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tw, alcohol
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INUMAKI WAKES UP TO an empty bed.
His fingers stretch across the rumpled sheets, seeking her warmth, but theres no warmth for him there. He blinks his eyes open and stares forward, afraid to glance over at the other side of the bed, but his fingers only to find cold, crisp fabric of his girlfriend's — no, ex-girlfriend now — aching absence.
He strains his ears to try and listen for steps out in their — his — apartment, clinging on to that thin shred of hope that his girlfriend just left to gets glass of water, but the silence is deafening, and there's already a glass of water on the nightstand anyway. And the bed wouldn't be so cold if she got up only a few minutes ago.
HE HAS NO PLANS for the day, not anymore.
Well, it's not much of a day, considering he just found out that he woke up at six in the afternoon. His girlfriend wouldn't have been there even if she was still here — she works a six to one office job at some company or other in the city.
He doesn't know his own girlfriend's company.
Six years of dating, and a single, full-blown argument just tore it down like that.
And all over a Christmas Tree.
He could have stopped it from happening, he could have apologized, he could have tried to reason with her, but although something inside told him that it wasn't supposed to happen this way, he was complacent to watch the situation unfold. He couldn't really help it — humans like to watch a little destruction. Sandcastles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their ability to escalate.
And perhaps that's what they were. A house of cards, doomed to collapse eventually. It was built into the foundations of their relationship — her strict job, his lax one, her order, his chaos. Opposite attract didn't plan for this — but then again, neither did he.
He's an empty shell of a man as he walks past his couch, trying his best not to look at it. The more he looks, the more he sees her everywhere — staring out at the falling snow on the windowsill. — a miracle in itself — a small smile gracing her lips, on the couch, a blanket pulled over her, at the kitchen sink, washing up after their dinner, a peal of laughter escaping her lips from something funny he said.
He hasn't made her laugh in a while. Not truly. Forced laughs don't count.
This is temporary, he tells himself, because he doesn't know what else to do, and frankly, he doesn't want to know what else to do. She'll come back. We've had arguments before — this isn't the first, and it won't be the last.
She'll come back.
She'll come back.
Poor Inumaki.
A BOTTLE IS ALL he holds in his right hand, a phone in his left as he sits on the carpeted floor at the foot of the couch.
The apartment is dark, the only source of light his glowing screen, starkly illuminating his facial features as he stares numbly at the mindless mobile game he has open on the device. The more he looks at it, the more it distorts, the sharp liquor clouding his mind as his brows slowly pinch into a frown.
A torrent of anger hitches his breath.
He hates the small, innocently deceiving device in his hand. The urge to throw it against a wall, to watch the glass crack and shatter as it bounces onto the ground, a million fractures reflected into his eyes staring back at him, is almost overwhelming. She might still be here if he didn't have the phone. It's all because of the small device that he's sitting alone in the darkness, sad and miserable.
He hurls it with all his might in his drunken rage.
He doesn't see what it hits — he just hears the collision. The screen flickers and is wiped completely dark.
And now the only thing visible is the silence.
His only companion.
It wraps and arm around him as he falls asleep.
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YOU ARE READING
𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐚𝐬 𝐋𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐬, Inumaki Toge
Action"Those christmas lights, light up the street." 𝐈𝐍 𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐂𝐇 he loses her in a time of merriment. - INUMAKI X OC
