This is a test of my ability so I may delete the story in any fit of low self-esteem or inadequacy I may experience.
Meanwhile I will attempt to complete it.
The italics in this story will generally represent Soi Fong's memories
I own nothing
She sat absent mindedly strumming a repeated bittersweet chord on her acoustic guitar which she had painted with two parallel stripes, one black, one yellow running right down the middle. It was an activity she took part in constantly as she was prone to finishing work early and the left over time she would use to practice. Her mind today though ,wasn't on the soft lingering tones of her guitar as the strings vibrated at her touch, but on a previous occurrence, a conversation as it were.
"Soi please? It's just one night, they need a singer. Inoue's got bronchitis."
She had busied herself with paper-sorting upon the black haired girls entrance. She didn't offer an answer.
"Soi? Soi!? Would you at least respond!"
With all the papers in place she had no other distraction from the girls voice which she realized, with an abhorrent glare, was in fact asking this favor of her. So she gave a simple answer.
"I don't sing Rukia."
Rukia gave her a matter of fact look, finding this answer unsuitable.
"Byakuya says you can! That you used too. Come 'on I'm desperate here"
There was a sudden fiery anger in her stomach and she just barely contained herself from hitting the girl who dare bring about such a subject, the target being Byakuya's little sister was a slight incentive to nonviolent actions. Of course on the outside this flare was unnoticeable.
"Byakuya is wrong I don't sing anymore."
Rukia had left defeated, as was Soi Fong's intention, but the conversation kept replaying in her mind like some skipping disc, that no matter how much she tried wouldn't go foreword. She concluded it was the subject matter. It had been awhile since someone had brought up her singing.
Unable to focus she lay her guitar down on the couch, which was (like the rest of her apartment) perfectly in order, she sighed. Her mind already wandering into less than friendly territory.
She hadn't sang at all since-
Soi wanted to stop there, she yelled at her mind to be quiet. She felt tears bite at her eyes.
In a flutter of activity she bolted to the closet, snatched her favorite jacket (the one with the kanji for two on the back) and a scarf, and was out the door and down the stairs. She found as she exited the building that it had started snowing and a small bit of the precipitation had already accumulated on the dark corners of the Tokyo streets. A single breath seared her lungs with freezing cold air and distracted her from her troubling thoughts as she blew out a visible breath. Twilight had passed long ago and car lights whizzed passed. She tucked her chin into her scarf and thought of a destination. She hadn't decided when she saw the flyer sticking out from a snow bank.
It was as if she had entered a déjà vu, she bent over and pulled her hand from the now warm cocoon of her pocket and stuck her pale fingers into the matching snow to grasp a corner of the damp flyer.
It had a familiar picture on it, of a black cat with golden eyes. Across the top it said in soul wrenching letters, Black Cat performing December 18, 10:00 then an address. Her heart nearly stopped. She checked her watch. 10:05 12/18. Her legs started moving.
She didn't know the address, didn't know the place, didn't know if she could get in. She flew around a corner and almost knocked over a tall man but didn't stop to say she was sorry in her excitement of seeing the street name she was looking for. Her eyes barely caught street numbers until she found a place that was familiar, a club she'd been to before with the address se was seeking. A bouncer stood outside a stairwell leading down. Colors flashed on the landing , the sound of a band playing could barely be heard over traffic.
She ran up and pulled a wallet out of the back pocket of her jeans as she'd always found purses an unnecessary hassle. Fumbling she eventually grabbed a fistful of money and pushed it into the bouncers hands, the confused man dropped quite a bit of it on the sidewalk but she breezed passed him into the club, jumping down the first five stairs onto the landing then nearly falling down the rest.
She managed to regain her balance and looked into a room filled with smoke and excitement and people bouncing up and down to the beat a drummer was laying out. She looked up to the stage and her heart dropped. She had been wrong.
There was no familiar faces there, she looked at the band members. A blonde man void of a shirt in leather pants, his messy blonde hair and odd hat covering his eyes. The drummer was a woman with rugged features whom seemed eerily familiar and the bassist was a man with slicked back brown hair and an odd mystic feel about him. With a sudden lapse of understanding she realized there was no lead singer. The lighting left the middle of the stage in shadows and she felt her body tense, on edge, hoping for too much.
The light came on and time stopped.
The club around her disappeared.
On the stage the woman's hair was longer, her clothes different but her eyes, skin, and smirk where exactly the same. They both saw each other at the same time and she registered the shock in the woman's eyes, the shock she knew must have been mirrored in hers. Moments passed moments that, by the guitarist's odd looks, the woman should have been singing and when she finally raised the microphone to her lips all that was muttered was:
"Soi Fong?"