"All right, this is where Public Safety keeps the devils they’ve captured locked up."
I’d followed someone here for one reason: to make a contract with a devil.
Oh, and you’re wondering why the guy who was trying to die until yesterday suddenly got the urge to make a devil contract?
That would take a lot of explaining.
1
"Fuck..."
Gongja opened his eyes in the hospital bed and stared out the window while cursing under his breath. Outside, the view was straight out of the late 1990s.
The moment he woke up, after roughly six suicide attempts, he realized that he unconsciously refused to kill himself, and he had already reached a certain level of resignation.
Having given up, he flopped down on the bed and started turning things over in his head. If he wasn’t going to die, then he needed to decide how he was going to live.
The first thing he thought of was just lying around and doing nothing. But that required money, and he had none, so that plan was rejected.
Next he thought about getting a part-time job and making money to live off that. But he didn’t know Japanese life or culture properly, and more importantly, he had no idea whether his identity was even intact, so that plan was rejected too.
Identity! Once Gongja started thinking about identity, he couldn’t come up with a single workable idea. Whether he worked, rented a place, or did anything else, he would need identification, and right now he didn’t even know whether his identity existed at all.
'Did I get registered as a Japanese citizen? Or, if Himeno was right, does Korea still exist... am I Korean here? Or do I just have no identity at all?'
After that, Gongja racked his brain like a madman, trying to think of anything at all. But nothing came out.
About two hours later, the door to the hospital room opened and two people came in.
"Hello. Huh? You’re already awake?"
"Guess we don’t need to wake him up."
Both of them had scars on the bridge of their noses.
"W-who are you..."
Gongja asked them.
For reference, he had long since forgotten a large portion of Chainsaw Man’s plot. The manga he’d read back then had simply been too much to keep all at once, so it couldn’t be helped.
Still, he remembered a few incidents, about six or seven characters, and the basic setting, so there shouldn’t be any major problem.
In response to Gongja’s words, the woman spoke. One of them was a man.
"We’re from the Public Safety Devil Hunters."
At the words "Devil Hunter," Gongja couldn’t help feeling a wave of fear.
'Wait, are they here to chew me out because I killed the devil they were supposed to kill?'
As Gongja’s expression rapidly hardened, the man walked up to him with a hearty air and said,
"No need to be nervous. We’re not here to reprimand you. We’re here to make an offer."
He took a document from the woman and held it out to Gongja. It was a Devil Hunter contract.
"Become Public Safety’s dog."
As soon as he finished speaking, the woman began explaining.
"Public Safety has taken a strong interest in your identity and your results. The devil you killed had a low name value, but it was in pretty strong shape."
Gongja cut her off and asked,
"Hold on. What exactly is my identity like?"
"Blank. You have no identity. According to the person who brought you here, we checked with Korean Public Safety too, and there was no one with your fingerprints or face."
At the woman’s words, Gongja inwardly lamented, 'So I really didn’t have an identity?' A little anger rose up too, but this wasn’t the time to lose his temper, so he quickly swallowed it down.
The moment the woman saw Gongja give a slight nod, she continued.
"So the higher-ups are currently suspecting that you’re either a devil or a fiend."
Gongja found her words absurd, but he could at least understand one thing: if he didn’t choose the path of a Devil Hunter here, he was fucked.
Fiends were devils that had taken over a human body or corpse. In other words, once the human host lost its body, its growth stopped there.
'If I’ve already finished my second growth stage, then even if I don’t have an identity, I should at least have been registered at birth. That means there should be fingerprints. But not only are there no fingerprints, even face comparison turns up nothing? By their standards, unless I’m a devil or a fiend, that’s impossible.'
"And devils or fiends are execution targets if they defy Public Safety..."
"You know your stuff. So sign already."
Gongja thought for a moment. Then, about twenty minutes later, he finally spoke.
"Give me a pen."
"Good. Smart choice."
The man handed it over quickly, as if he’d been waiting for that.
"But!"
Then Gongja said it as he took the pen. At those words, both the man and the woman fixed their eyes on him.
"Let me make a contract with a devil."
At Gongja’s words, the two of them were utterly stunned.
Even they had concluded that Gongja, whose identity and traces they’d been unable to find no matter what they did over the past three days, was a devil. And now that same Gongja was suddenly asking to make a contract with a devil... how could they not be shocked?
The two hesitated for a moment, then asked,
"Why?"
Gongja answered immediately.
"I don’t care whether I live or die, but I figured I should live since I don’t like the idea of dying. The problem is, I’m not as strong as you think I am."
It was something Gongja blurted out unconsciously, and at the same time, it was also the truth.
The two of them fell silent for a moment at Gongja’s words, then took the completed paperwork from him and left the hospital room, saying, "We’ll prepare the documents and come back tomorrow."
Once they were gone, Gongja sprawled out on the bed and thought.
'If I want to live, I have to become a Devil Hunter. If I want to die, it has to be an accidental death caused by devil interference... So Devil Hunter is a good job choice. That much is obvious. But...'
"Shin Gongja, why did you bring up making a contract with a devil?"
Gongja spent a long time thinking about why, and what exactly had made him say that. But no matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t find an answer. So in the end, he gave up on everything, pulled the blanket over himself, and fell asleep.
He never realized until he was already asleep that the words he’d unconsciously blurted out were sincere.
@
"...What kind of guy is that?"
The man muttered. His name was Kurose Yutaro.
"No idea. But I think I know one thing."
The woman agreed with Kurose’s words. Her name was Tendo Michiko.
"What?"
"That guy is completely insane."
"Well, yeah. A fiend saying he wants to contract with a devil isn’t exactly normal."
"He might be human. There wasn’t a single sign that his body had been taken over by a devil."
"True. That could be it too. I have no idea why his identity is blank, though."
After saying that much, the two of them quietly headed for the car.
After getting in and fastening their seatbelts, Kurose asked,
"So what should we do? Are we going to let him contract with a devil?"
Michiko simply replied that only the higher-ups would know the answer to that.
2
Gongja followed the two of them while straightening out the unbearably uncomfortable Public Safety uniform he’d been given.
The two led him on for quite a while. Then they found a door, stood in front of it, and began explaining.
"The devil in here is the Future Devil. There are only two people who’ve contracted with this one. One gave up half their lifespan, and the other gave up taste, sight, and both eyes."
Kurose said that much, then started opening the room.
And when the English on the keypad read 'un lock', he continued,
"If it likes you, this’ll be over cheap. All right, go on in."
Gongja went in without hesitation.
...Of course, he was a little nervous, but once he thought that dying would be fine too, he quickly relaxed.
After he entered, Kurose pressed the keypad again and closed the door. Then he spoke to Michiko.
"Will he be okay?"
"No idea."
Michiko answered simply.
Meanwhile, inside the room, Gongja faced the devil. The details were now hazy, but the shock he’d felt the first time he saw it was still vivid.
'To think I’d end up making a contract with this thing....'
The Future Devil, after confirming Gongja, said,
"The future is the best~! The future is the best~!!"
No, it shouted.
"Hey! You too, hurry up and shout that the future is the best!"
The future is the best.
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