Chapter Text
Part 1: The Ballpoint Casualty
If Hitori Gotoh had to describe Ikuyo Kita in one word, it would be polished.
Kita was a diamond. She was the finish line of human evolution. She smelled like expensive shampoo and vanilla bean paste. Her uniform was always pressed, her hair defied gravity in a way that suggested the laws of physics simply liked her too much to mess up her curls, and her smile could probably cure minor ailments in small mammals.
But Hitori, being a creature of the shadows, spent a lot of time observing from the periphery. And when you watch someone long enough from the corner of a room, looking past the blinding aura of social competence, you start to notice the glitch in the simulation.
You notice the crack in the diamond.
It was 4:30 PM on a dreary Tuesday. Kessoku Band was huddled around the low table in the STARRY backstage area, engaged in a "Lyrics Strategy Meeting," which was mostly just Ryo sleeping with her eyes open while Nijika tried to force productivity.
Hitori sat in her usual hunched position, pretending to read her notebook while actually monitoring the room’s energy levels.
Across from her, Kita was vibrating.
It wasn't a visible shake. To the untrained eye, Kita looked focused. She was reading through a set of potential setlists for their upcoming live show, a pen hovering over the paper. But Hitori could hear it.
Click. Click. Click.
Kita’s thumb was assaulting the top of her ballpoint pen. The rhythmic metallic snap echoed in the small room.
Then, the clicking stopped.
Hitori peered over the rim of her notebook.
Kita’s eyes had narrowed. Her focus had intensified. The "Kit-aura"—that radiant, blinding field of positivity—had retracted into a dense, sharp point of concentration. Without looking up, without even seeming to realize what she was doing, Kita slowly brought the pen to her lips.
It started innocently enough. She tapped the plastic end against her bottom lip. Tap, tap, tap. A sensory check.
Then, the main event began.
Kita slipped the blue plastic cap of the pen between her teeth.
Crinkle.
Hitori flinched. The sound was distinct—hard plastic yielding against enamel.
Kita didn't just nibble. She champed. She bit down with her back molars, releasing the pressure, then biting down again. It was a rhythmic, grinding motion, like a machine gear turning.
Grind. Scrape. Crack.
Hitori watched, horrified and mesmerized.
The pen cap, once pristine and smooth, was rapidly turning into a white, mangled mess. Kita chewed with the unconscious ferocity of a puppy destroying a table leg. Her jaw muscles rippled slightly under her skin, tense and working overtime.
It was... weirdly aggressive. It contrasted so violently with her bubbly exterior that Hitori’s brain couldn't reconcile the two images.
Why is she eating the stationery? Hitori screamed internally. Is she low on minerals? Does she have a calcium deficiency? Or is this... is this rage? Is Kita-chan actually filled with a berserker fury that she can only channel into innocent office supplies?
"Okay, so," Nijika sighed, looking up from her own notes, completely ignoring the destruction happening to her left. "For the opening track, do we want to go high energy with Seishun Complex, or start moody?"
"Start loud," Ryo mumbled, finally waking up. "Scare them. Then they pay attention."
"Moodiness is a valid strategy..." Nijika mused. "Kita-chan? What do you think?"
"Mmh," Kita made a noncommittal noise. She didn't stop chewing. She actually shifted the pen to the front of her mouth, catching the plastic clip between her incisors. She pulled.
Snap.
The clip bent backward, the plastic turning white at the stress point.
"Kita-chan?" Nijika asked again, louder.
Kita jumped.
Her jaw snapped shut. The pen cap, now slick with saliva and severely deformed, popped out of her mouth and clattered onto the table. It spun in a wobbly circle, a piece of mangled, tortured blue plastic.
"Ah!" Kita gasped, blinking rapidly as if waking up from a trance. She looked down at the table. She looked at the destroyed pen cap.
A flush of crimson flooded her cheeks, rivaling her hair color.
"I—I'm listening!" Kita stammered, her hand shooting out to snatch the ruined pen and hide it under the table. "Start loud! High energy! Definitely!"
Nijika narrowed her eyes, glancing at Kita’s closed fist under the table, then at her lips, which were a little redder than usual from the friction.
"You killed another one, didn't you?" Nijika accused flatly.
"I don't know what you're talking about!" Kita’s voice went up an octave.
"Kita. That was a Pilot G-2. That was an expensive pen."
"It was a casualty of the creative process!" Kita wailed, abandoning her defense. She pulled the mangled plastic out and stared at it mournfully. "I’m sorry, Mr. Pen. I didn't mean to hurt you. My teeth just... they needed resistance!"
Hitori shrank further into her tracksuit.
Resistance?
"It's an oral fixation," Ryo observed, reaching over to steal Nijika’s water bottle. "Like a baby teething. Or a hamster."
"I am not a hamster, Ryo-senpai!" Kita puffed out her cheeks, inadvertently looking exactly like a hamster. "I just have... excess energy! You know how Hitori-chan vibrates when she’s stressed?"
"D-Don't drag m-me into this..." Hitori whispered.
"Well, I don't vibrate!" Kita insisted. "I internalize it! I’m thinking about chord progressions, and vocal warmups, and whether I smiled enough at the last customer, and if my Instagram caption was witty enough, and all that energy gets stuck in my jaw! If I don't chew something, I feel like my teeth are going to itch!"
She picked up the destroyed pen cap and sadly tried to bend the clip back into place. It snapped off in her hand.
"Oh no," she whispered.
Hitori watched her.
The popular girl. The extrovert. The sun.
And apparently, beneath that glossy surface, there was so much static noise buzzing around inside her head that she had to physically grind it out of her system or risk exploding.
It was... relatable.
Hitori knew what it felt like to have a noisy brain. Hitori usually handled it by curling into a ball in a dark closet or convulsing on the floor.
But Kita... Kita bit things.
Hitori looked at the pen cap again. The bite marks were deep. The plastic was shredded. It was violent, crude, and destructive.
And for some strange, unfathomable reason that Hitori immediately shoved deep into the "Do Not Examine" folder of her brain... watching Kita’s sharp teeth destroy that pen had sent a tiny, electric shiver down Hitori’s spine.
"Just... try not to swallow any plastic, okay?" Nijika sighed, looking like a tired single mother. "And maybe bring gum next time."
"Gum is too soft," Kita grumbled quietly, tossing the broken plastic into the trash bin next to the table. "It loses the texture too fast. I need... crunch. I need snap."
She looked around the table. Her golden eyes were restless. The pen was gone. The stimulus was removed.
Hitori saw Kita’s gaze drift. It passed over Ryo (too scary), passed over Nijika (too mom-like), and landed on Hitori.
Or rather, it landed on the table in front of Hitori.
Sitting there, innocent and unsuspecting, was Hitori’s lyric notebook. It was a spiral-bound notebook. A cheap one.
The spine was made of a long, coiled, metal wire that looped round and round.
Kita’s eyes locked onto the metal spiral. Her pupils seemed to dilate slightly. She licked her lips, absentmindedly, still staring at the wire coil.
Click.
She tapped her fingernail against the table.
Hitori felt a phantom pressure on her chest.
She's... she's looking at my notebook, Hitori realized. But she's looking at it like a dog looks at a bone.
"Um... Kita-chan?" Hitori whispered, pulling the notebook slightly closer to her chest.
Kita blinked, snapping out of the glaze. She offered Hitori a dazzling smile, but it didn't quite reach her hungry eyes.
"Nothing, Hitori-chan! Just thinking!"
Kita reached into her bag and pulled out a fresh highlighter. It was a yellow fluorescent one. It had a nice, wide, rectangular cap.
She held it in her hand. She turned it over. She felt the weight of it.
Then, with the speed of a cobra strike, the highlighter went into her mouth.
Crunch.
The sound was deafening in the silence of the room.
Hitori swallowed hard. She had a feeling that the highlighter wasn't going to survive the hour. And looking at the way Kita was eyeing the rest of the room, Hitori wondered what—or who—would be next when the stationery ran out.
Part 2: Polypropylene and Pressure
The "Stationery Incident" was not an isolated event. It was merely the prelude.
Two days later, Kessoku Band found themselves decomposing in a family diner after practice. The energy was low; the collective social battery of the band had been drained by a four-hour rehearsal of a new song that Ryo insisted needed a "7/8 time signature breakdown that sounds like a panic attack."
They were scattered around a corner booth. Ryo was asleep against the window, an empty plate of fries (that she hadn't paid for) sitting in front of her. Nijika was scrolling through her phone, checking venue schedules.
Hitori Gotoh sat on the outer edge, nursing a neon-green melon soda.
And next to her—uncomfortably close, occupying a solid 60% of the bench seat—was Ikuyo Kita.
Hitori tried to focus on her drink. She stirred the ice cubes with her red-and-white striped straw, watching the carbonation fizz. It was a peaceful activity.
But peace was a luxury Hitori couldn't afford.
To her left, the sound began.
Scritch. Scritch. Pop.
It wasn't a pen this time. Kita was holding her own iced latte. The cup was plastic. The lid was plastic. The straw was black plastic.
Kita was staring at the napkin dispenser with glazed-over eyes. She looked like a mannequin posed in a diner, perfectly frozen—except for her jaw.
She had pulled the straw halfway out of her drink so it wasn't submerged in liquid. She had positioned the dry section between her canine teeth. And now, she was methodically destroying it.
Hitori watched out of the corner of her eye, terrified to turn her head fully.
Kita flattened the cylinder. She bit down hard, creating a sharp crease in the plastic. Then she rotated the straw ninety degrees and bit again, creating a grid pattern of teeth marks.
Crunch. Squeak.
The sound of wet plastic squeaking against teeth sent a vibration straight through the bench seat.
"Mm..." Kita made a soft sound in her throat—a frustration noise.
She wasn't getting enough resistance. The thin black straw was too weak. It folded instantly. It didn't offer the satisfying snap she craved.
Kita let the mangled black straw drop back into her latte. It floated there, twisted and useless, like a piece of modern art representing "Teenage Angst."
She sighed, drumming her fingers on the Formica table. Her leg started bouncing under the table, her knee knocking rhythmically against Hitori’s thigh.
Bump. Bump. Bump.
"Restless," Hitori thought, shrinking into her jersey. She’s run out of chew toys. She’s searching. The energy is building up.
Then, Kita stopped bouncing.
She turned her head slowly.
Hitori froze, clutching her melon soda glass with both hands.
Kita’s gaze didn't meet Hitori’s eyes. It didn't look at Hitori’s face at all. The golden eyes, slightly dilated and hazy with unspent energy, lowered.
They locked onto the rim of Hitori’s glass.
Specifically, they locked onto the pristine, sturdy, wide-gauge red-and-white striped straw bobbing amongst the green ice.
"Hitori-chan," Kita murmured. Her voice was low. It had a strange, raspy quality to it that Hitori had never heard before.
"Y-Y-Yes?" Hitori squeaked.
"I finished my drink," Kita lied. Her latte was clearly half-full. "Can I have a sip of yours? I’ve never tried that flavor."
It was a trap. Hitori knew it was a trap. Melon soda tasted like sugar and fake fruit; everyone knew the flavor. But refusing Kita Ikuyo was a crime punishable by intense guilt.
"I... um... indirect k-kiss..." Hitori whispered, her brain supplying a flowchart of potential bacterial exchanges.
"Please?" Kita leaned in. She invaded Hitori’s personal space effortlessly. She smelled of coffee and strawberry lip balm.
"O-Okay." Hitori slid the glass across the table.
Kita didn't take the glass with her hands. She kept her hands in her lap.
Instead, she leaned forward, bracing one hand on the table between them, trapping Hitori against the booth wall. She lowered her head until she could reach the straw.
Hitori watched, heart hammering a frantic drum solo against her ribs.
Kita’s lips wrapped around the straw. She took a tiny, token sip of the green liquid. Her eyes fluttered shut for a second.
Then, she didn't pull away.
She slid her mouth further down the straw, closer to the lid.
Cronch.
Hitori’s soul left her body.
Kita bit down. She didn't just nip it. She clamped her premolars over the thick plastic straw—the part that had just been in Hitori’s mouth moments ago—and crushed it.
The sound was loud. It was a hollow, cracking sound.
Kita chewed. She turned her head slightly to the side to get a better angle, looking for leverage, her jaw working side-to-side. She was gnawing on Hitori’s drink like a feral animal trying to get at the marrow of a bone.
The straw flattened under the assault. The red and white stripes were distorted, mashed into a flat ribbon of plastic.
Kita’s eyes opened.
For a split second, as her teeth were sunk into the plastic, her gaze flicked up.
She looked directly at Hitori.
The expression wasn't her usual "Kit-aura" beam. It wasn't friendly. It was intense, blank, and overwhelmingly... hungry. It was the look of someone satisfying a deep, primal itch in their brain.
And she was doing it using something Hitori owned.
"K-Kita-chan..." Hitori whispered, mesmerized by the motion of Kita’s jaw. "My... my delivery system..."
Kita blinked. The trance broke.
She released the straw. It didn't spring back. It stayed flattened, marked with deep, white indentations of Kita’s tooth pattern.
Kita sat back, wiping a droplet of melon soda from her lip with her thumb. She looked at the ruined straw, then at Hitori. A slow, guilty, but strangely satisfied flush rose up her neck.
"Oops," Kita breathed. "I... I did it again."
"You... you killed it," Hitori noted weakly.
"It... felt good," Kita admitted, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. She looked at the straw again, looking almost disappointed she had let go. "That one was... tougher. Sturdier. Than mine."
She turned her gaze back to Hitori. She scanned Hitori from the neck down—not sexually, Hitori realized with a jolt, but texturally.
She looked at the plastic zipper of the tracksuit.
She looked at the rubber aglets on the hood strings.
She looked at the thick fabric of the sleeves.
Kita licked her lips, subconsciously.
"Hitori-chan," Kita said, and the air pressure in the booth seemed to drop ten millibars. "Do you have... do you have anything else in your pockets? Anything... chewy?"
Hitori felt a shiver run down her spine that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. It was the feeling of being prey. But it was also...
Why wasn't she running away?
Why was she patting her pockets, desperate to find a pen cap, a guitar pick, anything to offer to the girl looking at her with that terrifying, focused hunger?
"I... I have a guitar pick," Hitori offered, holding out a pink Jazz III.
Kita’s eyes lit up. "Heavy gauge?"
"1.14mm," Hitori confirmed.
Kita smiled—a shark-like baring of teeth. "Perfect."
She took the pick. She popped it into her mouth like a mint. And as the click-clack of plastic against teeth resumed, filling the silence of the booth, Hitori shrank back into her corner, nursing her drink through the mangled, flattened remains of her straw, wondering when exactly she had become the supplier for Kita Ikuyo’s addiction.
Part 3: The Pink Polyester incident
The progression was logical, in a horrifying sort of way. First, it was the pens (hard plastic). Then, it was the straw (flexible plastic).
By Saturday, Kita Ikuyo had graduated to textiles.
The scene of the crime was Hitori Gotoh’s bedroom. It was 8:00 PM. The atmosphere was dim, lit only by the blue glow of Hitori’s laptop screen and the soft amber light of Kita’s "atmospheric" humidifier she had insisted on setting up.
They were watching a horror movie. Or, more accurately, they were surviving a horror movie.
“Curse of the Swamp Ghoul 4” played on the screen.
Hitori was huddled in the corner of her futon, knees pulled to her chest, trying to retract into her pink jersey like a turtle entering its shell.
Kita was sitting next to her. For someone who loved social outings, Kita was terrible with horror. She wasn't hiding, though. She was facing the fear head-on, eyes wide, body rigid.
But she needed an anchor.
Her left hand was clamped onto Hitori’s upper arm, gripping the tracksuit sleeve so tightly Hitori’s circulation was compromised.
Squeeze. Squeeze. Squeeze.
"Hitori-chan," Kita whispered, eyes glued to the screen where the Ghoul was stalking a teenager. "Why is he going into the basement? Why do they always go into the basement?"
"B-Because the script... requires a sacrifice..." Hitori squeaked.
On screen, the Ghoul shrieked. A jump scare.
"EEK!" Kita jumped, burying her face into Hitori’s shoulder.
She didn't pull back after the scare faded, though. She stayed there, huddled against Hitori’s side, seeking the warmth and the stability of the Rock of Shimokitazawa.
Hitori froze. Having a cute girl attached to her side usually caused her system to overheat, but she tolerated it because... well, it was Kita.
Then, Hitori felt a tug.
It was a gentle, rhythmic pulling sensation near her collarbone.
Tug. Rub. Tug.
Hitori dared to glance down.
Kita was still watching the movie, her face pale with suspense. But her free hand—the right one—had found the long, pink drawstring of Hitori’s tracksuit hood.
She was twirling the plastic aglet between her fingers. She rubbed her thumb over the weave of the polyester cord.
Then, without looking away from the screen, without asking permission, without even seeming to realize she was doing it—Kita lifted the string.
She brought the pink cord to her mouth.
Hitori stopped breathing.
Kita didn't bite it aggressively like the pen. This was different. This was soothing. She caught the plastic tip between her lips and began to suck on it, gently, absentmindedly.
Slurp. Click.
The sound of the plastic aglet clicking against Kita’s teeth was tiny, but to Hitori, it sounded like a gunshot.
Kita’s jaw worked slowly. She moved the string to the corner of her mouth, chewing lightly on the fabric just above the plastic tip. She clamped her molars down on the pink cord and tugged.
Hitori’s head was pulled slightly forward by the tension.
"K-Kita-chan...?" Hitori whispered.
"Mmh?" Kita didn't let go. She spoke around the string, her eyes still locked on the Swamp Ghoul.
"You're... you're eating my clothes."
Kita blinked. She turned her head slowly to look at Hitori. The string was still clamped firmly in the corner of her mouth, wet and slightly flattened.
Normally, this was the part where Kita would scream, spit it out, and apologize profusely for her "unladylike" behavior.
But the movie was stressful. The room was dark. And Kita’s brain was buzzing with too much static.
She didn't spit it out.
Instead, she chewed on it again. Gnaw.
"It’s... textured," Kita murmured, the string muffling her voice. "The weave. It’s bumpy. It feels... good."
"It’s... it’s polyester," Hitori stammered, watching the movement of Kita’s jaw. "It... It has accumulated closet dust..."
"It smells like you," Kita said simply.
She pulled the string out of her mouth with a soft pop. The end was soaked. She didn't let it drop; she held it in her hand, rubbing the wet fabric with her thumb.
Kita looked at Hitori—really looked at her. Her eyes were hazy, dilated, stripping away the cheerful "Kita-chan" mask to reveal something restless and instinctual underneath.
She looked at the damp string. Then she looked at the other string dangling from the right side of Hitori’s hood.
"Hitori-chan," Kita whispered. The air in the room grew heavy. "Is it weird...?"
"W-What is?"
"The plastic tasted boring," Kita confessed, dropping the string she had been chewing. Her hand drifted toward the other one. "But the fabric... the fabric had resistance."
She leaned in closer. Hitori felt pinned against the wall, trapped by the intensity of Kita’s focus.
"Can I..." Kita started, then stopped. She shook her head violently, her "Idol Mode" crashing back into place. "No! Never mind! Let’s watch the movie! The Ghoul is coming!"
She turned back to the screen, grabbing Hitori’s arm again with renewed vigor.
But Hitori couldn't watch the movie.
She stared at the wet, chewed-up string resting on her chest. She could feel the dampness seeping through her t-shirt.
And she could hear the sound of Kita’s teeth grinding together—click, grind—as she fought the urge to put something else in her mouth.
Hitori reached up, her hand shaking, and touched her collar.
She liked it, Hitori realized, a terrifying cocktail of fear and arousal bubbling in her stomach. She liked chewing on me.
Hitori looked at her backpack in the corner, where her spare guitar picks lived. Then she looked at the zipper of her gig bag. Then she looked at the rubbery sole of her converse shoe.
She had a feeling that Hitori Gotoh was about to become the world’s first human chew toy.
On screen, the Ghoul screamed.
Next to her, Kita let out a frustrated sigh, leaned over, grabbed the shoulder of Hitori’s jersey, bunched the fabric into her mouth, and bit down hard on the seam.
Hitori closed her eyes and accepted her fate.