Diruktober Day 15: Band

   Diruktober is a DIR EN GREY themed inktober challenge by re_be_ka_f. I chose to use them as writing prompts to join in on the fun. 

 Two years had passed. Endo had found that they’d gone by fairly quickly. Though, to be able to see and feel the world again outside of prison was a feeling unmatched. The first thing he did was rip up the leaves of some trees, the rough foliage staining his hands with proof of life like the concrete of his cell walls never would. The second thing he did was go to see his grandmother. Unlike the typically conjured image of a sweet old granny, perhaps baking cookies or carefully tending a garden, Endo’s grandmother was covered in tattoos, once colorful, but now faded images of battling demons and other such folklore. 

She still lived in a traditional house, one so romantically traditional that it was protected by the government as one of the last of its kind. The walkway protruded over his late grandfather’s much-adored koi pond. He’d made it himself, painstakingly so, and raised small fish into golden behemoths.  

His grandmother, upon his arrival, was sitting in robes with a long pipe carefully resting in her hand, hardly moving from her mouth. Her white hair was neatly folded back, fine and short. She took care of those golden fish now, and little more. 

Endo’s body was still scrawny, pale, and lanky. There had been little change save for maybe a few centimeters of his already incredible height. His once wild red locks had all been shaved off and for the first time since puberty, his hair was a brownish-black stubble. It made his large features, particularly his nose and mouth, appear more so. One single thing he could at least be proud of was his smile, with perfectly straight white teeth filling that wide mouth of his. 

That smile was abundant as he returned home to his grandmother, fresh from the countryside train ride. It was August, and the greenery was something anyone else might get lost in, though Endo himself was raised here. It did give him a comfortable sense of calm, a rarity in his life. His grandmother welcomed him as he arrived, her body folded under her robes, crumpled in the floor with her pipe, and he bent his long body down to greet her, a mild reunion after a troublesome two years. She gave a warm laugh, pleased to have a reason to animate herself, though he was the first to speak. “Did you miss me?” he chuckled in jest as he pulled from her to take a seat beside her as if nothing in the world had changed since the last time they’d met. He folded his legs under himself to expose the white knees from the same ripped jeans he’d been arrested in. “Not for a day,” she hummed, and it would have been convincing had he not known her. She gave another low laugh, pulling her tobacco box near to flip open the creaky wooden top and prepare a hand-rolled cigarette for her grandson. She knew he preferred that to a pipe. 

“Have you been to your mother’s?” she croaked out, soon handing him the expertly-rolled cigarette and holding out her lighter in offering. He took it gratefully, speaking with the cigarette between his lips, “I came straight here.” He left the lighter on the floor between them after lighting his cigarette, taking a deep drag and exhaling it with a childishly happy sigh, “I don’t have a reason to see her or Shin.” 

She knew he had felt that way, but pressed it no further, “I was thinking,” he said decidedly, “that I’d move up to Tokyo with Victor.” Victor, his young buddy that had moved to Osaka, was a drummer. They’d been close since middle school, where they were the sole rebellion right up until Endo had left, and surely, he thought, even now nearly a decade on. Endo and he had planned on moving away all along. 

“Well,” his grandmother started once again, though it seemed like a great effort on her part, “I know I’ll never stop a man like you.” She added a warm, encouraging smile. It was gentle but proud. Even now she’d been the only one proud of him. He made sure to burn it into his mind. “If you think it’s the right thing, then go and never look back, Keisuke.” She repeated those words to him when he left the next evening to Tokyo. They were the last ones she’d ever say to him. 

What he had gathered were his clothes, guitar, and the rest of the cash he had left there. No personal items came with him, and in his eagerness to be as far away from the place he had been imprisoned, he didn’t meet with Victor. He instead sent an e-mail explaining that he was already on his way, blazing on the path ahead make it easier on Victor later on. It invited him to find him. He’d had plenty of spare time to come to this decision and and refused to wait any longer. For someone who valued freedom as much as Endo, it made no sense for him not to leave this place behind. 

 

He arrived in Tokyo, only having spoken to his grandmother. It was late afternoon and Endo had begun his search for hotel and hostel one after another in which to shelter himself. Unfortunately, Tokyo had been more packed than he had expected, a man weak in foresight as he was. This discouraged him only after a twelve-hour traipse in his new surroundings. His plan B, and plan A had he been without baggage, was to go drinking. This had come as a defeat, though, finally too weary to search any more for shelter, far past midnight now. He’d slipped into some isolated side street bar, one which advertised five-dollar beers and blared vintage American rock music. It seemed a comfortable enough place to tuck in for the night, and if he were lucky, he wouldn’t care where he was sleeping by morning. 

He entered this small, empty bar, a midnight-to-sunrise bar with a smell of wood and cigarette smoke. He cheerfully called for a large beer as he sat down at the first seat of the bar table, unloading his bags at the foot of the stool. They only consisted of a backpack and a suitcase, but anything would grow heavy with time, making it a great relief to part from momentarily. 

Though Endo felt his appearance now only impressive in his height alone, the bartender seemed eager to impress, quickly pouring his beer with great care, scooping the foam from the top with a silver stirring spoon and offering it to him with a timid smile, refusing to make eye contact. He was only offered a moment to soak in the atmosphere, small a place as it was. Wooden shelves were packed with paraphernalia from classic rock trinkets to old broken fans and VCRs. It was homely, the first moment of comfort Endo had found in the new city. After that brief moment to gather himself, dousing his flame in a beer, a young couple came in, sitting at the other end of the bar to envelop themselves in one another, quickly fading from his conscious in place of a new couple that came in, perhaps not a romantic pair or perhaps comfortable enough with their relationship to present themselves no different than good friends. They didn’t dissolve into one another like the last couple, instead sitting right next to Endo, seemingly infatuated with his skeletal frame. It wasn’t so much that he was unhealthy but thin and just so damned tall. It only took a moment of silence before the bartender meekly commented on it, which opened the couple up to eagerly expressing their agreement. “Ignore them. They’re crazy,” the bartender commented at their enthusiasm with a bashful smile. Endou himself just grinned and nodded at the kind and quiet young man, his bad posture and thick glasses making Endou somewhat sympathetic towards him as well. 

“You don’t know me yet,” Endou chuckled in return, though as a sarcastic remark or not, he found the whole affair quite mild. The four of them had gotten to chatting just that easily, and upon learning that he’d come from Osaka just that day, the cheerful squat woman beside him would constantly reference his Southern dialect. The tall and pale man beside her insisted constantly that Endou would understand her either way, but Endou indulged her imitation, pretending he couldn’t understand the man very well. 

“Whatchya comin' here for?” she would slur out in an accent while her partner would insist with laughter, “You don’t have to talk like that!” 

“Whatchya mean like that?” she pouted, dropping the accent halfway through. Endou would butt in much to the woman’s delighted giggles to encourage her again, “Yeah, Whatchya mean? Like wah?” 

They went on like this for a while with her excitedly asking him questions about his life, listening with nods and wide eyes, though the exaggerated accents wore off rather quickly. 

For the social person that Endou was, it was quite welcome. Soon enough, she invited him to try her own drink, only described as a tea mixed with white liquor, and he sipped it. With alcohol wearing his tastes down as the night went on, he ordered one, a pint glass half full of liquor poured from a jug with a little tea over it, just as his new friend. After three more, there wasn’t much he remembered. 

He awoke in another wooden bar. It was silent and gorgeous, filled with music equipment, huge street art murals on each of the walls, and a few cots hanging from the ceiling, though he had been on the floor. None of that concerned him compared to the overwhelming urge to piss and shower the stench of such strong alcohol from his pores. He pulled himself up from the floor. He felt as if he’d fallen into it, perhaps fused to it throughout the morning. His lanky body felt heavy like thousand-year-old bones carpeted into an untouched forest floor. 

He vaguely remembered the couple walking him here and pissing on a building along the way. They had led him here to await a few musicians who owned the place. 

That’s what he remembered, but he felt like dying, so he explored the place for somewhere to wash up. 

This, he thought, was a great place to start his band. He hoped that Victor would come to meet him and capitalize on his dumb drunk luck sooner rather than later.