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“Hello Yoshida.”
He knows that when the assassins were hunting the chainsaw man’s heart the old control devil is the one who called him. But having the name Makima in his head and seeing her in person are two very different things.
“I am dead, no?” He asks, just to make sure. They are in an empty movie theater. Only this time there is no blond boy to whine to him about living a normal life nor a one eyed devil laying dead in front of the screen. This time the devil is sitting right next to him with bright spiral eyes.
“Yes, you are.” She says.
Yoshida can’t help it–he laughs. It’s a small chuckle that he doesn't really mean. The movie in front of him is something he remembers watching when he was a child. It’s about a group of girls all trying to make a band and perform for their school concert. There’s a long scene of them just sitting in the bus, the background a flurry of rice fields and nature.
“So, I guess it was true.” He goes to sit down, the chair squeaking like a dying mouse. “When you die you really do go into a movie theatre. Those manga writers must be messengers from heaven.”
“Yes, you could say that.”
She doesn’t say much else, just sits with him and watches the movie until it ends. The lights dim and suddenly he sees himself on screen, just minutes before his death.
He’s standing out in the rain with pizza and drinks in one hand with a smile on his face. He offers Denji to eat and he can see the way his eyes are truly looking at everything, knowing it’s the last time he’ll get to feel the wind on his face. Here, everything is so startlingly still. He doesn’t think he’s breathing in here. He doesn’t think he can feel his own skin.
“I wonder,” he says, not particularly to anyone. “Why am I with you, of all people? I don’t think we have anything in particular to talk about.”
“I see everyone who passes through here.” The control devil they used to call Makima simply says. “The exit is right over there.” She points towards a tiny green door with an eye symbol with legs running from a faceless jaw of teeth.
“Oh.” He turns back towards the screen. Denji is eating, grease all over his face. Some small part of Yoshida thinks that he should have slid a napkin over the table for him to wipe it off. Not like the chainsaw boy would have taken it anyways.
“And if I don’t leave?”
“You saw the world of the aging devil,” She says. “Only this time you simply become a chair.”
“I’m sitting on a person?”
“More or less.”
He’s reminded of the time he sat on Denji for 10 yen and chuckles. On screen he is telling Denji that he made school a lot of fun. He is reaching out his hand, denji taking it and saying,
Thanks for all the free food.
Something, a sort of dull, painful affection blooms behind his eye. It had been a while since he felt something real. From his parents death from a devil to hunting to being tasked to watch over a boy the same age as him with a sort of annoyingness that softens to something funny, he thinks the expression on his face is gleeful it happened, regretful he let himself be happy about it.
That’s what it is. He knew that he’d die at some point in the job, as it is for most except maybe Kisihibe. He just didn’t expect it to be in a school classroom, shaking hands with the chainsaw boy.
The building explodes and he watches himself die. He sees that man with a smile creepier than his own turn up and turn on the fire and burn his body to a crisp. It is sweet to think that he is worth enough to Denji to be a switch. In a way, when he first received his order, he was touched. And then reality sinked in and then he was dead.
“Well,” he says, knees cracking when he gets up. “I should be going now.”
“I suppose so.” Is all the control devil says. She must be lonely here, or the more accurate word would be bored. “Goodbye.”
He walks over to the green exit, sweating. It feels hot. His body must be feeling the fire, even from here. A screeching noise echoes the room of the theater. He walks to the green door and puts his hand on the handle and watches his arm melt off. All his skin is melting.
“Oh dear.” Makima’s voice rings though the room. He can see two bright red spiral eyes on the screen. They illuminate everything in a bloody red. “Looks like you’ll have to stay out a little longer.”
And then Yoshida wakes up, very much so alive, like the concept of death had never existed at all, to the sound of flames.