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One day it’s going to go too far. Hiroi knows it, knows it even as she pops another can open, trying to find a way to shut the voice up, to shut it all out, to keep herself going for one more day, one more gig, one more chance to play the only thing she’s ever been any good at, to drown out everything else until it’s just her and the music and she’s free from it, free from the crushing weight that lives in her chest 24/7 and makes doing anything but spiraling down into darkness impossible.
Comes to in a strange alleyway in an unfamiliar part of town, counts her blessings that she’s got the foresight to have left her bass somewhere (she hopes, it might have been stolen but she’ll figure it out), somehow unmolested (it’s because she’d crawled under a pile of empty boxes), keys, wallet, phone all where they ought to be or at least close enough to where they should be that she doesn’t have to look very hard. Headache splitting her skull open and she feels it coming for her, the horrors, the ordeal of having to exist here, now, in this world that’s falling apart and demanding so much of someone who was never worth anything, who just has the bass and that’s it. Jolt of terror gets her moving, fishes in her purse, feels fingers curl around a box that she hadn’t opened yet, kept for just such an emergency – not enough to really get her going but enough to beat back everything for long enough to get herself out of where she is and off to where she’s going (the next box of sake, the next can of beer, maybe some fried chicken).
Turns out it wasn’t a strange alleyway at all, but it does suggest where her mind was last night, and the shock of the realization is almost enough to sober her up because Hiroi can’t have this, she knows she can’t.
See it’s not that she doesn’t know she’s got a problem, she knows she has a problem, she knows the extent of it, knows what it would take to solve the problem and knows she isn’t strong enough to do it. That’s why she’s only allowed to have her music, she can’t have more – can’t hope for more, has to kill it, bury it, keep it, fuck, keep it fucking far away as possible. That shit needs to go multiple layers into the earth, past the crust and uh, fucking, is it more rocks after that? She never paid attention in geology class, but she remembers there’s a liquid layer that’s just magma and that’s probably about where that desire belongs. Thinking about it reminds her that she’s still hung the fuck over in spite of her emergency sake’s best efforts to the contrary and if she doesn’t eat something she is gonna end up either in the hospital or the graveyard – nutrition isn’t a mystery to her, man can’t live on alcoholic beverages alone – so it’s time for this bassist to skitter out of the alleyway and away from here as quickly as she can, before the unthinkable happens –
“The fuck are you doing here, Kikuri?”
Busted, the bassist thinks, and she tries to gracefully turn and adopt something like an innocent look but she’s hung over and the sudden motion makes her retch and, whoops, just let it out, there you go, lean on the wall for support and—fuck, she’s holding my hair back, why is she—it’ll be over soon.
“I’ve got your bass,” she says, and jerks a thumb in the general direction of her apartment. “You left it at the after-party.”
“That’s ‘cause I knew you’d take good care of it for me,” voice a little mangled from all the puke, “even though I don’t deserve it at all,” and whoops that was an inside thought Kikuri, you gotta find something to kill this quick.
The hand that’s still holding her hair back (she’s finished puking, why is the hand still there? It’s a real fuckin’ mystery that she’s not in any shape to figure out) tugs a little, a gentle reprimand. “None of that self-pity shit, Hiroi, I’m not in the mood.”
“Neither am I,” the bassist agrees genially, or as genially as she can, and it’s a good thing she’s gotten so used to being seen at her worst because otherwise this would be absolutely mortifying. “S’why I gotta go find some more drinks!”
The hand moves to the back of her neck, the cool feeling of it making her jump, hoping the flush she feels is just because of all the puking and not giving her away. The grip tightens, like a mother cat carrying an unruly kitten. “Not like that you aren’t,” the hand says, or its owner does anyway. “You’re a fucking mess.”
Hiroi shrugs, she’s carefree, she’s great, it’s fine that she’s like this isn’t it, what’s a couple puke stains here and there if it means she can keep everything at bay? “It’s fine, it’s fiiiine, I’ll get… I think I have some clean clothes at home.”
There’s an exasperated sigh from behind her, and the grip on her neck does not slacken. “Yeah I don’t think so.” There’s a shove, suddenly Hiroi is being directed to climb a set of stairs to an apartment that she knows and fears and wants to never leave, wants like she wants all the other stuff she doesn’t have and can’t have and doesn’t deserve, “Come on, idiot, let’s get you cleaned up.”
Hiroi’s got dignity, or she would have dignity if she hadn’t just puked on the side of her drummer’s apartment building after spending the night sleeping in a pile of garbage, so maybe it’s fine that she allows Iwashita to direct her into her apartment, then into the bathroom. With a practiced motion that indicates she’s done this roughly a million times by now, Iwashita strips Hiroi down, sits her down at the shower, gathers up the bassist’s soiled clothes, points to the faucet, “Don’t forget, it takes a few minutes to warm up, but maybe a cold shower would help your hangover a little,” and then leaves.
A few minutes later as Hiroi’s scrubbing at her hair and rinsing off the stickiness of spilled alcohol and vomit and probably urine (she isn’t sure if it’s hers or not and she’s not sure which answer is more mortifying – or would be more mortifying at least if she wasn’t so certain she deserved all this in the first place), Iwashita reappears with a pile of clean clothes that she sets down at a safe distance, then leaves again after grumbling something half-heartedly about Hiroi using all her shampoo that has no bite to it at all.
The Hiroi Kikuri who emerges from the bathroom is a little more human than the one who entered it, which is not a good thing as far as she’s concerned – she’s at her best as a caricature, a cartoon, do not look behind the curtain type shit – but if she wants to get out of here and get another happiness spiral going it’s the one she has to be for now. Iwashita takes one look at her and shakes her head again.
“You look like a drowned cat,” she says, and indicates a chair. “Sit down and let me dry your hair so you don’t catch a cold and fucking die on us.”
“Whaddaya mean Shima? I’ll be fine, ya ain’t gotta—”
“Kikuri,” Iwashita says, and there’s a flash of emotion in her voice that is enough to let Kikuri know she’s in danger of being in a lot of trouble, “sit the fuck down.”
There’s a part of Hiroi that’s always privately delighted whenever she manages to get Iwashita to drop the professional act, because she almost never drops it – this is something that for the most part, only Hiroi and Eliza get to see, and as for swearing, that’s something that Hiroi’s pretty sure only she gets to hear. It’s not what she wants, but it’s what she can get, and Hiroi is oh-so-good at taking whatever she can get. So she sits down obediently and Iwashita tsks and begins rubbing a towel over her head and it’s nice, it’s so nice, even though Hiroi doesn’t deserve nice, doesn’t deserve anything really, especially not from Shima, who I’m…
“Who you’re what?” Iwashita’s voice is gruff, the toweling has stopped.
Ah fuck I was saying that out loud. “Who I’m…” she scrambles for something, anything, settles on “already in so much debt to.”
Hiroi’s grateful, really, because the towel is blocking her view and that way she can’t turn back and look to see what exactly the expression on Shima’s face is when she sighs and says, “Just don’t try and weasel out of it.”
A drink would be perfect right about now, because it would let Hiroi run far, far away from this mess that she’s created – how the fuck has she managed to be drunk and more circumspect than she is sober? After a few more minutes of silence, Iwashita finishes drying Hiroi’s hair and disappears to hang up the towel. Kikuri sits, stewing in her own growing mortification and anxiety and the growing panic that if she doesn’t have a drink soon she’s going to fall apart and that’ll be the end of her, of Sick Hack, the music will stop and the music’s the only thing she’s allowed to have she needs to stop this now, needs to get out of here, but her legs won’t obey.
She’s crying when Shima reappears, crying when the drummer picks her up easily and carries her to the bedroom, sets her down on the futon and then, after a moment’s consideration, lays down next to her and holds her tightly, like Hiroi’s something worth holding on to.
“I’m sorry,” gasps Hiroi, “I’m a fucking mess and I don’t deserve—”
“Yes you do,” Shima says, firmly.
That only makes Hiroi feel worse, and she curls into a ball but Shima curls around her too, a reassuring presence, a warmth on her back, anchoring Hiroi here on the edge of the gnarliest abyss her psyche can conjure.
“You’re okay,” Shima murmurs quietly, and then, “I’m not mad,” and then, the knife that really makes Hiroi come unglued, just barely audible, “I wish you felt the same way about yourself that I do,” and Hiroi cries and cries and falls asleep.
When Hiroi wakes up, she’s alone, but there’s the smell of food and she follows her nose to see Iwashita setting out some fried chicken and rice, along with a giant bottle of water. She looks over at Hiroi, hearing her approach, and there’s a look of concern there for a moment, an unspoken are you okay now? Hiroi finds herself parched, makes a beeline for the water bottle.
“You’re a life saver, Shima,” she exclaims, after half the bottle’s gone and half the chicken too.
Shima waves it off, a roll of the eyes and a “Someone’s got to make sure Sick Hack doesn’t lose their main draw,” but there’s a warmth to her gaze that indicates she’s happy to be thanked.
Neither mentions Kikuri’s breakdown, and Iwashita doesn’t ask what Kikuri was on the verge of admitting, and when dinnertime rolls around, Kikuri grabs her bass and thanks Iwashita one more time for letting her use her shower and for keeping her bass safe.
Shima exhales through her nose, a little exasperation in her voice when she replies, “Yeah, well, maybe try keeping yourself safe too, hmm?”
Hiroi strangles the question that wants to jump out of her throat, the should I stay here with my bass then that she wants to ask, in favor of waving her hand airily and saying of course, of course, I’ll be fine, I’m always fine. She sees the flash of disappointment on Shima’s face, knows she’s just hurt her, but she doesn’t have the strength to face that yet. In some alternate universe, maybe she manages to ask the question, maybe that leads to a difficult conversation and maybe there’s a Kikuri who doesn’t need to be 75% alcohol by volume to function and her partner Iwashita who’s proud of her, proud of the hard road she’s taken to get sober, and maybe the music’s even better or maybe it loses a little of its edge but nobody seems to mind.
Maybe one day, Hiroi thinks, as she waits for her train to show up.
She cracks open a beer while she waits.