First Taste

Himeno rouses Denji and breaks the news that escape still eludes them. Aki keeps searching for the Devil, Arai has shut himself away in panic, and Kobeni was subdued after trying to sip from a toilet. When Himeno guesses Power has cracked too, Denji notes the fiend behaves strangely no matter the circumstances. To pass the wait, Himeno recounts how she got Aki hooked on cigarettes, a memory that unfolds as a flashback to their younger selves discussing how a hunter's brief lifespan makes such vices forgivable.

In the recollection, a stranger accosts Himeno outside and slaps her, later revealed to be the girlfriend of a partner Himeno had lost. Himeno shrugs off the violence as grieving relatives venting at her, while Aki retaliates by pressing gum into the woman's hair, earning a laugh. Over a meal afterward, Himeno coaxes Aki into picking up smoking as a token of their bond. Back in the present, Aki reappears with grim news: the Eternity Devil has swollen into a towering mass and offers a bargain, freedom in exchange for devouring Denji, just as Kobeni bursts in wielding a knife and demanding they accept.

The team's situation deteriorates as Arai isolates himself and Kobeni is knocked unconscious. Himeno fills the time with the origin of Aki's smoking habit, including the confrontation with a dead partner's girlfriend and the diner conversation that sealed the gesture between them.

Aki returns to report that the Eternity Devil has transformed from its earlier humanlike form into a vast wall of flesh. The Devil proposes a contract for everyone's release at the cost of Denji's life, and Kobeni, cracking under pressure, arrives knife in hand to force the group's acceptance.

Published April 1, 2019 in issue 2019-18, this chapter appears in Volume 2 and adapts into Episode 6 of the anime. It carries the Japanese title Hajimete no Aji and belongs to the Eternity Devil arc, sitting between Chapter 15 and Chapter 17. Kishibe and the Gun Devil are mentioned without appearing.