Staring at the ghosts in the glass, remembering her laugh…that sound that used to make angels stop and listen. Losing myself as I rummage through my variable realities. Sifting through the what IS from the what WAS. Weeding out the what COULD HAVE BEEN from the what WILL NEVER BE. Trying to discern what MIGHT have been from the what’s been MADE UP.

And finally surrender feeling more jaded than before, because…sometimes what IS never WAS, or wasn’t entirely altogether. And maybe…maybe now as I prate and unprofoundly complain, maybe now still ISN’T, and I’m only taking for granted that it is.

I am somewhere else, alone in a nowhere place I swear I’ve been before.

Am I remembering? Or simply here again?

I am somewhere else, but I am not myself…

Kiyo digs his hands deeper into his pockets to protect them from the drizzle and cold. He isn’t hungover, but he might as well be; the problems with his company’s mail servers would drive anyone to drink themselves sick. Had to pull another all-nighter because they went off line again, doesn’t know how much more of this he can take.

Shuffling down towards Shibuya station, Kiyo’s never seen the area so quiet -so dead- before. Hard to imagine just hours ago these same streets were impossibly packed and noisier than a Gojira panic.

Where does everybody go?

The drizzle becomes a light downpour, Kiyo grumbles. As he passes a Lawson, he takes an umbrella hanging from an abandoned bicycle. Then he starts his shortcut through Dogenzaka, aware that he’s still stressed out about work. And cold. Really fucking cold.

Why should I be the one punished because our servers always crash? They haven’t been upgraded in years!

The rain’s really starting to come down now, so Kiyo picks up his pace. But he slows to a stop, finds shelter under an awning, when he sees the queue outside a grey, dilapidated building covered in webs of utility wires. At least fifteen people are waiting there, some apparently salarymen; those not leaning upright against the wall are shagande iru, sitting squat bent at the knees.

Kiyo shakes his head in distaste, never understood the allure of pachinko. What a bunch of losers, he thinks.

But then the building’s marquee catches his eye and he looks again, realizes it’s not a pachinko parlour at all.

He stares through the rain until the scene registers.

A porn cinema?

Kiyo blinks his eyes, regards the men in their dark trench coats, all holding cheap white-handled see-through umbrellas.

At six in the morning?

He does a double take. Reminds himself he was only going back to his apartment, no one or plans waiting for him there.

What the hell…

Then reluctantly, Kiyo gets in queue.

[Continued at: Talking Too Lewd at the Often Seen Obscene]