Âmes en peine (English ver.)

¹⁸ 𝐋𝐢𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐮𝐫

Lying on the floor of his room, Keisuke slowly exhaled the cloud of opaque smoke he was holding in his lungs. The grayish swirls spiraled up to the ceiling before gently disappearing in an almost hypnotic manner. Outside, the last rays of sunlight had long since faded, replaced by those of the moon. It was so bright that the young man could make out the outline of his arm, stretched out in front of him. His gaze lingered on his hand, then on the silver rings that adorned his fingers, and finally on the glowing tip of his blunt before locking onto it.

Normally, he never smoked in his bedroom. The smell of cold tobacco had always repulsed him to the core, something that even his bad little habits hadn't managed to change. Ironically, all the people he came into contact with - with the exception of his little sister - didn't seem to be bothered by the whiffs of smoke that flew constantly in their direction, while he himself did everything to avoid them. He never wore the same sweater twice, so much did he hate the fact that his clothes carried this scent, even the slightest bit of it. He couldn't help it. It was almost obsessive.

So, whatever the weather, Keisuke always went out in the evening to avoid filling his room with that disgusting scent. But at the moment, and perhaps because the cone swirling between his fingers didn't actually contain much tobacco, his mind was far too altered for his compulsive manners to reach him. He could have sat down on his wide-open windowsill, but his thoughts were too unclear, and his body far too anchored to the ground for him to feel able to do so. And even if he'd found the strength to drag himself up to his window, the slight draught circulating inwards would have dismissed all his efforts.

So he'd given up, as the glass beside him could attest. The little lemonade left in it already held the ashes of his previous blunt.

Music was playing through the headphones he wore. Calm and slow, the notes played were perfectly in tune with his current state. And so lulled, he would probably have fallen asleep if Hana's voice hadn't still kept him in the real world.

With the other earphone in her possession, the young woman softly hummed the phrases she knew, which amounted to almost all the music that had been playing for many minutes already. Her head resting a few centimeters from his, her voice sounded like a gentle melody. Soothing, even with the few false notes that escaped her. She had a beautiful voice. He was only discovering that now.

Every now and then, when she got the lyrics wrong, her crystalline laughter momentarily replaced her voice, and to hear her having fun over such a trivial thing was enough to remind him that she was drunk just as much as he was high. Earlier in the evening, they'd had not only the Lean he'd concocted, but also a bottle of some wine - he'd borrowed it from the expensive collection of his father, who hadn't been drinking for a few years. Hana sometimes inadvertently kicked the empty glass with her foot. It always ended up rolling back to her, and each time she let out another laugh. A laugh that Keisuke listened to with as much attention as her voice, if not more.