[ Aside from the arm that's slunk around Aki's shoulders, Denji moves very little. His eyes tarry in what vacant space remains between their legs, lips pursed; the shame-ridden look of someone weighing the pros and cons of snitching out a close friend. In hindsight, he shouldn't have brought her name up this early, but he'd held a sliver of hope that maybe Aki would be in good enough spirits to allow the topic without completely shutting him down… It's a little funny how they don't talk about Makima that much, her name, what she did, and how her actions plunged their lives farther than even bedrock could reach. Beyond hell, toward some greater unknown. Denji thinks about her all the time, particularly when he's bringing up Nayuta — what she could do, where she could take him.

The trajectory's never good, but now what happens is predicated on what Denji does. How do you protect a kid without trampling all over them? His experience is limited to just one of those things. ]

It was Nayuta's idea to get off at Shinjuku Station and play around there. [ He only looks up to watch his fingers part through Aki's hair, twisting against the strands and softly wringing out thin streams of water along his shoulders. ] Just kinda see where the day took us, I guess.

[ And it was Nayuta's idea to go to the arcade, to have western food close by the entrance to the district. Dragging him closer and closer to the closed-off area. That could have been by coincidence, though, and he's telling Aki this, hoping he won't weaponize the information against Nayuta or him. He probably deserves to have it turned against him, but it's still not something he wants to deal with. ]

But, y'know, whatever happened, she was right in the end, wasn't she? We took care of the devil that Public Safety couldn't.