not really, but if he does not set the stage he’s sure Denji won’t order anything either. He settles on shoyu ramen, simple enough as to not upset his turning stomach, and familiar that he thinks he can down it on reflex.

He tells his order to the waiter when he comes by. He looks to Denji, a worn but genuine smile plastered on his face, and asks what he’d like. Denji raises the menu ever so slightly, and Aki realizes he has not seen his face since they sat down.

“Denji,” he tries to say gently. It comes out stern. “What do you want?”

Silence blankets their table. Aki turns to the waiter. “Could we have a few more minutes to decide? Thank you.”

Slowly, Aki reaches out to pull the menu down. “Denji,” he says again. “Aren’t you hungry?”

This provokes the first reaction from the boy since they’ve been seated. Denji nods quickly, his lips pressed tightly together. If Aki had not met him yesterday, he would think the boy mute.

“What do you want?” he asks.

Denji sets the menu down. He points to something on one of its final pages. “Denji, soju is alcohol. Even I can’t buy that,” Aki says.

A thought strikes him, cold and deep. Aki flips the menu to the front and points to the top. “What does this say?” he asks.

Denji shrugs. Aki finds something simpler. “What about this?” Denji shrugs again. “Can you read at all?” Slips out before Aki can mold it into something kinder.

“A little.” Is the first thing Denji’s said to him all day. He points a finger towards the middle of the page. “This says ‘fish’,” he says. It doesn’t.

“Do you eat meat?’ Aki asks. He should. He is bone thin and pale. Denji nods quickly.

He waves the waiter back over. “Can I get some tonkotsu?” he asks. “And two servings of gyoza? And karaage and edamame, if you’ve got them.”

Their food comes out soon after, and Denji eats so quickly Aki doesn’t even see him chew. “Slow down,” he says. Immediately Denji snatches his hands back and folds them in his lap. He doesn’t even swallow.

“No, I.” Aki huffs and tries again. “If you eat too quickly it’ll upset your stomach and you’ll throw up.” He pushes the shared platter of edamame closer to him.

“No, I won’t,” Denji protests. But he slows down.

“You will,” Aki says. “You’ll throw up everything you’ve eaten here, and it’ll suck.”

“Nuh uh,” Denji argues. “I wouldn’t waste food.”

“I’m not saying you’d do it on purpose. It’s a reflex. You can’t control it,” Aki says.

“I could.”

“No, you can’t. No one can.”

Denji takes a big, brothy slurp of his ramen. “I could.”

Aki hides his growing smile behind his bowl. “Eat your food, kid.” And Denji does.

Aki kicks the ball straight between two pinecones, and it bounces off the long stretch of brick that borders their edge of the park.

“Two to seven!” he shouts, and repeats himself when Power makes no move to adjust the score.

“Your goal is on the other side!” Denji calls from across their makeshift field. “You just scored on yourself.”

“That’s not something you can do.” Aki’s protests are drowned out by Power’s sideline cackles.

“You just did. So, Powy!” Denji yells. “One to eight!”

Aki wicks the sweat from his brow. To his delight Denji looks nowhere near as tired as he is, and Aki had the advantage of Power on his team until she got distracted by an alley cat that’s taken to curling up by her side as she mans the scoreboard. A whiteboard with crudely drawn soccer balls and referee shirts tells Aki he’s falling grossly behind.

“Ever heard of being kind to your elders?” Aki huffs as Denji knocks the ball between his feet and catches it before it can run too far.

“You’re not that old,” Denji says. “You’ve only got a few gray hairs.”

“From stress!” Aki yells. “From dealing with you two miscreants!” Aki grabs Denji around the collar of his shirt like an unruly animal the next time he tries to duck past. “I ought to return you,” he says.

Denji sticks out his tongue, kicking airborne feet when Aki raises him to eyelevel. “I’d come back,” he says. “You’ll never get rid of me.”

Good, Aki thinks, and doesn’t bother to hide his smile. Neither does Denji, and Aki sets him back down, the tips of his ears flushed from anything but the summer night chill.

“We should head back before it gets too dark,” Aki says, loud enough for Power to hear him. Denji bends to pick up the soccer ball, now well-used and lovingly stained. “I’ll even let you pick where we go to dinner, because I’m so nice.”

Denji scoffs and knocks his shoulder into Aki’s. Like an insect tapping against window, but Aki sways with the movement anyway. “You said I could pick if I won. And I whooped your ass.”

“Don’t remember that,” Aki says and hands Power her sweater. The walk to international district, where they sell the chow mein Denji loves, is a long one.

Denji rolls his eyes so hard Aki can feel it. “Whatever,” he mumbles. “Can we go to Little Duck? I heard they added egg tarts to their menu.”

“I want shrimp!” Power shouts. She’s taken to toting the alley cat above her head, its tail wrapped possessively around her wrist. “And a steamed bun! No, two steamed buns!”

“We can get you two steamed buns,” Aki says.

“Three! Five!”

“As many as you want,” Aki promises. Power crows and runs ahead of them both.

“Her fives are more like fifteen,” Denji says. “She’s going to eat you into the poorhouse.”

Aki shrugs and stretches an arm over Denji’s shoulder. He pulls the boy—his boy—into his side and carries his weight when Denji sinks against him. “I don’t mind.”

He drops a kiss to the top of his head and feels Denji’s small grin pressed into his chest. “Being with you two is worth everything I have.”