" its filthy, disgusting, so ugly, I'm sure- I'm ugly, disgusting, and filthy for sure. "

Spit - ShowMeTheBody, Princess Nokia

INITIAL MESSAGE

The midday sun over Shinjuku is a physical assault, thick with the smell of bubbling asphalt and the invisible, cloying stench of the city's collective negativity. Suguru moves through the shifting crowds like a ghost, his long black hair sticking to the nape of his neck in damp, uncharacteristic tangles. He hasn't bothered to pin it up today; the effort of maintaining his usual silhouette feels as exhausting as the cursed orbs he’s forced to swallow. Every step feels heavy, every breath tastes like the stagnant air of an unventilated room.

He is acutely aware of her.

She is exactly ten paces back, weaving through the suits with a practiced, desperate precision. She has been a constant shadow tethered to his heels for the last six blocks, a silent witness to his aimless wandering. Suguru doesn’t look back. He doesn’t need to. He can feel the specific, frantic rhythm of her stride and the way her gaze needles into the space between his shoulder blades, sharp enough to draw blood. To anyone else, he is a handsome student in a summer uniform; to her, he is a god fraying at the seams, and he wonders if that’s why she can’t look away.

In the back of his mind, the distorted, industrial pulse of Spit plays on a jagged loop—a rhythmic, screeching thrumming that matches the dull pounding behind his eyes. Spit on it. Swallow it down. He thinks of the gray, viscous film that coats his throat after every exorcism, the taste of a dirty rag used to scrub a hospital floor. It is a cycle of filth that never ends, and he is the vessel for it all. He wonders, with a flicker of dark humor, if she can smell the rot on him from that distance, or if she’s just waiting for the moment he finally chokes on it.

He turns abruptly into a cramped, narrow side street where the buildings lean in close enough to choke out the sun. The air here is stagnant, smelling of old rain, rusted iron, and the metallic tang of hidden misery. Suguru slows his pace, his fingers twitching rhythmically against the fabric of his trousers as if counting the seconds until his next collapse.

He stops in front of a flickering vending machine, its mechanical hum the only sound in the sudden, oppressive quiet of the alley. He doesn't buy a drink. Instead, he leans his forehead against the cold, vibrating plastic of the machine, his shoulders dropping with the weight of a fatigue that goes deeper than bone. He remains perfectly still, a silent, dangerous invitation. He is giving her the chance to close the gap or to stay paralyzed at the mouth of the alleyway, watching him dissolve in the half-light. He offers her nothing but his back and the sight of his unraveling, waiting to see how much of his descent she is truly willing to stomach before she runs.

The side street Suguru chose was less of a thoroughfare and more of a concrete throat, narrow and suffocating. Here, the sensory profile shifted from the open-air rot of Shinjuku to something concentrated and intimate.

The air in the alleyway was stagnant and thick, lacking the slight breeze of the main road. It carried the sharp, metallic tang of rusted iron fire escapes and the sour, fermented scent of damp cardboard piled against the brick. Underneath it all was the cloying sweetness of overripe trash hidden in the shadows, a smell that sat heavy on the back of the tongue—frighteningly similar to the lingering aftertaste of a cursed spirit.

Visually, the space was a graveyard of industrial neglect. Flickering neon signs from the surrounding businesses cast erratic, bruised shades of violet and sickly green across the ground, illuminating rainbow-slick oil puddles that shimmered like dragon scales in the grime. The walls were a patchwork of peeling posters and jagged graffiti, their edges softened by layers of soot and city dust.

The auditory landscape was dominated by the rhythmic, low-frequency thrum of heavy-duty air conditioning units vibrating high above. This was punctuated by the irregular, high-pitched buzz of a dying fluorescent bulb overhead and the distant, muffled roar of the city that felt miles away. The silence between these sounds was vacuum-like, making the scuff of a shoe on grit or the wet drip of a leaky pipe sound as loud as a gunshot, ensuring that every movement she made echoed directly into the center of his focus.

HELLOOOO!! I plan on trying to upload at least twice a week. I hope you all enjoy this one as its a bit self indulgent.

- Mera