-14: After-hours -
As it turned out, working through the stuff from the shack took more than a week to complete. Well, less one day that Amon declared as a day to decompress. In that vein, Amon was also correct on how much—well, how little—Kureo would be around. He showed up for maybe an hour each day, grabbed some papers, and ran back to the lab.
"What exactly is he up to?" I mused one day, as Kureo hurried out the door with a stack of forms and a notebook.
"He's probably making a Quinque." Amon, nose deep in a yellowed notebook, didn't seem perturbed. "He did find the one that Fueguchi had fascinating, after all."
Amon and I had decided early on that he would work on the written materials and I would start on the stuff. Which was just fine for me; my reading of Japanese tended to be mostly literal. Plus, even for being a Ghoul, Fueguchi Asaki had collected some very cool tools. Not that I had the skill to use all of them.
"Is he" I began, "the Mado? The one who basically came up with the idea for the Mado-Tasaki Procedure?"
"That's him. Never wanted the acclaim though, only new Quinques."
As we spent basically the entirety of each day working, we ended up talking. Not a lot, just small talk about what we were working on, and eventually got into work stories. I learned about Special Investigator Arima from him; a man with the fighting prowess of the grim reaper and the reserved personality to match. I told him the story about an East Coast crime syndicate who used Ghouls to dispose of bodies, and the chance leads that pulled it together. Simple stuff. We never talked about our lives outside of work.
I would come back to the room I lived in every night with ghostly images of forms dancing in my head. At one point, I had a dream about filling out documents with a foul-smelling permanent marker.
Conversations about life, however, I held with Hasuko while we commuted.
About halfway through the work from the Fueguchi case, the pattern was thrown out the window. Usually, Hasuko was serious, sometimes even grave, when she came down from the offices on the upper floors and only relaxed when we climbed into the sedan she drove. Today however, her face was bright, and there was a literal bounce in her step.
Still, she stayed quiet until we had closed sat down in the car.
"I'm getting promoted!" Her voice was somewhere between trill and an excited squeak.
"Congrats." I was always bad at this kind of thing.
"I've been putting in extra hours, managed to get some work in the field, improving my scores on the firing range and I got word this afternoon that two First Class Investigators had recommended me for promotion to second rank!"
Her giddiness was infectious, and I found myself grinning as I congratulated her again.
She was almost dancing in her seat at every red light. Partway through the ride, she dropped a bombshell on me.
"I'm going out to celebrate with some of my friends tonight," she was trying hard to sound nonchalant and not still absolutely giddy, "and since I can count you as one of the reasons I stayed sane through all that...maybe you'd like to join us?"
Hadn't expected that. Still, I wasn't going to say no; a change of pace was much needed before I dreamed of paperwork again. I really hope she isn't into me.
And that is how I ended up in a bright and boisterous karaoke bar barely three blocks from her apartment, surrounded by the happy and less than sober. I knew literally nobody there. That said, I did spy a couple familiar faces from the CCG office.
And Juuzou. Who ran over to greet me as if he had never expected to see me again.
"Mister Allen! This is awesome!" He waved his arms around. "Everybody is having fun! Are you gonna do the karaoke?"
"Me?" I sputtered. "Uh, no? I really can't sing... Are you?" Really hate singing too.
"Nope. I'm just here to have some fun tonight. And—" He leaned in close, "—see if any Ghouls try to follow drunk people so I can kill them."
Well, that was a pretty thought. "How'd you hear about this anyway?" I accepted a beer from one of the other almost familiar faces.
"Oh! Miss Hasuko has been working with Shinohara and I in the field." He nodded toward where she was laughing with a few other people. "Shinohara had a family thingy, but I came. She's got good instincts; she'll be great at hunting Ghouls."
"I see. She's certainly been working hard for it."
"Oh!" Juuzou's head snapped toward the door. "Somebody's leaving! I'll see you later."
And with that, the unsettling kid was gone. Well, 'kid' was wrong; he was probably just out of college. With a creepy love of killing Ghouls. Then again, I hadn't exactly lived a normal life either.
If Hasuko hadn't pulled me over to join a conversation, I might've stood there thinking all night.
It felt good to do something that was just for fun. I told a few jokes, laughed at a few, bickered inanely with a Junior Investigator about the best tie knot. My personal low point of the evening came somewhere after suffering my way through a second beer, when Hasuko pulled me on stage to do a sloppy duet of 'It's my life'. Only for a moment though, before the cheering crowd replaced my lack of singing ability with stage fright.
It ended quickly, but not quickly enough.
As people left the bar and the night rolled across the windows, it ended up being me, Hasuko, and a trio of other Investigators making boisterous small talk while slowly working our way through bottles of beer.
"You're not a fan of our beer, eh Ami?"
"Not really a fan of beer in general." I looked down at my barely touched bottle with a grimace. "I never liked the fizz and taste."
"So what do you like then?" Another investigator chimed in.
"To be honest, I've always been" I shrugged apologetically, "a fan of vodka."
"Never tried that." Hasuko chirped.
Two of the others voiced similar observations.
"Well," I carelessly drawled, "since this is Hasuko's celebration, I think I'll treat you all to a new experience. This is a lot stronger than beer though, so be careful." And it would be a heck of a lot easier to drink than beer.
So, I ordered vodka.
More precisely, I either misspoke, or something went horribly right.
I ended up with a full bottle of vodka.
You can't return alcohol at any bar, let alone one doing a roaring trade with drunk people singing karaoke. Was I nervous? A little; the full bottle was intimidating and the last time I had taken a shot was with Robalson, a world away.
I poured away my apprehension into the shot glasses. This was a celebration.
"To Hasuko," I raised my glass, as the others followed suit "may luck lead you on, and success follow your trail!"
I downed the fiery mouthful and thumped the glass back on the table before it had finished scorching its way to my stomach.
And then I woke up in bed.