Prompt: The Lint of Love From the 31 days Live Journal community.
Series: Darker than Black
Character/Pairing: Huang xShihoko
Rating: PG. Mild swearing. Spoilers for episode 19 of Darker than Black. This is such a pretty theme. Its hard to do it justice. I do not own Darker than Black characters. As if that wasn't obvious enough.

It's only a large canal. A large canal with damp fog clinging to the surface of the water. Weak moonlight sifts through the clouds to glint off the scummy surface.

There's a smell of dead fish in the air, among other things. It's probably emanating from the river. It's strong. So strong as to almost drown out everything else.

Just like I'm almost drunk. Drunk enough to almost drown out the memories of her.

It's barely noticeable, but if I close my eyes, I can almost smell the perfume of remaining blossoms that cling tenaciously to the barren branches.

Damn it. I wish I could get drunk.

The breeze wafts the scent towards me. Almost like a kiss. It drags me unwillingly away from a harsh reality. To a much earlier time. A time when the air was heady with scent and filled with swirling petals.

"Hey, where are you going? Your house isn't even that way!"

I reach out to take her hand only to watch her pirouette drunkenly on the step above.

Drunk out of her mind she was. She probably didn't even know what she was doing. She probably didn't even mean to. Or want to. This was probably part of some big joke fate was playing on me.

Still. Can't say it wasn't a nice kiss. While it lasted. Not that I had anything to compare it to.

"You damn drunk."

"It's not because I'm a drunk, its because I'm drunk. It's because like you. Kyupi." Standing where she is one step above me, the street light is positioned just nicely to make a halo over her head.

And here's me with a face like a frog. Like I said. This was probably going to turn out to be a huge joke. And it'd probably be at my expense too.

She's flushed. Because she's drunk. Because she's beautiful.

"What is 'like'? I don't even know what it means."

"There are some things you just don't need to know."

It's just a dimly lit canal. A canal speckled with grey foam and empty plastic bottles, reeking of dead fish and stale urine. A canal that picks up any amount of trash as it winds its way through the heart of this dark, damp and dirty city.

A canal that now carries the ashes of her photo away with it.

I wish I could get drunk. Then I wouldn't have to remember these things anymore. Or bother about things that I didn't need to know.

But I can't.