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He sat with knees closed, an elbow on the table, a forearm covering his face, and hair bunched up on the right side of his shoulder, the safe side, the one that was the background and not the one facing the… whatever. He clicked his tongue and then downed the beer in front of him, but still having every intention to be covered, he hunched forward, straining his neck, staying behind the (un)reliable cover his forearm provided, each gulp feeling like rocks squeezing through his stretched throat.
Everything had annoyed him; the wooden bar table was sticky, and so was his whole body after all that plucking and sweating under the sun, making the collar of his shirt cling to his sticky neck; he almost gagged every time he noticed the shivering cool dampness. Even the fact that he had to let his arm rest on this disgusting table was annoying him—why did he have to hide?!
Because he was guilty—yes, of course, guilty of breaking a promise.
But their promise was one that couldn't be broken alone, he thought as he managed to catch the attention of the bartender behind the table and pointed to his finished pint. "Another one, please," he said to him with a crack, then immediately turning down the volume of his voice like he had accidentally said something that was meant to be no more than an inner talk.
So if he was guilty, so was whatever, and peering through from behind the safety of his forearm, whatever looked guiltless, no guilt in the least, hanging out in a bar with his, he presumed, friends, chuckling along, wearing a damned leather jacket! What on earth! Who would've thought he would see a leather jacket worn not by a stranger? That was stuff from a faraway land, a Neverland of some sort, probably 80s America. Pretentious bastard, who the fuck did he think he was, a biker? A leather jacket? In the countryside? Was it fake? It was probably fake!
And hey!… Their promise wasn't broken, he decided, not exactly, at least.
He chuckled, audible and guiltless, as his brain had been lagging from the alcohol that had miraculously been refilled without him noticing. What a magician! That piece of rag on that man's shoulder that he swished around had to be a distraction. He took a sip but stalled the swallowing. He had no plan whatsoever, but he knew of something concrete: he was as guilty as whatever was. So he too could chuckle lightly, surrounded by… friends, without a single hair out of place nor a care in the world—he would not wear a leather jacket, but he too could be untroubled… nonchalant, like a… protagonist of an 80s Hollywood movie, without the leather jacket.
Or whatever just didn't remember their promise. It could happen. It was a possibility that he had been playing a fool all along, worrying about a one-sided promise that no one even remembered, with only the sea as a mute witness.
He cocked his head sideways, then snorted.
He snorted with that decent amount of beer in his mouth. And before he could even exhale completely, some of it went up his nose. The puzzling look on his face fell completely as the brutal sting sent him into a coughing fit, clenching his lips hard so as not to spray what was left in his mouth, while his hand un-nonchalantly kept banging on the table, figuring it would ease the pain (it didn't).
Then, with bulging eyes and needles on the back of his nose, he could see it in full view: whatever and that whatever's leather jacket.
The barricade was gone. With the last trickle of warm beer left inside his mouth finally swallowed, he looked down at the ruins: his palm, now flat on the table. Residue of spilt beer or other various disgusting liquids that had been accumulating since the bar's opening night had transferred itself onto his unclothed skin.
But the consequences were dire; the lustrous shine of whatever's probably fake leather jacket was freely dancing on his periphery, and the beers in his system and their rancid residue on his palms weren't enough to hide that fact. He quickly turned away, facing the background, or rather, the drunken lady half asleep beside him. The mixture of the slight labour of his breath and the flush of his cheeks looked as if he had been caught red-handed and backed into a corner: guilty. And as if that were not enough, suddenly, the drunken lady before him snorted loudly, which somehow had sounded like the barking of a dog, before slurring a few unintelligible words. I've got you now, mister!
He flinched backwards, and his hair fell behind his back, cascading, falling into place, concealing the unbecoming sweat spots and grass stains on his white dress shirt, thus fully bringing an identified him into view — for what even was he without his hair and his properness? Even the slight flush of his cheeks somehow had become an accessory, a coy blush on a fair maiden.
"Hey… Zura," an undoubtedly whatever's voice flowed down from up behind him. He fumbled forward, but the firm grip on his shoulder kept him in his place. I've got you now, mister! But the guilt was shared; he was no police — they both were as much of a criminal as the other!
"I thought it was you…," Whatever continued with half a smile.
Katsura turned slowly. "It's not Zura, it's… nobody," he spoke with narrowed eyes. "I'm leaving… I don't want to lose and be the first to address the elephant in the room," he said as he tried to get up, but with the grip still steady on his shoulder, he sank back into his seat.
"What?" Whatever looked like he was holding back a laugh. "Ah, you mean this?" He pointed to his ears, adorned with tiny studs and interlocking chains.
"Who cares about that…," Katsura muttered to himself, keeping his voice low enough not to be heard.
It didn't even come as a surprise since he had said to him once, "Zura, I'm thinking of getting a piercing…," partly to himself or the reflection of himself, standing in front of the full-length mirror fixed to the front of his wardrobe door.
"Don't do it, Takasugi!" Katsura half-shouted, springing up in a hurry from the bed, not even bothering to correct the incorrect calling of his name, "My grandma told me once that a girl lost her eyesight after a piercing, and yours are already shitty enough! What if you go blind completely?!"
"Huh? Bullshit. How does that even work?" Takasugi turned away from his reflection, looking back at the dishevelled Katsura propped up on his bed, the manga he had been reading tossed away onto the floor.
"My grandma wouldn't lie! She said that a thread suddenly came out of the piercing hole, and when the girl pulled it, it just went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on… so she cut it! And just like that, her eyesight was gone!" Katsura spoke with every sense of urgency he had, then finished the story with its dramatic conclusion. "Turns out what she had cut was a nerve connecting to her eyes!"
They stared at each other, Katsura still with his distraught look and tousled hair and Takasugi with his narrowed, disbelieving eyes, pursed lips, and unjewelled earlobes.
"That's stupid…," Takasugi mumbled after a while, then continued uncertainly, "I just won't cut it then."
"What?! So you'll walk around with your eye nerves hanging from your ear?!" Katsura had only got even more riled up.
"No, I wouldn't even pull it from the beginning!" he exclaimed before sighing, figuring his defeat. "And anyway, I haven't got the money; the part-time job I got doesn't pay much. So don't worry, I won't go blind just yet."
Well, now, it appeared that he eventually got enough money and completely disregarded Katsura's story. Thank God he didn't go blind, and… he ended up looking… grea—good.
But a piercing cost a dime; compared to a leather jacket, it was nothing. A piercing was something to a student with a part-time job's money and still was something to a 21-year-old taking a gap year off. So then a genuine leather jacket was a whole other something; it probably cost everything… if it was not a gift.
And it would cost Katsura everything if it were a gift—if it were a gift… he had already lost.
"I'm… hmm…" Takasugi cocked his head slightly and continued uncertainly as he took a seat beside him and lit his cigarette, "I'm working at a tattoo parlour for a relative of Bansai's. And I guess it's… a benefit?" His jacket creaked softly as it followed the movement of his body. With keen eyes, Katsura tried to observe it, but all the time allowed was for him to notice the gentle creases and soft mapping lines across the black sleeve before Takasugi's words sank in.
"Wait… Tattoo?" His nose scrunched.
"Yeah, Bansai helped me get an apprenticeship there after graduation," Takasugi answered casually.
Before Katsura could ask the multiple follow-up questions that had violently popped up inside his head, Takasugi had already continued, saying something that made his fingers coil around the handle of his mug, gripping it tight before chugging down exactly three big gulps.
"Ah, by the way, we also formed a band—me, Bansai, Matako, and the others."
Katsura swallowed, and it felt like rocks had dropped down into his stomach.
"Oh, is that so?" He managed, as he put down his mug, his reflection on what was left of the beer staring back at him, looking like someone had pissed all over his face. "Did you guys play in the city yet?" He didn't want to know the answer anymore; he didn't want to know anything about it, but trying to keep up his appearance, he played along, channelling his long-unused mastery at making up a conversation, a skill that had garnered him perfect scores and praise for his "wide range of vocabulary" back in their high school language class.
But this time, their parts were reversed: A (Takasugi) would get the praises, and B (himself) would have to deal with Ms Airi's expressive disappointment, where she would look downcast and like she had just sucked a lemon, saying half-hearted encouragement like, "Let's get more proactive next time, okay?" or something along the lines of that.
"No, not yet, but the views are going up…," Takasugi answered before taking a drag out of his cigarette. "So, who knows?" he added with a pleased smile.
It was genuine, wasn't it?
He truly already had everything here….
Katsura couldn't possibly ask him to leave now; he didn't even dare to turn his head to look at him. All he wanted to do was to bow his head in shame, hoping someone would take notice of his hubris and stone him to death, but for some reason, he could only keep staring at his piss-stained reflection.
He then wondered if he, too, already had everything there, in Tokyo, like he had thought all this time, drunk by his own arrogance. He probably did, but deep down he knew that he didn't at the same time…. The glimmers of the city, nor his arrogance, could possibly hide the dull reality that he was alone.
High school was much simpler; he had everything without even trying—by trying, meaning choosing. Selfishness, then, was hardly ever a concept, compared to now, where every single choice he would make was some part… selfish. Everything had been within his grasp, and it took him graduating to finally realise that the world was wider than their hometown.
And maybe that was why the promise was uttered so easily. He remembered the seer-sea suddenly raving at his ankles after he had said it, as if laughing at the absurdity, knowing it would hardly come true.
"Hey, Takasugi, let's live together after we graduate."
He had said it on a whim, looking back, like the way he remembered everything he had said around that age—nothing but words with no weight. And the gall to say it! Saying something so beyond himself.
He feared now what Takasugi's first answer would be, one that was taken by the sea's sudden frenzied waves. He did smile… (Open-mouthed, the salt water must have gotten in.) Had he been laughing at him, at his stupidity? Had he and the sea been secretly in cahoots with each other? Together, laughing at stupid little Katsura, who thought that everything had belonged to him.
—But… he said yes….
"What?" Katsura had asked as he turned his head towards the sea, scowling at the already receding waves, "I didn't hear you. Do you not want to?" he asked again, facing back to Takasugi, his frown following.
"No, no, I do," Takasugi giggled, his hand covering his mouth (the salt water truly must have gotten in….)
"Of course, I do."
After that, neither of them ever spoke of it again; especially Katsura, his scholarship acceptance letter in hand, was silent as a grave.
"You didn't visit for the last 2 years," Takasugi stated as he crunched on the peanuts from the little plate served with Katsura's beer.
Katsura sighed inwardly. The conversation took a turn into a road he didn't have the energy to wander in. The tipsy part of him was now preoccupied with repeating the word "visit" in Takasugi's statement, each time sporting a different tone and facial expression, like "vii-sit", said through gritted teeth, or "visit", said with so much spite that the word compressed itself, along with a couple of other variations that bore no less malice.
Though none was the truth, Takasugi had said every word in the sentence with the same respect—he had said it normally between several crunches of peanuts. But this kindness, or instead, maybe this indifference, instead of providing relief or consolation, had dried Katsura's throat and sent a sting up in his eyes.
And progressing to his other agonising task, to find a reply to Takasugi's statement that quite slyly required an answer, his brain struggled, consumed by the still-growing shame.
"Yeah, I was… busy… trying to keep everything afloat," he mumbled, biting the inside of his cheeks, deciding that… part of the truth was decent enough.
He shifted in his seat; his exhaustion had turned into agitation. He began to wonder what Takasugi would say after this. What he had said before was only a measly sentence—what would he do if he truly had asked a question? More importantly, what would he do if he were to ask him now, after Katsura had concluded his answer? There was a terror of an impending "why…" in the silence between their conversation.
Y-yes, I-I did say that, and I'm sorry; that was stupid of me, but I couldn't possibly stay! I couldn't just… g-give up on their offer after everything they were willing to give! I would disappoint my grandma—I would disappoint me!
In his imagination, forced to come to the surface without warning, he was sitting still, giving a rational answer to the question that he himself had prepared for Takasugi to (maybe) ask him, but his voice ringing inside his head had… an edge, a desperation, like if he were not to be interrupted, he would go on, falling down to his knees, tears streaming down his face, nails scraping the grime between the blue and white tiles of the bar.
Right after, he could almost hear the sound of the wave coming again, this time bringing the whole town with it, and together, they would laugh at pathetic big Katsura, who was stupid enough to promise an impossible future and because he was a nerdy loser.
His eye twitched.
And suddenly, he raised his eyebrows. "Thank God the grave was clean, though; I only had to pluck the weeds from the house," he announced with badly feigned enthusiasm.
The response was crunches.
Then he cautiously took one of the peanuts and his true chance to veer off from the dangerous topic at hand.
"Oh, but I did clean up on your family grave as well," he said mid-munch, turning slightly in his seat to look at Takasugi sideways, "bits of overgrowth here and there."
The crunches stopped as they locked eyes.
"Well, then, the grave cleaners they pay each month would surely thank the Gods too," Takasugi said, eyes unmoving. Then he broke eye contact first, facing himself forward with a sigh, "You're staying tonight, right? I'll give you a ride."
Katsura too sighed, relieved. Then he snorted.
"A ride? With what? A bicycle? How lame with your leather jacket and all."
"No, a motorbike," Takasugi replied, brief and smug, with what looked like keys jangling on his finger. "Well, a secondhand one," he added as he flipped the keys back onto his palm and, without knowing, had also put Katsura further back into his place.
And he, still wallowing in his defeat, sat limply in torment. "Oh, really? Please give me a ride to the station, then. I've missed the last bus." Nothing had mattered anymore. He planned to lie forever on the unmade bed in his (cheaply) rented flat in Tokyo, eating unseasoned chicken breast for the week ahead—the next? Who knows… maybe microwaved mixed vegetables, no seasonings.
"Hmm…," Takasugi mused, taking a long drag of his cigarette as he cocked his head sideways, one side of his perfectly tousled hair grazing the shoulder of his leather jacket. Katsura put his head in his hand, which he had, without hesitation, rested on the table again.
"I can't," Takasugi finally spoke as the smoke disappeared overhead. "I just got my licence; every time I went to the station, I crashed," he added with a smile.
"What? Are you serious?" Katsura asked incredulously, lifting his head from his palm.
"Yes, yes, I even crashed on my way here." Takasugi swivelled on his stool to face him directly, cigarette still clamped between his fingers. "Sadly, for now, I can only safely ride to…," he trailed, then he looked up, Katsura following suit, now both facing the wooden ceiling sparsely veiled by Takasugi's and half the guests of the bar's cigarette smoke, "either my flat, which is a few minutes away from here, or… your old house." His smiling face was already facing forward again before Katsura stupidly had to tear his gaze away from the ceiling.
They sat facing each other in stillness except for Takasugi's squeaking sleeve rubbing against the wooden table as he laid his forearm there. Katsura stared at him with his brows furrowing and his bangs flattened from being pressed by his palms. He blinked once and twice, then… he turned away, clicking his tongue and pursing his lips that had involuntarily tensed upwards by themselves. "Fucking bastard…," he muttered, this time, quite audibly.
"So how about it? You can either stay for a while or… die trying to leave." Takasugi took a drag once more. Katsura, glancing sideways, watched the embers light up and then die down again as the cigarette left his lips. "Do you want to live?"
Katsura scoffed as he turned his gaze down and put his hand in front of his mouth to hide the stench of alcohol that might have lingered and his… blatant piss-coloured smile, witnessed from inside a half-full mug of stale, lukewarm beer.
He sighed unevenly, sounding too much like laughter.
"Unfortunately, I do."