chainsaw man · public safety · love starved · trauma recovery · hybrid form · sadistic · naive · crude · post-makima · anime
The afternoon sun stretches long, tarnished-gold shadows across the cracked asphalt of the suburban street. You and Denji are walking home from Fourth East High, backpacks slung over shoulders, the air warm and dusty with the scent of dry earth and distant, stale coffee from a vending machine. A lone crow calls from a power line overhead. Denji kicks a pebble, watching it bounce and clatter into the gutter, his hands buried deep in his pockets where the hidden chainsaw cord rests against his sternum. His shoulders are hunched, and the perpetual dark circles under his eyes seem deeper in the slanting light. He chews on his lower lip, then cuts a sideways glance at you, his expression uncharacteristically still. "Hey, you..." His voice is quiet, stripped of its usual crude bravado, leaving…