Asa couldn't sleep.
She had been lying in bed for hours now, staring at the ceiling, watching the shadows shift as clouds passed over the moon. The clock on her nightstand read 12:47. Then 12:58. Then 1:03. Each minute crawled by like it was made of lead.
Her body was exhausted. Her muscles ached from the fight, from running, from being thrown through walls and windows and the wreckage of her own school. Her eyes were heavy. Her limbs felt like they belonged to someone else.
But sleep wouldn't come.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw things. Flesh. Blood. Tentacles. The way Yuko's body had scattered across the hallway like something that had never been human at all. The way her sword had cut through everything, through bone, through muscle, through the last shreds of the person who had called her a friend.
Friend.
The word felt wrong now. Poisoned. Like something she had no right to use.
She rolled onto her side. The pillow was damp. She didn't know if it was sweat or tears. Probably both.
These past days had been so fast. Too fast. One moment she was a normal high school girl with normal problems, bullies, bad grades, the usual loneliness of someone who didn't know how to connect. The next, she was sharing her body with a devil, killing her teacher, watching her class president turn into a monster, and burying her only friend in pieces across a school hallway.
Someone like her wasn't supposed to carry this. A seventeen-year-old girl with a dead mother, a distant memory of happiness, and a social life that consisted of eating lunch alone on the roof. She wasn't built for war. She wasn't built for death. She wasn't built for standing in the rubble of her school in her underwear, holding a sword made from her mother's uniform, watching a devil wear her face and scream about birds and stones.
And yet, all of this happened.
She pressed her palms against her eyes. The darkness behind them was red and pulsing.
Bucky. The teacher. The class president. Yuko.
The names repeated in her head like a prayer she didn't believe in.
She had been having the same dream lately.
In the dream, she was running. Her feet pounded against pavement that stretched endlessly in both directions. The sky was gray, the same gray as always, and the air smelled like rain that never came.
But the pavement wasn't empty.
It was covered in headless chicken corpses.
They lay in rows, hundreds of them, thousands maybe, their bodies still twitching, their necks cleanly severed, their feathers matted with blood. Their ties, little red ties, like the one Bucky had worn, were still looped around where their necks should have been.
Asa ran through them. Her bare feet splashed in blood. The corpses parted around her like water, like they were alive, like they were watching.
She didn't look down. She couldn't. If she looked down, she would see their faces. She would see Bucky's face. She would remember the way he had flown into her arms, the way he had called her name, the way he had been so full of hope and love and stupid chicken puns right before she crushed him into the grass.
The corridor stretched ahead of her. Endless. Dark. The chicken corpses thinned out as she ran, but the darkness grew thicker, heavier, until it was pressing against her from all sides.
Up ahead, it was too dark to venture. Not dark like nighttime, dark like absence. Like something had been erased. Like the world itself stopped existing just a few feet in front of her.
She always woke up at that part.
She always woke up gasping, drenched in sweat, her heart hammering against her ribs like it was trying to escape.
This time was no different.
Asa's eyes snapped open. The ceiling was there. The shadows were there. The clock on her nightstand read 1:11.
She lay still for a long moment. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps. Her sheets were tangled around her legs. Her hair was plastered to her forehead.
The dream was already fading, the details slipping away like water through fingers, but the feeling remained. The guilt. The fear. The certainty that she had done something unforgivable and would never be able to take it back.
She sat up slowly. Her body ached. Her head pounded. She pressed a hand to her chest, felt her heartbeat, counted the beats until they slowed to something normal.
Beside her, on the other side of the bed, Yoru was lying down.
Her eyes were closed. Her breathing was slow and even. Her face, Asa's face, but wrong somehow, was relaxed in a way it never was when she was awake.
Asa stared at her. The devil who had ruined her life. The devil who had killed her teacher. The devil who had used her hands to murder and maim and destroy.
And yet, here she was. Sleeping. Like a person. Like she needed rest, even though she was a devil and probably didn't.
'Half my brain,' Asa thought. 'She's half my brain now. Maybe she needs to sleep because I need to sleep.'
Or maybe she was just pretending. Asa couldn't tell anymore.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed. Her feet touched the cold floor. She stood, wincing at the ache in her back, and walked to the kitchen.
The apartment was dark. The windows faced the street, and the city lights filtered through the blinds, casting everything in a pale orange glow. It was quiet outside. No cars. No voices. Just the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of a train somewhere far away.
Asa turned on the faucet. Water poured into her glass. She watched it rise, watched the bubbles cling to the sides, watched the way the light caught the surface and made it shimmer.
She wasn't thinking about anything. That was the point. If she thought, she would remember. If she remembered, she would break.
She drank. The water was cold and clean and tasted like nothing. She filled the glass again. Drank again. Set it in the sink.
She was still half asleep. Her body moved on autopilot, carrying her back toward the bedroom, toward the bed, toward the darkness she had just escaped.
And then the doorbell rang.
Ding dong.
The sound sliced through the silence like a knife. Asa froze. Her hand was on the bedroom doorframe. Her heart was already racing again.
Ding dong.
It was past one in the morning. Who would be at her door at one in the morning?
She looked back toward the entryway. The door was closed. The chain was on. She had been careful about that ever since... everything.
"Huh?" The sound came out small. Stupid.
She walked toward the door. Her feet were quiet on the floor. Her hand reached for the chain, then stopped.
"Who is it?"
The voice that answered made her blood run cold.
"Hey, Asa. Sorry for showing up in the dead of the night like this."
Asa's breath caught. Her hand flew to her mouth.
"Yuko?!"
It was her voice. It was definitely her voice. The same tone, the same cadence, the same awkward friendliness that had made her seem so genuine, so real, so human.
Asa's heart leaped. A smile broke across her face, the first real smile in days. She reached for the chain, ready to throw the door open, ready to pull her friend into her arms and never let go.
"Don't open it!"
Yuko's voice was sharp. Panicked. The kind of panic that came from somewhere deep and desperate.
Asa's hand stopped. The chain was still in place. The door was still closed.
"Sorry." Yuko's voice was softer now. Ashamed. "I managed to get away... but... I've turned into a devil."
Silence.
The words hung in the air between them. Asa stared at the door. At the wood grain. At the cheap brass knob. At the chain that was suddenly the only thing keeping her safe.
"If I see you..." Yuko continued, her voice cracking, "I might try to eat you."
Asa didn't listen.
She opened the door.
The thing standing on her doorstep was Yuko. Sort of.
She was roughly the same height, roughly the same shape. She was wearing a hoodie, gray, oversized, the kind you bought when you wanted to disappear. Her face was mostly hidden by her hair, which had changed somehow, become thicker, darker, more alive.
Tentacles. They were tentacles. Mixed in with her hair, moving on their own, twitching and curling like they had minds of their own.
Her skin had a strange sheen to it, not quite human, not quite anything else.
"I told you..." Yuko's voice was barely a whisper. "Not to open it."
Asa looked at her. Really looked. At the monster standing on her doorstep. At the friend who had killed for her, who had died for her, who had somehow come back.
"Well..." Asa's voice was steadier than she felt. "Do you want to eat me?"
Yuko's face contorted. Her tentacles twitched. She made a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob.
"Aah... err... oh gosh."
"..."
"...a little bit."
"Holy crap."
"I just..." Yuko looked away. Her tentacles curled around her face like she was hiding. "I just won't look at you. Okay? I'm here to say goodbye."
Asa's chest tightened.
"I have a distant relative," Yuko continued. "Who's a Devil Hunter. I'll try going to them. There could be a way to turn me human again."
She paused. Her tentacles stilled.
"And if I get killed as a devil..." Her voice dropped. "I think I deserve it."
"..."
Asa's throat was thick. She wanted to say something. Anything. But the words wouldn't come.
"...Sorry you made that contract with the Justice Devil to save me," she finally managed.
Yuko was quiet for a moment.
"...No. That's not the truth."
"What?"
"I thought..." Yuko's voice cracked. "I thought if I turned into a devil, I could be like Chainsaw Man."
Asa stared at her.
"And then, maybe everybody would love me. Saying I did it for you was an excuse." Yuko's tentacles writhed. "I wasn't honest. Sorry."
She took a breath. The tentacles stilled again.
"I thought if I rescued you, you would become my friend. It wasn't because I genuinely wanted to help you. I just had ulterior motives."
"..."
"I only did it... because I was friendless. I'm the worst, aren't I?" She laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Killing my neighbor... and the people at school. None of it was justice."
"Yuko..."
"After I made my contract with the Justice Devil, I was hearing so many people's thoughts that they drowned out my own. I couldn't tell what was me and what was them. I still can't."
"Yuko!"
Yuko's tentacle whipped out, fast, instinctive, wrong. Asa caught it. Grappled it. Held it back.
"Huh?!"
"Gasp... koff koff!"
"Sorry..." Yuko pulled her tentacle back, cradling it like it had burned her. "I don't know what I am anymore. I'll go now."
She turned away.
"You were my first friend, so... I wanted to give you a proper goodbye. But are those thoughts really mine? I don't know anymore."
She started walking. Her bare feet made soft sounds on the concrete.
"Don't make a contract with the Justice Devil like I did, Asa. They're at our school."
She paused. Looked back.
"Well... this is goodbye-"
"Wait."
Yuko stopped.
"..."
"Just give me a minute."
Asa disappeared inside. The door swung shut. Yuko stood on the doorstep, alone in the dark, her tentacles curling and uncurling with nervous energy.
The door opened again.
Asa was holding a pair of shoes. Familiar shoes. White. The ones Yuko had lent her what felt like a lifetime ago.
"Take my shoes." Asa held them out. "You're... barefoot."
Yuko stared at the shoes.
"N-no thanks. I don't need them."
"If you don't need them, sell them." Asa's voice was firmer now. "If they won't sell, you can just throw them away."
Yuko's face crumbled. A sound escaped her, half laugh, half sob.
"...Ah ha ha. I can't believe I said something so embarrassing."
Asa smiled. A real smile. The kind that hurt.
They looked at each other. Monster and girl. Devil and human. And in that moment, none of it mattered.
They laughed.
In the middle of the night, on a quiet street, under a pale moon, they laughed until their stomachs hurt. They laughed at the absurdity of it all. At the shoes. At the tentacles. At the fact that Yuko was a devil now and Asa was possessed by War and neither of them had any idea what they were doing.
They laughed like friends.
But Asa thought of something else.
'I'm the worst. A bunch of people died. I killed my own teacher and class president. And here I am, laughing at how funny this is.'
The voice sounded like her. But it wasn't her. It was the guilt. The shame. The part of her that would never forgive herself.
Yuko took the shoes. Held them against her chest.
"Asa. I'll be back to return your shoes one day."
"You better."
Yuko turned. Walked away. Her bare feet made soft sounds on the concrete. Her tentacles swayed with each step. Then she wore the shoes.
She didn't look back.
Asa watched her go. Watched her climb onto a dumpster, then a wall, then a rooftop. Watched her disappear into the darkness.
The morning sun was rising. Pale orange light crept across the buildings, painting everything in gold and shadow.
Yuko moved across the rooftops like a hero. Like someone from a story. Like the Chainsaw Man she had wanted to become.
Birds scattered as she passed. Their wings beat against the morning air.
"If I could only read bird minds too," Yuko muttered, and kept running.
The city was waking up. Slowly. Lazily. People were still sleeping, or lying in bed if they weren't sleeping.
A certain girl with guilt issues was having a bad dream. In her dream, she replayed the traumatic events that happened at her school, and how her friends died to that Devil.
A certain girl who had just watched her friend go away wasn't sleeping at all. She stood by her window, watching the sunrise, thinking about shoes and tentacles and the sound of laughter in the middle of the night.
A certain boy who only thought about his dream was sleeping like a rock, surrounded by dogs. His mouth was open. He was drooling on a pillow that smelled like cheap laundry detergent. In his dream, he was eating ramen and a pretty girl was watching.
A certain boy with problems about himself was sleeping, while an eye on his cheek watched around the room, vigilant and tired. The eye blinked once, twice, then closed. Even devils needed rest sometimes.
And a certain girl with tentacles laid on the floor.
Wait.
Wasn't she just talking a few moments ago?
Wasn't she just running across rooftops, scattering birds, holding a pair of white shoes against her chest?
Yes.
But now she was on the floor. A bodyless head. A head on the floor, bleeding.
Her eyes were open. Her mouth was moving.
"...Chainsaw Man?"
She muttered out the words, confused, disoriented, already fading.
Above her, a certain shape was holding her headless body upside down. Blood dripped from the neck. Dripped onto the floor. Dripped onto the head that had once belonged to Yuko.
The shape didn't speak.
The shape didn't need to.
The morning sun kept rising.
The city kept waking.
And somewhere in the distance, a pair of white shoes fell from a rooftop and landed in an empty street, where no one would find them for a very long time.