Chapter Text
It’s 5:47 p.m.
At 5:51, the train will arrive and open its doors. At 5:53, it’ll leave for a street a couple blocks away from your neighborhood.
You shift your weight onto one foot and smooth out your perfectly appropriate, business-professional skirt with your hands. Today’s meeting would have been devastating if you hadn’t already heard it so many times. Budget cuts again. Maybe you should be nervous, but you’re all too familiar with this song and dance. You’ll just have to spend the next few weeks busting your ass and kissing someone else’s, and you’ll be in the clear. You start to groan just thinking about it.
Whatever. It doesn’t matter. You’ll forget about it by the time you pour your first drink at 6:14 tonight, and you’ll forget about tomorrow morning’s meeting by tomorrow night, too. That’s how the timetable works in the fog that’s kept you in its clutches for the last year. Every action, every day, like clockwork. You’re not sure what it’ll take to shake you out of it.
So you’re more than a little surprised when something knocks your clock out of time right as you’re about to step onto the train. A man with dark hair, clearly in a hurry, pushes past you without so much as an “Excuse me” as he nearly shoves you to the ground.
Ah. That might do it.
Your head whips around in a frenzied fury to find that he’s already made some considerable distance. Part of your brain is telling you to just forget about it. Take it out on those drinks tonight.
But something stronger, louder, and far more convincing is telling you not to let it go. Chase after him, it commands. Grab him and yell at him—or thank him—for screwing up your schedule.
“Hey,” you call after him. He doesn’t turn around. “Hey!”
Maybe he didn’t hear you. But he hasn’t gotten that far yet, and several people much farther away than him turned to face you when you called out. So it’s a lot more likely that he’s actively ignoring you instead.
Yeah. That’ll do it.
You glance at the train for a fraction of a second before your legs carry you in the same direction the man is running. And your rage carries you at a much faster speed than you ever thought was possible in these stupid heels. The hair you arranged in a neat bun this morning almost instantly loosens and falls apart.
You’re actually starting to gain on him, but it’s no simple task. He’s barreling through the station crowd with a level of courtesy similar to what he showed you, which only fuels your anger, pushing you to sprint faster and faster toward him.
But your pace slows when you realize your lungs are on fire. And then a bit of embarrassment creeps through.
What are you doing? What’s your plan? What are you even going to say to him if you catch him?
…Who cares? the newly rabid part of your brain argues. You’re losing him. Catch him before he gets away.
And then some other part of you entirely, a part that must have never communicated with your brain in your life, directs you to pull one heel off of your foot. You stretch your arm back as far as it will go, take a deep breath, and let it fly.
It pelts him right in the back of the head.
“What the hell?!” he barks, spinning around, his head whipping in every direction to find who just threw a fucking shoe at him. When he spots you panting and hobbling toward him, he locks onto you with a terrifyingly calm fury. As you slowly close the distance between the two of you, you realize just how intimidatingly tall he is, too. He’s already towering over you.
You don’t stop.
“You,” you seethe when you finally make it to him. You reach down to grab your shoe, but you never break your gaze on him. He, however, has already started ignoring you again, his head snapping left and right, his attention focused on something or someone else.
With courage you didn’t know you had, you place a firm hand on his shoulder and force him to turn and face you. When he finally regards you, a mixture of surprise and disdain adorning his face, you get a better look at his features.
The gauges in each of his ears complement his black hair, long and smooth, half of it pulled up in a loose bun. His eyes are serene and, to your irritation, just as symmetrical as everything else on his face.
…He is infuriatingly attractive.
“What is wrong with you?” you snarl. “Do you always run around the train station like this? Or do you just get off on trying to push women to the ground? Who do you think you—“
“Hey, thanks!” a cheerful voice calls out from a short distance. “Great throw.”
You’re not exactly sure what direction that came from, but it doesn't take too long to find the source: a man who appears to be just as tall as the one you were getting ready to verbally assault, with a mess of snow-white hair and striking blue eyes that pierce you from behind the sunglasses he’s wearing. Underground. For some reason.
Wow. If the first guy was infuriatingly attractive, this one is…confusingly beautiful.
“Shit,” the man next to you spits. You look up at him to find he’s already glaring back at you. He jumps behind you and hooks his right arm around your waist, yanking you back against him as he traps your neck in the crook of his left elbow.
“Ow, hey—“ you choke out, but he cuts you off.
“Do you want to live?” he whispers in your ear. You nod as fervently as you can against his hold.
“Y-yes,” you answer timidly, already starting to shake, your courage from just a minute ago all but vanished.
“Then I don’t want to hear a fucking word out of you."
The man standing across from you rolls his eyes, but other than that, he doesn’t seem too bothered.
“C’mon, Suguru. This is pathetic,” he sighs.
“Look, even you’re not jumping to save this thing,” the man holding you in his grasp points out.
This thing? Is he referring to you?
“And do you think a beast like this would risk anything to save you?” he continues.
Your brows furrow with a mixture of anger and confusion. A beast like this?
“Who cares? It’s not a conditional thing,” the man with the sunglasses shoots back. He glances at you before locking eyes with the man behind you again. “We help people. That’s all there is to it.”
“I agree,” the man holding you—Suguru? Was that his name?—says in an even tone.
“But this?” His arm snakes itself a little more tightly around your neck. “This isn’t a person. This is an animal, just like everyone else here.”
Your eyes are rolling before you know it. Oh. So he's just some pompous, modern pseudo-scholar. Whatever new and reckless part of you that ordered you to follow him in the first place rises again, and you speak up before he breaks out some speech about sheeple.
“Wow. Profound. How profound and edgy and brave you are,” you taunt. “It must be rough knowing you're the only unique person in this world. Tell me, do you ever get tired winning arguments on YouTube all day?”
The white-haired man snorts with delight. You can only assume the guy behind you isn't amused, but he confirms it when his hold on you morphs into an excruciating vice grip before he spins you around to face the tracks. Some onlookers gasp and speak to each other in hushed, panicked whispers, but the other man continues speaking exactly the same way he has been since he got here. It’s a little irritating, honestly.
“Don’t even try,” he tuts. “It’s pointless.”
But this Suguru guy doesn’t appear to be listening to him. He gives you a sharp, sudden push toward the tracks, but he pulls you back before the scream even leaves your lungs.
"Damn it, Suguru, not with all these people around!" the man in the sunglasses shouts. You think. His body language says he's shouting, at least. But it's hard to hear much over the frantic thump of your heart. Your vision, closed in and blurred at the edges, only barely registers the crowd growing between you and him.
And then, so much louder and more clearly than anything else, another voice speaks to you. Something frightening and enticing and repulsive and beautiful.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?”
Your eyes dart in every direction they can in your restricted hold. Who said that just now? The voice was close, almost right in your ear, but it certainly didn’t come from the man behind you. He’s still in a fierce back-and-forth with that other guy.
“…Huh?” you finally say in a low, hushed voice. To your surprise, it answers back immediately.
“You want to live, don’t you?”
You tremble a little more against the man’s iron grip.
“Of course I do,” you hiss under your breath. “Who are you? Where are you?”
For an agonizing few seconds, you don’t hear anything. It’s only when you start tuning back into the heated conversation between the two men that the voice speaks up again.
“I’m in your head,” it hums. You blink a few times.
“...I’ve finally lost it, haven’t I?” you grumble to yourself.
“Who knows?” the intoxicating voice answers. “Why don’t we find out?”
The man’s grasp on you tightens. He pushes you a couple inches closer to the tracks. It’s a slow, deliberate walk, like he really means it this time.
“How?!” you answer in a panic, a sharp pain radiating through your chest as your heart pounds right against it. The man nudges you a little bit farther.
“I can help you,” it says coolly. “But you have to promise you’ll help me, too.”
“What?” you gripe. “Come on, that’s so shady. What does that even mean?”
“I help you, and you help me,” the voice repeats. “Take it or leave it. Do we have a deal?”
“Hold on!” the white-haired man, still over twenty feet away, calls out to you. “I’ve got you!”
You stare at him hopelessly. How? How could he possibly do anything from all the way over there?
You’re paralyzed. You don’t know what to do. But a few seconds later, you hear something that makes your decision for you.
The next train is coming. The ground rumbles beneath you, and you get a far closer look at its headlights than you ever cared to see when the man shoves you with an earnest urgency to the edge of the platform.
Your chest seizes up in stark contrast to the heart beating furiously just below. You’re going to die. Holy shit, you’re going to die.
You squeeze your eyes shut in a desperate bid for a miracle.
“Fine! Deal! Help me!”
“Finally,” the velvet voice croons.
Your eyes snap open when you realize that it didn’t come from inside your head this time, but a few feet away. Your jaw drops.
What stands before you is just as ghastly as it is enchanting.
It’s…pretty much shaped like a human. Bipedal, with two arms and two legs, but each of its limbs is unsettlingly just a bit too long. Every part of its body, including its shaggy hair, is a dark gray. Everything except its two brilliantly green eyes, large and beautiful, which glitter like emeralds every time it blinks curiously at you. And that grin, admittedly, wide and full of pearly fangs, glitters just as bright.
But its most striking feature is the apparently never ending stream of what looks like a sickening smog that surrounds it, obscuring its eyes every few seconds and dissipating into the air around it. Passersby who either haven’t noticed you or have chosen not to notice you hack and cough as they walk by it, but they don’t seem to actually see it.
In fact, it doesn't appear they've noticed any of the new little creatures that have popped into your vision. You find one thing clinging to the ceiling. Small and gray and shaped like a cat with too many teeth and too many legs. To your left, a businessman walking as quickly as his stiff leg will let him is unwittingly playing host to a little slug-like creature gnawing on his ankles. You stare at it all with a slack jaw while the world around you carries on.
The two peculiar men who have been arguing with each other until now, however, absolutely see it all. But they're solely focused on the...person? you made your deal with.
But the gray beast on the ceiling suddenly drops, falls to the concrete floor with a wet thud, scrambles upright...and runs. It disappears into a crack between the tiles with startling speed. The ankle biter follows suit. One flees from under a bench, another hops from the train, and within seconds, every little monster has cleared the area. Still, the two men keep their gazes fixed on your new friend, despite the obvious and unsettling shift to a strange sort of emptiness in the station.
For some reason you can't place, you feel more comfortable asking the seven-foot-tall smoking abomination staring you down instead of either of the perfectly human men around you exactly what that shift was.
But the moment you open your mouth, the creature tenses. It goes quiet. It bears its shark-like fangs. It locks its eyes on something across the tracks. You follow its gaze.
At first, it looked like a shadow standing on the opposite platform. It was tall. And not only tall, either. It seemed...stretched, somehow. Its limbs bent at the wrong angles, as if it learned to imitate a body without fully understanding how one worked. Its face resembled a fox's skull, elongated and pale. Behind it, several massive tails slowly unfurled. Each one dragged along the ground like heavy rope.
Too quickly, the beast lifts its head. It sees you.
And it smiles.
Sheets of ice creep down your spine, slow and deliberate, as though winter itself has brushed against your bones. And you freeze accordingly.
Such hatred in those eyes.
The thing on the platform shifts. Its body blurs for a moment, moving too quickly again, and it readies itself to jump across and straight to you.
Until—
"You."
The black-haired man, now again focused on anything but you, narrows his eyes at the monstrosity. "Finally. Finally, you fall right into my lap."
The beast's eyes widen, and it freezes in place. "Oh. Whoops!"
A different type of grin overtakes its skeletal face this time, and its tails twitch wildly.
The black-haired man exhales, then he moves. Or, rather, he doesn't move so much as he practically teleports to the other side of the platform, jumping so hard and fast that he cracks the tile when he lands.
The monster shrieks. "Ahh! Hehehehe!!"
Then it bolts.
Its body folds sideways in a way that doesn't quite seem possible, limbs stretching and snapping back into place as it tears down the platform. The man is already behind it. He launches after it without hesitation, coated in what almost look like bursting blue flames. You tilt your head. They're not burning him. If anything, they almost seem more like a source of energy to him.
The creature skids around a pillar. The man vaults the turn a half-second later. They vanish down the platform in a violent blur of motion.
You, your new creepy friend, the blue-eyed man, and the rest of the people stare at the scene in utter shock, although, of course, everyone else only watches what appears to be a raving madman racing out of the subway.
One heartbeat. Two. You release a breath.
And carefully, movement starts to build as normal in the station again.
The white-haired man, who had seemed all but desperate to capture that other guy just a few minutes ago, simply crosses his arms and sighs.
"Well. That'll keep him busy for a bit."
You glance up at him. "Aren't you going to—"
"Nah." He slips his hands into his pockets. "That chase is his business. And his business is going to keep him out of my hair for a while."
You blink. Across the tracks, the place where the man and the monster vanished has already returned to looking like a normal stretch of subway platform. Someone coughs, and a train announcement crackles overhead. A woman steps around you with a subtle but curt sigh, as if you've been standing in the way this entire time.
Slowly, slightly, your shoulders relax.
Then you hear a devious snicker behind you, and they tense right back up. You turn. The seven-foot-tall smoking abomination is exactly where you left it. Its jagged teeth stretch into a delighted grin.
"Well," it says cheerfully.
That is all the warning you get.
The shadows around your feet move. At first, you assume something's up with the lighting again. The station bulbs flicker sometimes, the place is old, and maybe you're still trying to process the cackling fox demon that just ran out of here. Yet your vision blurs for a moment. Something cold presses against your ribs, tight and unfamiliar, holding your lungs still in an icy embrace.
The lights above you flicker again.
Then the blackness spills outward. It spills across the platform like ink, sliding between the tiles, crawling up the pillars, swallowing the fluorescent light in slow, hungry waves. The black flood reaches the edge of the platform and spills downward, coating the rails in writhing shadow.
The creature laughs. "You made a deal with me," it reminds you.
You see the white-haired man's hands tense. "Wait. You—"
“We’re going to have so much fun together,” it purrs.
Then the blackness surges.
The white-haired man’s eyes grow wide behind his sunglasses.
“Wait—“ he tries to shout. But his voice falls and crumbles under a stampede of panicked screams, confused gasps, and terrified cries when an unspeakable darkness, heavy and suffocating, surges forth and claims every shred of light around you.
You see the creature's eyes squint and its fangs flash in a dreadful grin before the darkness swallows up the last of your vision.
You have to rely on your other senses to tell you what’s going on. A sharp gust of wind, terrifyingly close, rushes across your skin. That must have been the train. A few seconds later, a sickening crunch and a devastating bang assault your ears. That must have been the train…crashing.
“Oh, God,” you murmur.
Was that your fault? Did this happen because of the deal you just made with that demonic creature?
“Oh, God,” you repeat, much more loudly, much more distraught. Your feet are frozen to the ground and your palms are pressed against your forehead, your fingers gathering relentlessly tight fistfulls of hair.
“This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening. This isn’t—huh?“
Your eyes snap shut when a flood of blinding light overloads your vision. You slowly open one eye again, waiting until it’s adjusted to the light before you open the other.
You’re…outside?
“What in the flying fuck—“
“It's okay. Breathe. I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” a familiar voice says behind you. It’s not the demon you probably just sold your soul to. It’s soothing, comforting, calm.
You turn around to find the man with white hair and sunglasses smiling warmly at you. You also realize that he’s been holding you—far more gently than that other guy did, at least—but when he sees that you’ve gained your footing, he lets you go. You simply stare at him for a few seconds before you say anything.
“…What is happening?” is all you can manage to get out.
Slowly, ever so slowly, that warm smile of his morphs into a devious, childish, shit-eating grin.
"You are in so much trouble."