#and he was on his own meeting a hateful volatile serial killer in the middle of the night | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

banjjakz · 6 months

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the grim reaper's wife; hananene oneshot

“...McDonald’s?”

Hanako smiles at her like she’s just told him a terrible joke.

“McDonald’s.”

(Or, in which Nene goes to college and meets the... janitor. Groundskeeper. Gardener? He works there. She thinks.)

wc: ~4k warnings: horror; graphic depictions of violence; serial killer!au; psychological thriller; emotional manipulation; major character death

🖤 read on ao3 🖤

Her lungs burn. Like running a marathon in the middle of winter. It hurts to breathe, it hurts so badly that she holds her breath and counts and waits and counts and waits and counts until the numbers melt away, along with her mind.

If, Nene thinks, she were to be anybody else right now other than herself, she would like to be the grim reaper’s wife. Then she wouldn’t have to drive herself dizzy with the held-breath business. What must it be like to exist so intimately with her own death? The idea excites her. When she can breathe again, she’ll remember to scribble it down on her Thought Wall.

“Hey. You’re doing it again.”

The sky knits itself back together. The clouds right themselves. The trees are next, sprouting up from the ground and defiantly raising dark, jagged limbs against the fluorescent inferno of the city’s setting sun.

And at the center of it all is him: pale and slim and dark in all the worst places. The mask from that foreign horror film she had to watch for her world cinema class. Ghostface.

“Hi,” Nene exhales, shuddering.

“Hey there.” Why is he smiling? She hates when he does that. She hates it so much that she holds her breath and counts and waits and counts and waits and counts until the ardor of her fury threatens to burn her alive.

The sight of him makes her want to shut her eyes against all else. She doesn’t. She bears the brunt of him, even as he grins and extends his hand. “Need some help?”

“No, thank you.”

“I’ll leave you here.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t. Come on. Let’s go get something to eat.”

He refuses to retract his hand. Something tells her it’ll never leave. She reaches out to take a hold of it, and ignores the way their skin slips and slides together with a disturbing familiarity.

“McDonald’s?” asks Nene, exhausted.

“McDonald’s,” answers Hanako.

He’s still smiling.

When Nene first arrives on campus, she is already exhausted. It’s hot. She’s in the heart of a metropolitan playground. She almost killed herself trying to wiggle her way into the lucky little sliver of 17% of all applicants that get to attend this bustling, elite microcosm of academic prestige. And now that she’s here, she mostly just wants to take a nap.

This goal would be easier to accomplish if she hadn’t already lost her keycard. You know -- the tiny, four-by-four piece of cheap plastic that acts as her means of entering literally any building on campus.

The breakdown isn’t quite yet at the point of boiling over, but it’s a very near thing. She can feel her internal temperature beginning to rise with each measured breath she struggles to control. It’s the first day, thinks Nene, the first day and I’ve already done something bad.

Move-in is stretched over the course of a four-day period. No more than 25% of a residential building’s populace is present at one time, at least not for today. Her building is at the southernmost corner of campus, a good twenty minute walk from any kind of support service. There is nobody around to let her in. She really wants to take a nap.

Suddenly overcome with a wave of frustration, Nene rams her fist thrice against the locked double doors. It is a testament to her self-control that she doesn’t shriek out in rage. It is an even larger one that she continues to breathe -- deeply, evenly -- through the upset coursing viscous and molten through her rigid, tremorous body.

“Wow.”

It takes her a moment to process that there is now a presence here, in this volatile space she’s created, that does not belong to her.

Woodenly, Nene turns around. fists balled tightly into muted remnants of her momentary lapse in judgement.

He stands there in a white T-shirt and jeans. Beat-up old trainers. A red windbreaker tied around his slim, wiry waist. Double knotted. The fabric is red and frayed at every conceivable edge.

“What’d he ever do to you?”

The joke falls flat, but the dark haired boy pays it no mind as he bustles around in his pockets, pulling out a large keyring. Quickly, assuredly, he swipes one of his many apparatuses against the black swatch of plexiglass beside the left door. A telltale click echoes in the otherwise heavy quietude. He hefts the door open and holds it for her by the handle.

“If you really wanted to fuck him up,” he continues, “you’d have gone for the jugular, or the solar plexus. A solid hammer strike would take any fella out of commission, even if he were as big as this nasty brute.”

“Do you live here?” asks Nene, dubiously.

He flashes an ID card with his free hand. “Maintenance.”

She scans the few characters she can catch before he shoves it away. “Yugi Amane.”

“Yes, Yashiro Nene?”

Every cell in her body goes cold and still all at once. She can’t even speak. The synapses in her brain are just beginning to fire again -- propelling her desperately towards flight flight flight -- before the strange boy nods at something on her chest.

Despite herself, she looks down.

At her new student name tag, pinned to the front of her shirt.

Sheepishly, she meets his eyes again, this time with a little less unguarded accusation in her gaze.

“Come on, give me a little credit,” says Amane, amicably. “If I were a creep that would have been a rookie mistake. Now you know too much. I gotta kill you. Game over.”

“I could take you,” she argues, against her better judgement.

“Really?”

“Sure.” She feels the lingering jitters from her initial wariness melt away into something gentler, something placed decidedly lower in her gut, something colder than fear, so cold that it threatens to brand the very core of her. “Wouldn’t be too hard. Jugular, solar plexus.”

“My oh my. I’d better be careful of you, then.”

“You do that,” Nene hums, gracefully sliding past, “Yugi-san.”

“Call me Amane.”

He doesn’t move from his spot amidst the doorframe, one hand gripping easily onto the slab of steel, the other waving in the air, bidding her adieu. He doesn’t move even as Nene makes her way into the elevator. He doesn’t move even as Nene raises her own hand in farewell. He doesn’t move even as their field of vision is severed and Nene rises up, up, up and away.

It’s absurd, she knows, but she can’t help picturing the image of his thin, wiry, bobbleheaded self, rooted to the spot, holding open the door, waving at nothing, frozen still and solid well into the night.

And in this fantasy, his grin never falters.

The Thought Wall is an entire stretch of plain, white drywall that she’s cleared off in her single suite room and dedicated to thousands of post-it notes.

Not all of the stickies are significant. Some are grocery lists. Some are doctor’s appointment reminders. Others detail traipsing, loosely connected plot points narrated by fragments of her mundane schedule: Lunch is with Aoi @ 12:30 p.m. Meeting is with Professor Tsuchigomori @ 4:00 p.m.

They are all the same color, and they all fall into neatly gridded lines across the expanse of her wall. If she wanted to, Nene would be able to catalogue each and every individual experience dating back to the day she moved into the dorms -- which, to be fair, was only a mere two weeks away from where she currently reflects, but retrospect tends to cloud her view with a hazy, dissociative glaze.

Amongst all of the transient variables of her newfound independent, adult life, there is one constant:

Amane takes out the trash at 9:00 p.m.

The bins are right underneath her second-story window. If she parts her blinds just so, she’s able to catch a glimpse of that familiarly sparse frame lugging gargantuan black bags that dwarf him near comically in size. The noise of him struggling through the task would wake her, if she were one to sleep early and well.

Amane takes out the trash at 9:00 p.m.

Come to think of it, Nene doesn’t think she’s seen him wear the university’s trademark navy jumpsuit reserved for custodial staff. It’s always those same jeans; that same iridescently bright shirt; that same frayed, crimson jacket, double-knotted around his waist. Falling apart at the seams.

Amane takes out the trash at 9:00 p.m.

Tonight he is whistling. She doesn’t recognize the tune.

Amane takes out the trash at 9:00 p.m.

Tonight the moon is full. Autumn swiftly approaches. She wonders if he ever gets cold, out there, alone. In darkness.

Amane takes out the trash at 9:00 p.m.

She wonders where the custodial staff live on campus. Is it close to her building? Is that why he’s always lurking around on the grounds?

Amane takes out the trash at 9:00 p.m.

She saw him today, with a bucket and a mop outside of her lecture hall. He winked at her, and raised a finger up to his lips. As if there was anything to say.

Amane takes out the trash at 9:00 p.m.

Where is his jacket?

At first, Nene thinks he’s cut off the sleeves in some bizarre, avant-garde fashion statement. And then she realizes that it is his t-shirt he wears -- the one that’s supposed to be white, but is now dyed a horrifically deep shade of carmine. The entire garment is soaked through with it, oversaturated to the point of streaking down his lean, pale arms in red rivulets.

What meagre light filters down from the street lamp above highlights the pop of color bright against his usually washed-out palette. He is wraithlike. He is gorgeous. He is hefting a black bag into the dumpster with frighteningly considerable ease.

He is meeting her gaze through where she peeks between two blinds.

He is smiling.

He is red there, too.

Amane takes out the trash at 9:00 p.m.

“Campus should be shut down. I mean, this is just ridiculous.”

“What is?” Prompts Nene, sidling down into her usual seat beside the other girl. Aoi blots the lipstick so violently onto her thin, pouting lips it’s almost as though her intention is to bring forth a fresher, brighter burst of ruby. The image makes Nene shudder.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about the bathroom stall.”

“I can’t say I have.”

A pause. The lipstick slides shut and away, for now. Nene breathes a silent sigh of relief. “Nene, I don’t know whether to weep or scold you. Anyways. You really haven’t heard anything? Nothing at all?”

Nene shakes her head.

“Well, in the girl’s bathroom on this hall -- this hall! -- someone was…”

Before Aoi has the chance to finish her sentence, Professor Tsuchigomori interjects from the pit of the amphitheater, announcing the beginning of class. His voice, too, is stretched thin in the same way that Aoi’s is, as she hisses under her breath in consternation.

“A girl was murdered,” she whispers, heatedly. “And we’re having class the next week like the crime scene tape hasn’t just been removed. It’s horrible. The girl who did it-- perpetrator, whatever -- even signed her name. Hanako-san. Like, what is this, some sadistic role-play fantasy?”

“Miss Akane. Is there something you feel compelled to add to today’s lecture?”

“No, sir.”

“Alright then.”

“When,” murmurs Nene after a moment has passed.

“Two days ago, Saturday. At night, too. Right before all the buildings lock at nine. Makes you wonder who could’ve gotten away with it, at that time.”

And wonder Nene does.

“Hanako-kun,” she greets him, which is her first mistake.

She beat him out to the bins tonight. Instead of observing from the relative safety of her bedroom, Nene elected to stand out in the mid-October cold and wait for thirty minutes, with thinly-veiled anticipation that made her toes twitch and shiver with more than just the chill in the air.

He doesn’t expect her to be standing there. He certainly doesn’t expect her to say that name, but he manages it well. “Yashiro Nene,” he chirps, hefting one large black bag up and over his shoulder.

“Are you gonna kill me now?” She asks, which is her second mistake.

Laughter. He’s -- laughing, possibly for the first time Nene can remember after all the weeks she’s spent observing him. Quietly. Studiously. Obsessively, if she’s being honest with herself.

There is just something so illustrious about the darkness that clings to his alabaster skin like a magnetic field of sin and dread and enticing ambiguity. He is bright, but there are shadows that tuck themselves away into the hollow of his cheekbones, the crook of his lethal elbows, the depressions beneath his abrasive, beady eyes; he is slim, but there is an unannounced strength that emerges when he slinks out beneath the moon every night to fill the dumpster; he is dangerous, Nene knows he is dangerous. And yet, still she is drawn like a moth to flame.

“I know too much,” she continues, “You’ve got no choice. It’s game over.”

His back is to her. Something about the absence of his ever-present grin sets her on edge.

“There’s worse things than death.”

“Like what?” She prompts, which is the final nail in the coffin.

Hanako turns around, then. The straggly lighting of the street lamp does little to properly illuminate his features, but Nene thinks that there is nothing that could obstruct this view from being permanently etched into her memory. He’s a basket case, hands coated in red, his teeth a stark strip of grim white amidst the impenetrable inky black of the city limits. Nene feels nauseous. Her feet move on their own accord, drawing her closer, impossibly close. Close enough to smell, to touch.

To burn.

“I can’t wait to show you, Yashiro,” says Hanako, mouth wide, eyes bright.

Foresight is not one of Nene’s strong suits. Neither is thinking in retrospect. Seemingly the only kind of self-preserving thought Nene has mastered the art of is fight or flight, and even that survival instinct fails her at some notably terrible times.

If she were a better person, she wouldn’t have ignored the red flags. No, that’s not quite right. She didn’t ignore them. She was excited by them; charged headlong straight through them like a bull incensed with bloodlust, throwing herself straight into the impending gore.

If she were a smarter person, Nene would have figured a way out of the spider’s web into which she’d so foolishly fallen. She would have escaped before it got too serious, too scary, with consequences all too material. She would have clawed her way back to the mundanity of her former life. She would have lived to tell the tale. Or, at least, this is what she likes to believe. It helps her sleep at night.

If she were perhaps anyone other than who she is, Nene might have done better.

Unfortunately for her, she’s stuck with her own fate.

This is how she finds herself on a double date at McDonald’s. An empty, grimy, liminal McDonald’s.

At eight-thirty in the evening. On a Saturday.

“That’s so funny, Yugi-san,” hums Aoi into her medium seltzer water with lemon (ordered at the counter of this decrepit, run-down, understaffed McDonald’s. Really. She’s a wonder.) “I didn’t know you went to our school. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around, before? What program are you in?”

“Business and finance. And please, Amane is more than fine. No need for formalities. A friend of Yashiro’s is a friend of mine, yeah?”

Akane raises his double-patty in solidarity. “Hear, hear! Y’know, I quite like this guy, Yashiro. Where’d you dig him up at?”

“The dumpsters behind my building,” Nene answers truthfully.

The raucous laughter that rounds the table is undercut by a sharp pang of discomfort in Nene’s gut as she catches Hanko’s eye; for a moment, they are the only two in this restaurant, in this city, in this country, in this world, and the way he holds her gaze captive in a merciless chokehold lets Nene know that if he could keep it this way -- just them, forever, suspended in an indefinite, impenetrable solitude -- he would.

Give to me what you love the most, he’d told her last night at nine p.m, and I’ll return the favor.

So. They’re on a double date with Nene’s best friend and her best friend’s boyfriend. It’s rapidly nearing her own personal witching hour. It’s a Saturday.

She recognizes the irony inherent in one’s last meal being soggy fries and a limp bun from a McDonald’s straddling the edge of the city limits, no help, no contact, no hope in sight. Just one long strip of highway to the east and an extreme abundance of shadowy, secretive forestry an innocuous ways away.

“Nene-chan? You there?”

Blinking back into focus, Nene meets Aoi’s eyes. Her kind, gentle, sweet eyes.

“I’m here,” says Nene. “I’m right here.”

It’s hard to believe that, though, as the conversation ebbs and flows around her and all she can do is soak it up and let it leave her like a grimy, worn out sponge. She feels old. She feels tired. She feels more alive than she ever has in her whole life and the evening has barely started.

“Good.”

Aoi reaches across the table and risks her dainty elbows against the greasy surface, all just to grab Nene’s hands in her own smaller, paler, softer ones, and squeeze. “I’m glad.”

There is little else Nene can bring herself to do other than nod jerkily.

TO: XX Univeristy Class of 20XX, 20XX, 20XX, 20XX, VP XX, Shinjuku Police Department

Subject: Regarding The Bathroom Stall Incidents

Good Afternoon,

There has been much speculation and rumor spread amongst the student populace as of late. We’re sure you all are looking for real, conclusive answers.

Our administration writes today under the express permission of the Shinjuku Police Department to confirm the discovery of two bodies in the third floor bathroom of the Arts Center for Creative Development. This is the second instance of homicide on school grounds in what has now been confirmed to be a slew of serial murders, marked by the signature ‘Hanako-San of the Toilet.’

In light of recent events, all students and faculty are to adhere to the new curfew implemented Sunday morning, effective 8:00 p.m. tonight. The Arts Center for Creative Development has been shut down until further notice. Anyone caught trespassing will be subjected to a fine and potential lawful investigation.Class re-assignments will be posted on campus portal later today.

On behalf of the families of the victims, we ask that students refrain from circulating the names of the victims. Until legitimate identities can be confirmed by the police, neither the University nor any other unaffiliated party may comment conclusively on the identities of the victims at this time.

Stay safe, stay vigilant, and care for one another amidst this tumultuous period of fear and uncertainty.

Thank you.

XX UNIVERSITY

“You hungry?”

Nene remains silent. Squeezes her eyes even more tightly shut.

“Because it’s been a while for me. I’m hungry. I’m starving.”

Curls her fingers into the comforter. Sinks into her mattress. Pretends she isn’t there, not really. This isn’t her life. It can’t be. It’s not. It’s not.

“It’s been McDonad’s these past few times, but we could switch it up, if you’re bored. You just say the word, Yashiro, and we can go anywhere. Anywhere you want. Pizza, Chinese, American, Traditional--”

Holds her breath and counts and waits and counts and waits and counts.

“Korean--”

And waits.

“--Mexican--”

And counts.

“--Italian--”

And--

“God,” Nene bursts out, shooting up from her corpse’s lay on her bed. “We just ate this weekend. It’s been three days, you can’t possibly be hungry again. Don’t you ever get full? Are you not satisfied?”

Hanako hates sitting in chairs. The only time he does so is when they go out to eat; and even then, he’s fidgeting the entire meal. With cagey, restless energy. Today he’s twisted pretzel-like on top of her work desk, one arm leant for balance against her lamp as the other fiddles idly with a pen and a sticky note. “Satisfaction is the furthest thing from why humans eat. Survival. Baser Instincts. Satiation, more like.”

“Okay,” she bargains, “well, I’m done. I’m full. I’ve had enough, Amane. Really.”

“Really-really?” He huffs out, amused.

“Really- really. I’m not hungry. I don’t think I can ever eat again in my life. So please, can we just--”

“But you were the one who killed her. Or don’t you remember?”

How couldn’t I, screams Nene’s stilled posture, her held breath, her glassy eyes.

“You held the knife.” He is smiling. How can he smile and say disgusting things such as these? It’s almost impossible to believe. Nene wouldn’t be able to wrap her head around the juxtaposition had she not already bore witness to Hanako’s grin present in much darker, much more twisted deeds than simply telling the horrible truth.

“You stabbed her. In fact, you wanted to go first. And right before you took the plunge -- right before, just right before, remember, Yashiro? -- what did you say?”

That wretched, awful night comes flooding back into the forefront of her mind regardless of how hard she tries to suppress it. Sharp flashes of images awash in murky technicolor, stained a muted burgundy by her subconscious’s feeble attempts at guarding her sanity; Aoi’s long, slender legs quivering in fear from where they were bound together at her pretty, petite ankles; her grey face stripped of its normal flush by a slab of crudely-torn duct-tape; her luscious amethyst curls scattered around her quaking shoulders; and her eyes.

Those eyes. The same eyes that twinkled at her, not just an hour before the tragedy, which then begged -- pleaded -- for a second chance. A last chance. Any chance at all.

“I’m hungry,” whispers Yashiro.

“Louder.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Did you mean it? Do you mean it?”

“I’m hungry!”

“Are you? Can you feel the craving? Does your stomach ache with it, Yashiro?”

“I’m hungry! I’m hungry! I’m hungry!”

“Exactly right. You’re just like me. We’re no different. We’re the same.” Hanako unfolds himself to hop off of the desk and approach the bed. She remains still as a statue, even as he touches her at her jugular, her solar plexus. A light, fleeting, feathery caress. “The same here, and here. And here, too,” a touch at her lips, then. He tastes chemical. Sterile. She fights the urge to lap at the pads of his fingers, and then forgets why she’s ever resisted in the first place. When it was so inevitable to fall into him, into Amane, into Hanako, into the strange abyss that lay between the two.

When he pulls away, it feels all too soon. Hanako slips something from his pocket and sticks it in the next free space on the Thought Wall:

Lunch is with Hanako @ 6:qkjewkn right now.

“Come on,” he beckons her. “Date night.”

“Double date?”

“Double date.”

“...McDonald’s?”

Hanako smiles at her like she’s just told him a terrible joke.

“McDonald’s.”

Maybe he was right, in the end. Maybe they were just alike.

Maybe Yashiro is just as bad as he was, or no better. It doesn’t matter anymore, does it?

When she asks the bathroom stall, she receives no reply. Not even when she calls his name three times -- Hanako, Hanako, Hanako! -- echoing and staccato and cacophonous and desperate and tragic in the worst of ways. He doesn’t answer not even when she shakes him, not even when the knife slips from her grasp and into the sea of blood that pools around her ankles, tepid and viscous, as though she’s wading through the world of the undead.

What facts Nene knows definitely are these:

She is hungry. She will never not be hungry, now that she’s learned what an appetite she possesses.

The name on the bathroom stall is hers to keep.

And,

The jugular was easier to hit, in the end.

All she needed was a solid hammer strike.

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