Outskirts of Tokyo, Japan — 1997
—Dog and Chainsaw—
It was raining.
He was small. Smaller than he should have been for his age, standing in front of a grave with soaked clothes and no umbrella.
A car idled behind him. The man with glasses sat inside, staring at the headstone with the expression of someone tallying a number.
"Damn bastard hung himself without making this month's payment." The engine rumbled. "Kid. I don't care if you beg or whore yourself out. Have 700,000 yen ready by tomorrow. Or you'll join him."
The car pulled away.
Denji stood there and watched it go until the tail lights disappeared into the grey.
Mom's gone. Dad too. And now this debt.
Everything's ruined.
A sound came from behind a nearby tree. He turned.
A small creature peered out at him — roughly dog-shaped, a chainsaw blade jutting from its head, eyes wide and cautious.
"A devil," Denji said flatly.
He looked at it for a long moment. Then he closed his eyes.
What's the point. I'm going to die anyway.
"If you're going to kill me," he said, "get it over with."
He waited.
Nothing happened.
He opened his eyes.
The devil was on the ground at his feet, bleeding quietly into the wet soil. Wounds covered its small body — deep ones. It looked up at him.
Denji stared at it.
You're dying too.
Something moved in his chest that he didn't have a name for.
"Bite me," he said, crouching down and extending his arm. "I heard that if a devil drinks blood its wounds heal. So bite me — if you don't want to die."
The devil hesitated.
Then it bit down.
Denji watched the wounds slowly close.
"My blood doesn't come free," he said quietly. "This is a contract. I saved you — so you save me."
The next day, a boy appeared at the yakuza's door with a dead devil at his feet.
"Will you hire me as a devil hunter, sir?"
The outskirts of Tokyo smelled like wet concrete and something rotting underneath it. Hills and crumbling houses — that was all there had ever been out here.
A boy walked the empty streets alone, hands shoved into his pockets, one eye covered by a worn eyepatch.
Cutting trees gets me around 60,000 yen a month, he thought. The kidney I sold — 1,200,000. My right eye — 300,000. One of my nuts...how much did that even go for? Doubt it was even 100,000.
He sighed.
That brings the debt down to...38,040,000 yen.
"Woof."
He glanced down at the small creature trotting beside him — orange, roughly dog-shaped, a chainsaw blade jutting from its head.
"Yeah Pochita," the boy said. "Let's go killing."
He reached down and pulled the cord on its tail.
BDROOOOM.
"One devil," he muttered, crouching behind a cracked wall, "nets me around 300,000."
He peered around the edge. The thing ahead was wrong — a body like a large swollen tomato, eyes scattered across it with no logic, hands growing where feet should have been.
The devil's eyes locked onto him the moment he stepped out from behind the wall.
It charged. The hand-legs drove it forward faster than anything with that many limbs had any right to move. The boy charged back.
He swung Pochita hard and low, shearing off one of the hand-legs clean. Blood sprayed across his face, thick and hot, catching his left eye and blinding him for half a second.
Crap.
"Woof!"
The warning came just in time. He threw himself into a roll as the devil lunged from behind, already adjusted to the missing limb — it had plenty more. The ground scraped against his palms and knees, tearing through fabric and skin.
He straightened up, blood still stinging his eye.
"Alright you bastard," he breathed. "Let's finish this."
He pulled his arm back and hurled Pochita directly into one of the devil's eyes.
SCREECH.
He jumped, grabbed the handle mid-air, and wrenched Pochita free — the eye came with it, dangling grotesquely. The devil reeled. The boy didn't give it a second.
He drove Pochita downward into the thing's body with everything he had.
Its guts split open. Its remaining eyes burst one by one like rotten fruit.
Then it was still.
A few moments later footsteps approached from ahead — human ones, thankfully.
The man was familiar. Glasses, a thick beard, a trench coat and hat that had seen better days. He looked up at the boy standing atop the devil's ruined body with the quiet expression of someone who had seen far worse.
"Tomato devil, sir," the boy reported. "It'll come back from the seeds. You should burn it."
"Good job, Denji." The man surveyed the corpse with mild approval. "This'll fetch a decent sum on the black market. Your reward is 400,000 yen."
Denji jumped down from the body and grinned.
"Wow, thanks —"
"Which comes to 170,000 after subtracting your debt and interest."
The grin froze.
"Then after the finder's fee and so forth —"
The man was already walking away before he finished the sentence, leaving Denji standing alone in the street with Pochita and a thin envelope of cash.
Denji stared at it.
"Only 70,000 left for me," he muttered.
He started walking. Pochita trotted alongside him, tail swaying.
Water bill. The debts to the others. The math isn't hard.
"That's funny," Denji said quietly. "I'm already down to 1,800 yen."
Nothing at home to eat. That 1,800 had to last the rest of the month.
He looked down at Pochita, who seemed completely unbothered — tail still wagging, eyes bright. Something about that made the tightness in Denji's chest loosen just slightly.
"Okay Pochita," he said. "Our meal today is a single slice of bread."
Beside them, a car rolled slowly along the road, matching their pace.
The man with glasses sat in the back seat. Behind the wheel was a blonde man with a cigarette hanging from his lip, who glanced out the window at Denji with mild curiosity.
"Why are we employing some kid as a devil hunter?"
The man in the back seat lifted his head.
"We're making him pay back a debt." A small smile crept onto his face. "Well — more accurately, his worthless dead father's debt."
The blonde man cracked his knuckles against the steering wheel.
"You sure a kid with a pet devil is fit for this kind of work?"
"No devil hunter worth their salt would be selling devil corpses to the yakuza, now would they?" the man with glasses replied. "Besides — what's neat about Denji is that he always does what he's told."
The blonde man took a long drag of his cigarette. Something seemed to cross his mind.
"You hear anything about that Public Safety agent? Word is someone's been sniffing around this part of the city."
The man with glasses didn't look up.
"Rumours. Nothing worth worrying about."
The blonde man shrugged and turned back to the window.
"Hey doggy." He held the cigarette out. "I'll give you a hundred yen if you eat this."
Denji's eyes lit up.
"You mean it, sir?"
He took the cigarette, held it over his mouth for half a second, and swallowed it whole.
The blonde man burst out laughing. He fished out the coins and dropped them into Denji's hand.
"We'll call you when there's another devil." The car began to pull away. "And remember — run off and you're pig slop."
Denji watched the car disappear down the road.
Bleh.
He stuck out his tongue. The cigarette was still there. He peeled it off and flicked it aside, then crouched down and scratched Pochita under the chin.
"Now we can eat for the next three days!"
Pochita wagged his tail.
Denji stretched his arms above his head as they wandered home, Pochita trotting at his heels.
By the time the shack came into view, it had started to rain.
It wasn't much of a home. It had walls and a roof and not a great deal else. Denji shifted the plastic bag to one arm and pushed the door open, letting Pochita squeeze through first.
Inside, Pochita shook himself dry with great enthusiasm. Denji did the same, running a hand through his damp hair before slumping against the wall and sliding down to the floor.
He reached into the bag and pulled out a single slice of bread.
Pochita climbed into his lap immediately, warm and solid, and settled there.
Denji took a bite.
"You know," he said, chewing, "I heard something recently. Apparently it's normal to eat bread with jam on it." He considered this. "Crazy, right."
"Woof."
The rain tapped against the roof.
"Though..." Denji took another bite. "Normal feels like a pipe dream for us anyway. At this rate I'll be paying off the debt until I die."
Pochita's ears drooped slightly.
"And I'll probably never get to go out with a girl either." He stared at the ceiling. "Can't exactly ask anyone back here. And I don't even have money for a date."
"Whine."
Denji looked down at him. Then he pulled Pochita a little closer.
"If dreams ever do come true," he said quietly, "I want to hug a girl before I die."
The rain kept falling.
Denji leaned his head back against the wall, staring at the ceiling.
"When I fall asleep tonight," he said, "I want my dream to be me and you eating jam on bread. I'll flirt with a girl and stuff. Then we'll play video games together — I heard those are cool." A small smile crossed his face. "And then I'll fall asleep in her arms."
He glanced down at Pochita.
"Good dream, right?"
"WOOF!!"
"B— bleugh—"
Denji lurched forward and spat blood onto the floor.
"Waff!?"
Three hard knocks at the door.
Denji wiped his mouth slowly.
"My mom," he said quietly, mostly to Pochita. "They said she died of a heart condition. She was coughing up blood too."
The knocking came again.
"Oy, Denji! Devil job. Let's go."
He stared at the door for a long moment.
I wish they'd at least let me dream.
The facility was large and abandoned looking, the kind of place that swallowed sound. Denji gripped Pochita and stepped inside, scanning the darkness.
"A devil showed up here, sir?" He glanced around. "I can't even see it. Maybe it's hiding somewhere."
The old man didn't move.
"Denji, boy." His voice was almost warm. "We're very grateful for your work."
"Uh, yes sir —"
"You're like a loyal dog. Work hard for cheap treats just like one too."
"...Uh-huh."
"Want to know something funny?" The old man paused. "I hate dogs." His voice dropped. "Can't stand the smell."
A blade drove through Denji and Pochita from behind.