𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐫 │Nishimura Riki

18

▀▄▀▄▀▄ ▀▄▀▄▀▄ ▀▄▀▄▀▄ ▀▄

↳ currently playing ;;
[about you] - [1975]

Lily knew who she was from a young age.

Not in some grand, destiny-unveiling way, but in the inconvenient truth of her own predictable patterns. She was a girl who, despite every internal alarm bell, every scraped knee from the last tumble, simply kept repeating the same damn mistakes.

This inconvenient self-awareness was currently making her feel profoundly stupid, perched on a barstool in a club, nursing a drink so vicious it felt less like a beverage and more like liquid regret, rearranging her brain cells into a dizzying kaleidoscope.

She hadn't meant to come out tonight. But Alessia and Chiara had blown back into the city from New York like a glitter-bomb hurricane, declaring themselves "bored senseless" with Manhattan and demanding "Italian debauchery."

And Lily? Lily's head had been a buzzing beehive of frustration these past few days. Drowning her soul out at a neon-lit bar, with bass thrumming against her bones, suddenly seemed like the most logical, self-destructive path available.

Alessia, was pouncing on an old, decidedly rich man across the room, her laugh echoing a little too brightly above the thumping bass. Chiara, meanwhile, was posing for a series of selfies by the bathroom door, ensuring every angle screamed "I am thriving without you, Jared,"

Lily, on the other hand, was deep in her cups, murmuring a faint, off-key tune to herself. "Dirty work... work..." she mumbled, even her subconscious apparently having a full-blown hallucination about her overdue spreadsheet. This was a new, depressing low for a night out.

Then, the air shifted. A shadow fell over her, bringing with it a smell. Not the sophisticated scent of expensive whiskey and a single cigarette.

Oh no. This was the unholy trinity: stale beer, three-day-old cigarettes, and desperation. It was less "Lana Del Rey" and more "leering predator who probably has an alarming number of unpaid parking tickets."

She winced, a subtle, involuntary twitch of her nose. A man, if you could even dignify him with the term without feeling a profound sense of pity for the species, was suddenly looming over her. He possessed the kind of smile usually reserved for villains in direct-to-DVD horror flicks—too wide, too eager, revealing a yellow tooth that seemed to gleam in the dim club light like a tiny lighthouse. His hair, what little remained, was styled into an optimistic comb-over that had clearly lost the fight against gravity hours ago, clinging precariously to his scalp.