Chapter three: The city at night
I looked out the window at my apartment, staring out on the city lights below. I had to admit, I liked my apartment. It was high up enough for me to look out over the city, and high enough up to prevent anyone from looking in through the large windows. After all, I liked my privacy.
Almost reluctantly, I pushed away from my desk and actually walked over to the window, leaning my hands against the cold, hard surface. From here I could see the neon lights of the entertainment quarter as well of the ambient glows of the restaurants streets, and of course, normal apartment and house lights. I liked the night better than the day. Somehow I trusted more in the darkness and the artificial lights than I did in the daylight and the sun. I couldn’t explain it, but I had been like that most of the day.
My fridge was getting almost painfully empty, and I knew that I had to go outside to get groceries – something which was a far harder task than it in all honesty should be. The closest grocery store was on the same street as my apartment building, after all, and it wouldn’t take me more than ten minutes to run my errand.
I sighed and put my coat on, making sure that I actually had enough money to buy enough food to last me at least a week. It was the way I always did it – sometimes I even bought enough food to last me several weeks. It was just easier that way. Plus, it was the way I had always done it.
As always, I hesitated slightly before I opened the front door, stepping out into the street – at this time of day it was nearly deserted, which was exactly how I liked it. It was definitely a good thing that the grocery store was open 24/7; otherwise I would probably never be able to buy anything at all. Once I was outside, I took a moment to appreciate the clear, crisp air. The night was cold, making my fingers cold, but I didn’t mind it. Felt like a nice wake-up call.
The grocery store was empty, as I had anticipated, apart from the cute girl behind the counter. Her name was Maria, and I had a massive crush on her by now. Well, maybe not as much a crush as it was simply admiration for someone I already knew I couldn’t have. She probably wasn’t even all that cute, but from my point of view she definitely was. She had kind eyes, and she always smiled to me. That was more than enough for me.
It didn’t take me long to find the things I wanted; instant ramen, a lot of water bottles, a lot of soda, a lot of coffee. Chocolate, strawberry lollipops, and bananas. My usual diet. I knew it wasn’t particularly healthy, but it had worked fine for me for several years, so I didn’t really care about just what anyone else would say.
“It’s been a while, Kai-chan,” Maria said to me with one of her usual warm smiles, as she packed up my groceries. I watched her hands with the rainbow-colored nails, because I couldn’t bring myself to look into her eyes. They were too big and too brown, and looking into them always made me even more uncertain than I already was.
“Y-yes,” I said, and avoided saying anything else. I never said much, and she was used to it by now.
Or if she wasn’t used to it, then at least she pretend to not be bothered by it. “Your usual, huh? We’ve gotten in some new lollipop flavors, you know. Watermelon and peach. Do you want to try them? I’ll give you half price, seeing as it’s you.”
I smiled, albeit faintly, and nodded. “I’d l-like that,” I replied – not so much because I honestly wanted to try out the new flavors (I always went back to strawberry anyway), but more because I didn’t want to disappoint Maria. Besides, the fact that she had actually given me some thought when the new lollipops came in made my cheeks feel hot, and I hoped that I wasn’t blushing. I probably was, though.
“Here, that should be it,” she said, and handed me the bag. Her fingers brushed my hand, and I nearly shook; even if the impact was small, it was still the feeling of skin against skin. Not a sensation I felt very often, I had to admit. Usually, that was the way I liked it, and the way I felt comfortable. It was just that it was difficult to resist the irrational temptation of asking Maria out in moments like these.
I never did, however. And I didn’t this time either. Instead I smiled faintly, paid her, bowed slightly and left the grocery store, stopping just long enough outside the door to hear it close behind me, the small bell fastened above the door tinkling.
As I wandered back up the street, I took deep breaths of the city air; it wasn’t as polluted as it possibly should have been, and seeing as I rarely ever had the windows in my apartment open, it was a nice change. I liked the fresh air, the darkness of these nightly walks, the lack of people I met, the chance to be out in civilization without actually having to do or say much at all.
However, that didn’t mean that I necessarily wanted to stay outside for longer than I really had to. Without even noticing it, I had been tense all throughout the short trip, and it was only when I was back in my apartment that I managed to relax properly. I took deep breaths as I stowed away the groceries and cooked up a cup of instant ramen, perching on the windowsill in the kitchen to eat it while I listened to the loud music from the apartment below mine, along with the usual banter and yelling from the apartment above mine.
I had discovered a long time ago that I was living in a rather crappy part of town, in a particularly crappy apartment building. I knew for a fact that there was a drug dealer or two living on the first floor (I knew this because I had seen them in action and because one of them tried to sell me drugs once), that the man in the apartment across the hall from me had been in prison (because he told me about it one day when he cornered me in the hall), that there had been whores living on the top floor (something which the manager of the building told me on the day I moved in), and that there had been several murders occurring in various apartment in the building (which several people had informed me of, whether or not I actually wanted to know).
I had thought about moving, many times. But every time I realized that despite the general crappiness of the building, it still felt like home to me. And well, moving again would simply be far too much work. I hated looking for apartments in the first place, and this one... It had been the first one I looked at, and considering that it had enough space for my needs and that it was relatively cheap, I took it without thinking about it any further.
Quite frankly, I didn’t like these kinds of downtimes, where I had nothing in particular to do except for sit and eat, by myself. Pausing everything and spending time by myself gave me time to think, and I wasn’t a big fan of thinking, at least not when said thinking involved myself.
I didn’t want to stop and figure out what I had done with my life so far, what I was doing with my life right now, what I was going to do with my life in the future. I had gotten enough of those kinds of lectures from my parents over the past ten years or so, I didn’t need to start the same thing by myself. I already knew all the answers anyway, they hadn’t changed since the last time I had contemplated the choices I had made throughout my life, so what would be the point in going over the same shit yet again?
Sighing, I finished off the cup of ramen and tossed it in the garbage bin before walking back into the dark living room. The only light came from a series of small, blue lights pinned to the far wall, and from the computer screen below the lights. It was more than enough light for me.
Not rushing back to my desk, I walked a small round around my living room – I knew I needed the exercise. Normally I didn’t get all that much of it, after all. Maria had told me once, a month or so ago, that I needed to take better care of myself, and so I tried to do just that, even if I wasn’t all that good at it.
All in all, I liked my cheap, run-down apartment, and in particular the living room. If it was one room in the entire that lived up to it’s name, it was my living room, because it was truly lived in. I didn’t have a bedroom, so the large, comfortable couch shoved into one corner doubled as a bed for the nights that I was too lazy to roll out the futon. Something which happened on most nights, in all honesty.
Seeing as I never used the couch for merely sitting on, it was permanently covered in a heap of multi-colored blankets, with a couple of pillows on one end. The heat in the apartment – and the rest of the building – was unreliable at best, so I had learned to keep a decent stack of blankets and warm clothes handy, otherwise I’d end up freezing to death. Not an appealing prospect.
The rest of the living room was taken up by my desk, and my bookshelves. My desk was more or less my entire life, so I had chosen a big one, pushed into the corner of the room, and it was mostly occupied by my computer, my scanner, my printer, and all my other computer-related things. I had to change my desk once already, seeing as the old one collapsed under the weight of everything I loaded onto it. The new one was holding up nicely, though.
My bookshelves were filled with all kinds of books, comic books and magazines. Nothing else. I hardly had any CDs – I wasn’t really one for music anyway, and I hardly had any movies either. I mostly spent my time either at my computer or reading, which was the way my life had always been, and it was the way that I enjoyed it. I didn’t really see a need to change it, especially seeing as there was nobody except my parents that objected to the way I lived my life.
The walls of my apartment were almost bare, apart from a couple of artsy (and cheap) posters. Considering that the lights were rarely on, I hardly even saw my walls. Which also meant that I didn’t see the floor all that much – sometimes I was shocked by the way my apartment looked in the sunlight. There were piles of books and magazines stacked along the walls (I could never buy enough bookshelves), there were heaps of clothes piled onto the chair next to the couch (I never sat on the chair anyway, and besides I had no closet for clothes, so I had nowhere else to put them). In addition, there were always a varying amount of empty ramen cups and soda bottles strewn all around, leaving only the pathways between the desk, the couch and the door to the kitchen clear.
Not exactly the nicest apartment in the world, but I figured that it was fitting for the building I was living in. And what was more important, it was very fitting for me.
I stretched and put on a thicker sweater, seeing as the heater was broken and had been broken for at least a year by now, and sat back down at the computer. I knew I should really do my job (otherwise the client would kill me for not finishing the project on time), but I had no inspiration, and besides, there were other things that were far more interesting to me at the moment.
Like what had happened to Dakota, and what the hell I should do about Rei. The cold night air had done absolutely nothing to give me new ideas for what to do, but seeing Maria had at least made me feel better. Hopeful, even. So I sighed, took a sip of the cold coffee next to me, and went back.
~tbc~
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