…Nothing.
Not a single word yet from Kaede…
The wood of the door felt cold beneath his forehead as he leaned against it, listening to the absolute, mindless silence radiating from the other side. For a fraction of a second, the former chuunibyou and delusional mangaka completely shattered.
His shoulders shook and he tried to take a deep, stabilizing breath, but his lungs refused to expand.
Is this… no—this is my fault. All of it.
Slowly, his shoes heavy against the floorboards, he walked downstairs.
His parents were waiting at the bottom of the steps, their eyes widen the moment they saw his face.
"How did it go, son?" his father asked, his voice barely audible.
Kaoru stared past them, unable to look either of them in the eye. "...I don't know," he muttered, the words tasting like dust on his tongue. "I need some time to think. I—I need to go home. It's my fault."
"Son, wait—"
The front door clicked shut behind him before his mother could finish.
The subway ride back to his own apartment was blurry. The screeching of the metal wheels against the tracks, the blank dead-eyed stares of the salarymen sitting across from him, the flickering lights—
Completely alone, huh?
Alone like Kaede is right now… God, I'm so terrified of what she might do because of me.
By the time he stepped out of the station, the night air had turned bitter and cold.
He walked up the concrete steps of his apartment and stopped right in front of his door.
He reached into his pocket, his fingers wrapping around the cold metal of his keys, but he hesitated. He couldn't turn the doorknob. Stepping inside that dark, empty apartment right now would be the act of a fool.
If I go inside right now… I'll just sit in the dark until morning. Like a depressed person again.
His chest hitched. Instead of unlocking the door, he pulled out his phone, his thumb trembling as he dialed a familiar number.
Is talking to someone really gonna help right now…?
The line rang twice before a tired voice answered.
"Takeshi?"
"Yeah, Kaoru? I'm a little bus—"
"Let's hang out in a bar."
What am I even doing? Asking for advice and comfort from Takeshi again... so stupid.
Kaoru's hands twitched twice before gripping the phone tighter. "Just the two of us… I wanna talk about things."
The harsh night wind swept through the hallway, biting through his clothes.
"Alright…" Takeshi finally sighed. "Does an Izakaya sound fine?"
"Yeah."
Kaoru slid the phone back into his coat. He turned away from his apartment door and began walking toward the usual streets, his shoes clicking against the pavement.
The convenience store appeared, the exact one where he used to buy those sweet fruit juices for Kaede back when she still smiled at him. Don't you dare think about that. Keep walking, me.
He forced his eyes forward. Only to pass the dark, empty park. The benches were dusted, bringing back a sudden, sharp memory of Aya Takahashi asking him out right under the streetlamp. In his bedroom, a winter gift from that time still sat completely unopened.
Right… I haven't opened that gift.
Look at me, the great former chuunibyou mangaka, walking here pathetic, useless and goddamn depressed all over again.
Kaoru buried his hands deeper into his pockets, his chin tucked into his collar.
A sudden burst of movement ahead made him slow down. It wasn't even a couple, it was just two kids, a big brother and little sister spinning in circles on the concrete, laughing wildly in the biting wind like growing up would never ever touch them.
Laughing like nothing could break them…
His feet stopped completely.
Is that… us? No, no, no… That used to be us.
The panel burned into his retinas. They were a reflection of himself and Kaede from years ago. A time when they played until their knees were scraped, when they danced in the living room, when they shared their favorite books and watched shows side-by-side until they fell asleep on the tatami mats.
All of it was gone anyway.
The childish drawings they made together still remained pinned to the corkboard, unchanged, but their lives were completely ruined.
Fingers pinched hard through the pocket fabric, nails digging into his leg.
How… the hell does someone even—even help their sibling in their darkest moments?
A violent gust of wind surged down. It brushed the hood straight off his head, the freezing air stinging his cheeks as the flickering, warm sign of the Izakaya finally came into view just a few yards away.
...I'm sorry, Kaede.
***
The heavy wooden sliding door of the Izakaya creaked open, instantly cutting off the bitter howl of the wind. Kaoru stepped over, his cheeks stinging from the sudden blast of thick, humid air that smelled entirely of fried chicken, charcoal smoke, and the sharp, nose-stinging yeast of cheap draft beer.
Kaoru stood by the doorway for a second, his hands still buried deep inside his pockets, his chin tucked into his collar. His mind was still trapped back in that hallway, staring at the cold wood of Kaede's bedroom door, listening to her silence.
"Oi! Kaoru! Over here, you gloomy freak!"
Through the haze of cigarette smoke and floating grease vapor, a hand was waving aggressively in the air from a corner booth.
Takeshi was already sitting there. He had his jacket tossed carelessly over the back of the seat, his collared shirt unbuttoned at the top, and his face already sporting the faint, pinkish glow of someone who had started drinking twenty minutes before his guest arrived. He was grinning…
Kaoru dragged his feet across the sticky floorboards, his shoes clicking dully until he slid into the opposite side of the booth. He slumped against the wall, looking completely washed out.
"You look like a drowned rat," Takeshi said, immediately sliding a grease-stained menu across the table with enough force to rattle the small ceramic soy sauce bottle. "Order something!! I'm starving, and watching you sit there like a ghost is killing my vibe!"
Kaoru didn't glance at the menu. He just stared blankly at the condensation pooling around the base of Takeshi's half-empty beer mug. "Just get whatever. It's on me..."
"Oh, no. We aren't doing the 'sad protagonist' routine tonight,"
"What are you talking about, Takeshi?—"
Takeshi snorted, leaning forward and aggressively slamming his index finger down on a picture of deep-fried chicken cartilage. "We are ordering a ridiculous amount of fried food because my wallet is currently crying and I want to punish it. Look at this. Delicious yakitori sticks. Look at the grease on that, Kaoru. That's pure artery-clogging joy right there!"
Before Kaoru could even mutter an objection, Takeshi caught the attention of a passing waiter by raising two fingers and shouting over the rumble of the bar. "Hey~! Two mega-mugs of the coldest draft beer you have! A platter of the fatty pork belly, three plates of karaage, and keep the edamame coming until I tell you to stop!"
The waiter nodded, scribbling furiously before disappearing into the chaos.
"Takeshi," Kaoru muttered. "I said I wanted to talk about things."
"And we will talk," Takeshi shot back, his hand suddenly reaching into the middle of the table, grabbing the small wooden box of chopsticks, and clattering them down between them like a challenge. "But we talk after ingestion. Rule number one of the Izakaya: you don't drop depressing monologues on an empty stomach. It ruins the mouthfeel of the beer."
Within minutes, the waiter returned, balancing two massive, frosted glass mugs that were practically overflowing with thick, white foam. The sharp fizz of the cheap beer seemed to vibrate against the wood of the booth.
Takeshi didn't even wait for a toast. He grabbed his mug by the heavy handle and chugged the first half of it like a man dying of thirst in the Sahara desert. He let out a loud, obnoxious slam as the glass met the table again, a trail of foam wiping across his upper lip, before eating a whole boneless chicken leg.
"God, that's terrible beer," Takeshi gasped, a huge, goofy grin breaking across his face. "It tastes like carbonated copper pennies. C'mon! Drink up~!"
Kaoru looked at his own mug. The ice-cold glass felt real against his palm. It was a physical sensation that pulled him, if only for a fraction of an inch, out of his own head. He lifted it, tilted his head back, and drank. The cold, bitter liquid burned his throat, freezing the lump that had been sitting there since he left his parents' house.
He didn't stop until the glass was three-quarters empty.
"Whoa, easy there, tiger," Takeshi laughed, though his black eyes narrowed slightly, observing the desperate edge in his friend's movements. "I said drink it, not try to drown yourself in it!"
The food arrived in a whirlwind of steam and grease. Heavy plates were dropped onto the table, piled high with golden-brown chicken and yakitori sticks dripping with thick, sweet soy glaze.
"Alright, explain this to me," Takeshi suddenly said, his voice rising as he aggressively pointed a half-eaten pork belly skewer directly at Kaoru's face. "Your latest manga chapter. What the hell was that? The main character spends three pages talking to a literal wall about his childhood trauma while the demon lord is actively destroying the city? Who writes that?!"
Kaoru's eyebrows twitched. The alcohol was starting to hit the back of his neck, warming his blood. "It's called character development, you uncultured brick. The wall represents his psychological block! The demon lord can wait; the emotional pacing requires a moment of internal stillness before the climax!"
"It's a terrible plotline!" Takeshi yelled back, slamming his hand down so hard a piece of fried chicken jumped off the plate. "If I want to read about a guy staring at a wall, I'll look at my own bedroom ceiling when Emi is sleeping over and taking up ninety percent of the mattress!"
Kaoru paused, his eyes narrowing through the alcohol-induced fog. "Wait. Emi's sleeping habits? Is that what you're complaining about?"
"Yes! She sleeps like a starfish, Kaoru! A cold, dominant, white-haired starfish!" Takeshi threw his hands up in the air, his speech starting to pick up a slightly slurred speed, though something felt wrong. "She kicks in her sleep! And if I try to move her, she just mumbles something about 'disciplinary action' and punches me in the ribs! I am fighting for my life in my own bed, man! You think your manga character has trauma? Try waking up to a knee at the sternum at three in the morning!"
"At least someone is sharing a bed with you!" Kaoru shouted back, his voice cutting through the loud, obnoxious clinking of their mugs as they banged them together for a clumsy second round. "My readers are actively sending me emails telling me that my magic system doesn't make logical sense! Do you know how hard it is to balance spell-scaling when you're legally depressed?! Like how the hell did they find my EMAIL?!"
"To HELL with your magic system!" Takeshi screamed, his face turning an even brighter shade of pink. "And to hell with logic! We are in an Izakaya! Logic doesn't exist past the third mug!"
They went back and forth like that for what felt like hours, their voices joining the general symphony of noise in the tavern. They argued about the price of cabbage, the terrible background art in modern anime, and why the convenience store down the street stopped carrying the specific brand of spicy chips they liked. It was loud, it was snarky, and it was completely stupid.
By the time the fourth round of heavy mugs sat empty on the table, the tone began to shift. The fast-paced, sharp-witted banter began to slow down, turning sluggish, hazy, and uncoordinated.
Kaoru slumped back against the booth, his head suddenly feeling three times heavier than it had ten minutes ago. His eyes stopped tracking the movement of the waiters, the entire room seemed to blur at the edges, the ambient chatter of the salarymen shifting from lively human voices into a suffocating, low-frequency static.
Takeshi's shoulders dropped. His chin tucking lower as he stared blankly into the fading foam at the bottom of his glass. He extended a clumsy finger, tracing the sticky, wet rim of the mug over and over again in a tight, repetitive circle.
The room spun just enough to make the noise feel miles away.
"Kaoru...hic" Takeshi murmured, his voice dropping into a low, raspy register that was barely audible over the hum of the bar.
"Yeah…?" Kaoru replied, his eyes fixed on a drop of grease slowly cooling into a solid white spot on the yakitori plate.
"Sometimes... Liiiisstten to me... Sometimes, your biggest supporters are the ones you'll never know. Because they're blind, Kaoru. They're blind! hic So you got nobody!" Takeshi's head swayed slightly as he spoke, his finger losing its grip on the glass and thudding onto the wood.
Kaoru blinked slowly, trying to process the words through the thick layer of mental static. "They're blind? My manga readers...?!"
"Total darkness. No one in sight," Takeshi whispered, his eyes looking straight through the wall of the booth, staring into some invisible emptiness "Just ghosts in the alleyway, man."
Kaoru let out a dry, hollow laugh that didn't reach his eyes. "Well... that explains why you're standing so close, then."
Takeshi squinted at him, his brow furrowing as if he were trying to solve a complex math equation.
"Wait! Are you calling me BLIND? I can see you fine. You're... you're blurry, but you're clearly definitely there... hic—You—hic—are so—hic—"
"Drink some actual water, Takeshi," Kaoru muttered, reaching for the small pitcher the waiter had left behind, his own coordination so ruined that he spilled half of it onto the table.
Takeshi grabbed Kaoru's wrist, his grip surprisingly tight despite his glassy stare. He leaned directly into Kaoru's personal space, his eyes wide and completely unblinking, his face warping into a horrific grin.
"And you wanna know something? Never trust water, because of Lloyd..." Takeshi mumbled with a tragic, drunken intensity that made the hair on the back of Kaoru's neck stand up.
"Maybe... hic—becwuse... Hic. Sometimes, the things our hearts want most... are the very things we can't name."
For a second, the nonsense stopped feeling like a joke. The line hit the air with a heavy, thudding weight. The things our hearts want most are the very things we can't name. Kaoru thought of Kaede. He thought of her breaking down, terrified of growing up, terrified of him changing. He couldn't name the solution to her pain. He couldn't name the way to fix his own broken mind.
But before the emotion could fully settle into the booth, Takeshi's brain was completely short-circuited.
His eyes suddenly rolled back into his head. His jaw unhinged. He unleashed his tongue, letting it flop out completely flat before violently swinging it side to side against his chin.
"BLELELELELELELELE!!!"
He kept his wide, unblinking eyes locked dead-center on Kaoru's face, his tongue wildly thrashing back and forth, making direct, menacing eye contact.
Takeshi stopped and collapsed back into his seat with a heavy thud, his tongue finally returning to his mouth as he let out a long, shuddering sigh.
Why did I even do that? AHHH!! that's so embarrassing! Maybe I'm drunk? No, no that's obvious that... I am drunk!
Besides...
...I can't tell Kaoru about my real situation with Emi...
He looked out the small window of the booth toward the dark alleyway outside, a blonde man with an anime-graphic tee who was currently locked in a fierce, silent wrestling match with a blue dark-haired youth over a bottle of industrial-grade alcohol.
Kaoru's gaze tracked the absolute chaos through the glass. Outside, the blonde bared his teeth in a terrifying, unhinged grimace, attempting to bite the other's hand off. The dark-haired one didn't even flinch. His face twisted into an equally horrific scowl as he locked the blonde in a chokehold. Despite the freezing night air.
Both of them had mysteriously stripped down to their boxers.
For a long, tense moment, Kaoru and Takeshi simply stared them down through the glass, their silent judgment cutting through the window.
Sensing the glare, the two lunatics froze mid-strangle. The dark blue-haired one slowly turned his head, his eyes meeting Takeshi's.
The blonde stopped biting, blinking blankly at Kaoru. Realizing they were being watched, a mutual, unspoken agreement passed between them. They instantly straightened up, offered a swift, incredibly sketchy salute, and bolted down the street.
"Takeshi... hahaah... It's the wind right?" Kaoru asked quietly, his voice dropping back into that dark, exhausted space.
"Definitely the wind, Kaoru," Takeshi replied, his eyes closing completely as he leaned his head against the cold wall.
Kaoru looked down at the table, his hand resting on a piece of scrap paper he had pulled out of his pocket earlier, a rough sketch he had started before everything went wrong.
"To truly fix paper, you must make it... wet," Kaoru murmured, his slurred words carrying a strange, heavy solemnity, as if he had just discovered the meaning of life.
"...You know what I'm saying right, Takeshi?"
Takeshi didn't open his eyes, but he gave a slow, heavy nod. "Hold on… you're hic cooking! I can hear you loud AND clear."
The silence that followed lasted for all of three seconds before Takeshi's eyes snapped open, suddenly gleaming with a frantic, chaotic second wind.
He reached down into his pockets. From the depths of the fabric, his hands emerged clutching two totally ordinary, unbranded plastic water bottles. The condensation on the plastic made them look perfectly innocent like pure, life-saving hydration meant to rescue two drowning teenagers from the brink of a massive hangover.
Takeshi unscrewed the caps with a dramatic flourish and leaned over the table. With an unsettling, dead-eyed focus, he began to pour the liquid from both bottles simultaneously into Kaoru's empty glass, the clear stream splashing innocently against the red velvet tint of the glass.
Kaoru sat entirely still, his chin resting heavily in his palm, his eyelids drooping as he tracked the rising liquid. Something felt off. The vapor rising from the glass didn't smell like minerals or tap water. It smelled sharp. It smelled dangerous.
"Is this..."
Without moving his head, his hand drifted into his pocket, pulling out his cheap convenience-store lighter. He brought the small plastic casing to the rim of the glass and flicked his thumb against the flint wheel.
Spark.
The liquid violently detonated into a brilliant, blue sheet of flame that roared nearly a foot into the air, scorching the bottom of the low-hanging wooden menu board above their booth. The eerie blue light cast long, demonic shadows across the table, illuminating Kaoru's face. In an instant, his sluggish, drunken expression completely vanished. His face warped into a terrifying, vein-popping grimace of pure, unadulterated apocalyptic rage, his eyes widening into two manic pinpricks.
"SPIRYTUS REKTYFIKOWANY!!!!! YOU BASTARD! WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO?!!"
"ARE YOU TRYING TO GET US ALL SUED?!"
Across the booth, Takeshi didn't even flinch at the explosion. He just leaned back, completely unfazed by the miniature sun burning between them, and stuck his tongue out. He began mocking his friend with absolute, unhinged authority.
"TOUGHENING YOU UP, KAORU! CHUG MORE! CHUG! CHUG!"
"OH SO YOU WANT ME TO GO HOME DRUNK WASTED AND HAVE S@X WITH AYA?!!!" Kaoru screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice cutting through the entire Izakaya's chatter like a chainsaw. A nearby table of salarymen went completely silent, turning to stare in absolute horror. "What the hell are those two idiots doing? Is that even related to their conversation?!"
Takeshi paused for a fraction of a second, shrugging his shoulders with a grin that was entirely too wide and entirely too chaotic.
"MAYBE!"
The fury completely evaporated from Kaoru's face in a millisecond. His features instantly dropped into a totally flat deadpan. He stared at the thin blue fire, then back at Takeshi, his voice dropping into a disturbingly polite, calm register.
"Alright. Fair."
He reached out, grabbing a second, identical glass from the edge of the table.
He reached over, unscrewing a flask he had hidden under his own coat, and filled it to the brim with a dark, amber fluid. He slid it across the sticky wood, his expression remaining completely deadpan. "Why don't you hydrate, too?"
Takeshi blinked, his posture relaxing into a goofy, vulnerable slouch as his hand reached out for the offering. He looked touched by the gesture.
Hmm why does it look like piss?
"Why, hic thank you kaor—"
Before the name could fully leave his mouth, Kaoru lunged entirely across the table, his upper body flattening against the plates of half-eaten yakitori. He grabbed the back of Takeshi's head with his left hand, and with his right, he violently shoved the rim of the glass straight into Takeshi's open mouth, tilting it at a brutal, vertical ninety-degree angle.
Takeshi's eyes nearly popped out of his skull. His throat swallowed a massive gulp by pure, desperate reflex before his brain could even register the chemical warfare happening on his tongue.
PFFFTTTT!!!
Takeshi spat the dark amber liquid across the booth like a literal human flamethrower, a fine mist of alcohol catching the edge of Kaoru's blue flame and creating a brief, terrifying flash of bright orange fire in the middle of the air.
He fell backward against his seat, hacking and coughing violently, his chest heaving as he lunged right back across the table, his knuckles turning white as he grabbed Kaoru tightly by the collar of his shirt.
"WAIT A MINUTE!" Takeshi barked, his voice cracking into a high-pitched shriek as he choked on the fumes. "VODKA AND WHISKEY?! YOU DELUSIONAL FREAK! ARE YOU TRYING TO TRIGGER A CARDIAC ARREST?!"
"YOU started it!" Kaoru hissed back, his collar bunching up in Takeshi's grip, his deadpan face still firmly locked in place despite the fact that his own eyes were watering from the alcohol vapors. "You brought contraband grain alcohol into a licensed establishment! If my heart stops, I'm haunting YOU for the rest of your natural life!"
"I was trying to help you!" Takeshi yelled, shaking Kaoru's collar aggressively while his own head spun in a wild circle from the sheer proof of the whiskey he had just ingested. "You were sitting there looking like a ghost! I thought if I burned the sadness out of your stomach, you'd start acting like a chunibyo again!"
"I can't handle you when you're normal, Kaoru! It's terrifying!"
"So your solution is FUCKING ASSASSINATION?!" Kaoru countered, his hand finally reaching up to swat Takeshi's grip away. He slumped back into his own corner of the booth, his heart hammering against his ribs from the sudden adrenaline spike.
The blue flame over his original glass slowly began to die down, flickering out until only a thin wisp of acrid smoke drifted up toward the ceiling. The table between them was a complete disaster area, spilled water, pools of cheap whiskey, burnt napkins, and a plate of cold chicken cartilage that had survived a literal explosion.
Takeshi let go of the collar, falling back against his own wall with a heavy, dramatic thud. He let out a long, wheezing breath, his hands coming up to cover his face as the temporary adrenaline faded, leaving him entirely at the mercy of the massive amount of alcohol now circulating through his system.
"My throat burns," Takeshi whimpered from behind his hands. "I think you melted my esophagus."
"Good," Kaoru muttered, though his own head was spinning violently now. He tucked his chin back into his collar.
He clumsily looked out the window, watching the blur form on the glass.
"That's what you get for playing with that crazy drink..."
Takeshi slumped against the wall. The manic, chest-thumping energy of a minute ago vanished, leaving his shoulders empty out. He stared directly at the table, his eyes fixed on a tiny pool of spilled whiskey.
"Ahh... People are pretty weird, right?" Takeshi murmured. His voice lacked its usual theatrical edge. "They always act like it's destiny. Or fate. All that kind of stuff."
Kaoru let his hand rest flat against the sticky wood, his fingers tracing a deep scratch in the glass mug
Takeshi let out a short, breathy chuckle that didn't touch his eyes.
"But sometimes I think we're all just cheating. Saying the right thing. Showing up at the exact right second. Eventually...
Somebody falls for somebody because they played the hand right."
Kaoru lifted his chin out of his collar, his eyes narrowing slightly through the empty throbbing of his intoxication "Woah, there, Takeshi. You're talking crazy as heck. Are you finally hitting the drunk state from the beer and that cursed tea?"
"Yeah. Guess so." Takeshi didn't shake his head to clear it, instead he simply let it drop lower, until his forehead almost touched the rim of his empty glass.
Kaoru reached onto the small plate, his fingers brushing past the cold bones of the yakitori. He grabbed a paper napkin, folding it precisely in half, creasing the edge with his thumbnail until the paper was sharp.
"Papers are just... easier to fix than people. You mess up a line, you scratch it out. You tear the page, you grab a new sheet."
"I see the meaning," Takeshi whispered.
The napkin folded again into a triangle then a smaller square.
Kaoru kept his eyes locked on his own hands, his voice dropping into the quiet space between them. "Hey. Can I ask you something, Takeshi? Be completely honest with me."
"Yeah?"
"What was your take on love back in high school? After all... we did kind of drifted apart during those years."
Takeshi opened his mouth, a sharp retort seemingly rising to his tongue, but his jaw stayed open for a second before clicking shut. He reached down beneath the table. Through the gap in the wood, Kaoru saw Takeshi's knuckles turn white as his thumb and fore finger dug into his own thigh, pinching the denim through the fabric to anchor himself.
"My mind is pretty sluggish right now," Takeshi tried to force a lazy, lopsided grin that failed halfway up his cheek. "But I can try to figure out my... My big motivational speech to ease all our pain! Let's see, let's see. Hold on... it's right there on the tip of my tongue. Some... ultimate, ultra final-boss wisdom. I can feel it…!"
Takeshi stared at his own hands, which were trembling slightly against the edge of the table. When he spoke again. A soft, thin tone that sounded far too small for his frame came out.
"Y'know… winning used to matter more to me than people."
Kaoru's hand stopped moving. The napkin remained half-crushed in his palm.
"That's probably why I got good at taking things that weren't mine," Takeshi watched his own thumbs trace the wet rim of the mug.
"You don't get it, do you?"
"I know," Kaoru said softly.
Takeshi squinted, a sudden, desperate defensively, tightening his jaw. "You don't know the half of it, man."
"I know enough," Kaoru replied, his voice entirely steady through the dull, throbbing buzz behind his eyes. "You're still sitting across from me, aren't you?"
Takeshi let out a long, shuddering exhale, the tension leaving his posture all at once as he slumped backward against the wood.
"I wasn't exactly a good person in high school," Takeshi muttered with a soft, thin tone that sounded far too small for his personality. "There are people who'd probably punch me if they saw me again…"
Takeshi let out a dry, breathy chuckle that didn't reach his eyes. "But anyway, let's talk about you, Kaoru… that emptiness of yours, ...why? Why are you trying so hard to just erase out your spark?"
The question hit the table with a heavy thud.
Kaoru looked down at his lap, his hands resting limp against his knees.
My... spark? What does he mean by that? Imagination? Dreams? Or... maturity?
"An artist like me... a mangaka losing his spark? Ha..." Kaoru let out an empty, self-deprecating laugh. "It's very funny, right? You spend your whole life staring at a blank page, pouring everything you have into it... until one day you realize something and it's that—that you're just completely empty..."
I quite don't understand what mature means still but hearing that 'word' from my best friend felt like... like a pen piercing my chest.
"...There's simply nothing left inside to draw."
He swallowed hard, the bitter taste of the alcohol in his throat. His fingers started feeling stiff.
Yeah... Artist block huh? No biggie. I can always get my motivation back this time once more, right...?
"I—I just... can't do the things I used to love anymore... I don't really know why. Just... why?"
"Because you're running… Just like me."
"I don't know anymore, man. I'm... I'm just—me," Kaoru murmured, his eyelids drooping as the thick layer of mental static began to close back in. "It doesn't really matter that I'm not special anymore. I guess that's just how I'm moving on. Just being me."
A waiter passed by, slamming a tray of empty beer mugs onto a counter three booths down.
Kaoru spun his glass on the wooden booth, the ice clinking a dull, rhythmic beat. The alcohol was supposed to make him forget the closed door but it didn't.
He looked up, his gaze unfocused, but serious. "Hey, Takeshi… Y'know why I'm still venting to you?"
Takeshi didn't look up, but his shoulders stiffened. "What is it?"
"All I wanted—wanted was just... just my little sister back."
Kaoru stared blankly into his empty glass, his knuckles white against the sweating glass. "...That's all. The mangas, the deadlines, the—all of it, everything. I don't even care. I never cared. I just... I just want to go home. But there's... there's no one, no one there. Not anymore."
Kaoru let out a ragged, shallow breath, his head dropping lower. "I'm such... a damn scumbag for neglecting her as a big brother, aren't I?"
Takeshi stared down at his own drink. He pulled out his phone, the screen lighting up his face for a fraction of a second before he flipped it face down on the counter with a heavy, deliberate thud.
"Six years..."
He swallowed hard, his chest hitching over a sudden, drunken bubble of air.
"...Six goddamn… years, Kaoru."
"She's still my... everything, but every damn time I look at my phone, she's just—she's watching me as if waiting for me to... break up with her…
And I don't want that. I really, really don't."
Takeshi gripped the edge of the table, his voice dropping into a rough, jagged whisper. "And to make it even worse—I still haven't proposed to her yet. I'm afraid."
"What if I'm not… worthy of her?" His toes curled up inside his shoes.
Six years? I've always thought he's the one who somehow figures everything out... I never knew he was like this. Is that really the Takeshi that I know of...?
"So yeah," Takeshi muttered, staring at the dark back of his phone case. "That answers your question, but also mine. We're both scumbags."
Across the room, a group of businessmen burst into loud, drunken laughter. The clinking of glasses, the sizzle of the kitchen, and the generic pop music from the speakers filled the space between them.
"Yeah—yeah," Kaoru finally murmured, raising his glass a mere inch off the wood. "I guess... we really are."
Takeshi reached out, his hand clumsy from the beer as he lifted his own glass to meet it. "To... hic—to the scumbag club."
"To the scumbag club," Kaoru repeated the toast, a bitter, humorless smile touching his lips.
"Tonight we drink until we can't remember our own names, let alone our mistakes. To being pathetic, cheers."
The freezing night air cut through the Izakaya scrubbing the scent of grease and failure from their lungs.
Takeshi slowed his pace slightly, his hands shoved deep into his coat pockets as he looked up at the starless city sky.
"Hey, Kaoru..."
Kaoru didn't stop, but he tilted his head back slightly, his chin tucked into his collar.
"Yeah?"
"Best friends in every medium?"
A small, genuine smile finally broke through Kaoru's exhausted expression. He bumped his shoulder against Takeshi's.
"You betcha."