The bell chimed again. The door swung shut behind him. He stood on the sidewalk for exactly three seconds, his hands in his pockets, his face blank.
Didn't see his body dissolve into nothing.
He walked back through the door, the bell didn't chime this time, the sensor couldn't detect him and moved past the cashier, past the shelves, past the racks of magazines and the displays of cheap candy.
He returned to the cooler. Opened the door. Took three bottles of whiskey, two of vodka, one of something amber-colored that he didn't recognize.
The cashier never looked up.
Hoshimi walked out again.
His invisibility faded as he rounded the corner, his arms full of stolen liquor. He found a plastic bag in a trash can. Transferred the bottles.
The morning sun was climbing higher now, painting the city in shades of gray and gold. His feet began to carry him somewhere else.
Reina's house was on the other side of the city.
His feet had simply carried him in that direction, navigating streets he'd walked a hundred times before.
[I doubt there'd be anyone there. Sarah probably already announced it, there's no reason for them to after me, I don't have the damn sword that they're so scared about anymore]
He didn't care.
The house was a modest two-story building in a quiet residential neighborhood, its facade unremarkable, its windows dark.
She'd moved here after her promotion to Vice Principal, after she'd finally accumulated enough influence to demand something better.
The garden in front was overgrown, the flowers Reina had planted years ago now wild and tangled and choking on their own growth. The mailbox was overflowing. The driveway was empty.
He walked around to the back. The key was under the same loose brick in the garden wall where it had always been, the brick that Sophia had used to sneak out at night when she was supposed to be sleeping. He let himself in through the kitchen door.
Jasmine. Her perfume. He stepped inside. Closed the door behind him. Stood in the darkness.
The smell of coffee and old books and the faint, powdery sweetness of the incense she used to burn when she was stressed. The smell of home.
Hoshimi stood in the kitchen for a long time.
The dishes in the sink were from their last meal together. Three plates. Two glasses, Hoshimi didn't like coffee, he never did, it was always too bitter. The coffee maker was still half-full, the liquid inside now cold and stale and covered with a thin film of mold.
A newspaper was spread across the table, open to the crossword puzzle she'd been working on. She'd finished all but three clues.
[Damn it, why'd I have to come back here?]
He walked through the living room. The couch where she'd sat with her magazine. The coffee table where the old newspapers still sat in their precarious stacks.
The television that had been broken for two years because of Sophia.
The console that she asked Reina to buy was still there, dusty.
The bookshelves lining the walls, crammed with everything from tactical manuals to romance novels to the battered paperbacks of classical literature she'd forced him to read when he was younger.
He climbed the stairs.
The hallway at the top was dark, the doors on either side closed. Sophia's room. His room.
The bathroom they'd fought over every morning. The linen closet where Reina had hidden their birthday presents.
Her door was at the end of the hall.
Her bedroom. The door was slightly ajar. He pushed it open with trembling fingers.
The room beyond was dark, the curtains drawn against the morning sun, the bed unmade, she'd never bother to fold her blankets, she'd always get back in after all.
The sheets were rumpled. The pillows were still dented where her head had rested.
A glass of water sat on the nightstand, half-empty, a thin film of dust covering its surface.
He stood in the doorway for a long time. His chest was tight. His throat was tight. His eyes burned with tears he refused to shed.
Then he walked to the bed. Sat down on the edge of it. The mattress sagged beneath his weight, and the scent of her perfume rose up around him like a shroud.
Hoshimi set the bag of bottles on the floor.
He sat on the edge of her bed.
He opened the first bottle of whiskey.
The smell hit him first, sharp and smoky and utterly unfamiliar. He'd never been drunk before. Had never seen the appeal. Reina drank occasionally, a glass of wine with dinner, a shot of something stronger after particularly hard missions, she'd always offer him some, asking him to try new things, but he'd always refuse..
He raised the bottle to his lips. Took a sip.
It burned.
His throat constricted. His eyes watered. He coughed, sputtered, nearly choked on the first swallow. The taste was awful, bitter and medicinal.
He hated it. Hated the way it sat heavy in his empty stomach. Hated the way it made his head swim and his thoughts blur and his carefully constructed walls begin to crumble. But he kept drinking anyway.
[Damn it! Why isn't it kicking in yet?]
The second sip was easier. The third was easier still. By the time he'd finished a quarter of the bottle, the burning had faded to a dull warmth that spread through his chest and loosened something that had been clenched tight since the warehouse. His hands were shaking less. His thoughts were slowing down.
He lay back on her bed. Her pillow still smelled like her hair. He pressed his face into it and breathed.
Black Scene.
"I want to go home."
The words came out before he could stop them. His voice cracked on the last syllable. His chest tightened, a fist closing around his heart, squeezing until he couldn't breathe.
"I want to go home. I want her back. I want—"
He couldn't finish the sentence. Couldn't finish anything. Just sat there on her bed, surrounded by empty bottles and the ghost of her perfume, crying.
He clutched her pillow like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to the world, pressing his face into the fabric, breathing in the last traces of her scent.
"I'm sorry," he gasped. "Damn it, I should've died instead, why couldn't I just….die?"
She was supposed to be here.
[You were supposed to live forever.]
"I hate you." He was sobbing now, the words barely comprehensible. "Is this my retribution? Is this the universe's way of punishing me?"
"I love you." He curled into a ball, her pillow clutched to his chest, the empty bottle of whiskey rolling off the bed and shattering on the floor.
He stayed like that for hours. Crying. Drinking. Crying more. The bottles emptied one by one, the whiskey, then the vodka, then the amber-colored thing that tasted like gasoline and regret.
His stomach heaved. He vomited over the side of the bed, the mess splattering across the hardwood floor. He didn't clean it up. Didn't move. Just lay there in the wreckage of his grief, his face pressed into her pillow, his body shuddering with the aftershocks of sobs that had finally run dry.
The alcohol was all gone.
His dreams were fragments.
Her face in the morning light.
Her hand ruffling his hair. Her voice calling him an idiot with that warmth beneath the exasperation.
The arcade machines she'd collected like stray cats. The way she'd looked at him sometimes, really looked.
He woke to darkness.
The window above her bed showed a sky scattered with stars. The moon was high, casting silver light across the stained carpet and the shattered glass and the mess of bottles that surrounded him.
His head was pounding. His mouth was dry. His stomach was a hollow, gnawing void.
[I'm hungry.]