Chapter 3
“’Kay then let’s go! See you later Reina!”
Reina whipped around suddenly and replied cheerfully.
“See you later guys!”
As the door shut behind the two girls Reina let out a hefty cough and felt a throat-full of mucus enter her mouth. She looked around back at the door in panic, then down at the floor which was sparkling clean. Grimacing she swallowed hard taking the mucus back down, causing her to almost throw it all back up. Her mouth opened wide but thankfully nothing came out and she breathed a sigh of relief.
After recent events in UFA she knew that she should have known better but Reina sat down beside her plaid bag, unzipped it and started to fumble around looking for her cigarettes. She quickly stopped herself when she heard sobbing outside, she quickly zipped up the back again and straightened up her back waiting for someone to enter the room. Reina let out another sigh after no-one entered, but this time in exasperation. She really wanted…no, needed a cigarette and it had been a long day. She could feel her throat tightening and her eyes started to water in impatience.
Finally deciding that it probably wasn’t a good idea to sit puffing away in the dressing room Reina snatched up her bag from beside her and headed towards the door. As she did she realised the sobbing was still going on outside. She propped her head against the door in an effort to hear any gossip she could gather. Unfortunately she couldn’t pick up on anything except the odd muffled word behind sniffling. Curious to see who exactly was outside and what was going she opened the door and left the changing room.
Almost directly opposite stood Ai and Sayumi, Ai crying into Sayumi’s shoulder. Certainly not a sight you saw everyday. Sayumi looked almost as distressed as Ai, seemingly not knowing what to do or say to comfort her. Reina tried to hide her grin from her face as she spoke out.
“What’s up with you two?”
The two of them looked up slowly to look at her. Reina just wished she could have completed the badass look, the attitude was there, she was still wearing her clothes from the video shoot, but the cigarette was missing from the corner of her mouth. Perhaps the two of them were too disconcerted to realise just what Reina had said but it didn’t seem to bother them.
“Ai-chan is just a little upset about things you know?”
Sayumi said it quite blatantly avoiding saying what the “things” were, as if the mention of Yossie’s graduation might start of Takahashi even more. Sayumi carried on with her voice trembling slightly.
“But we all are aren’t we? So we can get through this together, we’ll be okay.”
It was difficult for Reina to tell if she was speaking to her or Ai, or even if she was trying to convince herself that what she was saying was true. Whatever it was Reina didn’t really have time to stay around to find out, suddenly she felt her gut move and she felt vomit try to escape from her mouth.
“Gotta go!” she said hurriedly clasping her hand over her mouth and darting for the exit.
She slammed into the double doors leading to the car park and rushed to the left-hand corner of the room. Part way there her throat gave up on her and sick spewed from Reina’s mouth. She didn’t really manage to move her hand away in time and it was covered in her own vomit, dripping down her arm. After a couple more heaves Reina turned her attention to her arm, looking at it disgust and almost throwing up again at the sight. Thanks to her being pretty ambidextrous she opened her bag which now lay on the floor quite easily with her clean right hand and managed to pull out some tissues. After giving her arm a rub down Reina still looked at it unhappily as it felt sticky, and smelled terrible.
There wasn’t much else she could do about it so Reina quickly picked up her bag again and continued to head to the left side of the car park. She had a faster pace than usual, trying to get to her destination as quickly as possible. Against the wall of the car park was a door inset with a plaque attached, stating that this was the janitor’s cupboard. Reina pushed the door open, quickly scanned the car park to see if anyone was watching and entered the janitor’s room closing the door behind her.
Cramped was a good word to use for how Reina felt when she was inside, there wasn’t many cleaning materials left but it was still a tiny space for a person to stand in. The lack of light was also pretty deterring but Reina had been in here plenty of times so she was quite adept at searching through her bag and finding what she wanted. Not to mention the fact that she was pretty determined to find her cigarettes after how long she’d had to wait for them. Unzipping her bag once more she delved her hand in and instantly felt the shape of her cigarette packet.
It only took her a few more seconds to find her lighter and Reina quickly put the cigarette to her lips and sparked up the lighter. The faint source of light helped her place the flame against the tip of the cigarette. Reina made a sharp intake of breath as it lit and as the fumes went back suddenly all seemed well again. This was probably the most she’d enjoyed a cigarette in her entire life, granted she’d only smoked for little over a year but still, this was bliss.
Ironically enough it had all started because of Kago, not that Reina picked up the habit from her, in fact the two of them had barely spoken to each other (she seemed way too far up her own ass for Reina to make time for her). Instead it had been at a friends party, one of those usual things: everyone else tries it, you don’t want to be the odd one out right? Usually it takes a little while for people to get addicted but with Reina from the first moment she knew she’d been missing out on these for too long. She didn’t even cough the first time she tried one, something she was quite proud of, though she wasn’t exactly shouting it out from the rooftops.
She’d almost finished smoking when suddenly the text alert from her phone sounded.
“Shit!” she dropped her cigarette in surprise and reached into her bag to find her phone, it took her slightly longer than it had done to find the cigarettes. She checked her unread messages to find one from Niigaki waiting for her. Reina was pleasantly surprised to hear from her, she was one of the few members of the band she didn’t secretly detest.
“Hi how are you? We’re going to the Havana Club again tonight; let me know if you want to come along with us okay?”
Reina smiled, it had certainly been a pretty wild time when they’d last been there, at least what she could remember of it was. She slowly opened the janitor’s door and peered out across the car park, the coast was clear. She stepped out and text back one simple message.
“Sure”
(Thanks for the comments everyone, they really are much appreciated. I found this a bit weird, but does anyone know whether Reina is left or right handed? I tried checking out a few videos and pictures and she seems to use her left and right hands pretty frequently so it was damn hard to tell.)
Topic: Just Another Love Triangle (Read 6517 times)