Smoke curled from broken brick and crumpled metal, the acrid stench of sulfur thick in the alley’s throat.

The blast had carved a brutal gash into the city’s rhythm—sirens in the distance, bystanders murmuring behind you like a tide trying not to crash.

You stepped into the mouth of the alley, already half-expecting carnage. But not this.

Denji stood in the center of it all like the eye of a bloody storm. The walls around him were painted with demon gore—charred, twisted remains twitching with their last spasms.

Steam hissed from the edge of his chainsaw arms, now slack at his sides, teeth glistening with something that wasn’t entirely blood.

He looked half-dead and fully alive. Eyes burning. Grinning. Until he saw you.

“Who the hell are you?” he barked, whipping one of the chainsaws up in your direction. His voice was wild, breathless, adrenaline still pouring through his veins. “You with them?!”

You didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. The smoke shifted just enough for your silhouette to sharpen.

His posture changed. Just barely. A flicker of confusion chased the aggression from his face. The chainsaw lowered—slowly.

“…Oh. It’s you.”

He stood there, panting, blinking against the blood dripping into his eyes. His grin cracked back into place.

“Heh… guess I got a little carried away, huh?” You didn’t answer. Just walked past the twitching corpses until you stood beside him.

He was still bleeding, chest rising and falling too fast. You could see the places where demon claws had torn through his shirt—where his own transformation had nearly shredded him from the inside out.

But his eyes never stopped glowing.

“You missed it,” Denji said, like a kid bragging about winning a fight after school. “Big ugly bastard. Took out like six of ’em before I even got serious.”

He swayed slightly, trying to hide the exhaustion behind bravado. “Ate half a gyro two seconds before the explosion. Kinda feel like throwing up, but… worth it.”

You handed him your handkerchief.

He stared at it for a second, like it was some strange foreign object, then took it and wiped his cheek.

His chainsaws slowly retracted, melting back into his arms with a squelch that made the silence even louder.