Chapter Text
That was weird. Right?
Power continued to blabber on, listing everything she wanted to eat despite not having a Yen to her name. Denji listened, partially, but his mind was elsewhere. The crab devil hadn’t been that difficult to defeat, there was only one casualty. Nayuta would be happy, he thought.
But then there was that girl. A plain schoolgirl, forgettable almost. Nearly cookiecutter if the exhaustion she displayed wasn’t such a palpable thing. Like she was just waiting for something bad to happen. Like she didn’t expect anything in her life to go well. Denji could relate. It felt like most of his life was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for something to happen. What that something was, he never knew. With his kind of lifestyle it was impossible to even guess where things would lead. Meeting Power had been flabbergasting and getting recruited to hunt devils that same day was even more so. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been doing that already but good food and a roof over his head that didn’t leak was quite the upgrade. Aki would tell him that’s pathetic but he didn’t care. Aki wouldn’t get it. Mr. Two Bedroom Apartment In The City.
Power gasped as they passed some vending machines and pressed her nose to the glass of one, fogging it up as she marveled at the options. Denji didn’t protest when she tugged his wallet out of his pocket but didn’t let her take more than 100 Yen. He wanted a drink too. She stood and debated her choice aloud. Denji knew better than to actually respond. She didn’t care what he thought, just wanted to talk to herself. He stared out the mouth of the alley, watching civilians mill about and felt a pang where his eye used to be. He squinched his face as his gaze dropped back to his shoes.
Kids in high school changed shoes when walking inside, right? He usually just wore socks inside. Power would go barefoot. Aki had a pair of house slippers. Denji wondered what year he would be in if he attended. He was… 17? That sounded right. Maybe second year? He had no clue or basis. He’d never been enrolled in any school. He didn’t even know when you were supposed to start or how old you had to be in order to go. He knew there was a summer break and a winter break but he had no idea how long those went on for. Aki said there was a spring break too but he’d refused to tell Denji much about his time in school. It was the end of June and he’d seen high school students in uniform so he assumed summer break hadn’t started yet.
Whatever. It didn’t matter. He was on a different path. Guys like him didn’t get to go to school. He grabbed a drink from the vending machine and he and Power leaned against the wall to peoplewatch as they took a break before heading back to work—something Power would never have had the patience for before but had slowly been indoctrinated into since working with Denji. Denji considered himself a pretty nonchalant guy, tried to take things as they came and not worry too excessively. Aki would definitely disagree with him, Denji could be as obnoxious as Power but, comparatively, he did seem to have a little more self control. He’d always had this earnest nature. He tended to be honest. Lying didn’t really make sense to him but he appreciated the notion of a secret. Not everyone needed to know everything. Aki once told him that’s just privacy, not secrets, but Denji had never really known privacy, not even since working for Public Safety. He and Power shared a room for chrissake.
He was pulled out of his thoughts when Power punched him in the stomach hard enough for bile to burn his throat and she demanded they leave, saying something about needing to feel the slick warmth of blood on her hands. Denji staggered forward after her as she swiftly stalked out of the alleyway and down the street, a can of sweet tea crumpling under her grip. He found himself thinking about the day he met Power for a brief moment before he remembered that girl from the high school. Would they have gone to the same school? If he was a student. Would they share classes? He wasn’t sure how that worked either. Himeno had once tried explaining how the Japanese school system worked but she’d also been absolutely sloshed at the time so Denji had only caught every other word before she inevitably passed out at the table and Aki had to set up a futon for her in the living room. Nights out at the bar after work stopped being fun when Denji consistently had to introduce himself to new members as his coworkers kept habitually dying. Recently, after work shenanigans included Himeno coming over to the apartment and getting drunk while the four of them watched some shitty variety show.
He was distracted, thoughts jumping after each other one by one, as he and Power made their way back to the office. He still had a Nayuta to debrief and a hungry Power to sate—hungry in more ways than one. He didn’t need to think, he just needed to do. Something Nayuta told him a lot. He was often told he wasn’t made for thinking. He didn’t believe that was true, not lately at least. The walk to Public Safety was boring. It was 2pm on a Wednesday so there weren’t many people out and about. The most interesting thing had been the canned vending machine drinks and Denji had already chugged his and was flicking the pop tab with his nail. He’d gotten a little more Earth conscious after fighting the pollution devil last spring and had stopped tossing his garbage in the streets. The heaving mass of plastic had only spoken in what Denji considered to be Fun Facts about Climate Change. The one about meat production being the second biggest CO2 emitter had him eating vegetarian for a week—much to the delight of Power—but he couldn’t stay away from fried chicken for too long.
The briefing to Nayuta was, well, brief. She was half distracted by something on her GameBoy and had only responded to Denji in partial grunts as her brows furrowed down at the little screen in her hands. When Power had started knocking things off Nayuta’s desk for seemingly no reason other than she could, Nayuta kicked the two of them out without assigning them another task, outsourcing that to Aki saying; “Ask Hayakawa,” with a flippant wave of her hand. Denji and Power, pointedly, avoided Aki’s office like the plague but did steal some money out of his locker before they snuck back outside to dick around until their shift ended. They found a few more devils just by meandering around the neighborhood but nothing as extreme as the crab devil from earlier.
They ended up at another vending machine and got popsicles with Aki’s money and, by pure coincidence or maybe Denji’s unconscious, found themselves back at the high school just as classes had finished and students were pouring out of the gates in rambunctious, eager mini herds. He and Power people watched a little more until Denji noticed that girl from before, the one with the pigtails and boring look. His heart did that weird thing again. That uncomfortable little ba-bump, like a record skipping or what it felt like to miss a step when going down stairs. He found it was doing that a lot lately and for seemingly no reason. He could be sitting with Power and Aki at dinner or petting one of Nayuta’s dogs. Even just killing devils made his heart do a stupid little backflip, like it was a prisoner behind his ribs, straining to get out.
The boring girl was with another girl, short blonde hair and thick rimmed glasses. Blondie was animated, talking with her hands as Denji’s mystery girl nodded or grinned. Blondie managed to make her laugh once and something in Denji’s brain tickled at the noise as his heart strangled itself in his chest. It was so familiar, like something he should know, like something he shouldn’t have forgotten. They turned away from him and Power and headed further down the street. Denji considered calling out, considered following after them, but he just watched until they were nothing more than two specks in the distance and then they disappeared around a corner. He sucked the leftover juice out of his popsicle stick and stared at it. Popsicle sticks always made him feel weird, there was a guilt attached and he didn’t know why. He pocketed it.
“C’mon, Powy. Let’s get outta here.”
The pair headed back the way they came as Denji’s stomach growled and he wondered what Aki was making for dinner while Power gnawed on her popsicle stick until she got a splinter in her tongue.