BH: Ahhh, I'm aggro lol. I saw a youtube vid from this past July, it was an interview with the #1 Hostess of Japan. I just went with my old 2012 research from when I was prepping UTWWTE, and then some recent research which generally feels irrelevant. I guess at an International Hostess Club/Bar, brains are favored equally to beauty or more than it. There was an anecdote that an American Expat turned Hostess was told by a Japanese businessman that he is bored of talking to Japanese women, he felt they were all immature and uninteresting. So perhaps you can see that's what I primarily went with. :\ I tried to be like 'Oh, look! It's not as sexualized as it seems!', but then this specific youtube interview goes against that. But it was enlightening all the same and shows a lot of things that I could have done better.
I'm actually considering repurposing a Hostess!Hinata for my 'Powerless' sequel now. The #1 Hostess's backstory was both simple yet compelling. Also, I can throw in smut into that sequel where I had no original intention to! 8D
21 Days
Chapter Sixteen, When I'm Ready I'll Fly Us Out Of Here
"Get a load of this monster,
He doesn't know how to communicate,
His mind is in a different place,
Will everybody please give him a little bit of space?
Get a load of this trainwreck,
His hair's a mess and he doesn't know who he is yet,"
-Cavetown "This Is Home"
The phone rings right on time.
No later than twenty minutes after school, and it's his mother's day off to boot.
Naruto hurries into the kitchen and plucks the wireless handset off of the main unit. He presses the green button and with a muted smile, he greets the man on the other side.
"Hello, sir."
"Hey there, kiddo. Sorry I missed your birthday last week."
"It's fine," Naruto walked over to the dining table and kneeled down, resting how elbows atop the table. "Mom and I just had Ichiraku as usual. It was fun." Relaying this info almost felt scripted, as if for his father's sake, the man needed to be assured that everything was as perfect as he had left it.
A head of red poked out from behind the entryway. His mother grinned conspiratorially as she placed her forefinger to his lips. 'Shhh!' With that, she brandished the secondary handset, the one kept in her bedroom.
His heart rate picked up, the dread setting in.
Pressing the answer button, she put the device to her ear, and Naruto held his tongue.
"That's good. Thirteen, though. You're finally a young man."
Over time these conversations had lost a sense of warmth and familiarity, the only thing keeping their bond together were these perfunctory questions and generic observations.
"Yeah, looks that way. Next spring I'll finally wear a gakuran."
"Hope your mother takes a picture for me."
Naruto forced himself to look up from where his mother hovered, eyeing him with an unreadable stare.
"She will, sir. Right under the cherry blossoms, just like everyone else."
"Is she there?"
Fear body slammed his heart to the ground.
His mother made a swiping motion near her neck, shaking her head at the same time.
"No, she stepped out. We're, uh, low on groceries."
"That could have waited. I missed her last month, too."
Yeah, that was pretty messed up.
He didn't understand it, either. But when he glanced up at his mother, she was swooning, hand to her chest. Over the sound of her husband missing her.
Naruto's left hand curled into a fist. He swallowed carefully.
"She… misses you a lot, too. She knows that… being a mom comes first." Every word feels like an ulcer burning a hole through his stomach.
His mother is just being shy, he tells himself.
He's a good son, because he has his mother's back.
That's how it is. That's how it should be.
In the background, he catches a different voice. It's a woman. She sounds friendly. Then again, they all do.
Glancing at his mother, she glared darkly and he knew what she needed him to ask.
"... Sir, are you calling from the barracks?"
"No, no. Good old fashioned payphone-" He trailed off to address the woman speaking to him. It didn't sound like Rin-san. "I'll call same time next month. Take good care of your mother for me."
"Yessir."
He hung up.
Then his mother hung up.
"Who was that?" She said, as if he was the one keeping secrets from her.
Naruto placed the phone on the table and placed his fists atop his lap.
The hot white lamp was on him now.
"How'm I supposed to know? It was probably nobody."
"You don't recognize that voice?" Her words came out fast like a car crash.
"No, mom, I don't."
Kushina kneeled down on the side adjacent to him and crossed her arms over the dining table.
"Why won't you look at me when I ask you a question? Is it because you know who that was?"
Naruto shook his head vehemently.
His mother reached out for his left hand and gently cradled it, caressing the top with her thumb. Her fingers were still soft because all she does is sleep, goof off and go to her cashier job. His hands aren't so rough because he's still young. But he has some scars from some fights. Heroic fights. Because he's not a thug.
"Naruto-chan, what do you think I should do? Can you accept your father falling out of love with me?"
His widened, his jaw clenched.
How was he supposed to answer that?
How was he supposed to picture his parents splitting up?
Would they make him choose where to live? Who to side with?
No.
It wasn't going to happen.
His mom is just being weird as usual.
"... Dad still loves you. You heard him." And he knows it, too, even if the man doesn't know this side of his wife, Naruto isn't concerned about his father's feelings as much as his mother is.
But when his mother doesn't smile and her eyes look like darkened windows, he knows that his words just went in one ear and out the other.
"But what if he doesn't love me anymore? Do you think I could do better?"
His jaw went slack as he stared at her.
How can she say this to him of all people?!
Is this how women think?!
That their loves are like replaceable parts?
Or rather, that women feel they have to one-up the ones who hurt them?
Ino's been working her way up the boyfriend food chain. If she can't have Sasuke, she'll have a fourteen year old boyfriend, then a fifteen year old boyfriend, or Itachi-nii (which never worked out because of Shisui's constant presence).
It's freakin' spiteful!
Isn't that spiteful?!
And she thinks it's okay?!
His mother is preemptively throwing his father away before he's even done anything!
Doesn't that… doesn't that actually mean their relationship is over?
Are his mother's feelings that flimsy?
Early childhood memories of his parents' love for each other are hard to conjure up. It's like a permanently fogged up mirror. No matter how many times he wipes at the condensation, he can't see himself, the very embodiment of their love.
He doesn't really understand what's happening right now, but he can't be bothered to think about it, and this is the best he can come up with under duress.
"Rather, instead of worrying about dad…" He mustered up his biggest smile and gleamed at his mother. He opened his arms and raised his hands high over his head. "You should spend more time with me!"
His arms stay up because he's waiting on his mom to respond.
She reaches over and ruffles his head.
His grin widens. And as his arms come down, her hands clap together in front of her face, a guilty smile greeting him.
"But can we go to Mikoto's first? I already made plans."
His smile dropped.
Because of course she did.
How did he end up here?
His head is on her lap and he can't move.
His head feels like a fifty ton cement tetrapod.
Her fingers feel like feathers across his skin as she traces the shape of his jaw right down to his chin, then up to ruffle through his sparse hair.
He doesn't want to move.
And it's not because of her careful caresses, which also feel like the tip of a hunting knife ghosting his skin, circling around trying to figure out where to start skinning him.
But because of how he fell apart in front of her.
Because of everything she said about him.
Like she had just reached inside his body with both hands and pulled out his viscous, pulsating flaws and presented them back to him.
It tore him apart to think that he could be so good, so nice, so loyal for so long and still be undeserving of these same things back.
It tore him apart that this would happen with her of all people.
No, he understands he fucked up despite his best intentions.
It's the 'fucking up' at all part that unnerves him.
He can't help but think that nothing in this world is meant for him. That he was unplanned in every way, so the world had prepared nothing for him in turn.
He has a lot of issues, yeah, but it's the big picture that scares him. That he has to walk alone while everyone else he loves and treasures are happy enough without him. Like he's just optional. Like he's just a bonus.
Well, fuck that.
If he's the free cookie at the end of a blood drive, then he's the best damn cookie known to man! There are plenty of other healthier choices, sure, but none of them are him.
And he'll become whatever cookie people want so long as it means they choose him, and he doesn't care what fucking food allergy they have because he is the best fucking cookie they will ever have their whole lives. And they'll be grateful for not passing him up.
If that makes him a selfish motherfucker, then he's a selfish motherfucker.
But she doesn't like that about him.
She got a taste and discovered they used way too much salt to make him.
'Social chameleon.' He muses humorlessly.
Her finger traces the shell of his ear and a shiver tracks down his back.
"What're you doing?" He says without thinking.
But he is thinking alot.
He's thinking why is she even still here?
Why is she still comforting him?
Pitying him?
Why?
She doesn't see anything in him.
She just feels bad for him.
That's how it's been this whole time.
His eyes sting at the unbidden reminder.
Her soft, weary sigh meets his ears.
"I'm just thinking."
'Thinking', she says. Brooding, ruminating, plotting his demise…
Or maybe… maybe she's patching up the holes he gouged out of her, just as she had done to him.
It's not like he didn't start it.
Because he did.
Because he's a fuck up and a coward.
If he feels this much like shit, then how badly must she be feeling right now?
He can't even picture it.
If he does, he might just hurt himself… just to make it even. It's what he always did to her bullies. He deserves no special treatment.
His lips flap uselessly like a goldfish as he gracelessly breaks the silence.
"I,I'm sorry."
Waiting on her answers leaves him suspended.
Depending on her answer, he'll either land softly or fall into an endless void.
"... I know." She says. Her voice is like the cold, wet breeze on an overcast morning. It's sorry it has to put a chill down your back and break out goosebumps along your skin, but it also feels like the best thing you're gonna feel all day.
He could use some of that right now.
"Are you okay?"
"Are you okay?"
He blinked.
She asked him the same thing at the same time.
His ears burned as he dragged his courage forth by its wrists and cleared his throat.
"Y,Yeah… you?"
"S,Surprisingly? I,I'm okay."
There's no soft landing, but there's no void, either.
He's just floating in their own little world.
But then his mouth decides to act while his brain isn't looking.
"What did I even do?"
Is he asking her? Is he asking himself? Is he asking god?
Another sigh, this time vexed.
He elaborates. "I'm talking about before I left. You're not that pissed at me because of Tamaki or…" the shitty things I said. He winces.
She stops tracing his features. The loss of her touch nudges him towards withdrawal, but he knows it's just the beginning.
By morning he'll have the shakes.
Her hands move into her lap just above his head and he feels her fiddling with her dress, twisting and twisting, and he thinks she still won't tell him.
"... Something happened…"
He dares to look up at her. She's looking off to the side, cloaked in apprehension.
Duh, 'something happened.'
"Something 'cuz of me?" He nudged.
She shook her head. And he's still suspended. Because this is literally the same conversation as the one they had on the bridge.
He looks away and stares ahead, his own sigh trapped in his chest.
He palms the floor and shifts himself off of her lap, his head kept down. He raises up and turns away from her, avoiding her face at all costs.
The face that he caused to contort in bitter anger.
The face that he caused to be stained in tears.
Naruto reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, his gaze flitting from corner to corner of the living room.
It doesn't even feel like his place, the place he's been in the past eleven months. It's not cozy, it doesn't have sentimental value, it's just a box… it's just shelter.
"... This is the second time now that I've felt this way…" He murmurs.
"What way?"
His hand slips from his neck into his lap heavily.
He told her he was leaving soon. Just to make her feel bad, to make her miss him, to get her to chase him.
The way his deeply held sigh releases, it stumbles and trips and he has to clear his throat. "Uhm, like I just got kicked out of my own home."
He pictures their time apart. He pictures her flourishing without him. He pictures her hand in hand with another man, a better man, and he can't even muster up the energy to frown.
He's got no pride no more. She burnt it all up in her atmosphere.
Are they even still friends? Can he even be the one to ask her this time? If he got on his hands and knees, forehead pressed to the floor, would she even forgive him?
"Why does it feel like that?" She asks.
Warmth crawls up his neck and takes a seat in his face. He rubs at his neck again.
"W,Well, home is… y'know… a place that's reliable. It's always going to be there for you, and… it's mutual, like… you miss your home… and your home misses you… I,I mean a house can't miss you literally, b,but it's just that… i,it's like it's not a 'home' without… without its person, y'know? A,Ah, uhm…" Naruto hung his head, his ears burning.
None of that came out right, did it?
Somehow he's still implying that she is his. That she belongs to him. That she only exists because of him. That she's the house and he's the homeowner.
Pfft. Real fuckin' romantic, idiot.
Even if she understood what he meant, would she care? Or did he just make himself even more pathetic in her eyes?
He groans to cover up the awkward silence, otherwise he's going to keep picturing her bland, side-eyed stare. "A,Anyways, I don't like Tamaki like that, okay? She's just a family friend of Sasuke's…"
"I didn't think you did."
Wow, she said that quick.
Awkward.
"O,Oh."
"I was saying it was extremely annoying of you to use my presence to appear cooler to the opposite sex."
Double awkward.
"O,Oh."
"I know having a girlfriend would make you feel super cool-"
Not untrue, but… "It's not just that…" He grumbled. "I woulda done that regardless because I'd be happy to show everyone who's my special lady. It's not a weird thing to do." But she wasn't his, and that's where she drew the line.
Before, where he was scared to face the possibility of rejection by asking her out, now the unwanted truth is staring him in the face: That he's not what she's looking for in a relationship. That he never was and never will be.
So many times she tried to let him off her hook and each time he bulldozed through her demurrals; now he's twenty feet underground with no sunlight or fresh air.
Naruto double-palmed his face and internally screamed.
I FUCKING DID THIS TO MYSELF!
She used to like him. She never liked him. He doesn't fucking know, anymore.
He's a good lay, but a bad boyfriend? Is that even an acceptable trade-off?
Naruto pulls his knees up and ducks down, clutching at the back of his head as all the noise and all the static of his self-loathing roars inside his head and buzzes beneath his skin.
I don't have anyone to talk to. Sasuke and dad are exactly the same. Mom would just tease the ever living fuck outta me. Itachi-nii is polying it up with two other Uchiha and that's not fucking relatable at all. Shikamaru and Choji are both doing the long distance thing. Kiba is Kiba, Sai is Sai, and Iruka-sensei is married to the job…
But there was one guy… One guy who chose to stay close to his sweetheart despite the strict 'No Fraternization' policy. One guy who couldn't ever seem to catch a break. His mom's declared favorite, for whatever reason. But Naruto was fond of the man himself, so it was near impossible to hold hard feelings against him.
Naruto lifted his head and stared at the space between his feet. I wish Obito were here.
But he's all the way on the western border. Ever since he got shot in the eye five years ago and lived, he's been back at his hometown living the life of a hero.
All the man ever wanted was Rin, but hey, being a hero is pretty good, right?
Right?
He imagines Obito would tell him otherwise.
"Y'know, I got a job so I could stay…" He mutters.
"I don't want to hold you back, Naruto-kun."
His eyes widened. Fuck, she's perceptive! Well, then again, what the fuck did they just argue about? Us. If there is even an 'us'.
He rounds on her and her big, sad, faraway gaze meets his.
"So you think I should go?"
Her brows knit. "You always were. I don't understand. Do you not want to anymore?"
He doesn't know. He doesn't understand, either. Did they have this talk already? His head is hurting.
What is he hoping to get out of this? To see panicked tears in her eyes? Her hands clutching his arm telling him she'll miss him too much? That she wants more time?
"I've been training all year."
Her features smooth a little. "Then you should go."
Already kicked out of his own home. Now she's closed the door on him.
His jaw shifts to the side. His eyes feel hot.
"Yeah… that's what I should do, huh…" He turns his back on her, hugging his knees as he burned a hole into the middle space. The comforter of the kotatsu is at his feet, and he thinks about the perfect night they had together, and the perfect morning he had yesterday. He reaches out and fiddles with the edge, tugging and pushing the heavy cloth in random directions. "So… what happens now?"
"Now?"
Naruto closed his eyes and rested his cheek against his upper arm. "Yeah. Still got twenty- No, nineteen days left… You wanna spend any of it with me? Or… you wanna call it quits?"
She's capable of saying 'no', even if he's tried to influence her towards saying 'yes' to him in the recent past, all signs point to a big, fat rejection this time.
A clear one. A permanent one.
He didn't hear her move.
Not until the plush warmth of her body sank into his back and her arms wrapped across his shoulders.
She rested her head against his, and he swore he was going to melt away.
His hands came up instinctively to clutch at her forearms, because he doesn't want to melt away, he wants to stay with her.
"Twenty days left… that is, if you want to do something together right now…"
He cranes his head back slightly, causing her to rest hers against his shoulder and he gazes up at the ceiling.
He wants to believe this is her genuine answer, but in the back of his mind is a dark sky of doubt, threatening to drift closer.
He's not a thinking man.
He's not very good at thinking.
And all that he's done thus far has only made things worse.
He'll let her take the lead. He'll only fuck it up for the both of them again.
"You got something in mind?"
BH: I feel… completely neutral about this chapter, lol. Lemme know what you think!