I started it on a muddy winter day, like this one, and I did the same on every muddy winter day. I've never thought that, leaning my back against the coffee vending machine would I take a glance of those slim, enviable legs.
Legs. Tch.
I have never believed that those legs will catch my attention so much that I'd spill that damn drink.
Swearing, I dig into my pocket. Because I need that coffee.
Shit, I have no changes left.
"Can I help you?" she asks from her chicken legs perhaps lifted above the skies by her many-inch-high purple stiletto.
"Please, I've got everything under control." I say, but rather to my empty pockets, than to her, who clad those thighs in fishnet stockings. Aren't you cold? Mini skirts? I really hate these idiots. And I hate that she can look above my shoulders, looking into the folds of the worn grey scarf around my neck, and she sees my tiny purple lips shivering for the hot drink.
With one quick motion her long arm reached above my head, held between her long fingers, and black nails and a coin hits the metal box.
"How do you like it? Would we share an espresso with sugar and milk, or you get a short black, and I'll remain thirsty, without change?" she asks.
I swallow. I don't like people.
But she's a very charming woman. She offers to pay me something, which I hate, or she gives me something, and I hate the sense of her helping me out.
"Or should we go to a much warmer café to drink two different drinks? In a more comfortable place I can pay with banknotes anyways. It's snowing. Do you like it?" she goes on, and talks so much...
I grumble. I hate it. As I hate winter too. As I hate everything. The piercing boredom on those grey days. Winter.
Colourless.
Depressive.
"Very well." I answer. I look at those long legs that I would hug, kiss and dig my fingers into on my apathetic days, because I could never have them, I have never been able too look above the average Japanese height. I have never felt special. That is why I sang. That is why I cried. That is why I ruined my life, only to tear myself out of the illusion, because neither crying nor singing have ever redeemed my soul. I saw reality then. Reality is like the grey winter.
Yes, it's snowing down here too. I put my scarf straight. The scarf I got from her, along with a last farewell kiss. From my mother, who let her little boy waste his life.
But Mom stays Mom anyways, and her scarf keeps me warm even if I feel only this fucking winter inside. It's no wonder that I've become addicted to coffee, right?
The stilettos lead me through the road, and the woman in them pushes me through a glass door and I sit down facing her, to a comfortable table in the corner.
I must take a look at who you really are.
Your face is softly beautiful, your eyelashes are long, carrying snowflakes, and winter is swirling in your eyes. You are so calm as my innermost frost, then how can your lips be as burning red as my blood that flows dirty into the fragrant water of by bathtub after each cold cut? Tch. I'm off from the point.
"I'm Ambrose." she introduces herself.
She lifts her arm and puts her scarf straight. Grey. Soft. She used to have a white haired, old mother.
"So to you, I'm Warumono." I open the menu, hiding my embarrassment. We order. An espresso with milk and sugar for her, and a raw short black for me. I'm raw, so what?
"Why is it needed? Why did she pick me up?"
"I like tiny things. They're a pleasant company."
She moves, perhaps crossing her legs, being a woman after all, while my teeth gnashed. Legs. Long. With stilettos. Fuck it. Why don't I get a hard-on?
"Did you used to be a singer? Your eyes are familiar."
She leans her head on her long fingers, and the heavens of limitless calmness disappear from her eyes. My God, for a second, her eyes bloomed a rainbow. Suddenly I feel a lump in my throat, and I touch my black ‒ originally blond ‒ hair. It fades so quickly. Hers is red, falling on her shoulders in curly locks, caressing her face. She opens her lips.
"I split the band."
The coffees arrive. She swaps the cups and I watch it, not understanding her purpose. My frozen face moves.
"Let's taste each other's soul." she says, smiling, sipping the coffee. I drink too. So light, easing the cramps of loneliness. We aged years as the world froze in its own apathetic liquid, and somehow it's always winter. We're stuck in a snow globe with thick glass, and it wasn't broken by even the long, burning love. I loved her. Every one of her movements, her tongue, Oh, I loved especially her tongue.
And her legs.
And her arms.
Shit, they were long... I look at the woman who is called by the name of the food of the gods. Then I drink her namby-pamby soul and she laughs.
"Did you love them?" she asks.
"Perhaps. But time flew by and cut empathy out of us. the stage shrank suddenly and I couldn't stand the narrowing claustrophobe. No drugs could substitute soaring that high.
"And are you on drugs now?"
"I'm a bored millionaire, isn't it obvious?"
She flutters her eyelashes and goes back to leaning comfortably on her fingers. Perhaps my life is empty only because there's no one to fill it.
"Could I be the one who fills it?" her bold audacity could upset me, but an exciting curiosity took over me, wondering about her legs. What do they taste like? What are they like? Are they like his? They look similar.
In their features.
Perhaps I could imagine it, as I fantasised about him in the dressing room. I have always loved his tall body. He was what I couldn't be and I love it. I love it, because it's new, thrilling, different. He lives in another world...
"I don't like women." I answer quietly.
She closes her eyes and her lips start to flutter. I wait a few minutes until she looks at me again, and her eyes are as empty as a mirror.
I see myself in them.
"You know me." she whispers.
She puts her fingers on the table, her face changes, losing its feminine features. A man moves into them.
"Warumono, I'm Die."
The exciting silence that disappears, because even is she was talking, her voice seemed like loving whispers in bed.
Then her claws dig deep ditches into my face, like the knife into my thighs, and my red blood gushes forth. Winter moves into her voice, I bit my lip in my painful astonishment while hotness flushes over my groin. My knees start to shiver and I remember those lonely nights when I was thinking about his legs.
"What the fuck have you done?" my voice quavers although I want to shout.
She touches her hair, moves a smile to her trembling red lips and wipes the snowflakes off of her eyelashes.
"I thought you were homophobic."
My heart stops. Seriously, I fucking felt is skip a beat.
I have become a woman. Surgery. I couldn't. I couldn't even like this. So I set off to the streets. then even deeper. I sold myself. I let men take a collar on my neck and I kneeled before them.
"It hurts me, what you say. My heart is being torn out of my chest, along with my flushing erection. I didn't want you to become a woman. You were a man. Attractive. I dreamt of you, your body, out pulsing blood; we melted into one during dirty, pervert, disgusting nights in cheap motels, and we cared about nothing. This is what I dreamed. Why didn't you tell me?"
"Why didn't I tell you? To seduce you afterwards. As a woman. And then, those men... so disgusting..."
I barely hear her.
I'm not attracted to women, Die. Fuck you!
She hides her face between those long fingers, so I can not see how do the burden of the long years crush her, and I can't even say "I love you". Because I don't need her this way. Because she'd become a cheap woman.
"Oh, how I hate you now because of them. Because you're a man... Isn't it funny?"
