Chapter Text
Kyoka draws the shock blanket tighter around her shoulders and stares out at the sea of flashing red-blue lights in front of her. Her breath fogs when she exhales. Inhale. Exhale. She focuses on the cloud of her breathing instead of the people being led to police cars.
A man in a beige trench coat approaches her. “How are you doing?”
Kyoka shrugs. “Fine, I guess.”
“I’m Detective Tsukauchi.” He smiles. “You’re Jirou Kyoka, right?”
Kyoka nods mutely.
“Well,” he continues, unperturbed, “your guardians have been called. They should be here soon, but in the meantime, I have a few questions for you while everything’s fresh in your mind, if that’s quite alright?” He pats his pockets and brings out a notepad and pen.
“Sure.” Kyoka worries at the edge of the blanket with her fingers. “But, um,” she begins, “can I ask you something first?”
“Of course.”
“Have you seen a man with blond hair and a mask…” Kyoka trails off, brow furrowing in thought. “Wearing a black jacket?”
Tsukauchi hums. “No, not that I remember, although later I can go through the records and let you know?”
Kyoka’s shoulders slum. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Do you have any idea why someone would want to kidnap you?”
Kyoka shakes her head and says, “No.”
Tsukauchi hms and scribbles something down, then rummages around in his pockets again and pulls out a few photos. “Okay. Do you recognize anybody or anything here?” He passes the photos to Kyoka.
She scans them briefly. They’re of people drinking, smoking, all looking like they’d been taken from far away. Most wear some sort of mask, be it a medical one or a masquerade one or an animal one. There aren’t just people, though—there’s a stylized symbol of a plague doctor mask, a case of what looks like little red thumbtacks, a half-full syringe, and a fuzzy tattoo of a snake eating its own tail.
Kyoka shakes her head for the nth time that night. “No, I don’t recognize anything. I’m sorry.”
“No, no, don’t worry.” Tsukauchi pats her arm and takes the photos back. “It was a long shot, anyways. What do you remember about your kidnapping?”
Kyoka drops her head. “I, um…”
“We can stop if it makes you uncomfortable,” Tsukauchi hurries to say.
“No, I’m fine. So I was at the arcade, right, and had to go to the bathroom. So I went into a stall and… fainted. I got sort of dizzy and I tripped over nothing.”
Tsukauchi notes something down. “Did you feel drunken?”
Kyoka hunches over herself. “I guess you could call it that.”
Tsukauchi opens his mouth and closes it. A hand goes up to his ear where a small black earbud is nestled. “Well,” the man says, looking somewhere over his shoulder, “it looks like your parents are here, now. I’ll just speak with them for a moment and then you can go right on home. We may need to call you back into the station in a few days, okay?”
“Wait.”
Tsukauchi waits.
“Who—saved me?”
“Do you mean Eraserhead? He’s an underground hero.”
Kyoka shakes her head. “No, there was someone before him. He—” Her breath catches on her words. Killed someone, I think.
“He?”
“Killed someone.” She swallows, remembering the confusion-helplessness-fear as someone she couldn’t see came into the room, the dull thunk of a blade piercing skin, the low and horse voice at her ear. “And he just—left me.”
Tsukauchi smiles, tight and unsure. “We’ll have more details later,” he says diplomatically, then shakes his head slightly. “I’m sorry, Jirou-san. I have to go, but I’ll give my number to your parents, okay?” Without waiting for an answer he hurries away, steps quick and urgent.
He reemerges a minute later from the haze of lights with her parents in tow. He and her mother come to a stop just out of earshot, talking in hushed tones, while her father makes a beeline straight to her and sweeps her up in a hug.
“I was so worried, Kyo-chan. You worried me so much! You…”
Kyoka drops her head onto his shoulder and closes her eyes. “I’m tired, dad,” she whispers into the rough fabric of his coat.
“Alright, Kyo-chan. Let’s go home.”
The real shock sets in the next afternoon. It’s a schoolday, but she’s being allowed a few days off to recover. It happens when she finally unlocks her phone and sees a few texts from Mitoku, all dated from yesterday.
Where are you and the bathroom is empty and then, hours later, I reported you missing to the police.
She shoots him a text to let him know she’s alright and the next moment she’s crumpling to the ground, knocking a photo off a shelf nearby, sobs heaving out of her chest as she realizes-remembers-regrets. Somebody died. Right next to her. And she could have died herself and Mitoku was alone and she worried him and she’s so fucking irresponsible, and, and—
Her parents come bursting into the room. Her father tucks her into his arms and presses his lips to her hair, rocking back and forth like she’s a child again.
That night, Kyoka listens to their whispered argument. Pretends not to notice anything wrong as she wanders into the kitchen, even as they go quiet right when she steps foot into the room.
“Kyo-chan,” her father says, breaking away to cup her cheek in his calloused hand, “we’re thinking about signing you up for therapy. It couldn’t have been easy.” He shoots a meaningful glance at her mother, whose lips are pursed in disapproval.
Kyoka thinks about it. Remembers the man whispering in her ear, the sound of metal meeting flesh, blood gurgling. “Okay,” Kyoka says. It’s settled.
In the morning, she’s driven to an office building and takes the elevator to the second floor. She’s greeted with a reception area. The floors are shiny, unscuffed, and the plain walls still smell faintly of fresh paint. The computers behind the counter are one of the newest versions, and there’s an untouched playset for kids tucked away in the corner.
The receptionist catches her staring and informs her, blithely, that they’ve just gone through renovations. Kyoka looks away. She doesn’t much like the curl of their lip and the way their nose is wrinkled, as if disgusted.
Hardly a minute later, someone comes out in a pretentious lab coat and glasses. His hair is buzzed short and brown, and his smile is wobbly, like he’s forgotten how to. He introduces himself as Serapisuto Serapisuto with an awkward wink and a comment to call him just Serapisuto, please as he leads them into an office and shuts the door. Her parents sit by her, opposite him, and they all talk about meaningless things. After fifteen minutes her parents exit, leaving her alone with him.
“Hello,” he says, adjusting his glasses.
“Hello.” Kyoka spares a glance at the plush carpeting, the abstract paintings hung on the walls, the comfortable seating. All in all, it’s very… plain. No personal touches whatsoever. The paintings look like something you’d see in a hotel hallway.
“How are you?”
Kyoka blinks. “Fine, I guess.”
Serapisuto scrunches his nose up. “Sorry, shouldn’t have led with such a vague question. Uh, see any good movies lately?”
“Not really. I don’t watch many movies.”
“I saw this good one. It was a remake of Princess and the Frog. Do you like fairy tales?”
“Sometimes.”
“What’s your favorite?”
She has to take a moment to think. “Beauty and the Beast,” she decides.
They chat about movies and fairy tales for a few minutes longer, and then that slides into discussion on folktales and myths, and then half hour flies by when Kyoka’s not looking.
“I thought this would be different,” Kyoka musters up the courage to say. “Therapy.”
Serapisuto cocks his head and chuckles a bit. “As your therapist, our relationship is the same as any other. We’re not going to get into your deepest darkest secrets with a stranger, yanno?” A hint of an accent slips out with his last word, but Kyoka can’t place it.
“I… that makes sense.”
He checks his watch. “It looks like our preliminary session is done. I’ll see you next Tuesday after school, alright? Be there or be square,” he says, tacking on a bit of English at the end.
Kyoka takes the elevator down. She muses upon the meeting; his odd mannerisms, his seeming lack of experience. It’s almost… suspicion. She didn’t need to fill out any forms? He didn’t mention anything about preliminary meetings, or what she wanted to talk about, or why she was there in the first place?
All intrusive thoughts vanish, however, when she’s ambushed in the parking lot by her parents. They grill her on the session all the way home, and she shuts herself in her room—away from their prying eyes—as soon as she can.
After a while of doing nothing, she tries to call the number the detective gave to her parents. She has questions. Who died. Who killed him. Can I say thank you to the hero that saved me. Why was I taken. But the detective never answers.
He does call back, but she’s busy and misses it. The voicemail he leaves is crackly, staticky, tired. He says something about being overwhelmed right now from all the people they have to detain and set up trials for and etcetera. Kyoka doesn’t call after that, feeling bad about bothering him with trivial things.
Kyoka wastes away the few hours left in the day doing nothing on her phone. In fact, it’s one in the morning and she’s still scrolling at her phone, mindlessly consuming content when she drops her phone onto her face with a start. She picks it up, nose smarting, and scrolls back up. There was a train of thought she had, sparked by something on her feed, and if only she could remember…
An ad for a grey scarf.
Rapidly, she blinks away the memories that pulse against her skull. Her lips pinch together and googles Eraserhead, the hero she’d never before heard of but saved her.
The first result that comes up is a pencil. She parses through results until she sees a link to a forum dedicated to underground heroes. Curious, she clicks on it. It prods at her to make an account, so she does, putting her username as @musiclover and then adding a few random numbers after when it says the user is taken. She takes a few minutes to figure out how to work the site; it seems there are posts in the forum dedicated to different underground heroes. Within the posts, you can comment or open up a thread for discussion under a comment. There’s a private chat function separate to them, and the webpage boasts hundreds if not thousands of separate forums.
“This is just a ripoff of Reddit,” she says into the darkness.
Sighing, she goes to the Eraserhead post. There’s a collection of blurry photos and accounts from people who’d been saved by him. Some scathing jabs, probably people who he’d arrested. A few people call him a demon. There’s two usernames that pop up the most frequently; someone named @ilovecats69 and @chamole. They argue with each other on Eraserhead. Anything Eraserhead, really. About what his favorite food is under a shaky photo of him with a coffee, about if he’s right-handed or left-handed, if he’s a cat person or a dog one. Sometimes it’s lighthearted bantering, sometimes it’s full-blown all-caps screaming, but they never seem to bear any true ill-will towards each other, sometimes even jokingly flirting when the situation permits.
There’s also a comment that’s just a link. Curious, Kyoka clicks on it, then frantically backtracks when she realizes maybe clicking a random link isn’t the best way to go about anything, really. Still, she’s too slow, and the tab loads into an interactive map. Scattered across it in various prefects but seemingly centered mostly on Mufastsu are dots. They’re bright green and when she taps them, photos pop up.
Locations of Eraserhead sightings. Some locations don’t have any photos, just a text description of what happened or links to comments.
Kyoka keeps the tab open but goes back to the post, backreading old comment threads and dusty conversations. She falls asleep with her phone clutched tight in her hand.
The afternoon before she’s supposed to return to school, her mother bundles her up into the car and takes her to the police station. “They have a few questions to ask you, Kyo-chan. I’ll be right there in the room with you.” Her mother grips the steering wheel tighter as she pulls into the parking lot. “Don’t worry, okay?”
Kyoka squeezes her eyes shut tightly. “Okay, mom.”
They enter the precinct together, Kyoka slightly ahead of her mother. A man with the head of a cat at the front desk looks up when they come in and flashes a smile full of teeth. Or… a cat with the body of a man.
“You must be the Jirous. You two can just wait over there.”
Kyoka follows his finger—paw?—to where he’s pointing; a corner with a few plastic chairs and a water tank with paper cups stacked up beside it. They go over, but have hardly sat down before someone says their name.
“Jirou-san?” Both her and her mother look up. The man with a beige trench coat stands in front of them, clipboard tucked into his arm and coffee in hand. Dark circles carve themselves under his eyes. His name started with a T sound, a T sound…
“Please follow me,” Toshihiro says, offering a tired smile.
Kyoka dutifully gets to her feet and trails after him. They follow Tsuna through a busy precinct down a hallway to a door, where he opens it and lets them go in first. Kyoka takes a seat, her mother sits beside her, and Takato opposite. Behind him is a large mirror; Kyoka’s seen enough shows to know it’s double-sided.
“So,” Takehiko begins, “this isn’t an interrogation. I’ll just be asking a few questions, and if you don’t want to answer any just let me know. Is it alright if the conversation is recorded for the case?”
“Sure,” Kyoka replies. Her mother wrinkles her nose, but doesn’t say anything.
Takuma reaches over to a device on the end of the table that looks like an old radio, flicking a switch on the top. He recites the date, the time, a string of letters and numbers, and then the occupants of the room. “Detective Tsukauchi Naomasa speaking.”
Tsukauchi! That was his name.
“What do you remember about the kidnapping?” Tsukauchi asks, blunt and to the point.
Kyoka grips the fabric of her pants and forcibly relaxes her shoulders. “I remember…”
They leave the station as it’s just getting dark and drive home in silence, her mother’s hands white-knuckled on the wheel. Halfway through the trip the car shudders. Something splutters in the engine. Her mother jerks the wheel to the side so the leftover momentum carries them off the main road, even as the car whines and creaks.
And they’re stuck. Her mother swears and hits the wheel. A car whizzes by.
“What happened?” Kyoka asks.
“I don’t know,” her mother says, opening the door and sliding out with a frustrated sigh. Kyoka follows suit, walking around the car to join her mother at the front. Smoke leaks from the car’s engine, petrol clogging the air.
“Should we call dad?”
“Quiet, Kyoka,” she snaps. “Give me one second of silence, would you?”
Something tightens in Kyoka’s chest, but she nods mutely and steps back a pace. Their relationship got better after she ran away; her mother seemed to come to a realization, but some things will never change.
Her mother lifts the hood of the car, rolling up her sleeves as she begins to poke and prod. Kyoka rubs at the goosebumps on her arms and categorizes her surroundings to amuse herself, counting the number of windows and doors and weapons with the least amount of looks she can. She uses the windshield to survey the area behind her in order to be more discreet and thinks, absently, that Mitoku would be proud of her.
“Excuse me,” calls an unfamiliar voice, “do you need help?” Footsteps echo as someone emerges from a side road, slicked-back red hair at odds to his threadbare jacket. His sneakers are grey, possibly once white, and a socked toe pokes out from a hole.
Her mother straightens up. The tips of her fingers are stained with grease. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Gōtō,” the man says, flashing gold-capped teeth in a smile. He raises a hand. Shadows merge together in his palm, solidifying into a gun that he cocks, calmly, and aims it at her mother. “You look like you could spare a few coins for a starving man. Come on, empty those pockets.”
Kyoka’s heart jumps, jitters in her chest, breathing quickening. Vision tunnels.
Weapons: broken bottle by the curb, large shard of glass atop the sidewalk, rusty screwdriver on the grate of a gutter, empty syringe by her foot, broken pipe sticking out of the side street’s entrance. Exits: side alley, main street, broken window in the storefront behind her, ajar window in the apartment to her left. People: her mother, her, and the man. Nobody else.
She categorizes. Determines the best course of action. Still her feet won’t move, frozen in place as her mother slowly walks to the car door to retrieve her purse. The man smiles, still, gold-capped teeth glinting as the barrel of the gun swivels towards Kyoka.
“No funny moves, miss, or…” He mimics an explosion with his free hand.
Her mother grabs the purse and rummages through it with shaking hands. All Kyoka can think about is the black streaks of grease her mother is getting everywhere, on the car door, staining the purse’s expensive leather, smearing on her nice blouse.
Kyoka takes a shuffling step forward, willing her legs to move. The man’s finger presses on the trigger.
“Don’t move.”
Categorize. Determine the best course of action. Action. Action.
Her legs won’t move. Move. MOVE!
What a shit hero she’d make.
The gun dissolves into nothingness, shadows dispersing as the man slumps forward. His collapse is almost anticlimactic, soundless until his head slams sickeningly against the ground. Out of the darkness emerges someone in loosely fit black clothes, his white mask with red markings almost glowing in the moon’s light. He looms over Kyoka despite the distance.
The man on the ground twitches. Kyoka’s eyes are drawn to the movement, and watches helplessly as he jabs himself in the neck with a syringe of toxic green liquid. The vigilante—that’s what he has to be—notices, too, kicking the man’s hand hard enough to send the syringe skidding across the concrete. But it’s too late. It’s empty. The man’s dissolved into shadow, darkening the air and swirling around them.
Kyoka takes a few stumbling steps back. The pavement under her feet has begun to seep black shadow, warping the world under her. Dark sky turns pitch-black, everything becoming a haze of nightmares until Kyoka can’t see anything nor feel or touch nor smell—
The world is so empty, so full, and she is falling endlessly without that jumping feeling in her stomach. Suspended in dry liquid.
Hello? she says aloud. Her hand flies up to her—no, she doesn’t have a hand, or a mouth to gasp, a throat to scream. She is melting away and without a physical form. Death has come to claim her and there is no heaven after dying, no Elyisum nor Underworld. Her consciousness is being dragged away like a slain beast, trailing blood, organs spilling out to stain the ground. It lasts an eternity and a forever and in no time at all:
Kyoka ceases to exist.