chapter eleven

coffee at midnight

The place that Tetsu took me to was a hole-in-the-wall type place ( dare I call it more of a dive bar ) on the main Sannoh shopping strip. It as nearly invisible to the naked eye, occupying the second floor of a commercial building, directly above a psychic medium. The walls were covered in papers with Kanji calligraphy on them, reading out the menu. Despite the cool temperature from the cement floors, the place exuded a homely sort of vibe, right down to the high school students yelling in the corner, their red uniform jackets hanging off the backs of a set of bamboo chairs.

Taking my hand in his, Tetsu guided me over towards the main counter, waving over an older man in glasses, who I assumed was the owner. He smiled at Tetsu like they were old friends, so I figured that my companion must have been a regular.

"Hey, Ryusei, two of the regulars, but make one less spicy for my Canadian friend here, and two Sprites!" Tetsu called out his order, the old man nodding in agreement before vanishing into the back.

"You can drink if you want. You don't have to get a sprite just because I can't drink." I said, taking my seat at the counter

"Gillian, it's no big deal. I'm not a big drinker myself, anyways."

I nodded, searching for ways to redirect the subject. "So, tell me more about S.W.O.R.D."
"What do you want to know?"

"Everything."

Tetsu grinned. "The leaders probably have abut five brain cells amongst them, allocated as follows: Rocky from the White Rascals has two, Cobra has one, Smokey from the Rude Boys has one and a half. Now that other half brain cell is shared by Hyuga from Daruma Ikka and Murayama from Oya High. But the thing is, they both forget to use it, which brings their actual total to none at all. If there's conflict within S.W.O.R.D, it's usually those two. They can't stand each other. I crashed the meeting earlier-"

"Wait," I interrupted him with a laugh. "you crashed a S.W.O.R.D meeting?"

Tetsu nodded, a proud smile on his face. "Hell yeah I did. Murayama's girlfriend beat the crap out of Hyuga, had him on the floor in seconds."

"Good for her." I nodded "I take it most of these guys are single?"

"Perpetually. They're hopeless with women, even though Hyuga and Rocky fancy themselves as ladies men. Murayama was actually the first one to get a girlfriend, which surprised pretty much everybody. Midori Yamada. I used to go to school with her, she kicked Dan down a flight of stairs."

"I think we'd get along well."

Anybody who kicked Dan Kazuya down a flight of stairs is a good person in my book.

Our conversation paused as Ryusei came back with two steaming bowls of noodles, and two tall glasses of Sprite. Sheepishly, I reached for the metal fork instead of a set of chopsticks. Even though I'd been trying, via many YouTube videos, I had yet to figure out how chopsticks worked and didn't feel like embarrassing myself again.

"Okay, okay." I started, grinning widely. "Enough of this 'white people can't handle spice' crap. I lived down the road from this Trinidadian lady who made the best meat patties I'd ever had, and she used the absolute hottest peppers in all of New Mexico, I think I can handle whatever is in your bowl of noodles."

Tetsu raised an eyebrow, hastily sucking the end of a noodle into his mouth. "Are you sure about that? Most foreigners can't take this." He gestured at the bowl.

"Try me."

"Be my guest, but at your own risk."

I reached over to the green ceramic bowl, dipping the tines of my fork just below the sea of noodles, wrapping three around the metal fork before ungracefully shoveling them into my mouth.

It took about three seconds after swallowing for the spice to hit.

"Holy shit." I muttered in English, reaching for my glass of Sprite. "What is in that shit?" I hissed in Japanese. "It burns!"

Tetsu burst out laughing. "Told you you couldn't handle it."

"Shut up." I frowned, reaching for my own, less spicy bowl. "I don't understand how you can eat that."

He shrugged. "It's an acquired taste, I guess."

"Do you know why I don't drink anymore?" I'm not sure why I said it. It just slipped out. "For my dad, it was because he got violent, this need to prove his superiority. He'd get into bar fights almost constantly when he drank, but he never laid a hand on me or mum. Never. Me, on the other hand, I was a Harvard party girl. I'd wake up with little to no memory of what I'd done the night before, drinking to try and satiate this sadness and guilt about who I used to be."

"Gillian." Tetsu said softly, placing his hand on mine. "You don't have to tell me."

I shook my head. "No, I do. I need to tell somebody, or I think I might implode. Eventually, it stopped being healthy partying and I became self-destructive. We got clean together. I was sober for two years before Yuki died, and then I relapsed again. It was bad, my mom thought I was going to put myself in the hospital, that's how reckless I was. I'm three months now, and sobering up again was one of the hardest things I've ever done. It was worse than the first time because I worried that it wasn't going to work, that I was one fruity vodka away from another guilt trip."

"You're brave. Not just for doing that once, but going through it twice, even when you had doubts."

I turned my hand over underneath his, threading our fingers together. I half expected the tanned boy to pull away from my hand, but he eased into my touch. There was something comforting about it.

Something I hadn't felt since Keith. Keith who was back in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Keith who I left behind when my father got sick and had to move back to New Mexico. Keith had since graduated. He's a fully fledged lawyer now, working in Ireland. He has a fiancee too. Her name is Katherine.

I'd missed out on something good once, and I didn't want to run the risk of missing out on Tetsu. Missing out on Sannoh.

"Thank you." I said, my voice so quiet I wondered if he could even hear it. "Thank you for listening to me."

Our conversation hit a wall after that, hands separating as we both went back to eating, talking about less weighty topics: New Mexico, Sannoh Rengokai, a motorcycle trip that Dan, Tetsu and Chiharu had done the year before. Small talk, really.

We had both finished our noodle bowls when Tetsu's face lit up.

"Hey Gillian, I want to show you something."

NOTES!!

guys i am so excited for the next chapter, you don't even know

A L S O - teenage dirtbag hit ten k and i am S C R E A M I N G ! i never thought it was even going to break a thousand, but y'all blew me away-

thank you so much xx