Thanks for the pep talk guys!! You readers are great!!!
Chapter 17
Takumi stared into the double shot of whiskey in front of him. He swirled the amber liquid and remembered that it was drinks and a bar that had started this mess. He really hated revisiting that night but at this moment it felt like it was a relief. It was so much easier for him to think about that evening than to think about the year that followed. He was remembering it because his mind was trying to procrastinate revisiting what he liked to refer to as 'the missing year'. Maybe if he danced around that time, he wouldn't have to acknowledge it.
It was so many years ago. The details were foggy. He couldn't remember how his date had arrived at the pub, or what they were drinking. All he could remember was that he'd felt so hurt, so upset by Misa's letter. He remembered too that he'd managed in very short order to drink far too much. It wasn't an excuse. He had no excuse. He just leaned over and kissed that girl. It wasn't even like he wanted to. He wasn't attracted to her. He did it because he felt like it was something he was supposed to do. Like somehow, she expected it from him. Maybe he thought that something physical would help distract him from his emotions… from the turmoil that was raging in his aching heart. He could no longer remember his motives. All he could remember was his stupidity.
When he'd spun around and saw Misa's face, he thought it was his imagination. That his subconscious was examining his actions and it was trying to tell him that he should despise himself. It really needn't bother. His conscious self hated him the second his lips had touched that girl…the nameless girl. It had felt so wrong, so disgusting, so dirty. But if his subconscious was visiting him in Misa's form, how was it that the look in Mia's eyes was one he could never have imagined even in his worst nightmare. It took his drunk mind a minute to comprehend that it really and truly was her. Misa was actually in England. It took him five more minutes to figure out what he'd done, what she'd seen, and why she'd left running out of the pub. Of course he'd run after her, but her lead was too great and he couldn't see where she'd gone once he was able to get out of the crowded pub. He reached for his cell phone only to discover he didn't have it on him.
It started to rain and he realized he didn't have his coat on him. He'd left everything in the pub. He went back inside and that girl…that clingy annoying girl… the girl he'd stupidly kissed… tried to hold onto him. He remembered mumbling something to get her off of him and hurried back to his dorms. He felt ill. For three days, he hardly ate, couldn't sleep, didn't attend classes.
About four days after that terrible night, Robert, the emo musician that lived down the hall, ran into Takumi on his way back from the hall bathroom. Robert could sense something was wrong. Takumi would never know why, but somehow the desperate, destroyed look on his face had struck a cord with a Robert. Maybe Robert felt like he'd finally found a kindred spirit in the gloomy halls of hell. Whatever the reason, Robert decided that he would befriend Takumi and help him out. A decision Takumi would forever regret. Robert stopped Takumi and said, "Dude. You look like someone just killed your cat."
Takumi sort of wished it had just been Licht's demise. Robert put his arm over Takumi's shoulder and steered him toward his own dorm room. Takumi didn't have the will or strength to resist. He felt like a lemming as he blindly followed wherever Robert wished to take him. If only the journey had ended at Robert's dorm room… no this trip had a much darker destination down a rabbit's hole. Robert handed Takumi a pill. He told him that sometimes people needed a little help coping in life and that the pill it would "give him perspective". Takumi swallowed the pill. Fifteen minutes later, Takumi began to feel a euphoria. He felt like he was one with the world and that the world was his Misa.
Robert smiled when he saw the darkness in Takumi's eyes lift and become replaced with a goofiest smile. "I see you've met my girlfriend Molly."
It was Takumi's first foray into the world of drugs. He had found a way to escape from the misery he was feeling. But that escape was short lived. Four hours later, the effects began to wear off, but a Takumi knew that relief was only one pill away. It was easy for a rich college student to find illicit drugs and Takumi's drug habit took off swiftly. In a matter of months, the habit snowballed into a litany of pills, powders and injections. His life quickly spiraled out of control. He stopped living. He stopped attending school. He stopped seeing his friends. He stopped caring about everyone and everything. In his brief moments of lucidity, he would tell himself that was the point. This was how he could forget her. But those moments of reason and thought grew scarcer and scarcer. He started to spend every waking moment searching for his next high but the highs grew further apart and the trips would sometimes grow dark and scary. Takumi retreated inside himself. He became a shell of his former self. A shell of a human being.
It was six months after his life began to unravel that Gerald went looking for him. He had seen that his brother's spending had gone up significantly, the school had scheduled a hearing to discuss his expulsion, his family had been unable to reach him, something was terribly wrong. Gerald was not prepared for what he discovered. When Gerald arrived at the university, there was no sign of his younger sibling. He had to hire a private investigator to find Takumi and when news of his whereabouts arrived, Gerald was shocked. Gerald insisted on personally going to the address he was given.
When he arrived at the 'house' he had to recheck the paper because he could not believe his eyes. He had never seen anything that looked like the house he was standing in front of except in the movies. He never imagined having to step foot into such a place, much less finding his brother living there. It was a depopulated flop house. It had been condemned and was unlivable. Yet, the drug addicts that lived on the street had pulled some of the boards off of a window and used that ingress to gain access to a dry place to shoot up away from the view of the cops. The floorboards were rotting. The smell of defecation filled the air. It was the filthiest, scariest place that Gerald had ever seen. And Gerald was recognized instantly as an outsider… a threat.
The wealthy know the the curse of money also carries with it the ability to gain access to different worlds and information. Gerald bought safety for himself and his brother that day. He rescued a man that he didn't recognize from a den of lions. The man had the shaggy mop of blond hair of his brother, but that was the only familiar feature. His sunken eyes surrounded by dark shadows seemed the eyes of a corpse. Indeed, had Gerald waited much longer, Takumi would have been gone from this world.
Takumi was immediately sent to one of the world's most successful and discreet drug treatment centers. He stayed at the facility for six months and was allowed no outside contact with the world. He emerged a stronger and wiser man who vowed to put the missing year behind him forever. Gerald and he swore to never speak of it again and Takumi dropped out of graduate school to throw himself into the family business.
Without realizing what he was doing, Takumi had replaced his first obsession, Misa, with another addiction and now he found himself replacing his drug addition with work. From the first day out of rehab, Takumi spent countless hours in the office. He'd found a better way to keep his mind off of Misa. It was his unhealthy obsession with work that propelled him to such tremendous success but just like drugs, work had robbed him of all other aspects of life and in the end it was not a true replacement for what he really needed.
Takumi silently thanked Tora for recognizing that he had yet again lost his way. He thanked Tora for letting him know that Misa's love might be strong enough to forgive his sins. He thanked Tora for giving him the courage to talk to Misa about the one secrete he felt was too overwhelming to share with anyone. Yes. If nothing else, Misa would know it was not his lack of love that had stopped him from fighting for her all those years ago. She would also know that he was now a stronger man and, this time, nothing could tear him away from the fight for her love. Takumi set down his empty whiskey glass and hailed a cab. He had a dinner party to get ready for.
Do you totally hate me for making Misa attempt to take her own life and Takumi a junkie? Sorry. I know it's probably not what you were hoping for.