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After a week and a half crashing at Ramuda’s, Dice decides he can push his luck a bit further. His host’s been generous so far – weirdly generous, actually, for someone who’s so proudly annoying – and at this point, one more favour probably doesn’t matter.
“Hey. Is it cool if I do laundry?”
It’s a Thursday afternoon, and they’re in the main room of the apartment: Ramuda sketching something at the table, and Dice taking up the entire sofa. It’s familiar by now, one of them working and the other lazing around til nightfall, but he still feels out of place. No matter how much he thinks about it, and he’s been thinking about it a lot, it’s weird that a guy who likes cute things had chosen a gambler and a novelist for his team. Sure, Gentaro’s not bad-looking, if you go for that type and ignore how weird he is – but Dice still feels feral in comparison. And he isn’t just on Ramuda’s team, he’s on Ramuda’s couch, pinned between vibrant shades and soft lighting. Still, he doesn’t have time to linger on that, because a pair of eyes is suddenly on him.
“I don’t know, Dice… I bought all this fabric yesterday, and I have to wash it before I can use any.”
His expression says he’s weighing it up, but Dice isn’t fooled – because in the last few days, they’ve settled into an easy routine, and this is his opening bet. The rules of their game are simple: Ramuda pretends anything he asks would be a nuisance, and Dice ups the ante to try make him cave. It might be small-scale in comparison, but he’s having fun. It’s still a new feeling, to play with someone rather than against them, especially when his opponent is so unpredictable.
“I’ll vacuum,” Dice says, because last time he had offered to dust. “I’ll make dinner, too.”
Ramuda hums in thought, rocking back in his chair. “Whoa, you’re like a live-in maid service! If I’d known, I would’ve recruited you ages ago. But can you even cook?”
The thing is: Ramuda’s good, but not too good to have tells. Poker’s too number-crunchy for Dice’s liking, but he’s gone enough rounds to gain an instinct for reading people, and he’s faced way tougher opponents. Like how, months back, he’d been cleaned out three nights running at Shibuya’s ritziest casino, by the same plain-looking guy – and as much as he hates talking about that, it does make anyone else look easy in comparison.
Tell: if Ramuda’s obviously pretending to think about something, it means he’s already decided.
“I’m not a maid, I’m just paying you back. And I can.”
“And you’ll make me anything I like?”
“Shit, I guess.”
“Then, I waaaaaaant… yakisoba.”
Dice snorts, because it’s such a weirdly normal request. “What, is that all? I kinda thought you’d ask for something sweet.”
“And for dessert, I want mousse.”
“I didn’t offer you dessert!”
“Well, I don’t have to offer you my washing machine.”
“Fine! Fine.” Dice throws up his hands, mostly just baffled. “Dinner and dessert, but no vacuuming.”
“No vacuuming. I can’t let you use all your bargaining chips.”
Usually, when he bets against the house, the house isn’t so willing. But Ramuda prefers drawing out the game to earning a quick victory, and that’s something Dice likes about him.
“Thanks, Ramuda. Your machine’s up the back, right?”
“Next to the bathroom,” he says, and then, “Good luck!”
That’s ominous, or maybe just obnoxious, but Dice has no choice. He’s all out of clothes and, worse, there’s been a stain on his best jacket for days. He’s been hiding it by rolling up the sleeves, but he really should’ve asked sooner.
He manages to find the machine, tucked against the bathroom wall, and tosses his wardrobe inside. Then he strips to his underwear, and adds the rest. Ramuda’s lent him a robe for lounging around the house, but he hasn’t actually worn it yet, and it feels strange on him. It fits, but it’s way too short to be comfortable – and even worse, it’s bright turquoise. Because Dice might not know the first thing about fashion, but he knows that colour’s awful on him.
In hindsight, that’s probably why Ramuda selected it. Bastard.
Still, once he takes a look at the washing machine, he has much bigger problems. It’s some huge industrial thing with a million different settings, and his fingers hover uselessly over the console. How’s he supposed to know whether to run synths or outdoor or colours? It’s not delicates, he knows that much, but aren’t all clothes synthetic? And they’ve all spent more than enough time outdoors, and they’re definitely all colourful.
Unfortunately, he’ll have to ask.
He manages to work out where the laundry powder is, at least, and where it goes in the machine. Hopefully, that’s enough of a victory that he won’t look useless. Then, bracing himself, he hollers, “Ramudaaaaa!”
There’s a long, long moment of quiet. And then Ramuda pops his head around the door, looking more pleased with himself than usual, not even bothering to hide it. “Is something wrong, Dice?”
“Why’s this thing have so many damn buttons?”
“All machines have buttons. Or – oh, don’t tell me you’ve never seen a washing machine before?”
“Course I have! It’s just, the ones at the laundromat I used to visit had, uh.” He pretends to twist something in midair, the word slipping his mind. “Dials.”
“When did you last do laundry, the Stone Age?”
“They didn’t have –” He sighs. “Whatever. Can you show me how to use it?”
Ramuda ducks past him to peer through the glass of the machine, squinting at the clothes inside. “That depends on the materials.”
“Uhhhh.”
“Dice, it’s bad enough not to separate darks and whites, but you can’t mix all your fabrics together!”
“Okay, don’t you have that backwards?”
“Maybe, maybe not! Anyway, lucky for you, I know e-xa-ctly what I’m doing.”
His host taps a button marked normal, which Dice has never seen before. Then he hits start, and the machine whirs to life.
“See, it wasn’t so hard! But a real maid would’ve known that. I’m disappointed.”
Dice bristles. “Sorry we aren’t all fashion designers with big fancy laundries.”
“Oh, but that was a lie.” Ramuda’s impression of Gentaro is somehow exactly right and all wrong at the same time. The words are too stiff, too delicate – but the tone itself is weirdly close. “If I wanted a maid in Fling Posse, I’d have invited one to join right off the bat!”
“Good luck finding any.”
“You wouldn’t, with that attitude! But you can find anything in Shibuya, if you know where to look.”
“Even maids?”
“Even maids.”
Despite himself, Dice is weirdly intrigued. “Where?”
“That’s for me to know, and you to never learn!”
“I shoulda known you wouldn’t give it up so easily.”
“Uh-huh,” Ramuda says, “I’m uncrackable,” and skips out.
Ramuda might be weird company, slippery and difficult, but the washing machine is going to be worse. So Dice follows, fishing his phone out of his pocket as he walks. By the time he’s back in the main room, he’s pulled up a recipe for yakisoba, complete with helpful tips, and pictures of each step. (The mousse can wait.) It doesn’t seem too hard, at least on first glance. He’s made ramen before – well, instant ramen – and all noodles are kinda the same. Besides that, it’s just chopped meat and chopped vegetables, and he can definitely cheat on the sauce. Cause if there’s a time for him to break his no-cheating rule, it’s now.
Then he sets to investigating. Ramuda’s pantry is weirdly empty for a guy who lives alone; there are staples, but none of the things he’ll need. Unsurprising, since neither of them have eaten a vegetable in the last week, but still disheartening. After a second sweep, more thorough this time, he manages to find half a bottle of yakisoba sauce, hiding sadly at the back of the condiments shelf behind the soy sauce and mirin. Dice shakes it experimentally, watches a slow, dark residue trickle down the plastic. Then he unscrews the top and sniffs it, more for Ramuda’s sake than his own. And since it doesn’t seem like it’s going to kill them, he closes it and sets it triumphantly onto the counter.
Still, he only actually has one ingredient – which means, for the second time in ten minutes, he needs to ask for help. It’s impossible to be in Ramuda’s space without having to involve him, and he can’t tell if that’s on purpose.
(Later that night, he realises it has to be. Not because Ramuda’s being difficult about his territory, but because he’s never home: he’s always out with a girl or at his office or being a nuisance around Shibuya, even at weird hours. He uses his house for storage and sleep, sometimes not even that – and if it wasn’t for Dice staying over, he wouldn’t be here at all.)
“Oi,” he says, coming out of the kitchen so he won’t have to yell. “You haven’t got the stuff I need for dinner.”
Ramuda’s back at the table, sifting through pink fabrics and occasionally glancing over at his tablet. “Aww, really? I was looking forward to Arisugawa-style yakisoba.”
“So, uh. Are you gonna do anything about it?”
“Dice,” he says, instead of answering the question, “do you really know how to cook?”
“You asked that already.”
“I know. But I’m asking again.”
“You don’t believe me?”
Tell: when he’s bluffing, his palms start to sweat. But there’s no way Ramuda can pick up on that, because Dice’s hands are stuffed in the pockets of his ugly robe.
“Hmmmmm.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means we can reschedule, but I won’t let you wriggle out of today’s payment.”
He gulps, because this is starting to feel horribly familiar. “What, like in organs?”
“No, no, nothing so boring or bloody! In being useful to me, of course.”
As attached as Dice is to his kidneys, that’s almost as terrifying. Ramuda’s the biggest thrill he’s chased in a long time, even setting aside what he’d staked to join Fling Posse, and sometimes the price of that thrill is being scared shitless. But they’d made a deal, and for a gambler – even one who’s always in debt – his word is his bond.
“Uh. How?”
“Dice,” he says, completely serious, “you’ll want to sit down for this.”
He takes his seat on the couch again, trying not to fidget, and Ramuda strides over to stand in front of him. It’s unsettling to see him from below, and not just because of the circumstances. The angles of his face are completely different, harsher, in a way that makes him actually look his age for once; when he tips his head in thought, the sway of his bangs is weirdly ominous. Although by now, Dice has been on the receiving end of enough of his tricks not to underestimate him anyway.
Then Ramuda collapses into the spot next to him, and dumps his feet unceremoniously into Dice’s lap. He makes a big show of stretching his legs and wiggling his toes; it’d be more effective if he wasn’t wearing socks, but it’s still kinda gross.
“There! Well, are you going to keep your end of the bargain?”
He bats his eyelashes in exaggerated motion, like he expects protest. But the thing is, Dice doesn’t actually mind. He doesn’t have anywhere to be until tonight, it’s comfortable and warm in the apartment, and Ramuda is a pleasant weight against him. “I mean, I don’t get why this is useful, but yeah.”
“I see, I see. You really are a herbivore, Dice.”
“Am not!”
“Hmmmm.” Ramuda shifts his feet in Dice’s lap, crosses them at the ankles. And he has to notice the way Dice moves to accommodate him, because his smile gets a little sharper. “That sounds like something a herbivore would say.”
“So I’m a herbivore if I argue and a herbivore if I don’t?”
“Yup! Cause you’re a herbivore aaaaaall the way down.”
He knows he shouldn’t keep pushing this. Ramuda’s a hell of a lot smarter than he is, and at least as stubborn. But, still, he has his pride. “Why’d you ask me to join your crew, then?”
“I told you, didn’t I? No matter your diet, you staked your life for a hypnosis mic. I couldn’t help but be interested in you.”
Tell: sometimes the playful crinkle of Ramuda’s eyes isn’t enough to disguise their intensity. Even if he’s loud and annoying and a weirdo and an airhead, he’s all carnivore underneath.
Maybe, by agreeing to join him, Dice has already been consumed.
God, that’s a ridiculous thought. He needs to clear his head, preferably with a round or fifty of slots. But as it is, he only has one real option.
“Hey, let me up.” He shoves at Ramuda’s feet, which refuse to move. “I want a cigarette.”
“Dressed like that?”
He looks down at himself. Normally, he makes the walk down to ground level and smokes outside the building, but he’s still only wearing a robe.
“I mean –”
“You know what, Dice? I’ll let you smoke on the balcony today. Special occasion!”
He has to be hearing things. The apartment balcony’s a strict no-smoking zone; Ramuda says it’ll make the whole place stink, and doesn’t trust him not to ash off the edge anyway. Dice, more interested in staying on his host’s good side than avoiding three flights of stairs, has been happy to listen. Still, of all the weird things that’ve happened today, this might be the weirdest.
“Uh. What occasion?”
“You washing your clothes!”
“That’s… not really special.” Even if he’d gone long enough between laundry runs that it kinda felt like it.
“Being my obedient footstool!”
“Shut up, that doesn’t count either.”
“Forming Fling Posse!”
“You’re way too late on that. Plus, if we’re celebrating, shouldn’t Gentaro be here?”
“Hmm?” Ramuda looks at him, with that hungry anticipation in his eyes. It feels like waiting for a reel to stop at the slot machine, or for the ball to settle in roulette, or for a dealer to reveal the final card. Flop, turn, river, and Dice is drowning. “You want me to call Gentaro?”
He swallows. “Not really.”
“Do you or don’t you, Dice? You’re making me all confused.”
On second thought, it doesn’t feel at all like that. Because when he’s up against Ramuda, he kinda wants to lose.
“Get up,” he says again. “I’m dying to smoke.”
“But I’m trapped.”
It’s true: his hand is on Ramuda’s ankle, thumb against the curve of the bone, where he must’ve left it by accident. Dice snatches it back so quickly he almost sprains his wrist. “Sorry – yeah. Sorry.”
“Finally!” Ramuda swings his legs away, hops off the couch, and makes a big show of stretching. He must be having fun. “I thought I’d be stuck for the rest of my life.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Dice slides the balcony door open, letting a breeze sweep in, and steps out onto the tile. It was raining earlier, and a chill lingers, slicing through the thin fabric of his robe and raising gooseflesh along his neck. Still, he sits heavily in one of the plastic chairs, because the craving’s bothering him worse. Withdrawing supplies from his pockets – cigarettes, lighter, ashtray – he begins to set himself up.
Ramuda leans against the doorway and watches. Backlit by the main room, he looks like some kind of seductress, not quite real, all shadows and softened edges. For a moment, it seems like he’s going to stay there – and then he takes the other seat, kicking his feet up against the railing. He’s procured a lollipop from somewhere, and slips it neatly into his mouth.
“Hope you don’t mind the company!”
He doesn’t, really. It’s been a long time since anyone in his life has stuck around; he lost touch with his old friends after falling into debt, and casinos aren’t the best place for making new ones. But Ramuda, for all his quirks, is persistent, a decent person, and even the same kind of high-intensity he is. It checks out.
“Nah.” Dice shakes the box of cigarettes in his direction, even though he can guess the answer. “Want one?”
“Noooooo way. It’s a gross habit.”
Ramuda leans in and, very seriously, taps his lollipop on the edge of the ashtray. Tell: he holds the stick like a smoker.
“Hey, suit yourself.”
He lights up, breathes in. Exhales in a slow, steady stream, tilting his head away. But the wind isn’t going the direction he thinks, and Ramuda has to wave smoke out of his face with his sleeve.
“Ewww! Although I don’t know why I expected better.”
“Shut up,” he says, resting his cigarette in his mouth and pocketing the box. He’s about to put away the lighter too, but Ramuda darts in like a snake and manages to snatch it out of his hands. The guy moves fast – probably cause he’s so small, but Dice isn’t dumb enough to say that.
He turns his prize back and forth, inspecting it with obvious amusement. “Wow. I didn’t know your taste was so tacky!”
The lighter’s blue and shaped like a woman’s body, from shoulders down to the tops of her thighs, designed to release flame where the head would be. Ramuda’s holding it around the waist, fingers either side of its hourglass pinch.
“It’s not mine! I won it off a guy last week, and it’s the only one I’ve got.”
Ramuda eyes him up, pretending to consider his argument. Without meaning to, Dice finds himself holding his breath, but then his host heaves a colossal sigh. “Sounds super fishy, but I guess I’ll believe you.”
That was strangely easy. He’d expected it to spiral into an argument, or to be teased about his luck with women, or to be dragged into another circular conversation. But even though he sets the lighter down, Ramuda isn’t planning to let him alone.
“Then, I wanna see you blow some rings!”
“You said smoking was gross.”
“Yeah, but you could at least be gross in style.”
That seems just like him. He thinks about Ramuda, alone on the balcony, late at night, doing tricks with smoke to amuse himself. Or maybe he’d been a social smoker, lighting up with the rest of his old team, huddled over the cherry bloom of their cigarettes. Did Ramuda have other friends, when they fell apart? Not girls, but friends: people who’d offer a lighter, or let him bum a smoke, or blow rings when he asked. Maybe he had, and life had gone on for him like always. Or maybe he hadn’t, and that was why he’d quit –
Well, Dice finds it hard to give a shit about any of that. Across from him, Ramuda watches with impossibly blue eyes. Flicks his lollipop from one side of his mouth to the other.
God, but he hasn’t done this in a long time.
“I’m rusty, okay? So you can’t be a dick if they’re ugly.”
“I would never!”
He takes a long drag. Too long, and he ends up coughing smoke out of his throat. Ramuda makes no move to help, of course, even though Dice is suffering on his behalf.
“Shit,” he says, once he’s gotten his breath back. “Okay. Lemme try that again.”
Ramuda removes his lollipop, puffs out a burst of strawberry air. His lips are pursed into an o; if he was smoking, he’d doubtless have made a perfect ring. “Take your time.”
His next attempt goes a little smoother. He at least manages not to make an idiot of himself straight away, which is something. But when he flicks his tongue to try shoot a ring, it feels clumsy, and the smoke comes out shapeless. It’s frustrating, cause his mouth is in the right shape and he’s timed his breathing properly, but the motion evades him.
“There are easier ways to do that, you know.”
“Yeah, but I used to be able to do it right.”
“Wanna know what I think?” Ramuda says, scooting his chair a little closer. He doesn’t wait for the answer. “Your posture’s all wrong. Smoking’s nasty, but I knew a guy who liked doing tricks, and he talked about it allllll the time.”
“When you say that,” he says, “do you mean a friend? Or a teammate?”
“Are those ears just for show? I meant exactly what I said, of course!”
Too direct. It’s hard to curb his instinctive honesty, but Ramuda always lets more slip with patience. So Dice straightens his back, taps ash off his cigarette, and says, “So, posture?”
“Uh-huh, good posture lets you breathe better. That’s why I keep telling you to stand up straight during practice!”
“I thought you just did that to be annoying.”
“Are you accusing me of not taking Fling Posse seriously?”
It sounds teasing, but there’s always a weird undertone to anything he says. As usual, he steers clear of that minefield. “Nah. I wouldn’t be here if I thought so.”
“Dice, Dice, Dice. You’re so easy to mess with.” Ramuda opens his mouth, taps his cheek with a manicured finger. “A-ny-way! The smoker guy always said, if you can’t do it properly, you can cheat by forcing the smoke out.”
“I don’t –”
“Oops, did I say the ‘c’ word? Just think of it like a shortcut, then!”
Well, it’s the best option he’s got. Dice turns his head away to take one more drag, to steady his nerves, and when he looks back, Ramuda is perched on the edge of his seat. Emboldened, he draws more smoke into his mouth. Rounds his lips. Breathes out as evenly as he can. Copies the tapping motion –
Produces a perfect circle, which Ramuda immediately slices a hand through.
“See? See? I told you it worked.”
So Dice taps out another, and another. It might be an amateur technique, but they come out exactly round, and his companion gleefully shreds every one. Even when they start to lose shape a little, because he can’t entirely stop himself grinning.
“Do a waterfall next!”
Tell: Ramuda’s smile is toothy enough that it can’t be all fake.
“I don’t know how,” he admits, fiddling with the cigarette between his fingers. Because he hasn’t smoked with people in a long time, and hadn’t bothered to learn anything fancy even when he did. Back then, sneaking cigarettes with his friends behind the school gym, it had been about the rebellion and not the company. Then, after he’d been kicked out of home, it had been a way of coping with his circumstances, of passing time before opening hours. But neither of those felt at all like this.
At this angle, with night starting to fall, through the smoke rising between them, Ramuda looks like something otherworldly. He’s still leaned in, lollipop inches from the lit cigarette. And yet, if he were to move any closer and swallow up that distance, touch the plastic to the flame, Dice thinks he would ignite.
“Bad show! You should work on that for next time.”
“Huh? There’s a –” He swallows the question, so we’re gonna do this again? “Yeah. Okay.”
“Hey, Dice?”
Between the murmured words and the look Ramuda sends from under his lashes, Dice’s breath almost catches in his throat. This isn’t the thrill he joined Fling Posse for, but he’ll gladly pursue anything its leader throws at him. Because Amemura Ramuda is a knife’s edge, a highwire miles above Shibuya, a roulette wheel in constant motion, and Dice never wants him to stop.
“Yeah?”
Ramuda says, “Your laundry’s done.”
He’s telling the truth; there’s an absence of sound where the machine used to be. Dice, letting out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, sits back. Suddenly, he’s not in the mood to play any more. He ashes his cigarette, then stubs it out a little too forcefully, crumpled against the hard plastic of the ashtray. Searches Ramuda’s body language for tells – eyes, hands, lips, jaw, eyes again – but comes up blank.
“Is that it?” he blurts out.
“Is what it?”
“Is… never mind. It’s nothing.”
Just like that, the moment’s gone, and there’s a bitter taste in his mouth that has nothing to do with nicotine. Ramuda might be a knife, but Dice wants to reach out and take the blade between his hands, even if it cuts him. Ever since they’d first battled, he’d been prepared to bleed if it meant being on Ramuda’s side. And this time, he’d really truly done his best to make contact – but he’d only found empty air, been left grasping at nothing. Had he moved to take the knife too late? Or had it never been there at all?
He stands, casts a last look over the skyline as he organises his thoughts. Defeat feels bad, but Dice is used to it, and bouncing back means diving in again. So long as Fling Posse exists, there’ll be other nights, other opportunities. So he’ll play the long game, wait Ramuda out. Come back next time, with a new stack of chips and a new hand of cards, and sit across the table from him, and follow his lead. The rules might change, but the stakes are always the same: that, even after it all, Dice could be worth something.
As he heads inside, he can admit he’s lost this round. Because that instant, found and then lost, had made his heart kick up, his adrenaline spike, his breathing seem to stop mattering. He had felt alive. And it had nothing to do with the risk of making a big gamble –
And everything to do with how he had wanted Ramuda to burn him up completely.