A daydreaming cynic's life of irresponsibility
For the first time in 14 years, Yuuya ignored her neatly placed school-shoes in the hall and walked straight past them without as much as a glance in their direction. From now on, there would be no need for them, as she's not going to school anymore. To live irresponsibly, school is a big no-no. Her lovely slacker mother used to skip school all the time, after all, which proves that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yuuya enters the kitchen and remains still in the doorframe. Not until her shadow lands on her slumbering mother's face by the kitchen table, she notices her daughter.
“Mom,” Yuuya says unmovingly.
“What?” her mother drowsily replies, resting her head against her hand, and messy strands of black hair slide through her fingers.
“Where do you go to meet shady men?” Yuuya asks with a blunt innocence.
Her weary mother pins her with her gaze for a moment before burying her face in her arms with a deep sigh, returning to the resting position Yuuya found her in.
“What…? Ugh, mommy's tired, can you be an angel and go fetch some aspirin?” mommy grumbles beneath her covered face.
Maybe don’t drink on a Sunday afternoon, dipshit, Yuuya thinks to herself with a blank expression. On the bottle in her mother's clutched hand, she could now make out a label reading “SALT” in big, nauseatingly pink letters. SALT… that's right, she had heard the name a while back in school from a couple of gossiping classmates. Apparently, it's a bar most famously known to be a hotspot for female students “wanting to earn some extra cash”, as well as having been subject to numeral police investigations within the last ten years related to suspected drug dealing. And of course, SALT´s trademark beer is equally shady and cheap, at least, judging by the horrid pink font. That trashy bar has been completely uninteresting to Yuuya up until now, when trashy is exactly what she's searching for. With her next objective in mind, Yuuya returns to reality and leaves the doorframe of the kitchen. On her way to her mother's closet in search of clothes befitting SALT´s shit-reputation, a long-forgotten memory pops back into Yuuya's distractible mind. Naomi Tanaka… was that her name? It's no wonder her name is nearly erased when it was almost never used. Instead, she's come to be remembered as “that slut from class 1-C”, “whore girl”, “cum-dumpster” and, Yuuya's personal favorite, “Cock-sucking slut dog”. It must've been in seventh grade, almost two years ago now, when word spread like wildfire around school about Tanaka´s involvement with SALT after school hours. It seems the money wasn't worth it in the end, Yuuya remember callously thinking, when Tanaka was found unconscious in the school-bathroom after attempting suicide. Yuuya hasn’t seen her since. A small part of her secretly hopes, against her nihilistic mind's will, that Tanaka is still alive. The rest of her believes the sinner girl is lying in another bathroom somewhere with drool running down her chin and a mouth full of pills. Yuuya holds up a black, skimpy top, one that could impossibly fit her mother's round form. Not anymore, anyway. She tosses the top to the floor and digs through the rest of the undistinguishable heaps of clothes in the wooden closet. Mom's wedding dress? Weird. I thought she said she “threw that old shit away” after dad left, Yuuya thinks to herself while digging deeper and deeper. Ah! A piece of red clothing peeks out from beneath a pile, and Yuuya pulls it out with great effort, nearly falling backwards as she does so, then holds it up in front of her. A tiny, short plaid skirt, which looks to have been a part of a cheerleader outfit. Yuuya shakes off images of her mother wearing it and begrudgingly takes it, along with the skimpy top. With that, the preparations were nearly complete, all that's left to achieve maximum trashiness is some red lipstick and low-quality perfume. After that, the trip is easy. For once, Yuuya appreciated the fact that they were living on the very outskirts of town, in other words, the shady part of town, where people go to SALT. Which, incidentally, was only a few blocks away from her house. It all works out in the end, huh?