Chapter 3.2

Dan felt like anything would be fine as long as it wasn’t Chris Paul. Having put away the vanilla, citron, and peach one after another, he felt the alcohol spinning in his head and making him dizzy but didn’t hold back.

It was vodka over 40 percent, but only 50-millilitre miniatures. The sweet and tangy and smooth scents, different with each bottle, gave him the feeling of drinking a fruit wine. Only after finishing the cool pear and refreshing mandarin did he realise he had drunk too much.

“So… what? Deduct it from the weekly payyyy.”

All that remained was the Absolut in blue lettering, colourless, odourless, tasteless. The bleak and gloomy feeling had improved considerably.

Dan opened the last miniature and drank it straight down. He came down the stairs with unsteady steps, the empty Absolut miniatures rolling one after another behind him.

“Hehe.”

He tossed away his glasses and knocked back the last Absolut in his hand. He took a drink, laughed once, murmured once.

“This is good.”

Alcohol is a wonderful thing.

“Chris Paul that damned bastard can come at me…!”

Energy that hadn’t been there surged up.

“…Sorry, I didn’t mean it. A little, just a teeeeny bit I thought that for a moment. For god’s sake…”

Just as Dan was about to put the Absolut bottle to his lips again, the front door, locked by the security system, opened.

At the sound of the lock disengaging his loosened eyes turned around. It was raining again in Dublin. The afternoon gloom added to the dreariness of the rain and the sky was dark and overcast.

Chris, coming in through the front door, found Dan sitting on the living room floor knocking back Absolut vodka.

“Hehe.”

Dan laughed strangely.

“Tifosi.”

“Hm?”

Chris came and stood in front of the grinning face.

“Did you drink?”

“Heh.”

The face that had tossed its usual glasses somewhere stared blankly up at him.

“…”

Dan, looking up at Chris’s face far above from his seated position against Chris’s standing one, let out a strange laugh.

“Heh.”

Dan kept spreading the bizarre laughter. It was a face he rarely got to see clearly, always behind thick-lensed horn-rimmed glasses and often angled downward. Otherwise it wore an indifferent and blank expression that didn’t show emotions easily.

“Masssster.”

Dan said demurely, clutching the Absolut miniature bottle to his chest. A smile spread across his flushed pink cheeks from the rising alcohol. Chris frowned at the strange behavior of a drunk person.

“What?”

“Master. …You’re, ahem, here, ahem?”

Barely comprehensible words rang out.

“Tifosi.”

Chris reached out a hand toward the drunk face. Dan reached out his hand toward the firm hand coming toward him and got to his feet. The mouth that had been repeating master put force into the fingers holding the Absolut miniature.

“Master, ugh!”

Having gotten up, Dan spilled hot and sticky liquid all over Chris’s chest right below his chin with a retching sound.

“…”

“…”

A long silence followed.

Drip, drip.

Only the sound of the sticky vomit Dan had expelled on Chris’s chest sliding down broke the quiet space. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Even in his drunk state Dan understood what was happening and how. Chris looked down at his vomit-soaked chest and frowned.

“You actually threw up just because I told you to throw up?”

Dan, who had vomited generously, coughed. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Emptying his stomach and coughing, he felt his head slowly coming back to him.

“I.”

“You, what?”

“The thing is.”

Dan grabbed the corner of the man’s ruined clothes and mumbled with his lips.

“Tifosi.”

“I.”

“You, what.”

The sticky vomit soaking Chris’s chest was trying to flow vertically down over his abs along the shirt hem toward his trousers. Before the vomit could spread further Chris took off his shirt.

Watching that Chris, Dan kept moving his mouth.

“The…you know. Me. On purpose. That.”

Dan, putting out fragmented words, coughed with a tired face, then put out another strange combination of words, then coughed with difficulty.

“What did you do?”

Chris finally couldn’t hold back and said it harshly. Dan, who had been mumbling vaguely with a blank look, hesitated and then let out a weak sound.

“Huh…”

Tears flowed down his flushed pink cheeks.

“Tifosi.”

Even at Chris’s hesitant call, Dan cried easily. He heaved his hunched shoulders and cried out loud holding the Absolut miniature tightly in his hand.

“Tifosi.”

The quieted voice called the crying Dan again. Dan only cried. Chris grumbled at the sorrowful face shaking its head.

“What did you do so right that you’re crying?”

He disliked alcohol. His feelings toward alcohol were close to aversion. It wasn’t that he disliked and was averse to all alcohol. But he basically disliked alcohol.

Chris’s father’s hands shook when he wasn’t drinking. His words trembled badly at the ends, and he reacted sensitively and irritably. In contrast, when he drank he became generous, spoke cheerfully, and his hands didn’t shake. So he became more dependent on alcohol.

He couldn’t like alcohol that reminded him of the father who had become an alcoholic. The sharp alcohol smell that stung the tip of the nose, the unfocused eyes, the drunk face where rationality had slackened by an inch. He was mostly indifferent to alcohol, which reminded him of things he disliked, but sometimes he disliked it, and sometimes was averse to it.

Everyone drank.

Chris saw his father in drunk people. His father didn’t get angry or irritable or cause scenes when drunk. Rather, he expressed violent emotions and showed anger when without alcohol.

Even so, Chris caught glimpses of his father in drunk people.

He couldn’t like the state of being drunk itself. Drunk people sometimes cried and shouted. They laughed madly, expressed emotions they had been hiding with intensity, and sometimes threw punches. They caused trouble and happily did things they wouldn’t normally be able to think of doing.

Seeing in other people the anxiety and fear he had had to feel at his drunk father, Chris felt contempt. He had grown enough not to tremble in fear over not knowing what his drunk father might do, but no matter how he tried to ignore it he couldn’t view alcohol favorably.

The only alcohol Chris could view favorably was alcohol sitting quietly in a display cabinet that no one had touched.

“What did you do so right that you’re crying?”

“Hmm…”

Dan sat down on the carpet and heaved his shoulders holding onto Chris’s trouser leg. Below his flushed hot cheeks, lips wet with saliva moved.

Chris frowned and peeled off Dan’s t-shirt, which was splattered with saliva and tears and vomit.

“Don’t cry.”

He grumbled like an older brother stuck with a troublesome child. The removed t-shirt wiped at the face smeared with tears and saliva and vomit. The soft navy cotton t-shirt passed over the face and it came clean, but tears flowed right back down again.

“Tifosi.”

At the patient-sounding call Dan murmured.

“…I was wrong.”

It was a face that truly hated admitting it.

“Obviously.”

Chris answered firmly. Dan started crying out loud again. Chris smirked soundlessly watching the top of the head crying like a child. After crying for a good while Dan raised his eyes and said:

“I was wrong.”

The pronunciation was completely slurred but the will to say it while desperately not wanting to was apparent.

“Alright.”

He said it in a tone that said that’s enough.

“I was wrong…”

Dan murmured, tears dripping down.

“Yes, alright, you were wrong.”

Chris said, wiping the wet cheek with his hand.

“I was wrong.”

Dan cried out loud like a child again and murmured. Drunk people were unpredictable as always.

“Obviously you were wrong.”

A voice without a drop of mercy answered.

“Hic hic hic.”

Dan cried burying his face in Chris’s wet trouser hem. The sadness came through and it was pitiful, but somehow the crying was comical. Chris suppressed the urge to laugh and bent his knee to meet his eye level.

“So am I fired?”

Tear-filled eyes looked up at him. The teardrop clinging to his eyelashes was pitiable. It was a face that conveyed sorrow yet made you want to laugh.

“Why would you be fired?”

Chris shook his head and wiped the tears from the sorrowful face. In that instant Dan stopped crying abruptly.

“Mm. Then… I’m not fired?”

The face that had been dripping tears was clean as if it had never been crying. At the dramatic change Chris had to recall his employee’s background. He hadn’t heard the words aspiring actor.

Chris shook his head. At that Dan put on his characteristic blank and indifferent expression and wiped the tear-wet eyelashes with the back of his hand.

“So I’m not fired.”

Still slurred pronunciation, but the completely transformed attitude gave Chris a strange feeling like he had been conned. The face that had stopped crying was clean as if asking why it had ever cried.

“Finished crying now?”

“Yeah.”

“Right.”

Chris held out a hand to the now-calm Dan.

“What?”

“Hand that over.”

Dan’s hand still held the Absolut vodka with the blue lettering on the clear bottle. His other hand, the one not holding the bottle, had Chris’s trouser hem firmly in its grip.

“Hic.”

Seeing Chris’s extended hand, Dan, who had been quietly and cleanly composed as if that had all been false, heaved his shoulders violently again and let out a weak sound. Holding the plain Absolut vodka in one hand and Chris’s trouser hem tightly in the other, he started crying again.

Damned drunken nonsense.

Chris set his eyebrows at the growing sorrowful crying.

“…”

Dan, who had been crying with his forehead against the nearby knee, sniffled and said:

“I, I really want this. Hic.”

“Tifosi.”

Chris looked back along the path Dan seemed to have taken and frowned. Between the living room and the hall, in the centre of the hall, along the stairs coming down from above, Absolut vodka miniatures were scattered here and there.

Chris couldn’t understand Dan, who was craving more alcohol even after drinking through an entire miniature set.

“Are you going to take it?”

Tear-brimming eyes looked at him.

“Hand it over.”

Chris tried to put his hand on the bottle. Dan pulled the bottle back away from the approaching hand and looked up at him.

A feeble tussle went back and forth over the bottle. Then a face with pink cheeks scrunched up pitifully, eyelashes laden with tears, came right up close to Chris’s face. It was a wretched face full of desperate pleading for him not to do this.

“Don’t. Are you really going to take it from me?”

The tearful voice was plaintive. It was a resonance that made the one trying to take the bottle feel like the villain.

“Hand it over.”

Rather than snatching it forcibly, Chris held out his hand.

“No… no, don’t.”

Dan shook his head and pulled the approaching hand toward himself and buried his face in it. [Read on RanaTranslations🌸] Chris sighed at the face pouring out tears and carefully wiped the wet cheek at his fingertips.

Dan’s tears collected in the large hand.

“Don’t cry.”

Come to think of it, even though he was an alcoholic, his father, who would hand over the bottle with a pleasantly regretful face when asked, was a gentle drunk. He patted the shoulder of the vicious drunk Kim Dan.

Dan cried so sorrowfully it was impossible to scold him. But Chris was not someone who indulged a crying person.

“You should hand that over.”

Chris said quietly.

“Why are you really like this?”

Dan cried out loud like a child again. The sight of him hugging his knees and burying his face looked very sorrowful and pitiful.

Drunks.

Chris let out a deep sigh.

“Why are you really like this?”

“I. This, I really, really, really want to drink it.”

It was annoying, but somehow the drunk stumbling and halting pronunciation made it entertaining to watch.

“No.”

“You don’t drink so you don’t know.”

Dan shook his head and threw a tantrum.

“Yeah, I don’t know.”

At Chris’s cold words the sniffling shoulders drooped.

“You’re really mean.”

“Hand it over.”

“Why can’t I… drink alcohol freely either?”

Chris listened patiently to the tongue-twisted words. He patted the tearful Dan and steadily demanded he hand over the bottle.

“You should hand it over.”

Dan’s response was unchanged.

“What do you… know!? You don’t drink either and…really tough bastard. You don’t know. Why do you keep trying to take it away? Don’t. I’ve only had a little. Really. Yeah? So don’t do this.”

By this point it was suspicious whether he was pretending to be drunk and finally saying everything he had wanted to say.

“Alcohol is a psychoactive substance. If you drink too much you die. Even though I don’t drink I know that, and you’ve drunk a lot. You need to stop, so hand it over.”

Chris soothed the tearful Dan but didn’t back down about taking the bottle. He listened to his employee’s tongue-tied drunken ramblings without getting annoyed once, but showed the face of a firm employer when it came to the matter of the bottle.

So Dan cried again. He was completely immersed in crying sadly and sorrowfully. The face that had cried enough to seem on the verge of dehydration said:

“You’re awful.”

Chris couldn’t hold back and laughed.

“Yes, I’m awful. Hand it over.”

Dan usually went about his work with a blank indifferent face. The nuance was mostly that he didn’t like it, but ‘you’re the employer and I’m the employee so I’ll go along with it’.

The Dan who had seemed blank and indifferent, clutching a bottle and crying while pleading, was endearing even to Chris, who was close to averse to drunken behavior, drunk people, and alcohol itself.

“Is it funny?”

Dan said like a wounded boy. At that reaction Chris laughed again.

“No.”

“Is it entertaining?”

“You’re a little pretty today. Still, stop drinking.”

At the quiet words the tear-filled eyes wavered.

“What are you saying. I’m not pretty. The pretty one is you. Awful person. Lying is bad.”

The lips with the smile rising on them answered:

“Am I pretty.”

“Mean, cold. Awful person.”

The drunk Dan ranted into the carpet. From the tear-brimming eyes, tears fell onto the carpet. The voice trembling with distress was full of anger.

Chris stopped trying to soothe or comfort or reason and just quietly smiled. The drunken ranting didn’t seem like it would end any time soon. All the wavering and stumbling words up until now also seemed like pure drunken ranting.

He threw away the shirts that showed no signs of recovery. He went and brought back a large cup filled with water for his employee who was expected to be in the grip of dehydration soon.

The tearful face full of resentment glared at the man.

“Ease up on those eyes and drink some water.”

Chris held out the cup of water to Dan, who was on the verge of crying at the boundary between the dining room and the living room. The sorrowful face poured out tears from its eyes and shook its head.

Just as Dan had done to him once, Chris brought the cup to the stubborn face and fed him the water. Dan drank the water while crying.

The sight of him clutching the bottle even while drinking water was amusing and pitiful. The other person might not remember due to the alcohol, but it was a sight that made you want to tease them thoroughly.

“Hand that over.”

Chris said without warning. Dan, who had been drinking the water while crying, swallowed wrong and coughed while crying. The face with resentment multiplied several times over looked up at him.