§
I wobbled around as I stood on my feet. My vision swayed, and I felt like I would fall if I let my guard down. I looked up, noticing the dimly visible streetlight looked like a beautiful moon in an empty sky.
“Ha ha ha, what’s wrong? Get it together!” said Toru, his face bright red. It surprised me how close he was, having his arm around my shoulder. Then I realized how drunk he was.
This news was horrible, and I was completely out of it. Even though I wasn’t a huge drinker, it’s not like I couldn’t handle alcohol. I drank at home and controlled my intake, but I had never gone out to drink with my coworkers. My body wasn’t used to consuming like this, so it didn’t take long for me to get too inebriated.
“Wait, where are the other two?” asked Toru.
“I think they went home together,” I said. “You wouldn’t let me go, and we went for rounds two and three. Oh man, Marie’s going to be mad when I get home.”
I had sent Marie and Kaoruko home before us. Marie had been worried if something had happened, so I had told her everything was fine. Unfortunately, I would have to explain what had happened tonight when I got home. The server had packed our leftovers in to-go containers for us, meaning the pouting black cat was probably eating them by now, grumbling the entire time. Toru and I had gone to another place for a long night out in Koto Ward. I couldn’t really blame him, since this had all happened because I wasn’t more decisive.
“Ha ha, what’s not to love about being tended to by a pretty girlfriend like yours?” he asked, slapping me hard on my back. “That’s a dream come true for guys like us. Kaoruko is cute, of course... But she ignores me for days when she gets angry.” He suddenly turned sad and began brooding. It was getting pretty awkward until he broke the silence. “You know, it’s hard to believe that you two are so close and together all the time. All you’ve done is hold hands and kiss once in a while.”
“N-Not so loud, please! And even that feels like I’m doing something illegal.”
He was more drunk than I was, even though I desperately tried to keep him upright with his arm over my shoulder. The alley was dark, and all of the stores had their shutters down already. I looked up and sighed, grateful that it had stopped raining.
In the end, I didn’t get to talk to him about anything important since our conversation at the Chinese restaurant. Part of it was my fault for not stepping up; I could not tell him Marie was a hundred-plus-year-old elf from a dream world, and all I told him was that she didn’t have Japanese citizenship. There was still hope because she could get approval as long as she had the ability to get by in the country without issues. Apparently, he had been so relieved during dinner when he had grasped how much Japanese Marie had learned.
I looked at Toru, thinking he was a good person. Then I noticed his eyes were gradually closing, and I said in a panic, “Don’t fall asleep! We still need to get home!”
“Nng...” he groaned. “I don’t know why, but you make me sleepy. Ugh, my head hurts... I miss my futon...”
He was totally drunk!
As I repositioned the somewhat overweight man on my shoulders, his head rolled over dramatically to the other side. There was no way this would work. He was way too big for me to hold up, and I didn’t know what to tell Kaoruko if her husband ended up getting hurt. Such thoughts ran through my head as I desperately clung to him, but that only made things worse.
Crack!
I felt a hard, dull impact. My ears were ringing, and it slowly dawned on me. Toru’s head had swung at me with too much momentum, and our heads had collided. I would have usually dodged it, yet I didn’t have my wits about me due to the alcohol.
But I had made a critical mistake. I reflected on it with a deep sense of regret and never wanted to drink too much when going out again. Our legs got entangled, and then we fell into a trash pile, a loud crash reverberating in the alley.
Unexpectedly, I snapped awake and stared blankly at the wooden ceiling. I had somehow ended up in a Japanese-style room.
“Huh...?”
To my surprise, it wasn’t me who had just spoken. It had come from the naked person beside me, who was settling into a sitting position.
I could feel my heart racing. This couldn’t be happening. There was no way. I prayed that this was only a dream, then slowly turned to my side and saw a toned young boy who was anything but overweight. He had the solemn face of an honor student and bold eyebrows. The boy looked down at his own body, flabbergasted.
Who the heck?
I had never been so confused in my life.