>>5716127A handful of miles away from central Tokyo, on the seventeenth floor of an apartment complex, Watase Yoko is wading her way through the garbage heap she calls her room.
Bags of trash that were once piled away the corners of the room are slowly starting to close in on its centre, encroaching on the short, square table in front of the TV.
What it smells like she doesn't know. She got used to the scent long ago.
There's a crinkle of cans and swish of plastic as she throws a final bag filled with last week's beer cans over her shoulder, wading her way to a small cabinet previously buried under rubbish.
The blinds are shut, as always, coating the room in a comforting darkness.
The squat cabinet's door rolls open and Watase sighs in relief, pulling out half-full a bottle of hard liquor.
Watase tucks the bottle under an arm and begins to pull at the bottlecap.
The bottle wasn't stored correctly, causing the sticky content to suck at the cap.
<span class="mu-g">"Come on...!"</span> says Watase, gritting her teeth with effort.
The cap pops off and Watase smiles a bright, genuine smile for the first time in hours.
She sniffs the bottle carefully, nose wrinkling at the intensity of the liquor.
Some kind of hard whiskey. No clue where she got the bottle -- a gift, probably.
Doesn't matter now.
She looks towards the kitchen for a moment but remembers that her fridge is empty.
Nothing to mix this with. She'll have to drink it straight.
Probably no clean glass either. The bottle itself will do.
Watase takes a swig from the bottle, wincing as the drink burns down her throat.
She sighs. Bottle in hand, she stares at a distant wall in the darkness of her room -- eyes unconfused.
Long ago, before her delinquent days during in high school, Watase had a crush.
Hanamura Saeko, a girl she met during her first year in high school, they were good friends.
Back then Watase's preferences were secret, but you have to suppose it was showing on her face how she felt about Saeko.
The way the two girls interacted with each other didn't go unnoticed.
People started thinking Watase might've even gone soft.
Be different in even the smallest way and you make yourself a target for bullying.
Not that anyone would ever try anything on Watase.
Even back then she was taller than most, had a hair-trigger temper, and a tendency to hold a grudge.
This combined with a face that seemed ready to kill you over any minor grievance -- nobody would risk getting on her bad side.
Not when there's a far easier target available.
<span class="mu-g">"...Nothing's changed..."</span> announces Watase to the empty room, taking another pull from the bottle.
Then another to avoid the memories of her high school days from bubbling up.
