Chapter Text
Denji’s life isn’t easy.
When feeling especially sorry for himself, he’d even go so far as to say it could be downright difficult. Still, it proved to be a lot harder with a bunch of loan sharks on his ass.
He’s minding his own business at a usual haunt (yet another one of Tokyo’s backdoor betting stations) when it happens. Five of them, half-lurching round the corner, a big, sweating gnat cloud of cigarette tar and that awful liquor everyone gets from the konbini three blocks down. Like all yakuza cronies, they’ve got this transcendental, ageless air about them that means each one could be anywhere between twenty-five and fifty. Their faces are sun-browned fruit, identically hard and rindy, papaya-pitted with lentigos and beady eyes that immediately lock onto Denji.
What follows is simple math: a gaggle like this, plus the blocky silhouette of not one, but two switchblades stuffed into a single canvas pocket, equals him running for his life.
Here’s the thing: Denji dropped out of elementary school during his first year, so his calculation hasn’t quite accounted for the fact that the chase is doomed from the start. It’s fun, though. He’s a good runner: which is frankly more of a biological adaptation, and watching him calls to mind the visual paradox of a fleeing gazelle, since those wonderful creatures sprint away from cheetahs on what are effectively glorified stilts, and you’re always just waiting for the stumble, that crude snap of a pink-white femur, flesh peeling away like undercooked chicken.
At least, that’s what Denji thinks whenever he sees nature documentaries flashing behind the glass at the television emporium, boasting the power of Mother Gaia through an equally impressive LCD. Denji’s had about as much experience with both.
Now he’s more of a polecat, a freakishly scrawny one, appropriately wriggling his way through throngs of gamblers who curse him for tearing their attention away from the race. God forbid anyone get between them and their beloved nags; the few blurry pixels that can be seen of them, anyway. The TVs (probably also LCD, just crappier) appear to imitate their audience: their screens are all whorling iridescence from the sheer amount of oil left behind by those adoring, exultant fingers, and the cables hanging down give the impression of balding rattails.
As it so happens, Denji comes into contact with more oily rattails than he’d prefer, but at least the rabble is hindering his pursuers. The gazelle intermingles with a herd of buffalo – it’s age-old, really, they do this in movies, they do – and an enraged visage pops out from the seething mass, trapped in place by a sagging arm, both parties fascinatingly red.
The concept of a scoreboard appears somewhere in Denji’s hindbrain. One down, four to go.
(Prey animals like gazelle and horses – you wouldn’t think they are, they’re so fucking huge, but there it is, folks – have fields of vision completely unintelligible to the average person due to their side-facing eyes. As a result, they’ve got two main blind spots: one right in front of them, and one right behind, but the behind bit doesn’t really matter. This set-up wouldn’t work for a human because humans are always scratching their itches.)
Two seconds ago, Denji scratched his itch (glancing behind him).
Two seconds later, there is something adjacent to an explosion: sensed predominantly in his jaw, the pearly rattle of inlaid teeth; wherever bone is, really, and that encompasses the pelvis; the ribcage; the cranium; and the knobbly elbow that comes down in a feeble attempt to break the fall.
The tiling is hard. Smells bad. A litany of throbbing complaints erupts all over Denji’s body, which quickly starts feeling like what it is: one gawky, auspicious bruise. Reeling from all of that plus the initial impact, he struggles to his hands and knees and squints up at whoever he’s crashed into. A rumpled businessman gapes back down at him, his unfortunate-looking topknot now slightly askew from the collision. His legs are braced, but – the lucky duck – he’s still upright.
For a brief moment, the pair remain frozen. This is, of course, a threat display: the unarmed, one-eyed teenager versus the tuxedo-man, who wields an…oddly small briefcase…not super small, but Denji’s still tempted to ask where he got his purse from. Oh, and he hates him. That part should be obvious. The guy’s tailored suit and mildly disgusted expression were his first two strikes, and Denji doesn’t even need any to begin with.
If he wasn’t up against the clock, he might’ve lunged for him right there and then. As it is, though, he merely scowls, aposematic, until his new rival breaks their staring contest and storms off.
Then (despite the fact that he’s hunched over on all fours and people are very understandably staring), Denji smiles.
Because – if you do some more math, nothing too strenuous – as long as Denji has both hands free, he’s not all that bad at falling; however, one of those hands is currently balled into a sore, pinkish fist. The following spectacle is something that Denji personally finds very beautiful: the fist unfurls, and, not unlike a butterfly disentangling itself from its cocoon, out blooms the (slightly damp) card holder hiding within.
This is the part where the commentator goes wild and the play-by-play frantically rewinds to zoom in on the details: Denji, our hero, turning back toward the businessman at the very last second, fumbling at his shoulders as if to stabilise himself; then, the miniscule flash of metal that slips from his cuff to fit snugly between two fingers – what deft sleight of hand! – and, finally, a well-timed swipe at that perfectly-fitted breast pocket. It’s street magic, blink-and-you-miss-it, the sort of the thing that’d send the crowd into a frenzy when the perfidious card holder tumbled into his awaiting grasp.
Denji’s still lapping up the audience response when he’s grabbed by the scruff of the neck like some misbehaving kitten. “Up ya get, Fido.”
And up Denji gets.
Whenever this routine takes place, Denji likes to imagine that the bathroom isn’t completely empty, and some poor, perspiring wretch has been left in one of the stalls. Trousers pooled round his ankles. Shaking like a leaf. He’d have to be real fucking quiet to make each slap sound as loud as it does: that obscene, arrhythmic percussion of flesh on flesh, the herald of broken capillaries and busted noses.
“Listen, Denji,” is how the Boss always starts, since Denji obviously doesn’t do enough listening as is, “you know I like this about as much as you do, but sometimes you don’t give me any other choice.”
There’s a lot of reasons why he doesn’t reply. Primarily because he’s not sure he can form a coherent sentence given the current state of his lip. Split and swollen with two consecutive bee stings, in case you were wondering. Other factors include how close he is to accidentally licking a urinal (see previous sentence for lip situation, plus the fact that the world’s been set to “rinse and spin”) and the general assholery of the geezers surrounding him.
Movement on his right. It registers as a jaundiced smear of brown. “Get the holder off him.”
A pale block of something paws helplessly at the approaching figure: his own hand, about as intimidating as an exceptionally large moth. The lackey dodges it easily and snatches the card holder from his pocket.
“Were you gonna keep this all for yourself?”
His vision’s clearing up by now, lucid enough to make out the ungainly flicker of fingers as they rootle through the holder’s leather flaps. Notes, rustling. Topknot dude travelled light. They could still pawn a good chunk of yen off him, assuming he hadn’t yet changed the contactless limit on either of his cards.
Now that he’s out of the limelight, Denji feels safe in mopping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. Only a bit of blood: it’s more to comfort himself than anything else, even though the pressure makes him wince so hard he inadvertently bangs his head against the wall. Ouch.
Dull, abrasive chuckling grates at the silence. As well as Denji’s nerves.
The Boss crosses the distance between them in but one stride. He walks like that, long and loping, to hide his limp. His gang hasn’t informed him that you can still tell, especially when he lands on his left foot; he does this weird, gentle careen in the same direction, like a car with a flat tire.
“Denji,” he intones, stooping over him. Gravity sends one lank strand of hair flopping downwards, all greasy quicksilver, indistinguishable from the liquid gleam of his spectacles. “You’ve been a good dog for us today, so I’ll let you go scot-free.” Teeth flash before Denji in concentric circles, nicotine-yellow against the porcelain backdrop. Approving.
From then onwards, it’s a curtain call. The yakuza stooges bid Denji a merry adieu: some wave, a few blow kisses, but all make sure to express their sympathy thoroughly and accordingly. Last of all comes the knowing tilt of the Boss’s homburg. The emergency exit sign flecks his beard with tiny, luminous mould spores. Denji listens, as instructed, to the slip-drag of his fading footsteps until they can no longer be extracted from the vague roar of the great outdoors.
Then, he’s alone; apart from his imaginary friend, who is undoubtedly cowering in the end cubicle.
Taking all of this into account, it’s no surprise that luck doesn’t enthuse Denji much. It is, in effect, much like money: everybody got dealt shares of it as soon as they were born, and most spend the rest of their lives either chasing the high or chasing the chase of the high. Only difference is Denji can’t pay off his debts with luck; which doesn’t really matter, seeing as he clearly hadn’t had much of it to start with.
It’s philosophical thoughts like these that occupy his head as he sits in what is perhaps the dingiest subway station in all of Tokyo. It could be considered the polar opposite of a hospital. The prevalent stench is a basic coupling of unwashed bodies and urine, which, while not exactly unfamiliar, is certainly more befitting of an izakaya sometime past midnight than…here, wherever here was.
Does Denji have a purpose underground, perched on a plastic, semi-bleached bench that’s already been eroded by a million other asses? That remains to be seen.
However, it’s not like he has somewhere else to be. He’d already made his pay-off for the day. Overhead, dusk is turning the San’ya skyline blue: the blue of cigarette smoke, or the questionably blue splatter that might be a spilled slushie, or, judging from those organic, sallow chunks, is more likely to be the product of someone who had ingested said slushie, and…is no longer in possession of it. Like any self-respecting young man, if there was a task for him to be throwing himself at, it would be pickpocketing a prematurely intoxicated passerby and spending the lot on some cheap buzz.
He then undergoes that phase of twitchy indecisiveness that is shared among all of humanity: the will I, won’t I, the liminal period between an idea popping into existence and the decision being made. For Denji, it’s a drunk, unwieldy dance, and his knees all but give out as soon as he dares rise to his feet. Decision made, then.
A few minutes later, the man arrives.
His entrance is accompanied by a nasty, unanimous throb of Denji’s injuries, and the sensations combined make him instinctively lurch away from the nearing silhouette, mistaking him for an especially large rat.
When he does eventually swim into focus, Denji concludes that his dislike for the man is far greater than it would be for some innocent rodent. It’s humiliating enough to call him “the man”. He can’t be much older than Denji himself, and his face is vexingly smooth: a pastiche of the bathroom’s porcelain, minus the cracks, plus one unassuming mole (his only flaw, aptly perched in the shadow of his bottom lip): a charming asymmetry that leaves his ensemble of features perfectly balanced, like he’d be better off advertising perfume.
To his horror, the stranger offers him a nod before taking the adjacent seat. The perfume comment turns out to have some concrete foundations, because a waft of something green and vaguely masculine temporarily dispels the subway’s stink before it’s overpowered with good old piss.
Denji tries to reassure himself by focusing on the gap in between them (also irritatingly polite) – then, before he knows it, the man’s briefcase has landed next to him with a thump and two pale, slender hands set about working it open.
“Okay, dude,” Denji begins, voice embarrassingly hoarse from disuse, “if you’re gonna sell me something, it’s… I’m broke. So. Don’t bother.” Either the man hadn’t heard him, or he’s not interested in casual conversation. “I’m serious. You one of those Mormon dorks? You look like one. I’ve never been to church, and, sorry, that’s probably not gonna change anytime soon. I’m a…”
Busy guy is how Denji would’ve ended his sentence. Unfortunately for him, he’s interrupted by the soft, subservient clicks of the briefcase’s clasps giving way. It’s opened with a slow reverence that seems designed to goad Denji into telling the potential Mormon to hurry the fuck up.
In addition, it would’ve seemed more than appropriate for a rich, golden light to pour from the briefcase’s innards; he swears he can feel it, soothing the stinging mess of his face. In essence, it’s a gift box, ideally partitioned with crisp black foam, separating those three blocks of yen from some motley stacks of…whatever. That is a lot of money. Holy shit. His fingers clamp down on the bench’s edge like a vice, preventing him from grabbing at the cash as well as wiping away what feels suspiciously like drool gathering at the corners of his mouth.
The (extremely loaded) potential Mormon merely leans on the uplifted lid, treating Denji to a coy smile. “Before I start, I think it’s important that we get to know each other.”
Denji’s jaw closes, opens, closes, then opens again; combined with his inexpertly dyed hair, the action gives him the appearance of a scruffy goldfish. “Uh. Yeah. Sure.” Swallows the excess saliva. “Okay.”
His benefactor attempts to fix his own bangs, brushing aside a manicured lock with an equally manicured hand. The result could barely be considered a solution: only one eye has been made visible to Denji, limpid and cavernous: owlish, even.
“Hirofumi Yoshida.” The hand is brought back down in a singular, fluid motion.
A few moments pass before Denji realises it’s his cue. He makes an intelligent noise before settling on: “Um. Denji.”
More moments tick by. Yoshida’s had his arm outstretched for ten seconds and counting. It remains perfectly still. Recognising this as a necessary checkpoint, “Um Denji” meets him in the middle, loosely clasping the tips of his fingers in what is possibly the world’s worst handshake.
“Denji,” Yoshida echoes, pronouncing his name like a wine note: laced with just enough savour to make it weird. Any amount of savour would be weird. This guy is weird. “A pleasure.”
Denji, ever the gentleman, resists the urge to wipe his palm on his trousers.
Oblivious to his discomfort, Yoshida smiles again – a real serial-killer smile, shallow and horrifically benign – and proffers one of the non-yen objects from his briefcase. “Denji, have you ever played menko before?”
“Nope,” he answers, but grabs it anyway, just in case it’s worth something. It’s disc-shaped: the cardboard is of strangely high quality, and both sides are painted. The side that’s facing him bears the countenance of a lady, conjured up by thin, cautious brushstrokes – that old artstyle that tourists go nuts over. She’s gorgeous, obviously. Skin powdered white, wrist curled round a steaming mug of tea, or coffee. Her attention is on Denji, though, or whoever happens to be holding the card; two lambent eyes watch from behind the red curtain of her fringe, enchantingly perceptive.
Being a guy who appreciates the finer things in life, Denji’s focus veers down toward the slope of her bosom, consequently grinning. His joy evaporates when he realises he’s also being observed by Yoshida, who is not so well endowed.
“It’s a simple game,” he continues, picking up his own card; emblazoned with an octopus, or something else with writhing, purplish tentacles. “I put my card down, and you have to throw yours at it so that it flips onto the other side.”
“Sounds easy enough,” Denji replies, pretending to be too engrossed with his card to meet Yoshida’s gaze. Its other side shows a sort of yokai, a stubby-legged orange creature with a dog-like muzzle. Some miscellaneous object pokes out of its forehead; if Denji had to compare it to anything, he’d pick a chainsaw, easily making it the dopest yokai he’s ever seen.
Yoshida gets up from the bench. He follows suit.
While examining the disc on the dirty tiling before him, Denji summons all the ball game and dart experience he has to date, which is to say: not much. His lack of stereopsis also doesn’t help. He misses Yoshida’s card by an inch and is about to call him an ableist piece of shit when—
“That was good,” Yoshida muses, studying the two discs with genuine interest. “Especially since it’s your first time.”
Denji’s itching for him to make some offhand remark about his eyepatch, or lip, or generally dishevelled mien, but his opponent only lifts his head and regards him with soulful, unabashed respect. Simultaneously, Denji develops a tic in his left masseter. The two events may or may not be related.
Another smile. The kind you give to a trained seal whose performance wasn’t quite up to par. It’s like he’s got a mental catalogue prepared. “My turn.”
The next event occurs too quickly for Denji to process: there’s a deafening crack, and his own card soars up, flips once, twice, three times, before landing alongside Yoshida’s with a dismal clatter.
It takes a while for Denji to regain the ability to form words. “Now what?”
“Well, usually, the winner gets ¥10,000.” Yoshida casts a neutral glance toward the briefcase.
Oh. Oh. Sure. They could do it like that. His hands curl into fists before Yoshida gets the chance to elaborate – thumb over fingers, just like he’d been taught – and he briskly evaluates the figure before him: he’s definitely taller, but Denji doubts he could tip the scale at seventy kilos; plus, that stupid suit makes him look like the human embodiment of an oil spill, all limber, negative space.
Yoshida must also have “body language interpreter” on his personal statement, because he abruptly raises both palms in a show of surrender. “However,” he clarifies, making a point of keeping the laugh from his voice, “exceptions…can be made.” He squints. “Denji. Would you be willing to pay with your body, instead?”
“My hu—”
The slap is, like many aspects of this encounter, unexpected. The real surprise is that Yoshida slaps hard. Denji’s not sure if it’s on purpose, but his injured mouth is avoided; as a result, the side of his face takes the brunt, subsequently smarting with fresh, salmon-tinged abuse.
Yoshida’s hand is lowered. He looks bleak: lips parted, wide-eyed, a soft, polished reflection of Denji’s own outrage. “Sorry, Denji, but I have to receive my winnings somehow.”
Under the bruised, downy rind of his cheek, Denji’s tongue is once again reduced to roiling putty, and it takes him a full half-minute (during which Yoshida blinks patiently) before he chokes out: “What the actual fuck, man?”
A crescent moon. Yoshida’s smile.
“Let’s go again.”
They go again. And again. Slap. Slap. Ow. Crack. Slap. Some other, more profane sound effects. None of them particularly in Denji’s favour.
Maybe it’s his imagination, but the blows get gentler over time. They don’t feel that way, since the skin’s already sore, but…at least he takes turns between sides, and…yeah, it’s wishful thinking. Sue Denji. Or don’t. He is definitely not in the position for that sort of thing.
It’s only when his eyepatch is hazardously close to slipping off his brow that his card, after falling from his grasp on multiple occasions, is caught by a fortunate wind and strikes Yoshida’s just right. The octopus (as it spins in mid-air, Denji notices that both sides feature a continuation of the same animal, its appendages wrapped round the disc in powerful secrecy) goes up, goes down, and Denji – in perfect imitation – leaps up, tumbles down, howling his victory all the while. Yoshida watches, sated, almost Cheshire in demeanour.
Then, Denji slaps him.
Or tries to. Yoshida’s as slippery as he looks, and even his hair is barely disturbed by the gust of wind that must sweep his face when he dodges the wayward lunge.
“Where’s my money?” is the first intelligible thing that spews from Denji’s hard palate.
Unperturbed, Yoshida reaches inside his breast pocket, removing with surgical precision the sharp, folded rectangle of a ¥10,000 note. Denji snatches it like an overenthusiastic kingfisher. It’s impressive: the note ends up no less crumpled than before, even when he snaps it open with a flourish, scrutinising the translucent print. This cements him as Tokyo’s scrappiest gold prospector.
“Alright,” he concedes, grudging; although it’s difficult to look tough when you’re wearing some pretty horribly applied blush. Au naturel, if you like. He markedly does not thank Yoshida.
“You know, Denji” – and Denji grimaces, because now he needs to listen and know stuff – “there are going to be some games taking place soon, like the one we just played, where you can make even more money than you did now.”
He stares at Yoshida through the note. “Like…a reality show?”
“Something like that.”
This gives Denji pause. Being on TV doesn’t sound too bad. When he glances down, it’s golden confetti that’s swirling round his ankles and crushed under his soles, not the scuffed, grimy marks of his own shoes.
“Mm.”
A train roars past; within that thunderous funnel of noise, Denji can hear the clamour of cheers; of impassioned voices, shredded like confetti, all screaming his name.
Only one comes to fruition. “Denji.”
“Yeah?”
“Your surname is Kaneko.”
This subway, to Denji’s knowledge, does not have working air con, has never had air con installed, which does little to explain the chill breathing down his neck.
“Your mother died from heart failure when you were two, indisputably linked to her untreated congenital heart disease. Only five years later, your father was found hanging from the ceiling of your apartment. You were placed into foster care for the latter half of your childhood, but, after a successful escape attempt, you were ruled a missing person and the case quickly went stale.”
An expression bordering on concern flits over Yoshida’s features. Inhale, exhale. Continue.
“Since then, you’ve spent your life repaying your father’s colossal debts to the yakuza by carrying out their dirty work. You currently owe them ¥38 million. You’ve sold several of your organs just to stay in their good books. In order of decreasing value, this includes a kidney, your right eye, and a testicle.” Denji’s remaining innards are doing something very, very wrong. “All of these were sold via the yakuza, meaning you got a marginal share of their respective prices.”
He still has his feet, at least, which are working on propelling him backwards, away from the all-seeing god who donned a gleaming tie clip. “How the…who the fuck are you? How d’you know all this?”
Yoshida doesn’t answer. What he does do is extract another object from his pocket. A business card – a nondescript, grainy, beige business card – so disgustingly inoffensive that Denji stills.
There it is. The faintest incline of his thumb. L’appel du vide.
“We don’t have many spots left.”
Denji waits. Then, without warning, he plucks the card from Yoshida’s hand; barely pinched between two fingernails, like it’ll burn him if he holds more than just a corner. Nevertheless, he takes it.
Yoshida’s smile is the dent his index leaves behind on that corner. A little forced. He wears it as he passes Denji, all the way up to the waiting doors of the next train – another train, so soon, in a subway that only has one broken timetable! – at which point he slips inside, still facing Denji, and waves.
Thank you, Denji, mouths the god on the train. The carriage shudders, and he’s gone.
Denji simply gazes at the card’s flipside, which contains (in some impersonal typeface) an ominously short phone number with a logo to its left. On closer inspection, it proves to be the yokai from before – no longer orange, yet unmistakable – frozen mid-bound, tongue lolling, those big, irresistible eyes nullifying any threat suggested by the chainsaw rearing from its head.
He ends up giving it a kennel.
Somewhere in downtown Tokyo, there stands a phone booth. A bit 90s. Glass-walled. Popular with tourists. An adventurous wedding photographer, every now and then.
While functional, it’s not lit up at night, so it takes some finding. The girl who’s in there now is well-acquainted with this booth; in the dark, through the water stains, her silhouette appears smeared into the tarmac, an extension of the city.
She can see everything, though. Especially the figure who keeps peeking out from behind that wall. It’d be hard not to; he’s done something quite extraordinary to his hair. Maybe it’s just the lighting, or rather lack thereof, but she can easily make out that yellow bird’s nest every time it flutters forward, then backward, then forward again, like a particularly distraught canary.
That’s one of two reasons she gets peace of mind after leaving the phone booth. She’s barely stepped out the door when he scurries onto the pavement, fists shoved deep into the pockets of that big, shabby coat, hackles bristling. A one-eyed alley cat. She keeps her head down.
In the nauseous glow cast by those sodium streetlamps, it’s easy to pretend she doesn’t glance back.
It’s even easier to forget the way that glow hits the card he's holding in his right hand as each digit is punched in. The easiest thing in the world.