This story has a sad ending. Go back now if you don't like. Truthfully, it wasn't supposed to happen that way, but I had fun and don't want to change it. It was supposed to be cute, but oh well. I think it's actually a good story, this time. Please enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed typing.
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Ikkaku staggered into his crummy one bedroom apartment in the east end of Rukongai, drunk and tired.
It was such a damnable place, he thought. It was hardly big enough for more than a few scant pieces of furniture, which he never could keep long without getting mad and breaking. The only things that he kept were the bare necessities, which shared the space with all the junk that accumulated since his last live in girlfriend.
Forty years of absolutely no cleaning, all piled on top of the floor of conjoined living room, bedroom, and kitchen. His bathroom had a layer of grime and filth that most would find disturbing. He couldn't care less, he only slept in this place.
He lived his life in cheap bars. It was the same thing nearly every night.
When he went to sleep with beer on his breath and scantily dressed women on his mind, he knew nothing would change come tomorrow.
His only way to pay for his addiction at the bars would be to kill anyone who looked like they had heavy pockets, and sometimes he would remember to save enough to pay rent and food costs. It didn't matter to him anymore, though.
Whether or not he had a place to stay or food to eat. There wasn't anything he was looking forward to, most of the time it felt like tomorrow just didn't come and he was reliving the same day and the same thing over and over.
The only thing that ever changed was how much he would drink. How much the bartender would serve him before he'd be kicked out, that was. Tonight, he was glaring daggers every time someone so much as suggested that he should leave, that he couldn't pay for what he was drinking, that he'd had too much. Even the man pouring him glass after glass and selling him bottle after bottle of sake didn't complain once Ikkaku motioned to get his katana out from it's sheath.
The night was cold, but not enough to sober the bald man. His raggedy clothes were bellowing in the wind, they made him look so much smaller than he was. By the time he'd gotten to his apartment complex, he'd become so tired fighting the urge to just pass out from all the alcohol and going against the wind with his clothes acting as parachutes to keep him from reaching his bed, he didn't even care which room he walked in.
It didn't matter to him, when he walked in, that the room was spotlessly clean. It didn't matter to him that nothing in there besides the wallpaper even resembled his residence. It just mattered that there was a bed calling to him, letting him fall face first and sleep.
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Just a few hours later, the owner of the apartment walked in, holding a stained and tattered burlap sack with basic food stuffs. Although he may have expected that the local drunk would one day end up going into his room on accident (or maybe out of lust), it made the raven haired man jump.
"Did I forget to lock the door behind me?"
With all of his vanity, the owner of the apartment thought for sure it was merely lustful desire that attracted the bald man.
"What was his name? It started with an 'I', I think. An "Ick" sound? How fitting for someone so unbeautiful."
The man flipped his shoulder length black hair and walked over to his ugly vanity with a cracked mirror. There was no way in Rukongai for someone like him who was not suited for manual labor or born into a rich family, to obtain beautiful or nice things.
With the ugly things he surrounded himself with, however, he believed his beauty became even greater in contrast. Until he could have fine things, he decided he would be content to live with such an awful accumulation of things.
"Yumichika," he said to himself in the broken mirror. "You are simply beautiful."
Yumichika sat his bag down and went over to the man passed out on his bed, and thought if ugly things would increase how beautiful he looked, then he should certainly keep this one around. That made him chuckle and he bent over to see if the man whose name he never bothered to learn was still breathing.
"Oh, jeez. How much can one person drink?" Yumichika wrinkled his nose and backed away, his unwarranted visitor was certainly still breathing. His breath consisted of nothing but cheap liquor and bar food.
"What am I supposed to do with this?" He leaned over his the bald man, staying clear of his breath, and wondered if he could carry the man without waking him, back to his apartment?
While examining and guessing the weight of the man, Yumichika noticed the bald head of the drunkard was a better mirror than the one he already possessed in his tattered room. He admired his own reflection for a few minutes, cooing over his own image, when the man began to stir.
There was more beautiful things to be doing, Yumichika decided, than getting into fights with irrational, ugly people who are either drunk or have hangovers. He decided to disappear behind the bathroom door.
"What the hell?" The man asked no one. "Why am I here?"
Does he even know whose residence he's in? Yumichika doubted it.
"What a pain in the ass. This isn't my place."
"No duh, ugly," the vain man mumbled low enough so his unwelcome visitor wouldn't hear him.
"Ikkaku, you're a moron."
Yumichika heard the man curse himself and struggle to get up, after which he proceeded stumble over his own feet and walk out, slamming the door on his way. The raven haired man tiptoed to the exit of his apartment (only to make sure he went into his own room) and watched the drunk walk into the correct place this time.
"So, his name's Ikkaku? Kaku is a pretty sound. Not beautiful like Yumichika, or refined like Ayasegawa, but pretty, none the less. Maybe it could be beautiful, if it had some help?"
Yumichika walked back into his apartment, and although he didn't want to sleep on a bed where a drunk had just laid, getting his disgustingly drunk breath on the pillow, he didn't have the patience to clean all the sheets. He couldn't afford to use that time and lose beauty sleep, anyways.
He rested on the bed and was pleasantly surprised. The pillow on one side didn't smell at all tolerable, but once he turned it over, he noticed the man smelled of sweet spice.
"Beautiful."
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Yay, shortness.
