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They’re at a restaurant. A dingy Chinese diner, Hong-Kong style, the kind that’s open until four in the morning and then opens back up for business an hour later, with the pink neon lights and yellowing newspaper plasted on the walls. Quanxi isn’t partial to the ambiance of these kind of places, nor does she like the oiled-slick pan-fried noodles and other fast food dishes typical of a diner, but she is a fan of the two dollar beers at this place, so she sits back quietly and sips at her drink as she watches Makima pull apart a chicken foot knuckle by knuckle. Sucking each bone dry before dropping it on her plate.
“How does the food here compare back to food back home?” Makima says lightly. Her fingers are sticky with sauce. “I notice you’re not eating much.”
“I’m from up north. We don’t eat this kind of food.”
“Oh?” Makima hums, a lilt to her voice, delicate. “What do you eat up there?”
Quanxi takes a sip of her drink. “Liquor, mostly.”
A laugh. “I suppose close proximity to Russia would do that to you.”
Quanxi doesn’t say anything to that. She pulls out a pack of Lucky Strikes from her coat pocket, fishing out a cigarette and slipping it in between her lips. Placing the box in her pocket, Quanxi digs around for a light before she hears the distinct flick of a lighter, and looks up to find Makima holding out a little flame for her over the food.
She murmurs, “Thanks,” before dipping her head to catch the flame on her smoke.
Makima is resting her chin on her other hand, elbow propped up on the table as Quanxi feels her eyes follow the trail of smoke that leaves her mouth when she exhales. Makima doesn’t question why Quanxi’s smoking in an indoor establishment — neither do the servers at the restaurant, for that matter. It’s three in the morning and the only other patron in the diner was an old man scribbling in a crossword towards the back huffing on his own tobacco pipe.
Quanxi doesn’t offer Makima a cigarette, and Makima doesn’t ask for one. Instead, Makima says, “I’ve always liked chicken feet.”
She just takes a drag from her cigarette and lets Makima speak.
“If you think about it, it’s such a strange part of an animal to eat. It’s only skin and cartilage, really. There’s no meat on it at all, and the flavor of the food comes exclusively from the marinade and sauces on it. Instead, it’s a textural experience. It seems as though the people of Hong Kong collectively decided that ripping out a chicken’s tendons and sucking on the bone was an enjoyable culinary experience. And see,” Makima pauses, holding up a foot, “they look so much like human hands.”
Makima’s hands are still coated in sweet, red sauce. Quanxi sucks on her smoke and watches Makima rip the chicken foot apart with deft fingers. Thinks, she’s fucking nuts, and says nothing.
Then, Makima says, “I know who you are.”
“Of course you do,” Quanxi replies, before taking a long, long drink.
Makima smiles, and says no more.
-
In the deep corners of Quanxi’s mind exists a deep forest. One that is viridian green, lush with mist and tall redwoods and wet soil that sticks to her bare feet. Quanxi walks for what feels like hours down this path into the woods, the rustling of leaves in the wind the only sound, and eventually comes to a small clearing with a pond. The water is clear and still, and when she looks into it she sees nothing. No reflection. Just an opaque mirror that looks towards the sky and finds only the tips of branches, reaching into infinity.
Sometimes, when the girls are asleep and Quanxi is alone, she retreats to this pond. Sits at the water and looks into nothing, and tries to ease the gnawing helplessness that claws at her. Yet even here she feels watched. As if there is something darker that lurks deep in her woods that she can’t even know.
-
The skin on Makima’s thighs are like fine silk, as if unmarred and untouched, though Quanxi knows better. Sliding her hands over it, she debates resisting the urge to rip through it with her nails, and imagines watching this woman unravel with strings of blood dripping from the wound. The sight is impossible, yet after a few seconds of deliberation, she claws at the flesh, digging in deeply.
Makima just smirks as a few ribbons of blood start streaming down her legs. “Are you going to drink it?”
“No,” Quanxi says, nails still latched on to Makima’s thigh.
“Do you want to?”
“No,” Quanxi lies, and moves her bloodied fingers upward, sliding to Makima’s hips. Grips them tightly before dipping her head low, the smell of iron heady like rusted arrows, or a well-loved sword, or a massacre.
“Are you here to kill me?”
Quanxi slides her tongue upwards, and ignores the way every instinct in her body is urging her to flee. It tastes like sugar glaze, sickeningly sweet. Quanxi resists the urge to vomit.
“Do you want to?”
Makima tightens her thighs around Quanxi’s throat, pushing her head closer with a suffocating squeeze, and laughs. Laughs again when Quanxi rips her head away, gasping and struggling for air, the veins in her neck pounding with fear. Laughs once more when Quanxi dips back down for more.
-
The relationship that Quanxi has with Crossbow Devil is a pragmatic one; they’re the same being at this point, the evidence of their contract embedded into the socket of Quanxi’s right eye. Two monsters in the same cage. They don’t speak often, if at all, and usually the most Quanxi will hear from him is in the form of deep, indecipherable grumbles and grunts.
Yet as Quanxi leaves Makima’s apartment, she hears a distinct, ancient voice that simply murmurs, “She will kill you.”
“I know that,” Quanxi says out loud, and thinks of her girls.
-
In her dreams, in the forest, Makima is tearing her from bone to bone. Tendon from flesh. Licks her fingers, and then drops Quanxi's remains in the pond, where they sink to unknown depths, nowhere to be found.