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“Akechi-kun, please. We need you to finish the entire plate.”
Goro snaps out of his reverie to see the cameraman move back behind his camera and readjust the lens. To see and hear the director sigh and clear his throat as he taps at a manila folder that documents the points they’ve been scheduled to cover. Behind him, an assistant shuffles around, the loud click-clack of her heels against the café’s checkerboard floor almost deafening as she repositions the portable studio light.
“To further accentuate your handsome face, Akechi-kun,” she tells him. She moves it forward another foot and then back again until it shines directly into his line of sight. It is much too bright and much too hot—so much so that another bead of cold, sticky sweat rolls down his neck into the back of his shirt collar. “Now, please.” She gestures to the plate on the table in front of him, both of her hands facing palm-up in an overly explicit showing of generosity. “The pancakes.”
Goro smiles. It doesn’t reach his eyes, so he forces them to crinkle, trying very, very hard to match the delicate uptick that sits at the ends of his lips. To remain as calm as humanly possible in the face of something that so easily breaks him. “Ah, yes, of course,” he says, all faux charm. “Please excuse my rudeness.”
He looks back down at the plate. On it sits what basically amounts to a heaping stack of calorific garbage. Two squares of butter melt into a yellow-white froth and drip down a stack of hot, fresh pancakes. Maple syrup—once held inside a porcelain ramekin, safe from consumption—soaks into their spongy, fluffy guts. There’s homemade whipped cream, too. Powdered sugar. A large but dainty A etched out in hardened chocolate for garnish.
Beneath the table, Goro clenches his hands. “It’s just that I’m, ah, already very full…”
It’s a lie. Yesterday, he had half an apple, one CalorieMate, and two black coffees given to him for free after some dutiful flirting at LeBlanc. Today? Nothing. Honestly, his stomach is nearing empty. It growls, rolling in on itself as it searches for sustenance. It wouldn’t make any sense, anyway, because—
“Why would you eat beforehand?” the director snips, slapping the folder down onto his knee like a whip. The cameraman jumps, startled, but Goro only winces, gripping harder through his gloves. It was a stupid thing to say. “Did you even read the brief?”
He watches a dollop of whipped cream ooze and then fall. Of course he read the brief. Why wouldn’t he? Last week, after he had shot Okumura’s shadow in the back of the head, he had come home and read it front to back and then over again. Had placed it on his nightstand and then wondered how many calories he would need to cut to make the whole thing less painful.
Gingerly, Goro picks up the fork. “My apologies, sir.”
There are some sacrifices that must be made.
Out of habit, Goro chooses the last-most stall in the Omotesando station restroom. Already, his stomach churns, too heavy and too full, ready to be rid of its unwelcome filth.
At least preparation is quick. It has to be, or he can’t maximize the amount of calories lost.
Carefully, he rolls out exactly twelve squares of toilet paper and sets them onto the floor in two stacks—six, and six—before kneeling and setting his knees on top of them. He ties up his hair in a loose ponytail. Places his face above the toilet, and breathes in.
The first push is always the most difficult, mentally. His nose fills with the unpleasant, chlorinic stench of station cleaning products. It doesn’t make him sick, though, which is what he’s after, so he concentrates on something that he knows will—the disgusting ooze of pancake fluff, how easily they split open to reveal their soft insides in the same way that a shadow’s body rips open and bleeds out when killed. He thinks of the director, too, old and sat on his ass—don’t be rude, Akechi-kun, and why can’t you follow directions?
Fuck directions. Goro’s spent his entire life following directions. Tomorrow, he knows he’ll be measured and weighed again by his agency, and if anything has changed by even a centimeter, by half a kilo, it will be marked down and then scrutinized by a team of people he barely knows.
The world feels hypocritical. Stupid.
His stomach lurches, which grounds him. Saliva pools into his mouth, and he can feel it—that first wave of delicious nausea that hits right before it all comes gurgling up. He grips the edge of the toilet and retches.
Nothing.
Two fingers in his mouth, now. They push down on his tongue and then slide back, further, until his throat constricts around them. He coughs and chokes through it, gripping at the toilet’s porcelain rim until he gags so hard his chest hurts. Finally, he heaves into the toilet and spills out a part of himself that he hates and loves at the same time—the only part that holds even a modicum of control in this corrupt, vile world.
The first real dribble of vomit stares back at him.
Mockingly, it floats around in the toilet bowl, challenging him with its minute size and lackluster consistency. It’s slimy, runny, and he can still feel it in his mouth when he smacks his lips and runs his tongue over his teeth. Its taste is sweet, almost overly so, but slightly acerbic, too—maple syrup, mostly, and a little bit of something else that he figures is probably stomach acid. To be honest, tasting it feels like he’s eating it all over again, which is unbearable in and of itself.
He spits a second time. It’s just to get the flavor out, but it won’t leave, the lingering spit cloying and thick on his tongue—
His stomach churns again, hard. After that, it’s easy.
He doesn’t even need to use his fingers. It simply pours out of him again, threatening to come up through his nose, burning hot. It's all soft, though, easily one of the better things he’s vomited. Inside the toilet sits a beige mush in the form of regurgitated pancake, and something white and frothy, like whipped cream. It pleases him, so he does it again, and again.
It’s not long before he sits up and flushes. From his attache case, he pulls out a small, handheld mirror to check his reflection before leaving the stall.
The face that stares back at him is almost a stranger. It shocks him. Bare-faced and flushed red, Akechi Goro looks nothing like his usual self.
He scrubs at his skin with the back of his hand. It wipes off the lingering concealer that’s already begun to smear and pill around his lips. He pulls down his hair, delicately combing out the knots with his fingers.
A brief glimpse into the mirror again. God, he looks terrible.
But it’s no matter. He’ll just have to wear a mask home, because, surely, it would be suicide for him to appear as anything less than perfect.