Chapter 3: Blood and Neon
The Blue Lagoon smelled like lemony disinfectant and last night’s regret. Sukuna shouldered the door open, the synth-pop garbage from the jukebox grating against his nerves. Neon tubes buzzed overhead, casting a sickly blue glow over the empty chrome stools and vinyl booths.
Two old men nursing beers at the bar froze mid-sip.
A kid with a mop paused, water dripping onto the linoleum.
Behind the bar, a man in a too-tight silk shirt was counting cash into a register. Goro. His hair was an obvious, helmet-like atrocity. He didn’t look up. “We’re just open. Sit wherever.”
Sukuna’s boots were quiet on the floor. He didn’t sit. He stopped at the bar, placing his hands flat on the polished wood. He saw a sticky ring where a glass had been. He imagined her hand there, trembling.
“Help you?” Goro said, finally glancing up. His smile was a practiced, slimy thing. It died when he saw Sukuna’s face, the eyes, the ink creeping up his neck.
“Yeah,” Sukuna said, his voice conversational. “Heard you got a good touch with the ladies here.”
Goro’s eyes flickered, just for a second. A crack in the facade. He straightened up, putting on a show of authority. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We run a clean place.”
“Clean.” Sukuna chuckled, a low, unpleasant sound. “My little sister came home last night. She was wearing a black dress. Nice dress. Torn now. She lost a shoe running from this clean place.”
The color drained from Goro’s face. He took a step back, towards the phone. “Listen, pal, any trouble with a girl, that’s her word against—”
Sukuna moved.
It wasn’t a blur; it was too deliberate for that. He was simply on the other side of the bar, his left hand fisted in the front of Goro’s shirt. The silk ripped like tissue paper. With his right, he grabbed a handful of that perfect, helmet hair.
It came off in his hand.
The toupee sat in his palm, absurd and pathetic. Goro gasped, a bald patch gleaming under the fluorescents.
“Her word,” Sukuna said, staring at the hairpiece, “is the only word that matters.”
He slammed Goro’s face down onto the bar top. There was a wet, crunching thud. Glassware jumped. One of the old men made a choking sound.
Sukuna pulled him up. Blood sheeted from Goro’s ruined nose, mixing with tears of shock. “She gave me your name. You bought her drinks she didn’t want. You put your hand where it didn’t belong.”
“I didn’t—!” Goro spluttered, pink spit flying.
Sukuna drove his forehead into the bridge of Goro’s broken nose. Cartilage gave way with a soft pop. He let go, and Goro crumpled behind the bar, a mewling heap.
The kid with the mop dropped it and ran out the front door. The two old men scrambled off their stools, leaving their beers half-finished.
Sukuna ignored them. He stepped over Goro, who was clutching his face, whining like a stepped-on dog. He grabbed a bottle of top-shelf bourbon—the kind of shit Goro probably showed off but never drank—and unscrewed the cap. He took a long swill. It burned, better than the swill at home.
He poured the rest slowly over Goro’s head, the liquor mixing with the blood, stinging the raw flesh.
“This is for the dress,” Sukuna said calmly.
He dropped the bottle. It shattered on the floor. Then he reached down, hauled Goro up by his collar, and threw him into a small round table. It collapsed under his weight with a sound of splintering wood.
Sukuna walked around the bar. He picked up a chrome stool. It was heavy, solid. He swung it once, testing the weight.
Goro was trying to crawl away, leaving a smeared trail.
“Please,” he sobbed. “Money. I have money!”
“I don’t want your fuckin’ money.” Sukuna brought the stool down on the back of Goro’s right knee. The crack was loud, definitive. Goro screamed, a high, endless sound.
Sukuna dropped the stool. It clattered on the floor. He knelt beside the sobbing man, his voice dropping to a whisper the jukebox couldn’t mask.
“You listen, you bald, worthless piece of shit. You see a girl with blue hair, you look the other way. You see my face in your dreams, you piss yourself. You tell your friends with the laugh—they’re next. This?” He gestured to the wreckage of the bar, the sparkling shards, the pooled blood and bourbon. “This is me being nice. Because my princess asked me not to get hurt. She didn’t say a damn thing about you.”
He stood up, brushing invisible dust from his jeans. From his pocket, he pulled out a small, sharp folding knife. He flicked it open.
Goro whimpered, trying to shield his face.
Sukuna didn’t go for his face. He grabbed Goro’s wrist, the one that had held Megumi. With three swift, deep cuts, he carved a jagged, simple ‘M’ into the back of the man’s hand.
Goro’s scream hit a new register.
Sukuna wiped the blade on Goro’s shirt, folded it, and put it away. “So you don’t forget.”
He walked to the door. He didn’t look back. The neon buzzed. The jukebox had moved on to another equally terrible song. He stepped out into the late morning sun, the cool air a shock after the metallic stink of blood and fear.
He flexed his hand. His knuckles throbbed, the old splits reopened. He smelled of whiskey and violence. He started the walk home, the image of Megumi in his oversized shirt, waiting, clinging to the front of his mind. A quiet counterpoint to the symphony of chaos he’d just conducted.
The bar was broken. The message was sent. But the fire inside him, the one she lit and only she could bank, still burned. It was a quieter flame now, a possessive, smoldering thing. He needed to see her. He needed to know she’d seen what he’d done for her, and that she understood what it meant.
He was hers. And this was what that meant.