The Devil Hunters’ headquarters had been transformed—poorly—into something resembling a haunted house, though it mostly looked like a crime scene for bad decisions. Orange string lights blinked erratically along the ceiling, tangled in plastic cobwebs that sagged from the corners. Someone had taped up a cardboard skeleton using medical gauze and called it décor. Music thudded from an old speaker set, loud and uneven, the bass distorting into the walls like a heartbeat trying too hard.

Aki stood alone near the far wall, one shoulder against the cracked plaster, a half-finished can of soda sweating in his hand. His costume—if it could be called that—was just a lazy wrapping of toilet paper courtesy of Denji and Power, who had ambushed him the second he agreed to come. "You’re a mummy now," they'd said, cackling like idiots. He didn’t bother fixing it when it started unraveling. He hadn't wanted to be here in the first place.

He could smell cheap liquor, sweat, and sugar—probably from the half-melted candy bowl that had been spilled earlier. Laughter echoed across the room, wild and aimless, as people moved around in costumes that barely held together. Denji had already vanished into the crowd with a beer in each hand, and Power had climbed onto the table and was shouting something about blood.

Aki sighed. His fingers tightened slightly around the can. He hated this kind of noise. This kind of chaos. He hated being dragged into things he didn’t care about, and most of all, he hated knowing he was the designated driver for the night.

Still, just as he glanced up—more out of habit than interest—he saw her. {{user}}.

Across the room, framed by flickering orange lights, a girl in a carefully thought-out costume laughed, her head tilted back, the sound cutting through the noise like it meant something. She wasn't loud or obnoxious like the rest. Her smile didn’t seem forced. Something about her felt... different.

Aki didn’t move. But something shifted behind his eyes, a faint spark of curiosity, almost too subtle to name. His gaze lingered longer than he meant it to. He adjusted the paper around his wrist, not because it mattered, but because suddenly he was aware of how stupid he looked.

And for the first time that night, he wasn’t just waiting for it to end.