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The breeze carries the warmth and scent of soup towards the ocean faster than Yoshida would like. He picks at a shiitake mushroom in the murky broth, watching it bubble as it absorbs the flavour. The persistent tingle of ginger and the hint of sweetness of the garlic mix with chicken in the back of his throat, calming him and providing a temporary distraction from the mess before him.
Denji stabs a fallen strawberry from his cake and shoves it into his mouth, pointy teeth mushing it as if the fruit had a set time before being wiped from existence in front of his eyes, which, to someone in poverty, it did. He assumed all things except for the grass outside of that run-down hut had a time limit, and as he watched the blades dwindle come winter, he remembered they did too.
“Eating quickly isn’t healthy for you,” Yoshida remarked, an amused twinge mingling with that usual smile. “You could choke.”
“I’m immortal,” the blond bites back, tearing a corner of soft flesh and creamy filling from the cake, driving it into his mouth.
Denji loves sweets. That’s one of the first things Yoshida learned about him. His idea of a cake two years ago was simply sugar, flour, and water. Not an enticing, velvety slice of something grander, cut open to reveal the sweet insides.
Maybe that’s why Denji loved sweets.
“You wouldn’t want to choke to death in front of a bunch of people in a cafe,” he argues, “that wouldn’t be good for the Chainsaw Man image, or for our date.”
Right. Date. Denji mulls the word over in his mind before speaking again. Why did Yoshida have to put it so crudely?
“It’s not a date, dude,” he murmurs, more defeated, “it’s like… guys hanging out.”
Two years ago, he was dreaming of having dates with girls. Cute girls, not tall guys, who treated him to cake. That’s what the guys did.
“My treat,” Yoshida had said. He said it in the shops they went to on the boardwalk, the items now stuffed in cardboard bags at their feet. He insisted he buy lunch, and turned down Denji paying for something small he saw the other man looking at. He needed the money for the dogs and Nayuta, after all. He felt the shame burn hot in his stomach every time he said those two words.
Yoshida didn’t try to quip back at Denji, just giving a hum and another gulp of the soup as a response. A silence falls over them, only interrupted by the crash of waves about a half mile from where they are, and the clinking of their own and others’ utensils. It’s not an awkward silence that Denji is used to, and that surprises him. It’s more of the silence that would fall between him and Pochita or Power before they went to sleep. Essential, almost.
The frosting melts in the heat of his mouth, mixing with the cake as he finishes it. The soup in front of Yoshida looks like it’s barely been grazed, and still has bubbles of heat at the top of the broth.
The sugary, red mess was now gone before him, and he thought back to Power once more. He found he had to furrow his brows to remember her face. He thought about Makima: the soft red of her hair, the paleness of her skin like cream. Plush, pink lips, shiny with gloss.
They were all gone, dead now, and he figured there must be some sort of pull that brings people close to death near him. He had to search for the new Blood Devil, had to search for the Horsemen, had to search for another girlfriend, had to search for Makima in Nayuta. He wondered if Yoshida was on a time limit like Aki.
He reluctantly looked up.
“I’m glad you seemed to like the cake here,” Yoshida says with a smirk. Denji didn’t know if it was his resting face or if he was mocking him. He stared down at the soup.
“Yeah, ‘s good. Do you not like the food or somethin’?”
“I’m just a slow eater.” Yoshida holds the chirirenge spoon to his mouth, blowing on the soup before swallowing.
“You jus’ like watching me eat, don’t you?”
“A little.” He gives an almost inaudible huff of laughter through his nose.
“People don’t usually just do stuff for me if they’re not expecting shit back.” His nose crinkles, remembering when he swallowed a cigarette butt. He never got the money. He thought of Makima, ripping Pochita from his body. His heart.
The sea breeze suddenly becomes colder as another silence falls between them. The break this time is awkward; it brings back memories he doesn’t want to resurface or dig into deeper.
“Do you just do charity work?” Denji continues with a hint of irony. “Go around kissin’ babies and stuff when you’re not with me?”
Yoshida laughs, an honest-to-God laugh, not like that stupid resting smile he can never wipe off his face. It’s endearing to the other man in a way that the smiles of others aren’t.
“I don’t go around ‘kissing babies,’” he replies with another laugh, stifled this time. Tense, quicker, and focused, he’s finding words he didn’t want to admit to Denji at the moment. Not when the food is good, and the breeze is cold.
“I pity you,” he admits. He forces his eyes back onto the blond, not realising that they had taken to the side of the table instead of him. Yoshida can see the other man’s jaw flex. “I want you to live at least somewhat of a normal life.”
Normalcy was a foreign concept to Denji; every time he thought he understood it, it would be deconstructed and torn from him. He thought not going to school at 16 and working in Public Safety was normal until he met Reze. For a time, too, she was his normal. Then, normal was living in that cramped apartment with Power and Aki, until it became just him and Power. His normal was with Nayuta and the dogs, going to school. Running through the aquarium with Asa, ignoring the lingering threat of the War Devil.
Maybe ‘normal’ was something fabricated, simply unattainable for some.
“It’s hard to live as Chainsaw Man,” Yoshida continues, pulling Denji from his silent monologing. “I mean, I wouldn’t know, but I assume there needs to be a balance.”
“Balance,” Denji repeats, humour gone from his tone. “Yeah, I guess.”
Yoshida does not comment on his sudden disinterest.
“The normalcy civilians live in isn’t achievable to people like us. But,” Yoshida continues, “they still find a balance. I know you can as well.”
“The people in Public Safety weren’t Chainsaw Man,” Denji growls, a snap that has Yoshida finally show something other than a smile across that stupid face; surprise. He plants his hands on the table, enclosing the now-empty plate.
The other man closed his mouth, and it’s his turn for his jaw to flex. Denji could barely stand the way his dark eyes twinkled with a newfound determination.
“You’re not Chainsaw Man.”
It seemed to pull Denji out of something, because the rage that had boiled over had died down, even if just for a second. He clutched a patch of his white shirt over his heart.
“If people say the soul is your heart, what am I then?” he cries back, the same growl in his voice. It wasn’t ever apparent when he smack-talked other devils; it was an emotional quip that made him seem like just a boy. “That’s all people want me to be, so this is it! I’m Chainsaw Man, alright, dude?”
“You’re Denji.”
He was frozen in a half-standing position, staring at Yoshida as if he were a ticking time bomb. It’s almost a parody of what Reze had said to him before.
“Nuh uh,” he weakly replied, head hanging.
“Yuh huh,” Yoshida responded, definitely mocking him now. Something close to embarrassment bubbled in Denji’s stomach. “You’re Chainsaw Man when you need to be. But truly, you’ll always be Denji. Denji Hayakawa. That’s your heart.” He said it with a confidence Denji could never find within himself.
He wanted to reply with some smart-ass comment, “No, Pochita is my heart!” His lips twitched, almost opening, almost making a sound that never came. He sat down again. When Makima hugged him, was she hugging Denji or Chainsaw Man? Which was his heart?
“And I want something from you, Denji.”
This was it. Denji clasped his hands together, lowering his head onto the table, arms raised slightly above him. Yoshida was going to steal his heart; that’s all the people around him wanted, after all. Not Denji, Chainsaw Man. Maybe pieces of himself were still Reze and Makima’s.
“I want a second date.”
The blond looked up, bewilderment crossed his facial features, contorting them into something that brought the smirk back to Yoshida.
“Not a date,” he grumbled, unclasping his hands, finally finding a decent position on the chair with a pout. Like a petulant toddler. “But fine, if you want one so bad. I guess ‘s better than bein’ cooped up at home.”
This time, the other man smiled. He swirled the spoon around in the soup, porcelain clinking against painted porcelain. The breeze had slowed, drafting the smell of cooling garlic and ginger towards Denji. He lifted the spoon into his mouth again, and Denji watched, watched like how he watched Reze undress. How Makima fit her fingers into his mouth. He could still taste the flesh sometimes.
“Okay, a second hangout then.” The bits of garlic and pepper that had swirled to the top started to fall back to the bottom of the bowl. Yoshida caught some on the spoon, then took it into his mouth.
The sun hung heavy over the ocean, ripping yellow currents into the ocean’s top. They had slowly started to turn orange, and purple radiated over the horizon. Denji stared past Yoshida into the sky, then down at the bill as it was left on their table.
“I’ll pay,” Yoshida announced as if Denji was going to grab the slip out of his hands, as if he even had the extra funds to pay for it. He inserted a few yen bills before setting it back.
“You should take the soup with you,” he continues, sliding it towards the other man. “Look, they even left a container you can put it in. Cake doesn’t sit in your stomach for long.”
Denji looked down at the bowl with a grimace. A mix of “another dude’s spit is technically in this” and “is he pitying me again?”
“You put your mouth on that.”
“You can heat it again, and the bacteria will die, if you’re so worried.”
Denji paused. He moved the bowl closer to him, taking the lid off the container and pouring it in. It did smell good.
“Fine.”
Yoshida smiled, and Denji concluded that smiling was his resting face, because this one was pulled back, wider and more genuine, not a smile where it was how his face naturally contorted. He grabbed the bags around his chair as he sat up, placing them on the seat. Denji followed suit, and Yoshida held a hand out with another bag.
“Yours,” he said as the blond took it. Their fingertips bumped one another, interlocking for a fraction of a second, but Denji could feel the heat of Yoshida’s hand, the soup, like a hot iron against his.
The touch of another man had never burned before, and he dug his fingernails into his palm to relieve it. It didn’t help, only adding a short stinging sensation along with the static-y feeling of heat alongside his fingertips.
Denji nodded, bringing the hand lying now limply at his side to open the bag. Inside was a simple graphic shirt, but Yoshida had complained about the prices in the store. A wave of guilt that made him scrunch his nose washed over him. The other man either didn’t notice or didn’t ask until Denji looked up again.
“I had fun hanging out today,” he continues, leaving his bags on his seat as he stepped closer. Denji swore to himself that he was going to step back, put space between the two, so he couldn’t admire the way pale skin made his dark hair exaggerated, or the mole at his bottom lip, as if drawn on in a painting. He thinks back to when he got a good look at Makima for the first time, a close look, close in the way a fox can trace the hairs of fur on a rabbit’s back before attacking. To him, the features between the two are similar in a way that makes his eyes lose focus.
Maybe that’s why he doesn’t step back when Yoshida draws closer, feeling the rub of their shirt fabrics and soft skin. A simple loss of focus. Focus leaving until it leaves him in a pinhole-eyed stare, blackening the rest of the world apart from the other man’s features, as a soft hand falls to the back of his neck. He feels himself being pet at the nape, like how he would scratch the neck of one of the dogs after taking their collar off, assuming that the cheap fibre must be itchy against their skin. A doctor flicking at an area of skin before injecting a needle. Makima making him play dog.
The clash of their lips is soft, like the warm brush of their skin a few moments earlier, soft in the way Yoshida is when he handles him like a mutt. Pitying, almost, as he had moisturised them before, planning to deliver the softest blow to Denji as possible.
He’s glad it’s soft. He can pretend it’s another girl for a sweet, brief moment, not thinking about the rigid frame of Yoshida, and instead the soft and curvy ones of a cute girl kissing him. For that brief moment, he’s able to forget how the others felt and imagine this was his first kiss.
It doesn’t make him think that way. He had heard in Public Safety that ignorance is bliss; people there took it as a doctrine. He finally began to understand it as he felt the pressure on his lips alleviate.
It’s fast in the way other kisses aren’t; Reze had kissed him deep, Makima had taken her time with him. He blotted out the way he felt his tongue tear from his body and the despair from seeing Power, or the lack thereof, against the apartment building’s hallway. He could compare it best to when he had felt Power’s boobs; fast and pitying, a reluctant award.
Yoshida is still close, and Denji finally snaps back to reality when he feels a huff of air against his own lip. His hand had now moved to Denji’s cheek, cradling it. Denji opens his mouth, whether to speak or lean in, he doesn’t know, and doesn’t have to.
He feels the hand on his cheek leave, replacing the warmth with the breeze carrying itself in swirls out to sea. Feels the coldness form a wall between their bodies, which, before, had been pressed close, a fuzzy ball of heat they both shared.
“I’ll see you here in two days, then.”
Yoshida had already turned around. He missed him collecting his bags. Denji stared at the back of the hand he had raised as a goodbye as he walked away. His mouth hung open in surprise. For once, he didn’t get the final word.
He isn’t sure what he would have said. Maybe fall onto the floor and offer to tongue his butthole for another week if he got a second kiss. Maybe tell him to go to Hell, and that he wasn’t into dudes.
He had told Beam that, he remembers. He was lying to impress Makima in the same way he would have been lying to impress himself by saying that. He knows he liked the kiss. Maybe he wasn’t into dudes, and only liked it because he pretended Yoshida was a girl.
He would have to figure it out in two days.