DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, yuta okkotsu

02, the hunt

all sins are attempts
to fill voids

(Simone Weil)

THE HIGHER UPS have thrown you a new bone. Your front canines ache for raw meat, but you drool at the sight of scraps.

Yuta okkotsu is a boy who reeks of death. A curse haunts him and threatens to crawl inside his skin like an infection; the stench of calamity that follows him is vile. You recognize the scent of vermin.

You are to bring him to the execution room where you will kill him before he kills anyone else. You are advised to hold back your urges; if you happen to kill him beyond the bounds of the execution room, the curse's cursed energy might spread and fester— a parasite longing for it's first love. What you're doing is carrying out the word of God; you are saving the damned boy from depravity, as well as the lives of his future victims.

A hell hound is let loose; may you let the thrill of the hunt consume you whole. Once you have experienced thrill you will continue to seek it in a drunken haze; the higher ups hope you will be the only one chasing this high. Blood already stains your hands (it does not stop at just your hands), and will continue to stain your hands (and every other part of you), because a sinner stays a sinner and a dog stays a dog.

And how smart it is to make that dog sin even more so no one else has to be eaten alive by sin any longer!

The higher ups tell you that you're a savior, that you are doing this for the sake of mankind; you must kill this monster at birth before it unleashes true terror! But does a savior really feel no guilt when taking a life which has not taken another? ("Yet" is what the higher ups whisper in your ears.)

But both you and the higher ups know you are a maytr and will continue to decay, like all sinners do.

But the hymns of reverence still fill the air— you're a savior! (Though, not all saviors are saints.)

So, like all saviors do, you fetch.

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The predator stalks her prey; you watch him from the classroom window.

You see Yuta Okkotsu's (your) blood on the floor.

You see Yuta Okkotsu (yourself) being shoved to a wall and held by the neck, though not by your hand.

You see Yuta Okkotsu (yourself) dragging his (your) feet home and lying on his (your) bed, staring at the ceiling for hours on end.

You see yourself in Yuta Okkotsu. It is just a matter of time before he turns out like you, a hound who regards blood as a trophy and wears it like a medal. Maybe the higher ups were right when they said executing him was for the greater good.

This grief of being thrown away will translate to rage— which will scorch him like the sun when it flows like fire in his veins. He will then get a taste of what it is like to act on that rage and how it feels to light someone ablaze. When he stops burning from the inside because he has transferred the hurt to someone else, he will only be an empty husk because rage has taken everything from him and squashed it under it's burning hand. You theorize that he will resort to mass genocide to fill that gaping hole inside of him; he will kill not out of the rage that is long gone but to feel something, anything, that makes him feel alive. From experience, of course. You assume he will end up like you because of those sad eyes you once had.)

But relating is nowhere near sympathy. You do not care for this sad boy with sad eyes who wallows in self pity at his sad existence.

Don't you know? Hounds do not feel, they feast. To feel anything other than the desire to reap is so wrong to you because it's all you have ever known.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

  The sunset exists on the brink of it's own death and so does Yuta Okkotsu. The evening is young and drenches the empty classroom in autumnal hues; the day blends into the horizon before the overwhelming loneliness that is the night. It leaves it's trail in the form of warm kisses in crevices— a reminder of what once was; the sun's affection hides itself before the cold eyes of the moon. The swollen sun bends down from the sky and reaches out to a tuft of raven locks as if to say goodbye— a boy is shivering with his head in his hands, the tip of your tongue rots for a taste when you smell blood.

A scarlet substance that you recognize by scent and not sight drips from the locker next to him and seeps into the cracks of the hardwood floor. (You saw the special grade curse shove four male students into it earlier through the window. You left them to die, you are not here to save anyone. It would just be a pain, anyway.)

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry comes out between ragged breaths; you find his state laughable. Would he apologize like that to all his future victims? Or would this empathy be washed away by the hysteria of the hunt, replaced by indifference or even satisfaction? You do not know— empathy is a concept that has been lost and buried. Would that happen with his heart as well? Torn from his chest and forced to beat under a tombstone until there is silence. Cruel curiosity is what pulls the corners of your lips upwards.

He looks up when he sees your shadow on the floor; fatigue is evident from the bags under his eyes, which are puffy and red. Just how many nights has he been letting his thoughts point knives to the membrane of his skull, demanding that he relive the day that his first love fell from the sky as a withering star? (The answer is every night since you first looked at him through his window— 14 nights. Hounds have to sniff out their prey before pouncing, and you think you know the gist of the tired boy's life. Walk to school, get bullied, walk back home, dissociate. Rinse and repeat while hoping for death because a love so dear to a fallen star continues to burn, reducing all his attempts to fall with her to ashes. Oh well, you would do it for him later.) The night is not kind to a boy of the sun, the pearly moonlight does not hold him with the gentleness of the sunlight.

You lean on the locker full of bodies close to being corpses, holding it's door closed with your body weight— a temporary coffin for those who linger between life and death. The shadows of the curtains framing the windows dance on your features; no sunlight greets you because the hollow bones made from umbra have already wrapped themselves around that lone heart of yours. You are convinced the stars bottled up in your heart have long died, eaten up by a darkness that stretches across thousands of years; sparks disappear just as quickly as they appear. The light is not kind to a girl of the moon, whose void of a heart swallows all light that dares seep in.

His tired eyes meet yours when you gaze down at his trembling figure, and as they do your lips part ever so slightly to murmur a declaration; a promise made and signed with a hanko seal, using blood as ink— he will die by your hands and you will not feel guilt.

"I'm here to take your life, Yuta Okkotsu."

NOTES.

i like this chapter tbh💯‼️

anyways im trying to set up some sort of parallels w yuta and the reader!!! im not sure if they're any good but the reader and yuta having similar pasts but turning out differently because of their environments is such good angst and rivalry material🤤🤤

also i overuse the sun and moon thing so much and im gonna make it everyone's problem‼️