#voidnira

[Soundtrack]

He never started looking.

It’s a stupid idea anyway. Impractical. Ridiculous. Something Chishiya probably said just to see what would happen, because apparently poking at loaded weapons gets boring if you do it the same way every time.

But someone has to supervise these infantile idiots, so here he is, rifle propped over one shoulder, one hand shoved in his pocket, strolling past silicone dicks in shapes and colors no one asked for, wide-eyed manga girls plastered over the walls with soaked fabric painted tight enough to count as anatomy, while Jun tries to beat someone over the head with a half-deflated blow-up doll.

They came here for rope. Sugi claimed they’d find decent quality in a place like this, got mocked for knowing that, and now the whole group has regressed into twelve-year-olds seeing tits for the first time while he silently stacks bundle after bundle into the beaten-up shopping cart they dragged over from the kombini next door.

“Look at that,” Last Boss grins, holding out a collar dangling from the very end of his katana.

Pink. Glossy. Vinyl. White rhinestones set in Western letters.

“You know what that says?” Niragi asks, tilting his head, lazy grin spreading when Last Boss doesn’t answer. “Nice pick, though.”

He walks the few steps over and stops in front of the rack, while Last Boss eyes the thing from a distance like it might still taint his precious sword.

“Says ‘Yes, daddy,’” Niragi tells him, grin widening. “No need to be shy about it.”

Last Boss huffs something under his breath and flicks the collar off before strolling away, leaving Niragi alone in front of the obnoxious little assortment.

More rhinestones. More lettering. Cum Slut, Bitch, Good Boy. Spike rivets, cone rivets, a few with pronged studs placed exactly where they’d dig into skin if someone held his head wrong. Too many hooks, too many rings, too much cheap hardware pretending quantity means function.

None of it looks like something you put on a person who has to keep existing afterward. Fine for a back room with tinted lights, sticky floors, and the kind of bad idea that only works while the lights stay low. Ugly once the lights come on and someone has to walk out wearing it.

No way he’d let him walk around the Beach like that.

He picks up a sleek metal ring from the top section, sealed in a small plastic bag with the tiniest Allen wrench attachment and a price tag that’s anything but cheap. Seamless closure. Simple. Elegant, probably, if you’re the kind of asshole who uses words like that out loud.

Maybe something like that.

//////

The game is annoying first and foremost.

Some twisted hopscotch shit blown out of proportion. Jump here, dodge that, don’t fall, the floor is lava. Except the floor isn’t lava, it’s a fifty-foot drop, and if you stand still too long to think about your next move, the collar around your neck explodes.

The collars are the interesting part.

Black metal, a little over an inch wide, fitted tight enough that Niragi feels his every time he swallows, skin already itching underneath. No give. No shift. Just a clean, hard line around the throat, like whoever built it understood punishment better than bodies.

On the last stretch, with barely anyone left, he grabs the lanky guy in front of him by the collar from behind. There’s no clean hold, not with the metal sitting that close to the skin, but skin gives, muscle gives, panic gives, so his fingers scrape underneath just far enough to hook and yank.

Hard.

The guy makes a wet, strangled sound and goes backward too easily, like someone cut the strings and pulled the wrong one. Niragi is already moving past him when the sound stops. The guy hits the platform on his back, mouth open, eyes wide, hands useless at his throat, and for one stupid second the collar is still intact while everything under it isn’t.

Larynx crushed, probably.

Niragi takes the next jump, then the next, weight landing clean, breath steady, the line of his own collar pressing in when he turns his head.

Behind him, the game finishes what the metal started.

So no solid metal.

Something that gives when it has to. Something that won’t turn into another trap.

//////

There are shops he’s never set foot in.

Some because he didn’t care, some because they were way past his paycheck, and some because even if he’d had the money, he’d have had the doorman breathing down his neck the second he walked in. He can still feel the looks on him, all that polished little suspicion hidden under the thinnest veil of professional politeness, even though he’s alone when he steps through the broken glass door.

The vitrines close to the windows are shattered, too. The rest still sits there in the condescending glory of calling everyone out as lesser people because they can’t afford to spend a month’s salary on something a gas station bouquet of flowers can do.

Or don’t want to afford.

Niragi can’t remember a single time he spent more than he absolutely had to on anyone. Never felt bad about it either, especially not when they went through the pathetic pouting routine afterward. But walking between the display cases now, broken glass crunching under his boots, the cheap vinyl from the porn shop keeps sitting wrong in his mouth.

Not cheap as in affordable.

Cheap as in insulting.

He picks up a thin necklace, lets it slide through his fingers, then grips both ends and pulls. There’s some resistance, a delicate little protest, and then it snaps, tiny chain links scattering over the marble floor.

Better than the metal ring.

Still not right.

He bends over the rows of rings and pendants, all stacked neatly in off-white velvet, tapping his fingers against the glass as he moves from case to case, until he stops in front of a single bust.

Broad chain-link necklace. Silver - no, titanium, because why spend less for the same color - with a lock pendant that looks way too functional to be decorative.

He takes the rifle off his shoulder, pushes the glass in with the stock, and takes the necklace out, half expecting some alarm to go off just so he can be annoyed at it. Nothing happens. The bust falls sideways when he touches it wrong, revealing some certificate shit underneath and a branded teal box.

He takes that too.

Sets it down on the ring display, jaw tight for no reason worth naming.

The box has a set of keys inside. They fit the lock. It comes clean off, no fiddling, no decorative bullshit pretending to have a purpose.

Nice weight to it. Heavy enough to feel something’s there, light enough it can be ignored if you know how to ignore things. He turns it over a few times, thumb catching on the edge of the lock, then slips it into his pocket.

//////

Chishiya is sleeping way too deep for someone collecting enemies left, right and center as a casual hobby.

He doesn’t move when Niragi crouches on the mattress beside him, careful not to make it dip too suddenly, and he doesn’t move when Niragi slides one hand under the base of his neck and lifts just enough to slip the ribbon underneath. Hair fanned out around his face, lips parted a little, throat bare and stupidly easy to get to.

Softer than he has any right to look.

Niragi sets his head back down, crosses the ribbon over his Adam’s apple, marks the distance with his thumb and pulls it free.

Then stops.

Eating, drinking, swallowing. Talking, maybe, if someone forgets to shut him up. Sucking cock, because if the stupid thing digs in the second Chishiya gets his mouth around him, then congratulations, he’s built expensive garbage with a lock on it.

So he bites down until his jaw aches and does it again with a second ribbon, this time slipping one finger between the cloth and Chishiya’s throat.

Chishiya’s breath hitches.

Niragi freezes.

Nothing happens. His breathing evens out again, slow and uselessly calm, and Niragi checks the mark, checks the spacing, checks the distance to the bite mark, because apparently he’s thorough now.

The ribbon drags free without waking him.

Good.

He still gets off the bed too fast.

//////

“What are you looking for anyway?” Last Boss complains, katana pointed at the neck of a mannequin like he’s actually going to ruin good steel on resin.

“Told you. Need to repair the strap.”

Last Boss snorts. “Your precious gun needs straps from Italy?”

“My precious gun needs quality leather,” Niragi says, fingers moving belt by belt, testing thickness, surface, bend. “You’re one to talk. How long have you been polishing those? Gonna lend me one later? Need something sharp.”

Last Boss twirls the katana with a flourish and a dirty look. “Try.”

He takes it way too seriously, so now it’s Niragi’s turn to scoff and ignore him.

There’s a thin black belt with a glossy surface, almost reflective, thicker through the middle than at the edges. It looks sharp, but when Niragi runs his thumb along it, the leather is smooth. No cheap plastic bite. No stiff decorative bullshit.

He wraps it once around his hand and heads toward what looks like storage.

Nice give. Supple bend. Sturdy, not indestructible.

He dumps the contents of the storage shelves onto the floor as he goes through them, box after box, until he finds the same model. Then he pulls every last one out of its fancy little packaging and carries the whole bundle back to the shop floor.

Last Boss looks down at the belts in his fist. “How many straps did you break?”

“It’s called precaution,” Niragi tells him. “Need some eyelets. Now get moving.”

//////

Niragi has never done much work with his hands that didn’t involve a keyboard. Then again, he also had a father who’d slap the screwdriver against his knuckles when he handed him the wrong one, so it only takes two ruined belts until the eyelets sit right, the cuts come out straight and even, and the ring is marked dead center.

If Chishiya wants one, it should at least sit right.

The ring took another stroll through the abandoned mall to find. Matching the lock was the annoying part. Big enough to attach something, small enough not to turn into leverage for every idiot with fingers and a death wish.

Testing the thing is the worst part.

Testing always is.

He closes it around a pipe first and pulls. The lock holds. The leather creaks, stretches a fraction, then stops.

Stable enough for normal use.

Useless information, then.

Niragi stares at it for another second, jaw working, because normal use is not the problem. Normal use never is. The problem is someone grabbing it from behind, someone yanking, someone panicking, someone trying to get clever.

The problem is the guy in the game, mouth open, hands useless at his throat.

“Fuck’s sake,” he mutters, and closes it around his own neck.

It feels stupid immediately. Worse because it doesn’t feel stupid enough.

He swallows, turns his head, tips his chin down, then up, feeling where the edge presses, where the ring shifts, where the lock sits against the side of his throat instead of the front. Too much pressure when he looks down. Too loose when he twists right. The first version is garbage.

He takes it off, cuts it apart, starts again.

The second sits better. Not good. Better.

He hooks two fingers under the front and pulls, and the leather bites into his skin before anything gives.

Wrong.

Off again.

Another strip, another hole, another ugly little weak point worked into the side where it won’t show unless someone knows what to look for, because clean doesn’t mean shit if the whole thing turns into a noose the second someone gets a decent grip.

He closes it around his neck again, tests the fit with two fingers, swallows, turns his head until the edge shifts against the tendon, then hooks his fingers under the front and pulls.

Nothing.

He pulls harder, jaw clamped, skin dragging hot under the leather, the first bite of pressure flashing across his throat hard enough to make his teeth bare before the weak strip snaps with a sharp little crack and the collar springs open.

Before it gets deep.

Niragi stands there breathing through his nose, one hand at his neck, fingers pressing over the line it left, checking the damage because apparently that is the level of stupid he’s reached now.

Annoying, but good.

He does it again with a fresh strip, then again because once doesn’t prove shit. Front pull, side pull, twist, one-handed, two-handed, quick yank, slow pressure, every angle some asshole could find if he had Chishiya close enough and enough empty space where his brain should be.

The lock stays shut. The ring holds. The leather gives where Niragi told it to give and nowhere else, opening before the pressure can settle into anything worse than a red mark and a bad mood.

That’s the order.

By the time he gets it right, the table is littered with torn leather scraps, bent hardware, and failed versions that would have passed if passing once meant anything. His own neck stings when he swallows. The finished collar sits flat and black under the light, heavier than the cheap shit from the porn shop, softer than the metal ring, ugly in exactly the right places if you know where to look.

It won’t come off because Chishiya gets bored and picks at it. It won’t come off because someone tugs once and gets lucky. It will come apart before it crushes his neck.

Niragi runs his thumb over the break point, catches himself doing it, and drops his hand.

Stupid.