Camels are fashionable in Shibuya for an entire week because Joshua smokes them. Pink laced No. 9s lit with a white lighter encased in a pink bi-material gripper. Only a few people manage to replicate the foreign lighter, but everyone from Hachiko to Cat Street takes up the little pink-and-black box habit.
"You know," Joshua observes in that usual snide way of his as he opens up the box. Sunlight reflects off the pink foil inside for a moment as he deftly frees a cigarette. He balances it in his left hand between forefinger and middle finger, just below the little pink camel. With his right hand he drops the carton back into the front pocket of his plain Pegaso Atelier shirt.
Neku tilts his head down, hiding his face into his collar. He really doesn't care what Joshua has to say and has no intentions of encouraging him to continue speaking.
Joshua lights up with his pink lighter, drags twice, exhales and says, "Camels sold outside the US don't contain Turkish Tobacco."
Neku rolls his eyes. "Really don't care," he voices. "we have more important things to be doing."
A man walks past, urban young whathaveyou with a cellphone in one hand while the other works deftly to extract a cigarette from a black and green box. The inside foil is the same fuchsia as Joshua's, as is the little camel on the filter.
"Menthol," Joshua sighs with great suffering. "It's just terrible for you. And did you know that artificial grape flavor gives you brain cancer?"
Neku sneers at him. "Who'd have thought," he grumbles dryly. "Smoking is bad for you."
"Oh, lighten up, Neku," Joshua prompts breathily. He poses for a moment with his cigarette poised coolly at his lips. Neku is unimpressed. When Joshua laughs at his surly expression, he blows his smoke in his partner's face. Neku bats at the cloud irritably. "You don't have to be such a health nut. You are dead after all."
"I am not a health nut," Neku replies shortly.
Joshua laughs at him, nearly crying with it. He sobers up to take another drag off his cigarette.
"You are a health nut," he decides. "You bitch and moan about everything we eat, except what you watch Rikako make to your exact specifications. Oh, and those overpriced 'herbal remedies' you insist on buying at Mind & Body Foods."
Neku clams up, sulking, and Joshua grins brightly. He stubs out his cigarette, leaving the twisted butt in one of Hachiko's flowerbeds, the pink stripe and pink camel still plainly visible.
He ambles over to his partner and pauses before him, saying sweetly, "Don't pout my dear partner." His smile turns rude and leering. "I'll have you no matter what. Even if you're pale and scrawny from all your health food. You're still beautiful to me, and your ass certainly doesn't suffer for it."
Neku holds still and lets Joshua try to kiss him, only to kick him back at the last moment.
"You reek of smoke and I bet you taste like tar," he muses and then walks on, snatching a black and pink carton of Camel No. 9s out of the unsuspecting hands of a trendy passerby. He crushes it in his hand and shoves it down the throat of the first Noise he sees.
Standard Disclaimers.