Whoops! Fell into the AsaDen hole. Fujimoto is an absolute bastard (who I love) and while I'm sure he's going to continue to tear out my heart, the way he did throughout the entirety of Chainsaw Man pt 1, I will continue to hope that these two idiots are happy, in some way, some how, by the end of the series.
I wanted to play around stylistically with this piece. I'd appreciate some feedback!
Enjoy ~
"...I thought: I am at the whim of my uncontrollable, irrelevant body and of my uncontrollable, irrelevant past! For this reason I cannot be held responsible for my actions!"
Uncontrollable, Irrelevant - Avigayl Sharp
Merriam-Webster: Sotto Voce (adv., adj.): Under the breath : In an undertone. Also: In a private manner
1.
"I see. This feeling must be love."
Yoru said it on the afternoon of the endless aquarium date, sotto voce, under her, Asa's, breath. Asa felt the sentence pass her own lips unbidden - chapped lips forming the word "love" questioningly, as though it'd never made it through her teeth before. Maybe it hadn't. To who, and why? While she laid alone in her bed that night - as alone as she could be with Yoru - she wondered if her lips or teeth or tongue were sure of this truth in a way that her brain wasn't. The admission held a surprising weight. The date had been a scheme, the time spent only change given for change to be received. After Yoru said it, she knew something inside of her shifted and morphed instead, formless but substantial in her chest.
But he didn't change. Denji didn't - poof! - become a visceral body-blade, spinal knots jutting and sicklesharp, corded nerve bundle soft enough and leathery enough to hold, that slouched back of his finally straight with the precision inherent in a blade's killing nature. No, he still slouched like a street pest, shoulders curled in not with shyness but sloth, dopey, dumb eyes confused but obliging, pitying, even, how could he worry about her? look at his way of life! - pitying her, his soft hand and warm palm on her head a welcome weight holding her there, holding her down in place. She'd never been held in place before, steadied. Gravity was a dream even when her life felt stone heavy.
He didn't change. So he must not feel the same, Yoru shrugs - "But he doesn't love you"
Then, "Oh well, we'll just keep trying. He'll be ours yet."
And Asa wants to say that if anyone loves her -
If they could -
If he could -
she would not want an "us" involved.
But she's sure Yoru knows that already.
2.
She can't keep up with his long strides. He's totally unaware - comfortable, hands behind his head, rambling about food - and she's struggling to match his pace with her own. It's a hot day. She's glad that she wears skirt with her school uniform - that she gets some air and a fresh breeze, because the cotton top is clinging to her skin with stale sweat and she wonders if he can smell it, or see it, but-
He's still rambling about food. Slackjawed oblivion, he wears his usual expression.
She wonders how she can love that. But she doesn't question the existence of the love itself.
"I know a place that's all-you-can-eat for 1500 Yen. I got sick last time, but why not?" he says, "How about another date?"
She stops. Hands on her knees, she bends to catch her breath like a runner might. Her body's not a runner's body, though, and she's suddenly ashamed, and angry at the shame like it's a stain she could've avoided with a little care. Denj's never said anything though. She glares up at him through her bangs, sweaty, sticking to her forehead.
"Another...date?"
After the last time - after he didn't change, proved his antipathy - she thought she'd have to be the one to act. Yoru had poked and prodded, a school marm living in Asa's head, but the plan had been put off for a week, two, three, as she tried to gather the scattered pieces of her courage or sneak into his heart in little ways, like a spy; hanging out with him here and there, meetings on the school roof under painfully blue skies, walks home from school listening to the ballad of his life sung out in his degenerate drawl. The occasional stop in a park along the road. How to turn frequency into affection, how to transmute boredom into love? Every failure, every wasted moment or move of her tongue was discouragement distilled.
Every goodbye, "Denji Spinal Cord Sword".
Sometimes Asa uttered it, but sometimes it was Yoru, sotto voce, under her breath - and then - his fingers in her hair, calloused and clumsy but comforting. He'd remain there unhurried, still a dumb smile on his face, hers flushed red with embarrassment, then disappointment, but maybe Denji had Yoru's power too, because she'd feel her body tense up, her spine tighten, painful, under the weight of two minds and one hand as he repeated back to her, "Asa spinal cord sword".
"Yeah," he says, and now he's a little red, a little flushed, those strangely sharp teeth showing when he speaks. "Why not?"
"I don't wanna go somewhere that's going to make me sick," she answers. "And I can't spend too much money. Neither can you."
It's not a no, it's her own way of playing hard to get. Asa waits for his answer, waits to see if his face falls in disappointment afterwards. A sign that he likes her in a way only pain can prove; the existence of a disease showing only in its radiating suffering, or like poking an anesthetized cheek before a root canal to see if the nerves still sing.
"I could cook for you. Your place. Too many rules at mine."
"You cook?"
He smiles, proud. The look he gives is filled with a different kind of love, a look he's never given her, "An old friend taught me."
"Say yes," Yoru pushes.
"Okay," she says. Surprised for giving in - to both of them - to relinquishing herself, her home, her privacy so easily for just the potential of love, let alone the promise, - what is she, a puppy? some sick animal wishing for adoption? - and anyway, she shouldn't do this - she should take it back - she doesn't want to use people to make into weapons, just wants Yoru gone is all, and -
And he's already placing his warm palm on her head - is peering down, still the hooded lid of his gaze, still the weight of his presence.
"Asa spinal cord sword," lazy, but kind. Affectionate? She can only hope.
"Denji Spinal cord sword," Yoru, insistent, impatient, irritated.
"Denji Spinal cord sword," her own voice, there beneath breaths.
3.
He's at the door, shopping bags hanging from his hands, but he knocks with his elbow, doesn't actually wait for her invite before turning the knob to walk in. She's never had a boy over. Really, next to Yuko, she's never had a friend over. Her room is small and he fills it with his tall frame - more solid and muscular than she'd imagined in those few instances when he stops slouching and dragging himself round.
He gives a look about the place. Asa watches as he seems to fight himself from staring at anything too long: herself, her room, her bed, the hieroglyphics of her life etched into goods and keepsakes, photos and books. She can't read his thoughts, can't tell what he thinks of any of it.
Of her, most of all.
In the end his gaze returns to her before settling, finally, on the excuse of square footage she calls a kitchen.
"I only have this," Asa points to a single gas burner on the thin Formica counter-slash-table. Her 'kitchen' is complete with just that, a microwave, and a small fridge that leaks from the bottom sometimes and wets her socks. She begs things to work today, nerves already shot, heartbeats unaligned because she's not used to a boy, attention, guests, or the sudden and raw absence of the loneliness she's so accustomed to - but obviously the fridge can't answer, and Denji just nods, strangely serious in the kitchen.
"Okay, it's all I need. Do you have a knife?"
Asa sits awkwardly and alone on her bed. It's a small studio apartment, only a thin sliding wall separating the bedroom from the rest of the place, which, if closed, would leave it too cramped for even the two of them to sit comfortably. Open, she feels vulnerable, and the apartment becomes a mass of misplaced space, so she sits and watches and feels the distinct tingling dead nerve sensation of anxiety and a lack of being present.
"You're pretty clumsy," Denji laughed when she offered to help, half-heatedly. She already knew that about herself, doesn't need the reminder. The rebuff hurts.
"And you're gross," she replies, a few seconds too late, a few beats off and awkward, like everything else she does.
"Just watch. This is a date, right?"
Then, before she can answer:
"Unbutton your shirt," Yoru says, sotto voce, under her voice, "Invite him to bed. That's sure to win him over."
With clammy hands, Asa buttons up the topmost button of her dress shirt, constricts her throat til each swallow forms a lump. Every ounce of energy and focus is being used to prevent Yoru from taking over, and her hands shake with the effort.
"Seduce him"
"No. No, no no."
"Did you say something?" Denji asks, knife still slicing through an onion already half-mooned. He'd been talking about Chainsaw Man, or maybe his old friend - one of them - the one who taught him to cook. She wasn't listening. It took all of her effort to stay in control of her life, both before and after she met Yoru.
"Ah, n-no." Despite herself, she leans back on her two hands, her chest- meager, she hates it - thrust out. Yoru wants to get her way. Is getting in her way.
He shrugs, focuses on the food again. She's not sure he's glanced at her, or the provocative pose, and part of her - a part that isn't even Yoru - is disappointed. But at cooking she can tell he's good - surprising good, actually - his hands sure and deft with the knife, a pot of broth - dashi, shoyu, some other additions she didn't keep track of - simmers away in a pot he fished out of her cabinets, an old, cracked, clay donabe that belonged to her mother. Split down the middle of the rim and chipped, not so unlike herself.
The apartment smells wonderful. Asa almost never cooks, nothing like this, certainly. The heat in her home grows: from the food, or their combined body heat she isn't sure - and Denji's back to rambling, but she wants to listen now, wants to give him attention, because she loves him - Yoru couldn't lie to her - and outside of the awkwardness, the pressure, the stress and the wet heat - she finds herself interested in what this kind, poor idiot has to say.
Despite this she turns her tv on. The buzzing in her head requires the background sound in order to fill space if she goes silent, skips, stutters. "The friend who taught you - do they go to our school?"
The air stills. The pot boils. Denji stops chipping for a moment. "He died," is all he says, and then he resumes chopping, layering food onto a plate beside the boiling pot neatly. His slackjawed expression seems less slack, more tense.
She wants to suffocate herself with her own pillow.
"This is not helpful," Yoru admonishes.
Yoru wants to suffocate her with a pillow too.
Before she fits the pillow entirely over her face, Denji clears his throat, bows a little at the waist, once again wearing that shit-eating grin he so often wears, "Done. Shabu-shabu with the cheapest bruised veggies and day old meat I could find."
She takes a seat across from him at the counter-table, the steam kissing her nose and his nose and she wants to kiss him because the food smells delicious; the veggies are a little old but beautifully sliced, the meat's only slightly off-pink, all of it layered against each other and waiting to be cooked communally in the broth. Her chopsticks bump against his; the enoki mushroom she chose is teasingly devoured by Denji; the laughter and fun an ingredient neither can buy, neither can afford - but this is the first home-cooked meal she's had in a long, long time and -
"How is it? I'm good, right?" Denji asks.
"Yeah," she chews on salty sliced beef that tastes of her tears, "You're good."
Yoru rolls her eyes.
4.
Asa leans against the gatepost outside the school watching Denji accept 500 Yen to eat ice cream - partially melted, covered with ants - from the dusty, dirt path beside the school's gym door. He does it with gusto, a smile, a mint green ice cream coating slick on his long fingers, caked into the corners of his lips. An ant crawls down his wrist, antennae wiggling, wailing for its friends in the midst of a ruin it thought to be a treasure trove of food.
Asa watches this and wants to kiss him on his stupid ice cream coated lips.
She's disgusted, doesn't even need to glance aside to see Yoru's raised eyebrows. The devil must be learning human gestures quickly, her expression a bit too cute above the wretched scar in her cheek.
"Are you going to do it?" Yoru asks.
"God no. He wouldn't - why would he kiss me? He still isn't changing, he still doesn't love me."
"Make him," Yoru demands, "Or I will."
Her heart beats a bony staccato against her ribcage when he spots her, waving. He wets a thumb with his tongue and wipes the ice cream off the corner of his mouth, and then sucks it off and - shivering, Asa wishes to be that thumb.
"Yo!" he greets, "Wanna pass by that alley again today? Maybe that cat finally had her kittens."
"Uh - "
"Yes," Yoru urges, sotto voce, under Asa's breath.
He's gotten better at keeping her in mind on their walks. Now his strides aren't so large, now he waits, patient, for her to catch up, now he holds a steadying hand out when she trips over rocks and sidewalk cracks as she's wont to do, that steadying hand strong, supportive, whether on her head or a little too low down her back - but she hasn't complained and only cleared her throat meaningfully because, maybe, she wouldn't mind his touch there if he liked her - liked her back in return - but he clearly doesn't, she clearly does not have a hold on him and so he has to learn, has to understand her boundaries so he knows where to break through once she lets him - a surveying party, two saboteurs.
Yoru is like a hot coal in her chest, impatient, glaring. She knows Asa's thoughts, Asa's feelings, and only cares to use them like a weapon. What else could the War Devil do?
It's an abandoned train depot they make their way towards. Rusty tracks stretch their way into the eternal horizon on either end of the Earth. Old train cars rot on their steel wheels. There are broken bottles and cigarette butts paving the pace. They followed a cat in once on their way home, its stomach sagging with pregnancy, and checked up on it every few days. They'd even given it a little collar, once, made of the torn sleeve of one of Denji's shirts and a button that'd fallen off of hers.
The cat's nowhere to be seen from above, hiding either from the sun or from predators, like all good creatures, born knowing that at any moment they may be prey. There's a devil in her heart now, so Asa is painfully aware of what predators truly are. But Denji is pure - Denji is on all fours, open and exposed and vulnerable, searching below the eroded, cracked-window train cars for a cat. He's so trusting, she thinks, so readable. She gets down on all fours too, dust coating where her knees press her skirt into the ground. Seeing, maybe, from his perspective. Breathing in the scent of earth and steel and oilslick spills.
"Do you see it?" Denji asks.
He's close. She doesn't know when they'd moved so close together, but he's right in her face now, and hers goes red: heat, sun, embarrassment, nerves, desire, what would those shark teeth feel like on her lips, what would his hands feel like on her waist- all red all the color red, and his nose is covered in dirt, like he's a dog who dug in the yard, so she laughs, and then he laughs.
But Yoru isn't laughing. Instead:
"Kiss him kiss him kiss him, I want my sword, kiss him-"
Her lips tingle, her throat tightens, but she won't do it - hands clenched, can't - if he doesn't like her now, doesn't love her after a kiss, she'll, she -
She leans over to cover the inch or two between them. Kisses him. She had felt Yoru in her veins, the cold rush of detachment approach which would snip the tethering lines between her soul and her body, and replace them with Yoru's. It couldn't happen. What truth would there be in success, what greater truth in failure, if she wasn't herself? In the end what had been a pained decision supplied a simple answer.
Then - horror free of bodily signs, anger, fear, pain free of bodily signs - she had still lost control of herself, unable to hold on - Yoru's hand on his head again - "Denji spinal cord sword. Denji spinal cord sword!"
He doesn't change. His eyes are blank, confused, his cheeks red, his teeth sharp and biting a lip.
How does he still not love you? Yoru asks, sotto voce, under her breath, and when Asa's body runs, flees, she's not sure she knows or cares who is in control.
5.
As the devil rampages towards her, Asa wonders if perhaps she will never speak to Denji again.
She'd dodged him in the hallways (she dodges a blow from the devil's paw, cratering the earth).
She'd kept her back close against the door when he'd loitered out in front of her apartment (she hides now behind a dumpster, the ground shakes, the air is fetid with the stench of blood and viscera, this devil a bulging inhuman mass. It barks like a dog, it looks like roadkill).
She had sobbed hot, angry, sour little tears in bed, looked down upon by Yoru, clinging desperately to a possibility that was never real, like a child, like a loser (she clings now to her own control - Yoru wants to change, but Asa is truly afraid, and there, across the train yard, Denji gasps - she does not want Denji to know, to see her, Yoru, whomever - Denji is there, and she wants to change, to save him, but she does not want to change, and she wants to keep control but she can't, she can't, she can't -)
There's a cold rush. She is body without flesh - she watches, dissociating, as Yoru stands strong and a pit opens up in her not-stomach at how little her wishes mean, her body itself a betrayer. The Dog Devil snarls, fangs longer than her forearms dripping with gore and saliva. It shakes, and the scent of wet dog and death overwhelm her. She has no weapons, has nothing on her at the moment that could be changed. But Denji has disappeared - when did he leave her sight?
It's possible he's dead. It's likely, even, she knows, and she knows too that that was always going to be his destiny; not existentially but because he existed, here and now, in a world cruel enough for something like the War Devil to exist.
Crueler still, Asa sees the collar she and Denji made, torn around a railroad track. Something in her breaks. Something in Yoru cheers. The collar was hers (the collar was theirs). It can become a weapon.
The next few moments pass by Asa's eyes - distant, from the outside - in the style of a movie. A B movie, something lame that she's sure Denji would've loved. Time clicks, it shutters film-like snap snap snapsnapsnapsnap - and then light, sound:
Sotto Voce: A Screenplay
1. EXTERIOR - ABANDONED TRAIN YARD - AFTERNOON
WE SEE Yoru grab the collar from the ground and wrap it around her hand. The devil shudders with power in every breath. Monstrous, furry, fury.
YORU
Kitty collar bull whip!
IN SLOW MOTION the collar morphs into a leather whip, long and taught and powerful. The Dog Devil lunges, a hulking mass, a demon, snarling teeth. The whip flicks forth, the crack of a sonic boom follows.
CUT TO open space in the train yard, mountains of wreckage shading the ground. WE HEAR the rev of a chainsaw in the background. Denji is nowhere to be seen, nor is Chainsaw Man.
2. YORU'S POV
THE CORPSE STEAMS and the body sags under its own weight. The Dog Devil is dead.
A SHOT OF the sky. Fur, blood, bone, teeth, rain down. Yoru's clothing is soaked, torn, but she is victorious.
3. ENDING CARD: Fin
CUT TO BLACK
An explosion was all that was missing to really sell the scene.
Asa finds herself back in control as a fine mist of viscera finishes painting the scene where the initial burst of guts had already been tossed as through from a paintcan. For a moment it is all too much: Denji, gone; devils and impending death; even the small things taken from her, the cat they hadn't even given a name, too ashamed to claim what neither would take responsibility for together.
It's enough to make her want to give up.
And then, from the wreckage and debris, Denji strolls carelessly. Still slackjawed, still slouching, still breathing.
"Yo," he says, a hand raised.
Why is he only wearing an undershirt? Is that blood running down his arms his?
It's almost ironic that her heart can't really stop more than it already did when she died.
"Did you do that?" he asks, and his eyes are bright despite the laziness of his pose. He looks like he has a secret ready to spill, the look of a child geared up to tattle.
"No?"
"I'm glad you two are okay," comes a third voice, and Asa is surprised - and yet, not surprised - to see Yoshida sitting atop an overturned rail car. His look is as inscrutable as always, deceptively dull. He always seems to be around, lurking, but she's never been able to call him out on it. "I saw one of the Bureau Hunters run in here."
He's lying, but she's unsure why. He fixes her with that empty gaze. There's a challenge there, somehow, or debt he's issuing.
Denji seems to be in disbelief too, the secret on his tongue even closer to reaching her ears, but he huffs a breath when Yoshida continues to stare.
"You two should get going, who knows if there's another around here?" Yoshida offers, and Denji sags his shoulders in defeat.
"Yeah, C'mon Asa, let's get going." She's not sure she's ever heard him sound so dejected. She almost likes it - serves him right for rejecting her.
Outside of the now-destroyed rail yard she follows Denji without looking at him. This is the worst, this painful silence, this distance now between them. She wants to ask - why, how? They'd kissed, had he felt nothing? She couldn't believe it.
Mortified. Asa is mortified in any number of the senses of that word; after all she is dead, kind of, and maybe Denji can tell, maybe on some instinctual lizard brain level he can't love her because she's a walking, talking corpse? Yoru scoffs, clearly, she thinks, it's just that Asa is boring, and plain, and bothersome to be around.
Asa thinks that too.
"In the end he hasn't changed." Yoru, sotto voce, under her breath. "Proof he doesn't love you."
Maybe he can't.
But it hurts, because she thinks he does. He should. His hand had gotten softer, but firmer, on her head during their goodbyes. Denji's eyes linger, a spark somewhere in their near-dead gaze. His slouching form felt always close at hand now, his steps matched hers. His stories fill her head- dead friends joining Yoru inside her skull, urging her on. He's quiet sometimes now - something she never expected - and when he laughs with her now, it's warm, and she thinks she knows what's behind his lazy smile and slacker facade.
Nothing else is going to work. She can't grasp how - with these dates, with their time together, with her throwing herself at him - he doesn't love her back.
She hasn't spoken to him in over a week. Her voice is missing now, as she walks aimlessly beside him. They both politely ignore the blood staining her uniform, the near lack of his.
She never wanted Denji in the first place, not really. She just thought him easy and stupid and pliable, a dumb boy she could wrangle with her feminine wiles.
Not - not this, not knowing what he really is. She wishes he'd stay away, let her get over things.
"I wish you'd stay away," she says to his slouching form. She doesn't know where they are now - she lost track in her daze, in self-and alter-self admonishment.
'Ehh?" he says, head cocked to the side like a confused dog, "What are you up to? I was sure you liked me. You kissed me!" he's astonished, maybe even a little angry, and she's almost happy that she could make him feel this way: dark and sticky and frustrated - that whatever claim she has on him can produce the bad, if it can't produce the good.
"I-I don't!" she stammers stumbling over her lie-slash-not lie.
"You did!"
"Go away!"
"Maybe we should just kill him," Yoru says, and Asa watches in horror as the idea seems to grow into a smile on that scarred face of theirs.
"No," Asa says, loud enough for him to hear.
"I told you before; what you kill is yours. It belongs to you. If he will not fall for you through love, we can have him another way."
Asa can see her, the crazed look, those spiral eyes dragging her down into an endless darkness of war and pain. Guilt. After all of this - the guilt she'd feel at killing Denji might be enough to simply die from.
If only she felt more fear now than disgust, or horror, or shame. Fear could stop Yoru, if Asa wasn't strong enough to.
And then her control is released as Yoru turns to the boy, flinging her arms out to commit some violent attrocity, and she pulls at him until Denji invades her space, twisting and falling forward, confused and angry and to stop him she thrusts out a hand -
She feels his heart, his heart racing under her/Yoru's palm, feels what might be a strange pulley piercing in the middle of his chest - feels his heart beat as fast as hers.
She's back in her body.
She pulls him in for a kiss.
She feels him kiss back - the slobber and messiness, the taste of blood and dirt.
Hears him say, sotto voce, under his breath, "But I like you."
She moves a hand from his face to his back, tries to feel his spine, she hits knots, but feels only muscle, blood, heat, sweat, life.
Yoru is yelling it now, but the words aren't forming on Asa's lips.
"No more Denji Spinal cord sword," she says against him.
"Mmm," he answers at the back of his throat, tongue otherwise occupied.
And she can feel it too.
6 -
Two days later they find a litter of kittens in a den beneath an overturned rail car. The mother seems to be missing, but they are squirming with life.
If nothing else, it makes Asa feel like something good can come out of this.
That, and the warm hand on her back, and the taste of mint ice cream on her tongue.
I will take your teeth
But I'll hold out for a while
If you please
"You Don't Deserve Yourself" - Andrew Jackson Jihad
Thanks for reading!
Reviews, criticism, and responses are all welcome!