Chapter Text
It took her a little while to regain consciousness on the bathroom floor, and it took her a little while more to register the fact someone was helping her bend over the toilet, and that she was still retching. Soon, her head stopped spinning and her world stopped tipping into perpetual vertigo, and dread had wound its fingers around her ribcage. Did she really let herself go that much?
She could have suffocated and died.
In between heaves, Kikuri rasped, “Have we met before?” Before all this.
“No.” The pink-haired girl didn’t miss a beat and tucked one of Kikuri’s stray hairs behind her ear. “B-but every day I’ve known you, I’ve grieved for you. And so do Shima and Eliza, who’ve known you much longer.”
“Grieve?” Kikuri tried to chuckle, but found that her throat was raw and blistered. “That’s a little dramatic. I’m not dead yet.”
“Yet.”
—
She wasn’t addicted. She could stop any time she wanted. She just hadn’t found a reason to.
Kikuri was twenty-eight and drank every day, but she didn’t think that was a big deal. A lot of people drank a glass of wine a day, so she didn’t get why Shima was starting to look at her like that. It wasn’t like she was drinking in the afternoons, or woke up and immediately popped a bottle. Sake doesn’t even cross her brain until seven or so, at which she only knocked back a box or two at most.
It was just a convenient habit to pass time. What else was she gonna do? She didn't have many friends, or that many hobbies, but she's making it work somehow. Shima shouldn’t look at her like that. Their band was changing in bigger ways, and that was more important.
The new guitarist they picked off the side of the street was real good. ‘Picked off’ wasn’t an exaggeration, either. A few weeks ago, Eliza found a scruffy high school girl sitting conveniently outside FOLT on a nearby bench, cuddling a guitar, and decided to give her a spin for the heck of it and because they were desperate to give the boot to Matsuo after he missed five of the last eight practice sessions in two weeks. It wasn’t anything serious cause the girl was, well, sixteen and a minor, but they paid her to be rhythm guitar, and so for the time being, it was Bocchi until they found someone more suitable.
Bocchi wasn’t her real name (thankfully). Kikuri and Shima hadn’t been able to get the girl to tell them her actual one. It was kind of frustrating. She kept quiet about where she lived, her parent’s number, which school she went to, or any friends she knew outside of SICK HACK. She was an enigma through and through, as if wholly untethered to anything, anywhere. It was like she didn’t exist at all outside the walls of the venue.
Kikuri didn’t care. The girl was funny and stuttered a lot. Real cute. Bored eyes into her when she picked up two or three cans of sake and chugged it down before each concert, but Kikuri didn’t care about that either, nor the sigh Shima sent her way each time about being crass in front of a sixteen year old. Or like, even if she did care, the haze and giddiness soon washed it away. As long as Bocchi had no ill intentions and kept up that insane guitar display, she was happy to be in her happy spiral.
The anxiety was starting to get to her.
“When’s the afterparty gonna be tonight, Shima?” Shima tossed her drumsticks into her bag and swung it around her shoulders. She turned to Kikuri with a frown, twirling a strand of brown hair, and Kikuri hoped she didn’t sound as desperate as she felt.
“I don’t know, Kikuri. Bocchi can’t go to bars, and I don’t wanna leave her out like last time.”
“Yeah, I get it! I just was thinking, I kind of missed going out with you guys…”
Shima paused, narrowing her eyes at her. Kikuri grinned exuberantly. Laughing it off helped Shima and Eliza relax a little, so she laughed a lot, nowadays. After a moment, Shima sighed and said, “Just hang on for a bit, ‘kay? It’s just for a little while.”
Except she can’t do it for that long. Until they found someone to replace Bocchi, they weren’t gonna go bar hopping like usual. Kikuri shouldn’t even be asking, and honestly, she already knew , but her throat was beginning to itch and the haze from the concert alcohol was starting to go, and it’s been a week since their last bar.
Let’s just ditch her again . Kikuri couldn't say that. She made sure her smile was fixed on her face.
Bocchi had already packed up her gear and stood watching them. Kikuri didn’t like the way Bocchi’s eyes kept nervously darting to her, like she knew Kikuri was a few seconds from breaking into a cold sweat.
She laughed and rubbed behind her head. “You know what, you’re right. I’ll see you guys tomorrow…” Kikuri wouldn’t say she fled, but she did grab her bass case and dart out the doors of the venue as fast as possible. She didn’t know why that freaked her out. Bocchi usually kept quiet and just did whatever Kikuri, Shima, and Eliza told her to do. Maybe it was because she practically felt the worry that girl radiated for her, sometimes. Sometimes Bocchi looked at her like they weren’t very much strangers. It was frightening.
Kikuri’s breath colored the air in white buffs as she came to a stop next to a nearby lightpost. She opened up google maps and tapped the first option on the list. Her hands were shaking. Whichever was closest, it didn’t matter.
Before she could initiate the route though, footsteps had came to a stop besides her.
“Kikuri…”
“Ah!” Kikuri dropped her phone into her pocket. She made sure to grin wide and adult and reassuring and turned around to where Bocchi was huffing, having jogged after her. “What the heck girlie! You scared me. Do you need help with something?”
Bocchi didn’t look reassured at all. Kikuri found that none of her jokes, laughs, or smiles could break the girl’s solemn and anxious demeanor. It was like she saw past that.
“I-I-I was wondering if you’d like to get dinner t-together."