What's left (残り物)

10. In a passionate kiss

I walk through the gates to see a city full of life. Buzzing neon lights, music, buildings, the sound of engines, but the streets are bare. The only sound in the streets before are the rustling of a few papers. No one is outside these buildings. Boris once again heads forward as always leading me to wherever we may be going. The streets are somewhat quiet with only muffled music in distant rooms. Boris goes forward inside a building with a glowing pink sign of a pill falling into a martini glass. I of course follow him inside. It's some sort of desolate bar with only one customer at a barstool and a bartender washing a glass that appears to not actually be dirty in slightest. Boris takes a seat at one of the stools and pats one beside him looking at me with his jade eye. I take a seat and Boris converses with the bartender "Welp seems I've found a loner all by himself, Erika, I decided to bring him here and show him around the place." He chuckles a light bit "Much better than that dumpster you were in, huh?" I smile and humor him "I don't know this place seems like a much bigger dumpster in comparison." We both cackle at the dumb joke I made. The bartender, Erika, seems to smile with her colorful pink hair glinting in the light. Her eyes are a deep ocean blue with a large shape to them. She stares at me and in shock at my face she states "Jeez fuck, you got a little..." I smile and joke back "Is there something on my face?" She smiles back and chuckles "Yeah I think there might be a local doctor around here if you want to check out your bullet-to-the-face-itis" I laugh at the name she gave it as she didn't know it's painful origin. She says in a friendly tone "What are you feeling today I'll let you have a free drink for being such a funny one." I look behind her and see no drinks nor bottles and ask the simple question "What do you have?" She smiles and answers "A little bit of every drink if you're into the poisons but if you're looking for something not so hard we have simple drinks as well or you can have the tabs straight from the pack if you've got a sweet tooth." I look baffled at her "Tabs?" She chuckles a bit "Y'know the candy pills?" I try to remember and it dawns on me all the commercials I saw on the flavor tabs. They were these pills that you could pop into a bottle of water and in mere seconds the entire bottles contents were turned into whatever drink the tab's flavor was. To call it a water flavoring would be underwhelming it. Not only would it change the flavor but add the nutrients concentrated inside the capsule dispersed throughout the liquid. It essentially alchemized water into beverages with a hint of caffeine in all of its contents. It was engineered for military usage originally as a pill that would act as a super-vitamin that stimulated blood generation in the bone marrow as it fed it high stable doses of iron additionally containing salt and sugars to replenish any blood and nutrients lost from wounds but, it eventually saw other commercial usage from military scientist. The product was less addictive than your average soda but still managed to spur up fanatics of the product seeking to make their own bootleg tabs. It usually was an in vain effort as you required a specific machine to make the drug. The tabs had a wide selection of flavors ranging from strawberry lemonade to cookies n' cream smoothie to hard vodka. Of course some people felt that the pure tablet itself would be delicious and people would place it under their tongue and have their mouth fill with flavor replacing any saliva they made with a concoction of enzymes and flavoring. With it's wide range of flavors I assume it was one of the many things I missed out on in the old world. "Uhm do you happen to have a tea?" She smiles "We most certainly do. Any tea is specific?" I think for a second and answer "A sweet tea is good for now." She looks under her counter and pulls out a drawer with many boxes each with different labels on the top made from tape and marker. Labels such as "Chamomile" "Ginseng" "honey" "Cannabis" I eye the cannabis label out of curiosity. She places down her cleaned tall glass pours in the clear water and in pops a brown and white pill that immediately oxidizes and dissolves spreading like an explosion and shifts the tone of the glass to a thin red and then rests to a dark brown done with its work in mere seconds. I stare at the glass for a second and take a sip. The flavor is sweet and smooth like the tea it imitates. It sits well on the tongue and is even throughout the entire drink unlike the powder flavoring I imagined it as. It was not powdery, the bottom was just as sweet as the top it was not what I was expecting at all. A drop emanates from my lip as Boris' ever so curious eyes look around and see the drop. "You've got a little something on your lip!" He says and quickly leans in and suckles my wetted lip. He stops his suckle and pulls back with a completely indifferent expression on his face. His eyes have no look of lust or affection just the same smiling expression as if he was watching a television show. My eye however was widely opened as a cold feeling filled throughout me of something I didn't expect. He breaks my awkward stillness with a sentence and confused look "What's wrong Gray?" Erika the bartender laughs in the sides and speaks to me "You have to forgive Boris. He's a sweet one but the guys awful when it comes to people." Boris looks back at Erika "Uh what did I do?" She laughs more as she goes back to cleaning the glass I finished

and I simply just smile.