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Aki doesn’t like to smoke. He agrees to one cigarette and then another later. Says the taste isn’t as bad as he thought. Anyhow, it’s just to shut her up. And after the third and the fourth, he’s the one who is silent.
It’s not an addiction when he buys the same brand as her. It’s not the time ticking down with the ash as it burns. It’s nothing to cry about really.
Smoking is not a curse.
A ghost that takes your eye for a contract doesn’t see clearly. Intangible things don’t appreciate the taste of beer. The warmth of skin. The fear of someone dying. A ghost doesn’t care about lying. Himeno is a liar though. An actress. A kidder. Too sane to go far; tipsy-turvy enough to have lasted this long. She has walked in a straight line to every grave she has been forced to, but she’ll stumble out of bars. She’ll fall through her front door, fumbling with keys and with boys. They have always been the hardest to handle.
Do you know what it feels like, ghost? To hear his voice? To see his eyes? To imagine what he might feel like to hold? To connive for him to give up on a doomed dream and reach for something normal?
Himeno is not normal. She doesn’t cry. She laughs too loud and drinks too much and what it is that she actually feels has been sold and killed and buried (but not forgotten).
Kisses like puke. Boys with chainsaw hearts and shit taste in women. Lollipop comedowns and breakfast-time pacts. It’s a dream. It’s a life. It’s a ghost of a celebration.
A gunshot is not the same as a taiko drum. Himeno knows that they are in danger. One eye can see too well. Lie for long enough, and the truth is cast too brightly real.
Aki, you’re a beautiful fighter. Don’t die on me now. All the blood in my mouth and the air burst from my lungs and the hole in my heart don’t belong to me now. Intangible things. A ghost doesn’t care. It only takes, and it leaves.
I lied when I said it.
I lied.
(It’s a joke.)