City Lights and Invincible Summers

[Zetsu]

Asuka sat down, slouched, crossed her arms on the table, and put her head down. You know the routine. Golden streetlights, cricket songs, cheap concrete and metal, black choking air. God, she needed a cigarette. She didn't smoke, of course, but a cigarette would make everything complete and perfect. It was all peaceful and quiet and yeah maybe it was kinda melancholic, but fuck it, it made Asuka happy. Yeah. Asuka liked that shit. Just sit back and watch the cars pass by. Gaze at the sky a little. Listen as the laughter drifts over and wonder what the hell they're laughing about. Summer days.

Okay, so it wasn't actually summer yet, but between the Arizona sun and the fact that she was sitting outside, alone, at a cafe in downtown doing nothing in particular gave it that vibe. Sit back and watch life fly by. C'est la vie or something.

And god, wouldn't it be nice if she actually felt that way? But this wasn't the right kind of emptiness. This wasn't sad half-smiles and clouds floating over and past her and telling Sam, play it, play As Time Goes By. This was, this was staring at a blank wall, this was a mediocre joke that wasn't good enough to be funny and wasn't unfunny enough to be, well, funny.

Focus on little details. Bugs buzzing. The fwoosh of cars going by. Random white noise. Her own skinny, rickety legs.

So she actually had been staring at a wall the whole time. Well. Let's move the chair and face the street and

Nope. Still exactly the same feeling. Well, it's not like Asuka was expecting anything different.

Asuka closed her eyes. Breathed in, breathed out. Steady. Tried to make herself feel sleepy. This kinda thing always seemed to work better when she was sleepy.

Let's do a mental inventory check. Reasons to feel melancholic: the Sadie Hawkins Dance was going on right now. She wasn't against it on principle. She just really really didn't feel like asking someone out. So yeah. Yeah, that was fucking it. She was sad and lonely, or supposed to be. Forever alone and all that. She could've gone and been a wallflower, if being a wallflower was all that it was cracked up to be. Asuka doubted it. So she hadn't gone, and she'd come here with the idea that she'd live out her sad little romantic vision, and here she was.

Another reason: she'd drank a little of her dad's shitty liquor, drowning her sorrows and all, and her thoughts really should be getting foggier now. They weren't. Fuck, she should've drunken more, but she hadn't wanted to overestimate herself and gotten passed out on the street. It probably would've been worth it though.

Somewhere in there she actually did get sleepy and didn't want to pick her head up off the table. She could've been there for minutes or hours. She really didn't know.

But fuck, she needed to talk to someone if this was gonna go anywhere, right? And she was feeling a little more in the moment now, so that was fucking great, right? So get up and start walking. Start wandering downtown and looking for Cochise students to talk to, students who'd had the same idea as her and they'd sit down together and get to really know each other over a few hours and they'd keep on going long into the night and then they'd go home at dawn all sleepy and dysfunctional but feeling really good.

Or fuck, it didn't have to be a Cochise student, any stranger would do. Just tell them why you're here, it's a very romantic reason why you're here, it's a natural conversation-starter, right? Just...go. Go and give them a reason to care about you, until they like you enough to trust you with a reason to care about them.

And she kept walking, and she kept walking, and eventually she found herself sitting on a bench at a bus stop. Fuck, eye contact was just so fucking hard.

She looked pointedly at some thirty-something guy, baseball cap, standing in front of her. Nothing happened. He probably hadn't noticed her, but Asuka kinda doubted that anything would come of it even if he did.

She could be a runaway for a day, just sleep in the street til dawn. Today was gonna be something real fucking meaningful whether the world or fate or whatever cooperated or not. It was gonna be meaningful for everyone else, right?

Her mom was probably gonna call the police or something. But, fuck, even that would be pretty cool. It'd be like something out of a movie or some shit.

Her mom was gonna be worried as fuck.

Oh. Well.

Fuck it, then.