This is uber-lame. As I was editing the chapter I had an inexplicable urge to link this fic with another storyline, an experiment I used previously in my Naruto fic; so if you have read this chapter already, you'd know by now that this picks up from where "One of These Days" left off, which I would be discontinuing. I also plagiarized some lines from my previous fics (and Rilke), and I think I will never stop making references to The Shins. Feel free to flame.
CARIVAL TOWN Version 1.3
In which Nighttime Extends, Sendoh Meets a Contrast & the Experiment Resumes
They parted with a few exchanges of words and a countless silences afterwards.
He wanders aimlessly, and soon it seemed like he was walking across the infinity of the firmament as he makes his way home; there was a nil of possibility of going to, however. The enormity of Kanagawa's abyss hypnotizes him, luring him into its trap. He deems it to be detaining him in the dead of the night as the seeming chasm enjoys while he wallows over a past self; but the so-called haven of a home was another prison.
A rush of blood to the head; his mind's eye halt to thoughts just in time to watch himself smiling over some tanned body he spoke with beforehand. He remembered the days, where after the sugar-coated dreams he lay awoke entwined with the other's body that he often thought it was another dream, another saccharine taste. They were days where he relinquishes his pedestal to step down and be watched; the thrill of the other's eyes as he shoots one hundreds, without missing, and they would smile to themselves to ignite the days and clear restless nights away.
Summer days and autumn nights came with their times too stretched, and a year passed when the feeling became too mutual it choked them, afflicted with a too spacious room that they both ironically found it hard to breathe in. They enjoyed each other's company too much that it was nauseating. Their bodies leave a bitter aftertaste each growing night; all that was left was a nihilistic feeling that it only took minutes to part their ways. One year, twenty-one days and counting; Akira Sendoh had his pipe-dream then.
His feet dragged him to a street where the materialistic lifestyle can ever gets so defined. Across him was a building, jagged in correspondence to aesthetics, and he hears techno music in the distance. As his sight spins a thread of tension, he realizes they were a field of selfsameness as they appear like mushrooms. Some other clubs have started to welcome the waiting people, punk-dressed, appearing to be minding their own business when they're actually assessing themselves at variance with the untailored adults. Even here high school life overflows with deceptive faces.
With a sprawl of his wallet, he takes his ID out and showed it to the bald bouncer.
"Go in."
He delights in the ambience. While the flanking club roared with digitized songs, flickering neon beams which hid the darkest sides of them all; the bar spoke rhythmically with jazz as the band's music resounds in his ear, a soundproof place that paid more attention to mood than the bodies' proximity. He walked then towards the barista. "Give me your best,"
"Sure thing," the other says as he sits.
A slight pivot of his body to explore, and he tries to feel the milieu which all of them savored like an asylum. Minutes after and the glass appears in front of him. The animated automatons have started to speak right through him, hurried voices waiting for hassled replies. Here is a place where, undeclared in the social sphere, stories are given life that the crowd can almost feel it themselves; a place to relinquish one's self to the leviathan that is the pub, a haven of alcohol and chauvinism, of alcohol of femininity, of alcohol and everything else in between.
Sendoh Akira basks in whatever liquor provides; especially tonight. An utter honesty is an indication that one has succumbed to inebriation; something he thinks he longed for like infinity. He takes a sip, burning his throat – he's a swimming thought; at the pub, his weakness.
"Lime vodka please," whispers through his eardrums.
Another shift of the body and there was a group voicing lime vodka out. Whoever theorized groupthink as a justifiable excuse surely luxuriates on colleagues' praises.
"Puh-lease. I ordered it first,"
"Hey, did not! I was the one who thought about it when we were outside!"
He seemed familiar to the spike-haired. "Shut up Hanamichi. Like hell you can drink this one. You're a minor!"
"You toothless gangster! I'll have that drink–"
"Uhm... guys, the bar's too cozy for a fight..."
He stares at the russet-haired youngster who assumed the mediating gesture of a voice. A perfect ordinariness outlined his appearance while his locks graze his forehead at the slightest touch of the air-conditioned breeze. Behind him was the fox, narrowing his eyes as his own lay upon the raven-haired. What was it really that make this creature wince at his presence?
"Huh? Spikey!" Hanamichi's hoarse voice reverberated, and there was an interval of sort before the customers resumed their monotonous talks. "Why are you here?"
He smiles, yet again. "For a drink. It's Akira Sendoh by the way."
"You're Spikey to me."
"You know he took Haruko for a date," teases the mischievous ex-gangster, earning him a thump in the head. Obviously their captain was there, too; he looked more of a guard with his black shirt, the spike-haired thought. "What was that for?"
"What!" Hanamichi declares next, his face blighted from fiery eyes.
It hit him no intimidation. "It's not necessarily a date, Sakuragi."
"You're so slow, Hanamichi. And with a Ryonan at that," Miyagi joins the pandemonium.
Gathering all politeness and he excuses himself; from the raucous symptoms of immaturity, away from the starkness that're Rukawa's eyes, from thieves annulling his triumph, away from the disarray of words piercing everything like bullets. He walks for the washroom, the metal knob too cold for him, and with enough force confined himself within its four walls, and it smelt of decontaminators – an odor he found to be absurdly comforting.
He looks at his reflection, flexing his fingers to caress the velvety spikes of his hair, and he becomes uplifted at the handsome man in the mirror. A tinge of happiness can be dredged within the soulful azure eyes gawking at him as the feeling slithers from his feet, moving its clutch to his back and his arms. The thought intoxicates him.
He suddenly remembers Haruko. Beauty is the beginning of terror which he's still able to endure. Inspecting the almost-pale skin of the man before him, he revels in such terror embodied within him, knowing all-too-well how it engulfs every hearts and minds. He relishes the terror brought by the power of silken locks and blue eyes, of smiles and contoured flesh.
"You smile because you want to make a fool of yourself,"
Now where did that come from?
A seemingly genuine beam turns into a grimaced smile. Fools are the lifeless automatons who forgot their mouths at their house and are therefore silences in the social order. Foolishness is an art that lifelessness seeks to master a mindset of sorts, like a haunting baroque sculpture, desiring nothing more but the flouncing passiveness reeking of wounds of the heart and mind. Even with a sigh, the image before him percolated a golden aura which proved otherwise. That blasted fucked-up seer.
"...because you're wandering alone," There're countless stars to own, and he possessed them all. He grimaces; what was the rousing dynamic which has reeled his head just now?
"You're a clown, Akira Sendoh."
The faucet surges with oceanic jewels, slightly coating his shirt wet, drenching his face; and trying to see if the waters would wash away the grimace and paint him a better version of himself. Fingers strain themselves, almost abrading; thereupon closing his eyes as weightlessness metamorphose into a ton of split needles as the water runs ever so deep. At the pub; his weakness.
"Hello? Excuse me? Why is this locked?" He wheels his head at the door. Three knocks come forth and he walks to open it; he was going out anyway. He takes a last glimpse at the man before the mirror, and he sees a handsome one.
He realized how nighttime stretched itself too much when the skies began to show the glimmering sparklers and the moon turned into crescent platinum. The spike-haired lad cared not in the very least, nor did the Shohoku Basketball Team as Hanamichi squeals as he speaks. Sendoh occupied a seat beside the barista while the all-too-familiar faces secured a corner and created their own world amongst other dimensions that the customers have fashioned for themselves. The spike-haired only shared a paradigm on the other hand.
"I'ma soa–ring prince fo–r my waiting lo-lo–ve... lovey prin-cess!"
He observes them all, and he hides a sardonic smile when Miyagi professes a monogamous intimacy; who was he referring to? Hisashi Mitsui seizes his glass, downing the colorless alcohol with a rough swig it became apparent that he's as feeble as Hanamichi, wherefore the ex-gangster and the redheaded rookie clutched each other's shoulders with an arm and began their rubbish songs with their coarse voices.
"Turn it down a bit will you?" A faceless person warns.
Despite Akagi's darkened face, the blue-eyed began to notice a blush, and Sendoh had to give him credit as the leviathan of the team when he thumped the two lads, the force of which was too strong than the usual. His so-called rival can be seen in the distance, behind the laughing face of Miyagi; there is solemnity behind those eyes as his flushed cheeks mark drunkenness. Rukawa gulps his blue alcohol, and after a minute he downs another. He stares straightforwardly; what chasm is he looking into?
Applause has furthered this rather disturbing act, only making those ice blue eyes like a gravity of sorts, a shining light; and Sendoh thought he only saw those eyes in court. Yes, he thought, the lovely games with the venerable companion called the snifter.
And then he found it again, the man of fortuity.
A muffled but jubilant sigh hid between closed eyes; nodding his head, puckering his lip. He thanks the midnight afterglow like a god as it swept the windows of the bar, and the air-conditioned zenith rushed like spring time. His body stayed still as Kiminobu Kogure conforms to the so-called social sphere and joins the madness and commotion that are his teammates. Despite the apocalyptic sight, he is a golden sun rushing in the crayons of a field while the pristine waters flow. What a contrast he is to the brutes at the corner; at the pub, his weakness.
He revels in the frailty of it all, this embodiment of ordinariness. Akira Sendoh is a venerable warrior of a youngster who thought he's better off intruding someone else's face (outlined by the same wavelength of physicality) and resume his little experiment. But there was a psychological offense against him, a ballistic strike as the russet-eyed nourishes the distended egos of his teammates. He acts like a host of multiple idiosyncrasies it almost haunted the spike-haired to see them all, a kind of terror which defeated everyone else through difference, and bestowed lightness to him nevertheless.
The growing curiosity devours him; a requisite to be answered, and immediately at that. But how?
And so over the next days, the venerable spike-haired would have to spend his dough and waste his time within the soundproof walls of this saloon, investing a hope for the thrill of introductions, something he had never felt before. The brown-haired, however, didn't come for two weeks; maybe he isn't the alcoholic type? Maybe he really lived up to ordinariness' name? Maybe he has somebody else? Maybe he's inexperienced? It was an adolescence of a twilight which left him sleepless, but an excited mind confronting such kind of absence would cultivate a sense of disinterest, and he would have to revel in another kind of terror. He doesn't even know him to boot.
But with another schedule of mock game he felt like a schizophrenic; and all would be history.
The sun's glaring orb was already receding into a darkly orange combustion and the clouds have stockpiled to a grayish hue. All the exhaustion of the day has come to pass through their bodies and Kogure takes his stride with an odd meticulousness. With suspicious eyes and a frown plastered on his face, he endeavors to learn the depths of meanings which lay hidden in all the hysterical antics, from the first day up to this moment where a certain raven-haired followed him like a dog. A psychosomatic attempt to digress from this frustration only led him to shift his body.
Rukawa stops, shuddering.
"Is there anything you want Rukawa?"
"I... tutor me."
"I'm sorry Rukawa, that won't work anymore. Where d'ya go home? I thought you're north?"
"Change of route."
Kogure raises an eyebrow. "Really? Won't you get tired?"
"Kogure-san!" And so the spike-haired found him again. The other has swiveled yet again, and the fox raises his own eyebrow.
The Ryonan sophomore sees more colors than a human can possibly see.
"Uhm... Ryonan?"
"Uh, yes, I'm from Ryonan. It's Akira Sendoh,"
"Oh," sighs Kogure as Rukawa sardonically smiles. "Ah... that Sendoh."
"Yes. We're neighbors?"
"No..." he looks at his teammate, "I... I just stopped because Rukawa is here,"
"Uhuh."
"Anyway, nice meeting you Sendoh-san,"
He thought he heard a chattering breath in the distance. "Yeah. Me too," he smiles, scratching his head for special effects. He raises his other hand, holding Kogure's; he thought it felt too smooth for a basketball player.
tbc.