𝕃𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕣𝕤 𝕚𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕟𝕚𝕘𝕙𝕥 // Akaza x reader (+18)

Chapter 36 | Hakuji 🍈

There's a pause. Not hesitation. Something heavier. Like the words are being dug out of a place even he hasn't touched in years.

And in that silence, your chest tightens.

Because you're not sure what scares you more-what he might say... or the fact that you want to know. You want to understand him, this demon whose mouth was just on yours, whose breath still lingers on your skin like a confession.

You shouldn't want that.

You shouldn't want him.

But the truth is a quiet ache inside you now, pressing against the walls of everything you've believed. It's not just the kiss. It's the way he touched you like you were breakable-like he was.

When you finally glance over your shoulder, he's looking into the fire, not at you. Its glow casts a shifting gold across his face, flickering in the hollows of his cheeks, catching in the edges of his eyes. He looks younger like this. Less like the predator the Corps warned you about and more like someone left behind in a world that kept moving without him.

"I don't remember everything," he says, voice roughened by the truth of it. "But I remember being hungry. Cold. Angry all the time." A flicker of something almost fragile passes through his expression. "I hated how weak I was. I wanted to protect some people. I couldn't."

Your hand curls around the hilt of your sword-still resting across your knees. You haven't let go of it, but you're not gripping it like a threat anymore. It's just... there. Like a part of your past that doesn't know what to do with your present.

You lower it gently.

He glances at you, not quite surprised. Just quiet. Like he's still not sure if this version of you is real.

"I remember her hands," he says next, after a breath. "Calloused but warm." His own hand presses briefly to his chest, right over the place his heart should be. "I used to think if I trained hard enough, I could make a world where she'd never have to lift them again."

He doesn't say her name.

He doesn't have to.

You see it in the way his fingers twitch slightly, curling like they're trying to hold the shape of her hand-like the memory itself is fragile and close to slipping away.

You don't speak. There's nothing clean or safe to offer someone who's already burned through that kind of grief.

So you listen.

The silence stretches-but this time, it doesn't feel heavy. It feels... full. With what's been lost. With what might still be found.

You shift your sword, laying it flat now. Not forgotten. Just... no longer in the way.

"She must've meant a lot to you," you say softly.

He exhales, slow. Measured. "She was everything good I ever knew."

The words are simple. Final. But they feel like a blade slowly turned inward-painful even now, after all these years. You see it in his eyes, the way they don't shine like a demon's should. Just ache.

You don't try to comfort him. He doesn't need kindness. He needs witnessing.

So instead, you say nothing. And somehow, that feels like enough.

His gaze returns to the fire, but his focus is lost again-drifting through time. His eyes have gone distant. Hollow in a way that feels dangerous. Like someone standing at the edge of something deep and unrelenting.

Your voice cuts through it again, soft but sharp. Not a mercy-an anchor.

"What was your name?"

Another pause. This one longer.

He doesn't flinch.

But something in the air does. Like even the shadows are listening now.

Finally, he says it. Quietly.

"Hakuji."

The name falls between you, slow and solid. Not dramatic. Not sacred. Just true. And in its quiet truth, it changes something fundamental in the space between your ribs.

You let it sit in you. Let it shape the weight of everything you know about him. Everything you don't.

You nod once. Slow. "Hakuji."

Not a question. Not reverent. Just... human. Just real.

His jaw shifts. A flicker of tension in his shoulders. "Haven't heard it spoken in a long time."

You don't apologize. You don't thank him either.

That's not what this is.

Instead, your arms wrap loosely around your knees. And for a moment, the silence between you feels less like a threat and more like a truce.

"How old were you?" you ask.

He closes his eyes briefly, then breathes. "Eleven when I met her. Eighteen when I lost her."

You swallow. Hard. "You were so young."

He doesn't respond to that. Maybe he doesn't believe it. Or maybe he remembers what you do: that being young doesn't save anyone from the world.

"I was fifteen when I first held a blade," you say. "Sixteen when I used it."

That gets a nod-small, quiet. But full of understanding.

Then he speaks again, voice nearly a whisper. "After... when the grief started turning to rage, I didn't care what I became. I just wanted to destroy something. Anything."

You glance sideways.

His fists are clenched now. Knuckles pale. But it's not anger. It's memory. Pain given form.

"That's when he found me," Hakuji says. "Muzan. Said I had 'potential.' Said he could make it so I'd never feel weak again."

"And you believed him?" you ask.

He gives a short, bitter sound. Not quite a laugh. More like a breath that's learned the shape of regret.

"I wanted to."

The firelight flickers across his features-too sharp for a boy, too young for a monster. His skin, pale even in the glow, is marred by the faintest traces of what he once was: the ghost of freckles across high cheekbones, a jaw clenched not in defiance, but the memory of it. The marks of Muzan's design-those jagged blue lines curling over his body like smoke-don't hide the boy underneath. If anything, they make the boy more visible. Like a curse drawn in ink, saying: remember him.

His eyes flick back to yours. That same focused intensity. That unwavering lock that feels like standing too close to lightning before it strikes.

You feel the kiss still there, hanging in the silence between you. On your lips. In your chest.

It's not just the act. It's what it cracked open.

You shift, slightly. Just enough that your thigh brushes his.

His gaze drops to your mouth again, and something shifts behind his eyes-tightens. Like he's wondering if you meant it, or if this is just another fight he's going to lose.