Utena, Revolutionary Girl Fan Fiction ❯ Arisugawa's Locket ❯ Drunk and Disorderly ( Chapter 34 )

Drunk and Disorderly

Juri looked up at the building and whistled softly. The mansion was almost over the top in it's elegance, perched on the very edge of the city of Tokyo. The fenced off lawn stretched out in perfectly maintained order, plants placed around to soften the massive band of green.

'Pretty much what I expected from Touga,' Juri silently admitted to herself. She parked her sports car in the driveway and made her way to the front door. She rang the doorbell, and waited a few moments before ringing again.

The door opened, and a perky young woman in a maid's outfit cheerfully said, "Yes?"

Juri blinked, reminded for a moment of Wakaba or Excel. "I'm here to see Kiryuu Touga," Juri said to her formally.

"Mr. Kiryuu is a bit indisposed right now," the brown haired woman said diplomatically.

"He's drunk, isn't he?" Juri sighed.

The girl paled, then she tried to stammer out a denial.

"We're old friends," Juri smiled at the girl gently, "I'm sure it'll be all right."

The girl looked nervous, "I hope so, Miss...?"

"Arisugawa Juri," she answered, pushing by the girl gently. She turned back to look at her, "Could you take me to him?"

The woman led Juri upstairs, stopping at a closed bedroom door to say, "He's in here."

Juri put her hand on the door handle but before she went in Juri asked her, "Could you start a strong pot of coffee up, please?"

"Yes, Miss Arisugawa," the maid bowed and was swiftly gone downstairs.

Going in, Juri was nearly knocked over by the strong smell of spilt alcohol. She made a face but moved into the room, quickly finding Touga Kiryuu slumped in a chair and still holding a bottle clenched in his hand. His long red hair fell limply around his face, and his skin had clearly lost the glow of health it had once possessed. She tapped him on the cheek lightly, then slapped him, but he was out to the world.

"Looks like I'll need to take some more extreme measures," Juri said with a sigh. She looked around the large bedroom, and noticed a connecting door. She opened it, took a look inside, and grinned impishly, "Perfect!"

Picking up the limp Touga wasn't as easy as Juri thought it would be, but she managed. She carried him into the bathroom, then sat him fully clothed in the tub. Turning on the tap quickly sent cold water down the drain, but she waited until it was ice cold. With a evil little smile on her face Juri turned on the shower!

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!" Touga screamed, jerking wildly as he was quickly soaked. Keeping a firm grip on him Juri made sure he stayed under the icy spray, finally helping him up only to put his face directly under the freezing blast.

"Feeling better, Kiryuu?" Juri asked as she finally turned off the water. She helped the shivering man out of the tub, glad to see a bit of color back in his cheeks.

"No," Touga snarled back. He shivered in his damp clothes before demanding, "What on Earth are you doing here, anyway?"

"Nanami went to see Keiko," Juri shrugged as she tossed a blanket sized towel over to him, "and Keiko came to talk to me. Dry out and change your clothes, I want to talk to you."

Not waiting for an answer, Juri went through the bedroom and stuck her head out into the hallway. "Is the coffee ready?" she called down to the maid.

"Yes, Miss Arisugawa," the girl called back.

"Bring up a couple of cups, we'll need them," Juri ordered.

Touga emerged from the bathroom fairly quickly, dressed in a fresh set of fine clothes. He almost looked like his old self once again, if you ignored the shaking hands, or didn't choose to look into his dark eyes. "What can I do for you, Arisugawa?" Touga asked her, barely a shadow of his old arrogance showing through.

Before she could answer him, the maid tentatively tapped at the door. She carried a tray loaded with two cups, a large jug of coffee, sugar and several different types of creamer. "Is there a parlor up here?" Juri asked her.

"Would you like the coffee there?" the maid smiled up at her. Seeing Juri's nod she led them down the hallway, setting up the coffee table for them. "Call if you need anything else," she bowed to them respectfully, and quietly left.

"What happened to you, Touga?" Juri finally asked after he had a chance to drink a bit of his coffee. "You never drank like this before," she added.

Touga sighed softly, "I wish I could say it was something dramatic." He looked down into his coffee cup, "A lost love, maybe, or some tragic loss."

Juri waited quietly, knowing there was more to come.

"When my father died, I was free," Touga murmured. "I had a fortune, power, prestige, everything that I had thought I wanted," he finished.

"And it didn't make you happy the way that you thought it would," Juri said quietly.

"Exactly," Touga looked up at her in surprise. "How did you know?" he asked.

"It happened to me once," Juri quietly admitted. "I thought that being a fencing champion would... make up for everything bad that had happened to me up until then. It didn't, of course," she smiled a bit sadly.

"What did you do?" Touga asked.

"Became a Duelist," Juri smiled at him grimly, "then I bounced around Japan a year or so, learning better ways to beat up people." She sighed softly, "I finally realized the only way I could really become happy was to fix in here." She tapped her chest right above her heart, "Not easy, but I'm getting there."

"And I?" Touga said quietly.

"I don't have any answers for you," Juri answered, "you're going to have to go find them yourself." She thought of the empty bottles in Touga's room, "But living in a bottle won't help you do it, I'm afraid."

Touga smiled wryly, looking up to meet her eyes, "Thanks."

Our Cast This Episode: Arisugawa Juri, Kiryuu Nanami, Kiryuu Touga and Keiko are all from the Revolutionary Girl Utena TV series.

Author's Notes: Continuing on from Juri's Tales #4 and the episode Out Of the Locket. I'm laying more of the groundwork for my series Eternal City: Crystal Tokyo, as Touga may become one of the heroes of that era.