And here I was wondering what might be taking her so long… I considered chewing her out a bit, but it was honestly hard to bring myself to when I saw the giddy, childlike glee on her face. Well, as long as she only took a little bit from each one, I guess.
“Man, I haven’t done karaoke in forever,” said Akira, sitting down on the other long leather seat. “Feel like singing anything?”
“Huh?!” I said. “Oh, no. No, no, no—I’m fine. I don’t like singing in front of people.”
“Damn, you sure shot that down fast. Whatever. I’m not really in the mood either, so it’s cool. Not like the machine would work right now anyway.”
With that, she grabbed a box of Pocky off the table. I caved to my hunger and tore into a bag of spicy peanut cracker mix. As I munched, the familiar tingly spices tickled my taste buds.
“Gotta say, I don’t have many fond memories of doing karaoke myself,” said Akira, biting into a stick of Pocky.
“Oh yeah? Have some bad experiences before or something?” I asked.
“Just the one, really,” said Akira, her expression somber. “Got invited out to a karaoke party by a friend back in junior high, but when we got there, it was nothing but high schoolers. Trashiest kids you’ve ever seen too. All of ’em stank like cigarettes.”
“Oof, yeah. I can see why that would be a bad time.”
“I knew right away that they were super sketchy, so I pretended I had to go to the bathroom and just bailed right then and there. Always say no anytime I get invited out to karaoke ever since.”
I was relieved to hear that the story didn’t go any further than that, and that she’d made it out of there safe and sound.
“Well, thanks for not bailing on me just now,” I said jokingly.
“Oh, please,” said Akira. “You could clone yourself a hundred times, and I still wouldn’t be afraid of you.”
She snickered, then ripped open a fresh bag of chocolates. She’d already gone through her entire box of Pocky—and it wasn’t like we’d skipped dinner or anything. Maybe she just had a second stomach for sweets.
“You ever think about dyeing your hair and getting your ears pierced, Mugino? You know—get a little waya with it? Think that’d totally change up your vibe.”
Waya? Oh, hey—that’s Hokkaido slang for “messy” or “wild” or something, isn’t it?
Anytime I heard Akira use her regional dialect, I couldn’t help but feel a little warm and fuzzy inside—same as whenever I got to see her canines poke out when she smiled. It was just one of those things that made me feel like I was getting to know the real Akira a bit more intimately… Okay, maybe that made it sound kind of lewd, but basically, I was just glad she felt comfortable enough to let her guard down around me now. I honestly kind of wished she’d speak her local dialect more, but I got the impression that she was self-conscious about it, so I’d been deliberately refraining from pointing it out. Hopefully, she’d just naturally start using it more often as we spent more time around each other. That’d be pretty nice, I thought.
“I really don’t think that’d be a good look on me,” I said. “Besides, doesn’t getting your ears pierced hurt like hell?”
“Well, I mean, duh.” Akira popped a handful of chocolates into her mouth. “You’re literally stabbing a hole in your ear.”
“Why did you get your ears pierced, Iguma-san? Just think it looks cool?”
“I mean, what other reason is there?”
“I dunno. To scare people off so they don’t mess with you?”
“Ohhh, yeah, I guess that’s part of it. Or if I had to give another one, mmm…” She mulled it over for a moment. “Maybe to increase my defense a little bit?”
“Your defense?”
“Yeah, like…it makes me feel more confident in my self-image, I guess? Like I can handle whatever life throws at me. Every time I get a new piercing, I’m like, ‘Yeah, okay. I still got this.’ Y’know? …Well, not that I have that many piercings to begin with, obviously.”
“Interesting… Okay.”
Increasing your defense by equipping more accessories, eh? It almost sounded like we were discussing Dragon Quest here or something. But perhaps the underlying rationale was the same, come to think of it. Like, maybe it wasn’t that the accessories themselves offered any tangible protection or stat boosts to your party members, but that how the characters felt while wearing them raised their HP or Attack… That was kind of an interesting way of looking at it, actually.
As we sat there making idle chitchat and gorging ourselves on snacks for a while, I felt the urge to sleep creep up on me. I could see that Akira was beginning to nod off as well, so the two of us settled down and got ready for bed in the karaoke parlor, having sung exactly zero songs between the both of us.
Once I brushed my teeth and got changed, I quickly fell asleep on the leather couch. Problem was, it was so narrow and slippery that anytime I turned over in my sleep, I nearly rolled off the seat cushions. This meant I had to sleep with one eye open, more or less, and spent a good part of the night having a series of shallow catnaps without ever truly falling soundly asleep.
Just when I was about to give up and try lying on the floor instead, I heard Akira groaning in her sleep. She sounded like she was struggling; perhaps she was having another one of those “bad dreams” she’d mentioned the other day. If so, then I couldn’t help but wonder what these recurring nightmares were about.