Always Eat a Hearty Breakfast

Makima shuts the door on Power's remains and walks a shellshocked Denji back to her couch. Trembling, he asks if he is dreaming. She rests her head in his lap and bursts into wild laughter, then orders him to remove his shirt. When he hesitates, she reminds him of his obedience and he obeys, lying back as she toys with his cord and begins to explain.

His vow to Pochita to win an ordinary life, she says, amounted to a contract, and she wanted to break it by ensuring he could never enjoy that ordinary life again. To that end she handed him everything he craved before tearing it away: food, employment, and a family in the form of Aki and Power, letting him reach a new sense of normalcy only to wreck it. From here on, she tells him, any comfort of normalcy he feels will be staged by her solely so she can destroy it. Asked why, she answers that the time has come for him to atone for his sins.

Makima reveals she dug into his buried memories, the ones behind the door Pochita warned him never to open. Denji had hidden the truth from himself to keep living a normal life: that he killed his own father. She clarifies that he did so in self-defense against an abusive, alcoholic man, and that the mafia spun the death as suicide so Denji would inherit the debt. By opening the door and owning his past, she argues, he accepted that he is unworthy of a happy, normal life, just as he ultimately chose to open the door on Aki's and Power's deaths despite the warnings and alternatives. She asks whether he thinks he deserves a normal life, and a small, broken Denji answers no. The next morning, Makima eats breakfast calmly while he lies motionless on her couch.

Makima discloses that her entire arrangement with Denji was a scheme to break his contract with Pochita by granting and then destroying his normal life. She reveals Denji's repressed memory of killing his abusive father in self-defense and the mafia's cover story that saddled him with debt. By the end, Denji concedes he does not deserve a normal life, left emotionally hollowed as Makima eats her breakfast.

This nineteen-page chapter is part of Volume 10 and the Control Devil arc. Denji and Makima drive the chapter, with Power now a corpse, Denji's Father appearing as a corpse in revelation, and Pochita and Aki Hayakawa present in mention.