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What a kick-in-the-balls of a story! Fuck... I echo Vlad's sentiments and need a drink after that!

And killing off Taro and Suzu off-panel? You're a fucking monster!

I'm going to assume they died in a car crash, since neither of them had particularly lethal problems (unless Suzu was driving of course.)

I also think it' strange that nobody ever bothered to tell Hisao about what happened to Misaki. I'd expect one of the first things to explain to someone who wakes up from a six month coma (I always think six months of coma are too much to just casually slip into a story by the way...) would be to tell them why their significant other is not there...
Feels more than a bit mean to both Hisao and Misaki not to tell him.

The Universe In Ecstatic Motion, According to Emi Ibarazaki

The party does not have to end, but the music might have to change.
J.R Rim

“But we’ve got to get you laid Ibarazaki!” Miki’s cat-like growl from the seat beside me makes me laugh out loud. With her one good hand she slaps my inner thigh.

Hey! That hurts!

She continues her relentless assault and reaches over to ruffle my hair.

I smack her hand away and stick my tongue out at her.

“It took me ages to get it perfect, don’t ruin it!”

Miki cackles, and leans back into her seat. Passing by in the window behind her, the lights and sounds of the city in motion, it's honestly exhilarating. This taxi feels more like a limousine.The leather seats are really comfortable. Really, really comfortable.

“Oi! Don’t you dare fall asleep before we get to Taro’s! Hell, don’t you dare fall asleep until after we leave Taro’s!” Miki’s stern glare is enough to keep me awake. And if it isn’t, her glare will probably follow me into my dreams and drag me out kicking and screaming.

“I’m not!”

“Suuuuuuure.” Miki sighs. Not like she’s disappointed or anything, but in a kind of laughing way. “You were out running today huh?”

“Yeah, you should try it sometime,” I tease her.

“My running days are behind me. It’s work, gym, bars for me.” She laughs. She still has her powerful toned legs from when we were younger, and they’re on full display tonight in the tight black dress she’s wearing.

“So I don’t get it, you and Taro dated in college?”

Miki chortles, and bats the idea away with a flick of her wrist. “I think dated is a bit generous, but there are just some guys you can never shake from your system you know?” A momentary wistful glance out the window and then she’s laughing again. “Besides, Taro throws killer parties. You should have come with me to one sooner, they’re very bohemian.”

There are just some guys you can never shake from your system. Ain’t that right?

“I’ve been busy. Besides, I’ve had enough fun cleaning your drunken messes up since we moved in together.” This time I reach over and ruffle Miki’s hair. She doesn’t put up a defence, and instead pouts at me. “I don’t know who said pouting was an option for you Miki, but it really isn’t.”

“Co-o-o-old!”

We sit at several red lights before Miki tells the taxi driver to ‘step on it’. Thankfully, he ignores her, and we slowly make our way across the city, from our cramped little apartment in the outskirts to the financial district, where the bars are absolutely packed and the skyline blots out the night sky. Outside the window, sat in the smoking area, two western tourists with comically large glasses wave at us. Miki shakes her stump at them, much to their horror.

“Here we are,” Miki grins and taps her card against the taxi driver's card machine. “Time for some debauchery.”

I laugh and accept her help getting out of the car. I’ve never felt as comfortable in my civilian legs, but it’s a bit of a faux-pas wearing my running blades in the silver dress number Miki insisted I wear. Miki doesn’t so much help me out of the car as yank me out onto the street, before reaching back into the taxi to grab her little bag that she’s miraculously crammed a bottle of vodka into.

We pass by a throng of people in equally skimpy / fancy clothing and head into a lavish apartment foyer.

Woah. I knew Taro was successful but… Woah.

There’s a koi pond in the centre, and opulent looking golden trees on either end of the large hall. There are direction signs that tell you which floor has the swimming pool and which floor has the private gym, and which floor has the cinema…

“Taro lives here?” I ask.

Miki shrugs and greets the security guard / receptionist with a familiar wave. Clearly she’s been here a lot. So far, I can’t blame her. This place is bougie as anything! “Intelligence coupled with inheritance, it’s a winning combo.” She laughs again as we enter the elevator and the doors close behind us.

“Thirty-six,” she instructs me and I comply with a press of the button.

The elevator quietly surges upwards. It doesn’t even make that weird groaning noise that our elevator makes, and that Miki swears is a ‘moleman’ living in the shaft, whatever that means.

God, I feel nervous. I haven’t been to a party in ages, let alone one so… what did Miki say? Bohemian? It honestly makes me feel a little sick. I’m not sure I even remember how to flirt.

Miki wraps her arm around my shoulder as we pass floor twenty-four. “Relax you little goblin, you keep thinking and you’ll detonate. You know how hard it is to clean blood from an elevator?”

“Do you?”

“No, and I wouldn’t be the one clearing it anyway. I’ve got plans. I’m not wasting my New Years cleaning up your blood.”

“Charming,” I reply, and Miki leans down and kisses the top of my head.

“It’s not like you to get hung up on a guy. You’re the fastest thing on no legs, I always assumed that was because you were a bit slutty.” Miki teases.

“Miki! I was the fastest on no legs and you were the fastest on your back.”

We laugh, and Miki squeezes me again for good measure.

“You got this, Ibarazaki. If you haven’t secured a kiss by midnight, come see me for a smooch.”

I laugh and playfully punch her in the arm.

The elevator doors open to a stately hallway. There’s only two doors, one on the left and the right, so it looks like Taro has half a floor to himself.

It’s fairly obvious which side of the floor belongs to him, given the pumping music practically blowing the door down and the scattered trail of christmas decorations outside his door that haven’t been taken down yet. The Arai’s party party, Miki told me once. I think I’m starting to understand what she means.

Miki is quick to rap her stump against the door.

No answer.

“You should ring his cell, I bet they can’t hear a thing in there.”

Miki shrugs and reaches into her purse, producing a small key.

“Why knock at all?” I ask.

“Laziness, I suppose.”

Just as Miki starts to open the door, it gets yanked wide open by Taro. He’s slimmed out a lot since I last saw him in high-school. I guess I never noticed how tall he was either, but he towers above me and even Miki, who has always been tall and lean.

“Ibarazaki!” He exclaims in a loud deep voice. “It’s been far too long. Miki here has told me so much about you. How are you finding living with her?”

“Messy,” I reply, which earns a laugh from him. “It’s been far too long Taro.”

“Yeah yeah, I’m standing right here man.” Miki pushes Taro backwards into his own home and grabs him by the collar. “I missed you.” She reaches up to grab the back of his head and pulls him into a long passionate kiss.

I shuffle about awkwardly and look behind them. Taro’s apartment is insanely big, and he’s even put up a disco ball in what I presume is his living room. It’s bustling with people I don’t recognise.

After what feels like way too long for a public display of affection, especially considering they’re not together, Miki and Taro break apart. Basically throwing Miki behind him into the party, Taro grabs a beer from the counter and offers it to me.

I accept, and before I can enter the party as well, Taro envelops me in one of his massive bear hugs from High School. I feel like I might break in half.

“Miki told me you and that fellow split up. Daichi? Daisuke?” He shakes his head, resolved. “Daichi.”

“Ren,” I correct him.

“I was about to say Ren.”

“Suuuuuure.”

“No man has ever kept up with you, huh?” Taro chuckles. His eyes are drawn across the room to another guest, and he throws them a cheery wave.

“I’ve not found one yet, no.” I answer. Behind him in the surge of a crowd, I see Miki down a shot.

“Maybe tonight is your lucky night?” He asks, but his attention is clearly elsewhere. “Here, let me introduce you to someone.”

With only that slight warning, Taro practically hoists me into a group of people. They’re all dancing, below the disco ball hanging from the split level mezzanine above. Holy cow this place is insane!

If Miki doesn’t marry Taro for his friendly personality, his wealth should do it.

I shake the thought. That’s a bad way to think, obviously.

Buuuuut…

“Emi, I’d like to introduce you to my colleague, Kiyoshi.”

The bespeckled man in front of me eyes me up and down like a rotisserie chicken. Gross. He offers me his hand and I shake it so as to not be rude, but I can’t pretend this guy attracts me.

“A pleasure,” the weird and, ew, sweaty man says.

“Sure, so Taro I -”

I turn around and see Taro disappearing after Miki into a crowd. Classy.

A deep hypnotic beat pumps from the speaker in the centre of the room. Lights fly around at dizzying speeds.

“So how did you meet Taro?” I ask Kiyoshi. He smiles fondly as he recalls.

“We work at the same firm. My father and Taro’s father go way back.”

Figures.

“Uh-huh,” I answer uninterestedly. Maybe Taro put us together because we’re the most boring people at this party.

Wait, how did I become boring? I’m Emi Ibarazaki. The fastest thing on no legs. The speed demon herself.

“And you? Did you meet at Ritsumeikan?” Captain of the good ship boredom asks me.

“No, I actually went to Tokyo U.”

“Oh? What did you major in?”

“I dropped out.” I confess.

“Ah. But you and Taro?”

Oh.

“Taro and I went to school together. High school that is. Now he’s… dating, I think, my roommate, Miki.”

The man nods thoughtfully. “Ms Miura, I’m familiar. Dating might be generous.” Without really looking, the man reaches out to the bar counter beside him and offers me a bottle of beer, to swap my now depleted one.

I accept it with a shrug and twist the cap off. Behind Kiyoshi, against the wall, illuminated by one of those little spotlights you see in museums, I recognise a painting. Or rather, a style.

“So, your prosthetics -”

“Car accident.” I cut Kiyoshi off. “Excuse me.”

“Oh, yeah I -”

Before Kiyoshi can continue I push past him and head over to the single space of calm in a spinning room.

Hanging dead centre on the wall, a painting. A small signature in the bottom right corner.

Akio Hayashi. The only man I ever slowed down for.

I knew Akio continued with his art. He was obsessed with ‘getting discovered’ in college, and deep down I’ve always associated his artwork with one of the several reasons we split up.

My reflection faces me from the glass sliding door on the wall directly adjacent to the painting. It’s an ethereal sort of scene, looking back at myself in this skimpy little dress, a token of my ex boyfriend illuminated beside me as though he’s stood there. Behind my reflected self, a series of undulating and pulsing lights, both from within this apartment and from the city that hums its life-song outside of it.

I’ve never really understood art. Maybe that was part of the problem. I have no idea if this piece here is one of any significant value, or if Taro simply hangs it like this because of their friendship. Either way, I’m stuck at a party staring at the past.

Rin and Akio. Two artists I loved. Two people I haven’t heard from in years.

What happened to never looking back?

I take another long look at the painting. It’s a melancholy scene. A view from a window in Tokyo, the skyline towers impenetrable above.

I close my eyes, the music pounds in my ears like a heartbeat.

---

“Stop it!” I barely manage to get the words out before another barrage of kisses and tickling sends me reeling with laughter.

“No can do captain, I’m on the warpath now.” Akio laughs, his hands move from under my armpits to my sides, to my inner thighs, and then back up.

I burst into laughter again and try to push him off me. My prosthetics watch in horror from the wall as I’m tickled to death. Farewell, my loyal legs.

There’s a sudden abrupt thump on the wall from Akio’s neighbour.

“Piss off Takahiro!” Akio shouts into the wall.

Well that’s my near death experience over, thankfully. A shame though, because our tickling normally leads to…

Well, nevermind.

Akio’s dorm room doesn’t insulate noise very well. Or heat. Or anything really. He really crapped out here. And his neighbour is a real prude.

I gently push Akio back and straighten myself out. My hair is probably a mess, and now I’m all out of breath.

“You are really mean,” I say.

Akio laughs and pulls me into his side for another kiss. I oblige, even though I should punish him.

Scattered art supplies litter his room, half-finished canvases and empty coffee cups. I whack him carefully on the back of the head.

“You need to tidy up here if you expect me to stay over.”

“Bah, I'm a creative. We’re inherently messy.”

“And I’m an athlete, we’re inherently organised.”

“So I’ll work and you’ll clean,” Akio teases. I thump him gently on the back of his head again for good measure.

“I’m not your mother, young man.”

“But I call you mommy?” He laughs. Another thump for that.

“Gross! You know Takahiro is listening, you pervert!”

“Not listening!” Comes the muffled reply through the wall.

Akio and I burst into laughter.

He jumps up from the bed and walks over to the window. Tokyo stretches out above us, its highrises and impenetrable skyline.

I pull myself over to the end of the bed and watch him.

“It’s all coming together Emi,” he says. That determined look on his face. The one that made me fall for him. The one he wore when he asked me out.

“We’re still first years, and yet you’ve got it all figured out huh?”

I certainly don't. It’s a miracle I even got into University, and now I have exams just around the corner…

I shake the thought.

“I’m going to make it. We’re going to make it big, Emi.”

Silhouetted by the window light, Akio’s body tenses up.

“Of course we will, I’m still the fastest thing on no legs.” I say.

That’s not technically true, since Tokyo U has that prodigy Akane. But our rivalry will become legend. Probably.

“Hell yeah you are,” Akio laughs. “Life is a race and we make a killer relay team.”

“Well don’t forget your studies, or I’ll be running it alone.” I say, only half-teasing. He needs to buckle down more.

Akio chuckles. “We’re heading straight for the top Emi,” he repeats.

He turns to face me now, the city skyline shimmering outside the window behind him.

“You’ll take me with you?” I ask, and he kisses me hard.

“There’s nothing in all of Tokyo that could stop me.”

---

“Ibarazaki.” Miki’s hand finds my shoulder before I hear her.

“You left me,” I reply without looking back. “That wasn’t very ‘big sis’ Miki of you.”

She laughs and slings her arm around me. The beer in her hand clatters against my own, and they make a soft clinking sound barely audible above the electronic funk.

“You haven’t made any friends yet?” Miki asks. “I’m beginning to think you’re a social parrot.”

“Social parrot?” I ask, and Miki looks down at me like I’m being stupid.

“Yeah, like someone who isn’t very good in social situations. An outcast.”

“Do you mean a social pariah?”

“Whatever,” Miki shrugs.

“Well I think Taro paired me up with one of those,” I gesture back to the weird guy Taro introduced me to. “Kiyoshi.”

“Oh, that boring fuck? Taro said he was going to pair you up with him so you’d remember the difference between the boring people and the fun people. I told him that was stupid, but I guess he did it anyway.” Miki explains.

“It was stupid,” I reply, which earns me one of Miki’s pseudo dirty laughs.

Miki grabs me by the wrist and pulls me after her into the centre of the room. We pass back by Kiyoshi, and Taro steps aside to make room for us.

“Come on Emi, I came here to dance with my roomie, not mope about.”

I laugh and start swaying along with Miki as she starts mouthing the words to the pop song blaring over the speakers. Before long, we’re swinging our arms around wildly, and I nearly go tumbling down when another girl bumps into me on my side.

I wave Taro over, and he makes his way through the crowd of dancing strangers. Well, strangers to me, I guess they all know Taro. He looks pretty suave as he glides across the floor to us, rocking his hips side to side. He throws an imaginary lasso over Miki, and pulls himself to her.

The three of us dance below the disco ball, the rhythm and beat of the music entering us. Strangers on either side swarm around us, moving with the same infectious sway as us. I can’t say for how long, but for a while I forget where I end and Miki and Taro begin.

“There’s my -!” Miki shouts across to me.

“What?” I can barely hear her over the thumping base.

“I said there’s my girl! Party Ibarazaki!”

Taro’s booming laugh is much easier to hear among the cacophony of sounds. It’s a familiar sound even from high school, when I’d hear him across the cafeteria.

It’s funny thinking back to high school. How I thought I had everything figured out back then, and how now I know I don’t know a thing. A silly girl with silly dreams.

Taro looks down to his phone and excuses himself. Miki flashes me a knowing smile.

“What?” I yell, still swinging my arms and hips.

“A surprise!”

Hearing that makes my stomach sink a little bit. The last ‘surprise’ I had from Miki was when she set a firework off in our kitchen. I wish that I was joking.

She punches my shoulder and points towards the door with her stump.

And that’s when I see him again.

From the crowd in the hallway, he emerges. He’s gotten a bit bigger at the sides, but those eyes, that smile. That’s Akio. That’s him in all his glory. Taro’s smile blares like a super trooper beside him.

“Emi.” Akio smiles as he shouts my name above the noise.

The two guys dance over to us, cutting shapes as they go, big stupid cheesy grins on their faces.

“Akio,” I shout at him. “Nice moves!”

And then there are four of us, dancing all together.

I close my eyes and let the feeling and rhythm take control.

Somewhere in the distant recesses of my memory, I see myself again. My eighteen year old-self, in her Yamaku uniform. A school disco, dancing alongside Miki, a larger than life Taro, a skinny redhead boy.

I see Akio and me kissing in my Yamaku dorm room, I see us doing so much more. I open my eyes and see his deep brown eyes.

I see his face when I got accepted into Tokyo U, when all of those hours studying finally paid off. I see Akio and me eating dinner with my mom. I see Akio standing at the airport. His year abroad. I’m crying in the rear view mirror.

I open my eyes and see Miki smiling at me. I close them again and see her opening her apartment door, taking my suitcase from me.

The past and the future, dancing all together.

After a few songs, and after getting probably a bit sweatier than is socially acceptable, Taro taps my shoulder and points back towards the bar. The three of us wordlessly follow, cutting back through the crowds who all offer Taro a high five or say something to Miki.

Taro reaches over the bar-counter and produces a bottle of whiskey, before reaching again and fiddling around until he finds a few plastic cups as well. Miki shakes her head and yanks the bottle of vodka from her bag, offering us all some and pouring me WAAAY too much.

Akio and Taro fill their cups with the whiskey, and the four of us exchange cheers.

“Happy new year,” I say. “Thanks for having us Taro.”

“Here here,” Miki nods as our cups bump against one another unsatisfyingly. Plastic cups.

After our toast, and a well deserved but not very hydrating drink, Miki and Taro sort of turn towards one another. It seems Akio notices their imminent make out session, as he gestures for me to follow him.

We wordlessly make our way back to the painting, to the sliding glass door, and Akio opens it. The cold air rushes past me as I follow him out onto the balcony. He fiddles with something in his pocket.

“Still smoking, Akio?”

“It’s an excuse at parties. Like now, for example.”

He plucks a cigarette from its packet and places it between his lips.

That’s a disgusting habit. One that Akio picked up after high school. One he picked up from his father.

“Killing yourself to get out?” I say, a bit below my breath.

“Better than killing myself in there,” Akio laughs.

I shrug, and take another sip from my crinkly plastic cup.

“Brittle bones and botched lungs,” I say. Akio doesn’t take it personally and chuckles.

Below us, car horns sound, and the occasional siren blares in the distance. The smell of cold, you know that sort of fresh smell, it intermingles with the smell from Akio’s cigarette. I shake from the chill.

“Here,” Akio says, offering me his suit jacket.

I take it and stick my arms through the sleeves. It’s like a dress on top of my dress.

“I’m sorry about the way things ended, Akio.”

“Not with a bang, but a whimper,” he chuckles sadly.

I can’t help but smile. “We got a few good bangs in there too, though.”

“Forever the dirty mind, classic Emi.” He takes a long drag. “We did though. Remember Tanabata?”

“I could never forget.”

“So you and Taro, you stayed close?” He asks.

“I live with Miki now, and obviously…”

“Obviously,” Akio agrees.

“But you and Taro?” I ask him now.

“We reconnected when I was abroad. I guess that’s when he was hitting it big, because he messaged asking to buy one of my pieces. I still don’t know if he’s a secret aesthete, or if he just wanted to re-connect.”

From the party inside, a countdown begins.

“TEN!”

I close the distance between us, and Akio wraps his arm over my shoulder.

“For old times sake?”

“SIX!”

“You don’t have to invoke the past,” he smiles, tilting his head down just a fraction to meet me.

“THREE!”

“It goes quickly, doesn’t it?” I ask as I shiver into his arms. He presses his cigarette into the ashtray.

And then our lips meet as the countdown hits one.

We linger, our lips locked, the sounds of cheering and ‘oohing’ inside.

Part of me wants to stay in this moment forever. The cold can hardly touch us. But the party resumes inside, and our lips slowly disengage.

“Life moves fast,” I say, begrudgingly.

“Life moves pretty fast,” he repeats to himself. Beyond him the lights and sounds of the city blare. There’s a long moment of silence between us.“You want to know when I fell in love with you?”

I laugh bitterly and take another sip of my drink. “When I kicked Miki’s ass at the track meet?”

He shakes his head, and reaches out for my drink, having finished his own. I relent and pass it to him, and he takes a long swig.

“No, no. It was after that. It was in the Shanghai, when that ditsy waitress spilled coffee all over the floor and you helped her clean up.”

“That’s…. Surprisingly dull Akio! “ I exclaim, and Akio laughs out loud.

“I don’t know what to tell you, it wasn’t some grand romantic or sexy moment. I just knew that day that I was in love with you and that I’d never meet anyone like you again.”

Hearing him speak like that, it nearly makes me cry. I offer him my hand.

“I’ve never met anyone like you either, Akio.” He squeezes my hand and our fingers interlink. “You were worth slowing down for, even just a little.”

“Don’t say that,” Akio chuckles sadly. “I never wanted you to slow down for anyone.”

We sit in silence like that for a moment. Back to being two strangers, what feels like miles above a city made from millions upon millions of strangers all moving in tandem.

“I never wanted you to slow down,” he repeats. “But the more I think about it, I never wanted to speed up either. I wish I could go back and shake myself. Tell myself what I needed to hear.” He passes me the cup back. It’s considerably lighter now.

“And what was that?” I ask, our fingers still interlinked.

“That we didn’t need to be in the same race to be in the same life.” His eyes meet mine.

I reach for his head and pull him into another long kiss.

We stay locked in a desperate kiss for what feels like an eternity. I want it to be an eternity. Until, again, we stop.

“Are you back in Tokyo?” I whisper, holding his head in my hands.

“I fly back to London in a few days,” he confesses.

“Life moves fast,” I repeat, my forehead pressed against his. I feel my tears as they freeze against my cheeks.

“It goes just the right speed with you, Emi.”

In the dark of the balcony, with the lights both from the party and from the city below and above us, we hold one another close, until it’s time to return inside.

---

No, I'm not stealing Sharp-O's work but I am stealing his little sign off note. I actually wrote this piece in an attempt to emulate Sharp O's style and he did much the same with his story, A Matter of Memory, which I posted previously. Hope you enjoyed both stories! Sorry for tricking you all.