Author's Notes:

Warnings for this chapter: Adult situations and underage drinking. And cussing. (I totally pulled it off.) Scary, I know. Don't let it bug you—it's everywhere in Japan, as you can buy beer out of vending machines right on the street.

As you can probably tell, I'm focusing pretty heavily on Fake right now. My apologies go out to fans of Resolution, which I have sorely neglected, but which I promise I will get back on soon. Right now, I'm kind of pushing to see where this hotel thing goes.

For those of you who don't know, Hokkaido Prefecture is home to Sapporo-shi, the city where the famous beer is brewed.

If you're curious about the Buddhist thing (how they're generally encouraged not to drink), you could start by looking up the principles of Sila. If you are a Buddhist and you feel that I've done a poor job of representing you (I did my research, but I'm not a Buddhist myself, so naturally, errors are likely), please PM me and I'll do my best to fix the error.

The handkerchief thing is normal. Trust me.

I'm splitting this chapter into two parts. It's frigging huge.

When Shimako says "Forty five," She is, of course, measuring in kilograms, which is about a hundred pounds. She's a small girl; you knew it.

Many thanks go out to my awesome editor, Sumiregawanenene, for staying up late to help me finish this chapter.

As always, thanks for reading! And hey, if you liked it, or if you didn't, drop me a review and tell me about it! (If you have a question, feel free to drop me a PM, too.)

Come on, go barefoot / you'll be free / I'd like you to just talk / now, I'll show you your truth.

No matter what, you got to believe.

Chapter Thirteen

Be Free (First part)

One
Sachiko had heard a lot of rumors about the taste of beer and its close, long-standing relationship with equine urine, but had only tasted it once, so long ago that she could hardly remember the taste at all, only that the custodian who had given it to her had had a rough, hard face that she had secretly been in love with. The custodian was long dead now, and she had a feeling that she was the only one who still remembered that gentle gleam in his eyes underneath his bitter expression, passing a twelve year old Sachiko his bottle of Sapporo and telling her to have a seat if that was what she wanted.

She remembered coughing heavily after her first sip. Her second was more controlled, but she had remembered thinking it tasted like…what? It was strange, really, how little what she was drinking mattered to her. They hadn't really talked at all, since her mother had forbidden her to do such a thing not a week before. (Her mother was, after all, a perceptive woman who really did want what was best for her, or so she claimed to her friends.)

He only said one thing to her, really, and that was what she really remembered about the whole thing. He gave a gentle little smile after taking the bottle back from her. "Not your cup of tea, huh," he had said. "That's all right. Beer's not for everybody, much as everybody would like you to think it is, you know?" Sachiko had not spoken back to him, and he didn't seem offended by that.

In spite of the fact that he didn't even really look at her, let alone touch her, (and she didn't actually know what she would have done if he had) it seemed to her very nearly romantic all the same.

He had quit soon after that. She never heard from him again, and the next time she saw his face, it was in the newspaper as a neutral writing voice told her about how he had drunkenly driven his car off of a highway overpass into the face of oncoming traffic and killed four people. That had been three years later, and she had nearly forgotten him by that point, but for the rest of the day, she had felt the claws of a strange, icy depression dig into her ribs and her chest. That was really the taste she associated with beer—not a taste at all, but those cold, icy fingers, stabbing at her heart and at her sides.

She knew that if she told any of the girls in the hotel room about it, they would probably ask her to see a doctor, but for some reason, when Yumi passed her her first mug of beer and she put it to her lips (after some hesitation), the first sensation she felt was not the taste, but those fingers again, creeping up her pants, moving over her panties without so much as a hesitant stroke, up past her sides and onto her shoulders, where they rested and shoved her down, bending her back as best they could.

"Is it all right, Onee-sama?" she asked. She put a hand on Sachiko's shoulder, whether by coincidence or some bizarre cosmic design exactly on top of the invisible hands. "If you want, you don't have to—"

Sachiko straightened her back, and as she put her hand on top of Yumi's, the icy, chilly hands vanished back into her past. "I'm fine, Yumi," she said with a smile.

Yumi smiled back and then was passed her own mug—it had turned out that, buried underneath that enormous stack of self-toasting alcohol, there had been a small stack of six mugs to drink out of.

"Hey Sachiko," Sei said. "What are you doing? You've got to toast with us before you're allowed to kill your liver."

It was such an unbelievably stupid gaffe that Sachiko had to stop from pinching herself on the spot; normally such a social error would be cause for scolding by either a parent, or, more likely, her manners coach, so that she almost expected it to happen here, now, in the middle of a cool, locked hotel room filled with her closest friends.

Instead, everybody laughed.

"I'm very sorry," Sachiko said as sincerely as she could, and Sei winked.

"Don't worry about it. If I had Yumi sitting right next to me like that, I'd be in a rush to do something out my inhibitions, too."

Shimako said nothing to this, though a fifth grader could have thought of you have inhibitions? as a decent response. She did not stare at the ground, but she did not look at anybody, either.

Sei began filling mugs and passing them around, but when she filled one to pass to Shimako, she stopped, blinked, and then sighed. Yoshino looked at her, and then looked back at Shimako, and a second later, her face lit up in understanding, and she said, "I'll take that one, Sei."

"No."

Shimako's voice was very small, very delicate. Sei openly gaped, and it seemed to Sachiko a little funny that the first thing that Sei said to Shimako after several hours of painfully awkward silence was, "Are you sure?"

Shimako nodded a little timidly, and Yoshino passed her a glass.

"All right, then?" Sei said. "Everybody got one? Great." She raised her mug, and everybody followed suit, even Shimako, who looked up. At first, Sachiko thought that she would just clink somebody's glass, being in a rush to drink, but instead, Sei took a moment, and then smiled. It wasn't a grin, as Sachiko was used to from her, but a genuine smile. She looked at Shimako, who didn't look away, though she appeared as though she wanted to.

"To friends and whatever else we are," Sei said, "for all of our highs and deep, deep lows, I wouldn't drink with anybody else in a locked hotel room just off of a largely empty highway."

She looked as Shimako as she said it. When she was finished, she did not drink.

Shimako took a second, and then said, with some difficulty, smiled back. Her eyes shone with…something. "Cheers," she whispered, unable or perhaps unwilling to raise her voice any higher.

Sei reached across Yoshino—which involved essentially setting her chest on the girl's lap—and clinked her glass with Shimako's. She straightened up and clinked with Yoshino, and said, "Well, you heard the lady. Cheers."

And as that sentiment echoed across the room, Sachiko echoed it right along with the rest.

Sachiko felt funny at first, and that had nothing to do with the still mildly nostalgic taste of the beer; she knew this because the funny feeling started before she drank (the second time): It started when she clinked her glass, first with Yumi, and then Rei, and echoed along with the rest of them, "Cheers." And as she did, her voice neither stood out nor faded away; rather, it blended in, a unique ingredient in a common dish.

A man might have called this being one of the gang, but Sachiko knew very few men. An average girl might have called it being one of the girls, but Sachiko knew very few average girls; one of them was sitting next to her working determinedly on her glass of beer, trying to compensate for the fact that her glass was almost too large for her mouth with the fact that her tolerance for alcohol was abysmal.

It is always very difficult for somebody who has a very strong sense of self to let herself be pleasantly lost in a crowd of friends. Because Sachiko's thoughts were very often turned inwards, because she always, always watched herself, in the least vain sense, and because blending in and being absorbed into a group of friends required one to look at others first; or rather, to simply not look inwards, being too absorbed with what was happening around, it was something which was difficult for Sachiko. It required a great deal of effort, and at first she was not able to keep it up for very long. Rei started telling a story about when Yoshino was very young, and Sachiko was not sure when to laugh. (Sei might have advised, laugh when the story is funny. Yoshino might have advised, never, if you want to wake up in one piece.) She didn't want to be rude, however, so when Rei told them about Yoshino tearing down the block wearing nothing but a pair of training underpants and a smile the size of Honshu, and Yoshino responded by turning a deep shade of red, Sachiko didn't laugh even though everybody else did, not wanting to offend Yoshino, who was clearly becoming angry.

But then something else funny happened: Instead of being angry, Yoshino fumed for a second or two and then shouted at Rei, smiling. Rei took it politely and then said something about Yoshino saying the same thing when screamed at by her mother that time to come in and put some pants on. Laughter again, and Yoshino drank another mouthful and turned her nose up at Rei, and Sei remarked, "I know who's sleeping on the floor tonight."

And nobody was angry. Nobody had a fit or smashed a bottle of wine or threatened to bankrupt a company or smacked anybody else. And Sachiko thought, what if I laugh at the next joke? Will it make a fool of me? How will I know when the next joke comes? There's no hushed pause at the end of a sentence and then awkward laughter from the teller to inform me that the punch line has just been told.

What if it's Yumi telling us? I know when she's telling a joke.

But Yumi didn't tell a story. Rei told another story, and when she told them about the bunny rabbits and where precisely they went, Sachiko thought it funny, and so she laughed, and so did everybody else.

Sachiko had laughed in public before. Often when this happened, people noticed; the most notable instance of this being Yumi's performance early on in their

(relationship? Is that what we call this?)
(friendship?)
(what do you call this?)

This time, nobody noticed. It was expected. If it was funny, and it was, you laughed.

Well, almost nobody. Yumi noticed, and so she slid back so that she was sitting just next to Sachiko, and took another small mouthful of beer, and then she put her hand on Sachiko's.

It got easier after that. Part of that was the alcohol; with each mouthful, Sachiko doubted herself less; trusted herself more than her training. Sometimes, she followed Yumi's lead, and sometimes she was able to do it by herself; mostly, she did it by looking first at Yumi, and then at those around her, and then maybe forgetting to look inwards.

Because that was really what blocked somebody from having a good time with friends, who usually accepted other friends for whoever they were, rude or not, funny or not: Self-consciousness. Sachiko was not so multitalented that she was able to both watch her own behavior and relax at once, and really, Sei might have told her, that wasn't the point anyway. They were getting sloshed (and rather quickly, Rei thought; lightweights, the lot of them—she didn't bother to look at Shimako, who was still politely nursing about half of her first mug); the goal was to not worry about watching their behavior. That was what they did professionally, Sachiko moreso than all of them. It was impossible to do that twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year.

So what does that mean? Sachiko thought as they paused and Sei passed refills along—Shimako took a refill but did not make to drink it; Sachiko and Yumi as well, though Rei politely declined.

I would have thought that was obvious to somebody as bright as you, a voice in her head that sounded remarkably like herself said. It means you're more than a Lady. You should have known that all along.

That sounds like a bucket of worms to me. A psychiatrist's nightmare, or maybe his windfall.

Hell if it isn't.

Hell if it wasn't.

Two
Sei Satou had always had a fairly good tolerance for alcohol. It wasn't legendary like Rei's was, (legendary was a relative term, since it was, in fact, a closely guarded secret of hers, and she so rarely drank) but she wasn't such a lightweight as Yumi, who was working hard on her second mug.

Maybe that was why it surprised her when, halfway into her own second, she very nearly did not stop herself from moving off of her perch onto the bed and next to Shimako. It began with the first of many trips to the bathroom, which was composed entirely of porcelain so white it made her head hurt.

As she dried her hands on a handkerchief, she exited the bathroom and started to make her way across the haphazard circle of upright girls who were all (with two exceptions) trying very hard to forget for a night how upright they really were. (She promised herself she would come up with a decent line to tease them with tomorrow as she stepped over Yumi, taking care not to knock her nose into her mug.)

(Where are you going? She's that way.)

Sei stopped.

What?

(She's that way. She's not on the bed, so where are you going?)
But why would I need to do that?
(If you sit next to her she'll let you.)
But why would I need to do that? She'll forgive me if she wants to.
(She'll hug you if you sit next to her.)
That's absurd.
(She'll kiss you if you sit next to her.)
You're an idiot. I'm an idiot. You're a product of my booze-addled brain, and I swear to God, I'm never drinking this much again.
(She'll touch you if you sit next to her.)
Booze addled my libido too, that's great. You're hitting close to home, buster, and that's going to just get you hit.
(She'll fuck you if)

Sei caught Shimako's eye and held it for a full three-quarters of a second—much as they had during the toast—before Shimako dropped her gaze, simultaneously dropping something heavy into Sei's chest.

She's not speaking to you, remember? Sei thought. A little grin at a toast is nothing to throw up banners over, not after…what was it she said? Something like, until you're willing to speak to me, I can't speak to you. What did she expect? She can't poss
(go to)
piss off

Yoshino's voice, shaky but not slurred, stopped Sei mid-thought, which was probably for the best. "You know where you're going, Sei? I hope you haven't forgotten your way around the room already." Laughter, and Sei smiled easily, a practiced reflex. She wondered what she was doing—aside from slowing down, nearly to a stop, in the middle of a crowd of people. It was unlike her to lose herself that quickly; Sei did her Catholic best not to be an inward person, since inward people tended to wind up doing stupid things like freezing in the middle of a crowd of drunken girls to wax angst about a sisters' tiff that would resolve itself like basically every other one in the history of the damn school. She preferred to think of herself as well-grounded and more or less certain of who she was; though, of course, that was just what she thought.

"Sei, would you please pass a bottle over to this end?" Yumi asked politely, stumbling a little at the word please. "I think Onee-sama would like some more."

As she sat down, though—next to Yoshino again, much as her body compelled her to do otherwise—she couldn't help but think, but if you've never thought about it, how the hell do you know who you are, you—

"Sachiko isn't even halfway finished with her glass, you lush," Sei replied with that wry grin that had taken her so damn long to get back that now she couldn't believe she had to force it. "Now, if you'd like some more beer, I think you ought to ask me politely, Miss Fukuzawa," she teased. "Have you found that you're not quite brave enough to slip out of those teddy bears?"

Laughter. It made something inside of Sei move…not quite with pride, but with something very near it. She loved making people grin like she did, even if it did make Yumi go red and say, in a voice that was slightly too loud, "There are no teddy bears!"

"We all saw them, Yumi," Yoshino said. "There's no use hiding it now."

"It's all right, Yumi," Sachiko said as gently as she could, putting her hand on Yumi's. "Teddy bears are nothing to be ashamed of." She said it so innocently that Sei could not resist giving a shit-eating grin, not even for an instant.

"On her panties?" Sei asked, and at hearing this, Sachiko did something that nobody had ever seen her do before, and gasped, jumped slightly, and went a very, very deep shade of red, and Sei knew she was spot-on.

Sachiko, you try far too hard to be innocent, she thought, and then, for some reason, found it very nostalgic.
But can you really criticize, when—

"Okay, but this is your last bottle, and then I'm going to change your diaper and put you to bed, Yumi," Sei said.

"You're mean," Yumi grumbled.

"And you are oh-so-cute," Sei replied even as she handed Yumi the bottle. "Or are you too grown-up to sleep in my bed tonight?" You're going too far. Knock it off; that one was right out there, and you'll—

"You're being inappropriate, Onee-sama," Shimako said. Her voice was probably louder than anybody had ever heard it, and it was thus rather ironic that most everybody in the room was intoxicated to the point where it didn't have an impact on them, since their voices were all louder too.

It had an impact on Sei, though. Sei most definitely caught it.

This probably didn't have the impact that it should have had—nobody froze like Sei did, nor did they all look at Shimako like Sei did. Yoshino was putting back her third mug by this point, and Yumi and Sachiko both looked fairly well shot (Sachiko's low tolerance still surprised Sei, who wasn't yet over the idea that the absurdly rich did anything other than drink and have sex with each others' wives).

Sachiko glanced up, though. Sei saw it, and then remembered that Sachiko Ogasawara was a better fake than she herself would ever be. She never, ever, ever completely lost herself.

I'm sorry, Shimako, did you want first dibs on Yumi? No, that sounds bitter.
I had thought that was the idea? Too smart-assed.
My bad, Sister Toudou? Hell, I might as well just pop her one in the nose, and then fling myself out a window while I'm at it.
Hey, don't let—
"I'm sorry."

Dead silence.

Damn it to hell, why do I get all the attention? Shimako broke rank first.

For a second, Sei locked eyes again with Shimako.

What is this?

"Holy crap," Yoshino said. "Who had a tape recorder? Anybody? Historic freaking event right in this little hotel room."

Laughter unwound the tension, and Sei thought, Thank you, Hokkaido Prefecture.

"Yoshino," Rei said. "Your language is as coarse as Sei's."

"Hey, why Sei's and not something like sandpaper?"

"The metaphor only works if you use something infamously coarse."

Laughter again.

I don't think it's the booze, though.

I think I just have good friends. God Himself couldn't get them to keep their noses out of other peoples' business, but it's because they're concerned, and they know when to back off and when to just…help.

Thanks.