Heart-Shaped Box

Part II

Choso was woken up with an absurdly-splitting headache. He groaned and covered his sensitive eyes with his forearms. He wondered how he even got this hungover. Last thing he remembered was- oh yeah, the phone call. Her voice. He put two and two together, groaning again, but louder, knowing that he probably got shit drunk. He knew he was a lightweight. God, he hoped he didn't do anything too stupid. He was probably just being overdramatic though.

His phone pinged on his mattress, alerting him of messages he had gotten from Yuji.

'hey u up'

'Big bro, wake up it's 8am'

'u gonna be late and be mad'

'bro u got work'

'wake ur ass up'

Plus 11 missed calls from him as well. Choso sighed, then gasped loudly, seeing it was currently 10am. "Damn it!"

He hurriedly ran to his connected bathroom and threw on a pair of white sweat pants and a loose black shirt. Looking in the mirror, he noticed his bags were deeper than usual. Oh well, he would manage for the day. It was too late to do anything about it now. He wasn't too concerned of his appearance anyway. Choso slipped his noir boots on over his socks and went to grab his keys to his bike. When he walked outside he was met with an amazing surprise. No motorcycle. "Wha-" His phone started ringing before he could get the chance to even talk to himself and he answered.

"Your bike is still at the club dumbass." Yuji spoke before Choso could even get the thought out.

Choso made an 'o' face. He was so idiotic. Stupid. He ran a hand down his face. How was he even to get to work? He could possibly ask Yuji for a ride. "Can you drop me off at the shop, brother?"

Yuji hummed in affirmation. "Yeah I'm on my way already. I knew you'd wait 'til last minute to wake up." Before Choso could give him a smartass remark, Yuji laughed and hung up on him.

Choso lit up a cigarette, shaking his lighter, noticing it was about to go out. He would have to remember to buy a new one. He shoved the useless lighter back in his pocket and took a long drag. It was a bad habit, he'd admit, but it wasn't so easy to put down. Especially with all the stress and chaos his brain loved to caused him. Halfway through his cigarette, Yuji pulled up and Choso fully put it out, tossing it in the bin for the butts. (If you smoke, for the love of god, please dispose of the butts properly -.- )

"You know those kill you right?" Yuji asked. What a dumb question.

"You know I didn't ask right?" Choso mumbled as soon as Yuji spoke, then sighed, apologizing for being crabby. "Sorry little brother, I didn't mean to be rude to you."

Yuji waved it off. His nonchalant emotions about the comment calmed Choso some. "Don't worry bout it big bro. You gotta have other moods than just being a people pleasure," he chuckled, "Get in or you'll be more late than 10:30."

Choso hopped in, clicked in his seatbelt in place, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. It was definitely going to be a stressful day. Now that he had slept in, he'd have to grind the design he was working on for longer.

The ride to Choso's work was quiet, other than Yuji's occasional tapping on the steering wheel. He pulled up to the shop and let Choso out.

"Thank you little brother." Choso walked up to the door and unlocked it. He looked around the parlor to see if anything was out of place before he started working on the intricate design. With nothing out of the ordinary, he sat at his desk with his legs straddled over the chair, slouched over, and began to finish the sketch.

After a bit of time working on it, Choso had finished and sighed, resting his head on his arms. His eyes were heavy and he was exhausted beyond belief, but he had to stay up, being that he was only one there at the moment. Ino would be in about, Choso looked at the time on his phone, an hour and a half and he still had to thermal print the stencil, shake all of the ink bottles, plus take any walk ins as well. He loosely tugged at strands of his hair.