バング！

               James fixes Akachan with the most incredulous look he can muster, given the circumstances. Before he can bring himself to say anything, though, the overwhelming nausea does get to him and he finds himself hurling the contents of his stomach out onto the road, what little there is to throw up, after all. He seems relatively unfazed by this bit; unfortunately, throwing up is not an uncommon thing for him to do at all.                James wipes his mouth with his sleeve, still warily eying Akachan to make sure he doesn’t do anything, well, off. Not like James is in any position to defend himself, nor does he have the will to do so, but that’s another matter entirely. He’s a pathetic sight, down on his knees in front of a puddle of vomit, half-dead and at the mercy of a Japanese gangster. ❝ Why don’t you just— kill me already? ❞ He finally manages to croak out. ❝ Just… finish what I don’t have the guts to do myself. ❞

    “What kind of a man do you think I am?” he laughs, hip akimbo, his hand resting on it. He wears a variety of rings made of platinum that he seems more interested in inspecting than the pile of stinking, hot vomit coming from this trembling, pale fish in the backseat of his car.

The woman grins, raking in her winnings while taking a second shot of whiskey. It goes down a lot more smoothly. “Double it. Four.” 

The question surprises her and she raises a brow. In a way, she supposes he is her pimp, even if she wouldn’t put it in those terms. Guess he was worried about the merchandise getting…diseased.

“You don’t have to tell me. Some of those fuckers are disgusting. Where do you find them?” Shi laughs, not yet answering the question. “I was going to lie, but I’ll be honest. I don’t. And that’s why I get better tips.”

“Don’t worry, though. I can’t catch anything, including pregnancy.”

    “Eight.”

    He lifts his cup and--wow, would you look at that complete and total convenience. He collects the double fours in his hand and then opens his other palm for the cash, “You said double it, yes? Gimme back my cash, whore,” he says--but it’s all friendly, none of the vitriol he reserves for people like his mother in his voice. Non-toxic and playful.

Shi watches the yakuza with wry curiosity. He trades the stoneware sake cup for a plastic one. Perhaps he doesn’t trust her not to chip the fine china, as it were, but she guesses that there’s something else going on. 

She produces her wallet, filled to the seams with mostly yen, but some American money mixed in as well. “What’s the starting bet?”

The revenant takes the whiskey, letting it burn down her throat in an over-ambitious gulp that leaves her coughing and exaggerating its pungence with the slap of her open palm against the concrete. 

Before Akachan lets her know the bet, she settles on the cup. “Three.”

    “Let’s say--two thousand yen. Easy,” he grins, flashing amber, and pulls his own wrinkled, loose pieces of yen out of his suit pocket as she’s busy hacking up the medicinal taste of whiskey. He peers through the cigarette burn in the paper cup which is very carefully kept from her line of sight, and sighs. Well--whatever.

     “Nine,” he says, already defeated, and raises the cup. Three is, indeed, below: snake eyes and an ace. But it’s fine--she’ll have her luck turn soon. He slides the yen to her and throws the two dice back in the cup, shaking it up.

She snorted a short laugh, nodded her head ass he agreed with him, “I am. It’s a tragedy that I am a hater,” she laughed once more. Her eyebrow, then, arched at his words, “ Perhaps you could sell Suntory, no promises about your success. But, would it still be on your body as a tattoo?”

        This man was, to say the least, fucking weird. Of all the happenings that could have been that day, why was Eryk being tested with this interaction? Curiosity let Eryk remain calm when Akachan took hold of his hand and held it close enough to really get a good look at the mess he made of his fists. This could have been simple enough, just a man genuinely looking to help him out like originally offered, however Eryk was quickly punished for letting his guard down. 

        The shock alone of watching Akachan bring his tongue to Eryks knuckles was enough to give Akachan the time to lick them in the first place. So much for being disrespectful. Now Eryk was the one being disrespected. The brawler ripped his hand from Akachan’s grip and with his other he grabbed  the yakuza by his tie and yanked him forward. That forward motion gave Eryk a momentary advantage to throw his licked fist into Akachan’s nose as hard as he could.  

         “The FUCK is wrong with you?! Sick motherfucker!”

     He supposes he had that coming. Still, his face blooms with a purple-blue pain that he knows will develop into a bruise, that throbbing, awful thing that just sits above the bridge of his nose that gave an ungainly cracking sound, and pulses. He staggers back and manages not to lose his footing, but he does feel his head swim. Definitely could fall at any moment. Cupping his face with his palms, he closes his eyes tight until he sees those white stars of nebulae-vision and then blinks them away.

      God, he hopes his pretty, cute nose isn’t askew now. He knows it’ll swell, but he hopes it isn’t broken.

“Dice, right?” The woman rises, going to a rickety, cluttered table nestled in dim light. She picks up an empty sake cup and two die, one red white-speckled the other traditional black and white.

Shi kneels on the floor by Akachan, swirling the dice in the cup. “Way to pick a game that requires zero skill. You could have fleeced me.” The woman offers a wry grin.

    Well, well. That won’t do. He does intend to cheat, after all.

    He leans forward and takes the sake cup from her, walks over to the kitchen and pours himself a glass of whiskey instead. Drops an ice cube in it. As he pretends to rifle through the fridge, he comes out with a plastic cup, and carefully punctures a small hole in it with the pointed end of his coke nail.

     “I’m playing house,” he says, dropping the dice in the plastic cup and offering her the whiskey. If he keeps the hole facing him, there should be no problem, right?

      He flops on the couch and throws the cup down, glancing at the hole. Four.

She’s been hanging out with Akachan. It’s self-serving on his part, but hers, too. He bandies a young, pretty woman around. Gets more clients. She fucks them. Easy (and entertaining) enough to hold the creature’s attention, at least for now.

Shi sits across from him, voluptuous legs crossed over one another. Her dress, blush velvet, is too small.

“I have money,” the woman says with a shark-tooth smile. “What do you wanna play? Blackjack? Poker? Some shit I’ve never heard of but you’re really good at?”

    While he’s got a penchant for a hanafuda deck and he trusts his luck when it comes to a game of Texas Hold ‘Em, he finds the prospect a little boring. He rests his cheek on a curled fist and hums, thinking about it. The other hand continues to fan himself slowly.

      Eryk glanced down at his knuckles, having forgotten about the scabs on his hands. He supposed, now that he was really looking at them, they did look fucked. The man pocketed his phone and kept his hands in the pockets as well. 

      “Stupid? Yah, do you think you’re being charming?” Eryk took a moment to eye the strangers appearance. Slicked hair, metal in his teeth, and a ‘classy’ suit? Gangster of some sort for sure…. Best not to be to disrespectful then, because Eryk had no clue what he could be walking into.

    “I have never misconstrued myself as being charming, pal. I’m a genuine, bonafide annoyance on two legs, but I’m a real one, let me tell you that,” he huffs. It’s true--as much as he can hold his tongue and play the serious, bidding yakuza underling around his boys, as much as he can roll his r’s and yell and slap his underlings with a receiver, he’s genuine, through and through. He doesn’t fake shit, just tones it down when he needs to.

      She snorted a laugh, shaking her head, “that is a fucking lame idea,” she told him. She tipped her head to the side, “think if you want an ad for Lowe’s you should do it else where rather than your body. Less permanent,” Luna replied in a teasing manner as she assumed he was joking. “Plus they would not pay you at all. Greedy companies. Also, your artist would probably say fuck no to that idea. Why ruin your irezumi?”

… “Oh…” she very delicately leans over for another chip, nodding thoughtfully right along to his… insight. It’s a tantrum in her eyes. “Oh don’t mention pizza, I’d kill for some pizza–” Like when the girls at the studio complain about the sun shining in the windows: if you just pay attention to your steps, you won’t quite notice the surroundings… hopefully. 

“I came here of my own volition.” As if the girl in a leotard and leggings is really screaming MY OPINION MATTERS by appearance alone. “I think there’s somethin’ quite lovely ‘bout it… everyone all runnin’ ‘bout, doing their own thing in their own little worlds, what’s that word called?” Legs bounce when she tries to find it, and upon remembering, Evangeline bursts to action: snapping fingers, smiling again, dropping the rest of her chip on accident, “SONDER! When ya know everyone’s off in their own little worlds. Yea, sonder…”

Good. The word’s back. And she settles again, gazing around a bit: a baby crying, a few other people just looking bored as all Hell, a gentleman in a suit with a briefcase that’s smacked twice at her knee, “What is your Business? I’m’a ballerina…” sure, that’ll look great on her card…

    “What a coincidence, I’m a ballerina too,” he says, and slaps his thigh encased in silk slacks, “Can’t you tell by this hardened muscle not at all emaciated by meth use?”

     “Are you a doctor? Can I ask you something?”

     He leans really close, smelling like your weird uncle doused in cheap cologne, nicotine, and a slight undercurrent of body odor. But he definitely spent well over 10,000 yen on that scent.

    Akachan’s eyes well up with tears, which is about par for the course, and his nostrils flare a few times. He hiccups out a small sound, brings his sleeve to his eyes, and then sneezes violently. The force of his mucus puts out the cigarette sticking out of his clenched, golden teeth, and he blinks in despair. His last one.