The Night We Never Talk About

"Drink this. It should help with your head." Yusei held out a glass filled to the brim with a mushy green liquid.

Akiza glared up at him in annoyance. Unfortunately, she did not have the strength to resist. She barely had enough to keep her head up. "What is it?"

Yusei smiled, understanding the girl's hesitation. "If I told you that, you wouldn't want to drink it. Come on, it'll help with the hangover. I promise."

The young girl reached her hand out and took the glass from Yusei, eyeing up the sickly contents he was making her swallow. Akiza slowly started drinking the questionable concoction, immediately wanting to gage on the bitter, sour taste. What the hell did he put in this? She pulled the glass away from her mouth and shook her head in disapproval. "This is awful."

"I know." Yusei replied with the slightest smirk on his face.

"Anyways. Thanks for coming over." Akiza tried to smile in Yusei's direction as a 'thank you' for helping her through the consequences of her actions. "I really didn't want to call my parents and explain to them how drunk I got last night."

"It's no problem." The young man sat besides Akiza on the couch.

"I just hate myself for forgetting how much of a low tolerance I have to alcohol. I haven't had a drink in over a year and I went so overboard last night." Akiza explained, leaving out certain details of her night out with a group of her schoolmates. It was a miracle she even got home last night considering what went down.

"It happens to the best of us, Akiza."

She snickered. "I bet you've never been completely wasted before." Assuming that from Yusei's stoic personality and beyond his age maturity.

Yusei paused and swallowed hard, his mind racing back to one of his best kept secrets. "Yea, well..."

"Wait." Akiza perked her head up after analyzing Yusei's expression. "What are you thinking of?"

"Uh. I...can't really say."

"Come on, Yusei. You can tell me anything." Akiza managed to smile. She knew Yusei could never say no to her crescent lips.

Yusei sighed. He should not be telling her this. He promised not to tell a living soul this story. It was embarrassing. It was pathetic. It happened when he was young and stupid. He was a boy. A stupid, clueless boy. They all were.

Akiza would not tell anyone if he asked her not to. Right? Then again, Yusei did not want to think about what would happen to him if a certain three found out he was speaking of that fateful night.

She would not tell anyone, right?

"Fine. I'll tell you. It happened a couple years back...the first time I ever tried alcohol. Well, the first time any of us had. It was me, Jack, Crow and Kalin, living on the streets of Satellite. I guess the whole thing started when Crow was dumpster-diving with some of the younger kids, and found an unopened six-pack of beer. He brought it back to show us, but instead of drinking it straight away, we saved it.

A few days later, Jack came waltzing into our hideout with a bottle of wine he traded away his magazines for. He stashed the wine with the six-pack and the four of us made a pact to continue the booze collection until one perfect night came along to break into it. A week later, Kalin stole a bottle of vodka from one of the other duel gangs and added it to the stash. Then I did some repair work for a neighbor of Martha's and he gave me a couple bottles of beer as payment.

Before long, we managed to build up quite the collection of liquor. Then, the perfect night came. It wasn't anything special really, it was just so nice outside. I remember the air was warm with a slight breeze and the clouds of smog that normally covered Satellite were gone. We could see the stars and the whole atmosphere of the night was just so relaxing.

Jack was the one who suggested that it was the perfect night to crack open a couple of cold ones with the boys. Kalin and Crow agreed immediately and I couldn't argue with them. After we brought everything out of its hiding place, we all sat on the rooftop of our hideout, cluelessly staring at the bottles. None of us knew where to start. We had no idea how to drink alcohol, or even how to read the labels. Martha had always told us to stay away from the stuff entirely.

Kalin was the one who picked up the bottle of vodka first and started drinking. I can still remember the face he made. He took two quick swigs of the stuff then looked like he was about to throw up at the taste. Crow started laughing and Kalin almost chucked the bottle at him. Jack took the vodka out of his hands and tried it for himself. Then Crow tried it, then I did. I remember the only word I could come up with when Crow asked me how I thought of the taste was strong.

After that, we started opening up the various kinds of beer we had, tasting all of them to figure out which ones we liked. We rotated between the beer and the occasional shot of vodka, trying to get all of the different flavors and sensations down. In retrospect, we drank all of that way too fast. I remember getting dizzy and my heart was beating out of my chest. Crow was overwhelmed with the amount just like I was. He kept rocking around and spitting out random words. Kalin and Jack were able to hold onto their composers for a bit longer. That was until Jack grabbed the wine. Him and Kalin had a face-off to see who could stomach the most.

That's when the night went downhill.

From what I can remember, Jack and Kalin were laughing their asses off and Crow was rolling around on the ground. I think I was trying to talk between Jack and Kalin. Then Crow sat up and joined in on the conversation, whatever it was about. We were all yelling at each other, laughing and stumbling around. This next part is what I remember vividly for some reason. Jack said something about Kalin and Kalin got really pissed. So he swung at Jack and socked him in the face. But, Kalin followed through and ended up slamming his fist onto the ground.

Then, I tried to stand up to go over and stop them, but couldn't find my balance and I fell to my knees. Crow started crawling over to me, asking if I was okay. But when he got over to me, he locked his arms around my neck and started kissing my cheek. I remember Kalin yelled to 'miss that gay shit' or something like that. Before I could get Crow off me, he kissed me on the lips a couple of times and I spit on his face.

Then, Jack grabbed Crow's leg and dragged him across the roof, calling him a gay bird. Crow retaliated by calling Jack a pussy because if he kissed a guy it would instantly turn him gay. Well, Jack accepted that as a challenge and turned back to Kalin. Kalin, of course protested, but couldn't push Jack back before he went to tongue him."

"Wait! Wait! Wait! What!" Akiza stopped Yusei's long story just when things were getting good. "I'm having a hard time believing any of this. Coming from you four."

Yusei laughed. "Well, it happened. Unfortunately. It was after that point in the night I started to black out, so I don't really know what happened after that." Yusei grabbed the Akiza's shoulders and looked her desperately into her eyes. "Akiza, please don't tell any of them I told you this story. They would kill me!"

"Sure thing, Yusei." Akiza smirked her lips. "Sure thing."