About Smoking By Subaru Sumeragi
Author's Note: So finally I got some work done again. It's just a short little story, nothing more, but I still hope you'll like it and leave me a quick comment:-)
Disclaimer: The characters in this story of course belong to CLAMP.
He had tried almost everything. But nothing had worked.
Subaru Sumeragi was sitting in the dark of the room, curled up on the swivel chair in front of the desk. The desk lamp threw a circled cone of light on the wooden surface of the table, throwing eerie shadows on Subaru and the rest of the room. In the middle of the desk was a glass ashtray, between Subaru's fingers a slightly glowing cigarette.
It's been almost nine years since he had taken up this two edged habit. At the beginning it's only been one cigarette now and then. Mostly when he was depressed, when the terrible events, that made him try out smoking in the first place, crossed his mind again. It would always soothe him quickly and he had never disliked the taste of tobacco from the start like most other people do until they are used to it.
Soon the dose increased rapidly and the occasional indulgence became a habit. A habit that could not easily be abandoned again.
Three packets a day. Since one packet contained ten cigarettes, it meant thirty cigarettes a day. Nine years were 3,285 days and 3,285 times thirty made 98,550.
98,550 cigarettes in his life.
Which meant the cigarette between his fingers right now was his 98,551st.
He sighed. What good did idle mathematics bring? It couldn't solve his problem, anyway.
Nothing could.
Nothing he had tried so far could make him stop smoking.
As a first attempt he had tried to chew chewing gum instead of smoking cigarettes. Every time his body longed for the taste of nicotine he would pull out his packet of chewing gum and soon be healed from his vice. But as soon as he tasted the cherry flavour he found himself smoking twice as many cigarettes than before.
Okay, cherry flavour, bad idea, admittedly.
Second try was candy. This time he paid attention to the flavour he bought and chose strawberry. But again, pretty bad idea. Thirty cigarettes a day made thirty candies a day. Sounds like spending the night bowed over the toilet bowl? Very right. And besides, there was the problem with caries. He didn't want to brush his teeth half-hourly.
Oh, and then there was the glorious third attempt, that certainly had the least effect on helping him give up smoking. It was a packet of plasters he had obtained accidentally in the supermarket. Supposedly they are drained with nicotine and provide you with your needed dose, so that you don't need to smoke cigarettes anymore and are able to reduce the dose slowly step by step. It didn't work for Subaru anyway. His need for cigarettes was not lowered in the slightest way or maybe he just wasn't able to talk himself into believing it.
And so he was still sitting here in the darkness of the room, his 98,551st cigarette glowing between his fingers.
He somehow wanted to give up smoking before the 100,000th.
But what on earth could be a better drug than smoking…?
"Subaru-kun, I'm going to bed now."
…
Subaru stubbed out the cigarette and threw it into the ashtray.
Oh well.