So Much It Hurts

Akashi looked around at Taylor as she heard Taylor try and excuse her bowing. "Let me give you a tip...' She said with a smirk. ""The Japanese bow whenever the situation is appropriate. And when in doubt, just bow..." She said and chuckled before she meandered into the shop. Taylor bee-lined towards the wrestling paraphernalia but Akashi was a little slower. She looked at the manga and all the anime stuff. She was behind on the few manga she read and could stand to pick up a few volumes.

But she was snapped out of her slight stupor as she heard Taylor call out to her. "Eh?" She said and went over to Taylor. She blushed and looked atthe poster of herself. It was her, in a bikini about to try and axe handle Angel in her first ever title defense at Summer Splash.

She blushed and pushed it aside and looked at Taylor. "Eeeeeh... why did that pick THAT picture! I... I'm not even in the ring! I... I didn't even HIT her with that move!" She then lowered her head a bit. "I do look pretty ferocious I guess... and... pretty hot..." She blushed even more before looking up at Taylor. "Ahhh... Hey..." She said and put a hand on Taylor's shoulder.

"Now that you're all big time and stuff, you must have gone throw some of the promotional BS, right?" She said. "You have to get me a copy of one of your posters!" She said with wide eyes. "Oh.. and sign it too! I wanna put it on the internet and make a fortune!" She then chuckled at Taylor, joking a bit. 'But no really, sign it, punk." She said and brought Taylor's shoulder for a quick hug.

"oh! oooh... we should try and convince them to get one of us as Kamikaze!"

"Do you think they would? I... went through all kinds of PR crap. I posed and posed and posed until my abs were sore. I dunno what they want to do with that stuff. God help me if they ever interview me. Well, the one guy did before the match with Natalia. I didn't really know what was going on."

Taylor wandered off away from the posters and ran her fingers over the covers of some autobiographical, inspirational, smutty, and generally self serving books co-authored by former wrestlers, each with the girl on the glossy cover posing like she was all that. There were plenty of photo books and other such things to keep the fanboys happy.

She rounded the corner at the end of an aisle and came face to face with an endcap display of little resin figures. She ran her eyes over them... lots of Wrestle Angels girls in triumphant and tough-looking poses. On the bottom shelf were a few that looked like AFW Hentai material. One caught her eye. She squinted at it, then leaned down. She picked it up to be sure it was who she thought it was.

She giggled. "Kashi." She summoned again. Her giggle grew to a laugh. "This is good. This one is good." She held up the box to show Akashi a resin figure of Natalia, in a sexy pose, winking with her tongue stuck out. "Isn't this amazing?" She laughed some more and looked back at the box. "It isn't quite right though. Her butt sticks out more in real life."

Natalia. Taylor had thought a lot about her in the last week. She could never bring herself to write her off, even after bring jumped in the AFW halls by her and Adrian. She wanted to say that she hated her and didn't want anything to do with her, or that she was a ridiculous waste of time, but she couldn't. She eventually came to the conclusion that she just wasn't sure if she liked her or not, but she felt drawn to her one way or another. She felt like they were somehow alike, but she had no idea how. At first glance they couldn't be more different.

"Kashi..." Taylor said more soberly. "What do you think about Natalia?"

"Yeah!" Akashi said with an excited tone. "I'm not the champ anymore but I think I could still throw some weight around and get somethings done!" She then grabbed her belly. "I got enough of it!" She said and stuck her tongue out.

Akashi slowly followed her way towards Taylor, looking at some of the other stuff in the shop,not really noticing the figures until she was poked by Taylor again. When Taylor showed her the Natalia's figure, Akashi's face blushed and her eyes widened. "I... I'm glad they showed me in my bikini now... Ah.. Ah... Y-you can totally have that one, Natalia-chan."

She then paused when Taylor Aasked about Natalia. She became quiet too for a moment. "I think she's a good kid. Pretty darn good in the sack too..." Despite her words, Akashi didn't change her tone. She didn't smile or joke, she said the words seriously. "But... she's a bit misguided. She needs some friends, good ones." Akashi turned her head. "Not that... Adrian isn't... or wasn't capable of being a good friend but, um... She also isn't capable of being a good friend yet either, at least not for someone like Natalia. I'd say she needs her cute tush kicked some more but maybe... I don't know if that would be quite the best for her either. She just... needs some more tough love I think. She needs straightforward kindness, without strings attached. But it's hard for the girls in AFW to give that kind of love and even harder to receive it sometimes."

Akashi lifted up her hand and rubbed her hand up and down Taylor's back. "Why?" She asked. "Still thinking about your match? I know it's hard to compare a win with a loss, but that was a tough match, I could understand if it was still on your mind. I..." Akashi paused suddenly and smiled. "You really connect with someone if you have a tough fight with them. That's something no one understand until it happens, even girls in this league I don't think understand it."

"Yeah..." Taylor said. She figured that's about what Akashi would say, and truthfully she wasn't totally paying attention. Her mind drifted off to Natalia and the match. She thought about Akashi and their fight and their new relationship, if she could call it that. It was weird. Everything seemed so different to her, and she wasn't sure if she'd recently lost her mind or found it.

Taylor sighed. "Yeah, I am. And Yeah, you do... I mean, not for nothing but I freaking rolled her, but still... maybe that was lucky. She could've kicked my ass too, but she just wasn't ready for me. No one is..." Taylor said a little boastfully and smiled.

She tucked the Natalia figure under her arm. She had a plan now. She looked over the other little resin figures and noticed that a lot of them were from anime and manga. Sitting right next to the real life AFW ones, they were almost indistinguishable. "Man, anime stuff is so realistic, it's crazy." She said, poking at some skanky anime girl. She picked up one of Akashi in her mawashi in a low, wide sumo stance.

"Hee. I want one." Taylor said. "When are they gonna make mine?" She also noticed one of Sarah Gatt. She paused, and then walked away.

She headed back to the posters and grabbed a rolled up tube of the poster of Akashi. She leafed through a few more and found a poster of Sarah in the ring, looking insane, standing over a downed Akashi. She scowled and turned away again, almost running into a magazine rack. She immediately began sifting through the nerdier ones with her eyes to find wrestling stuff, and she reached out to grab an AFW magazine. It had Sarah on the cover, of course.

When she picked it up, she saw that on the bottom corner there was a posed picture of herself. She paused, trying to comprehend what it meant, then she began leafing through it fell open to a 2-page centerfold of Taylor, standing on a turnbuckle and leaning out, holding her new belt high, with a huge, elated grin. Taylor inhaled sharply and held her breath.

"Kashi..." She said. Suddenly she felt like she was going to cry.

"Eh...?"

Akashi had gave an opinion and it seemed like Taylor wasn't really listening to it. She looked at Taylor thoughtfully and when Taylor answered her in such a way, Akashi frowned. "It was a good match." She said again. "She's pretty tough but you did good." She wasn't going to take away from Taylor's victory but it probably could have gone Natalia's way. She couldn't guess how many times in ten the outcome would have been different even though she was pretty sure that it would favor Taylor.

She grinned when Taylor spoke so confidently. She couldn't help it. But she was surprised when Taylor picked up the Natalia figure. Why would she want that. Then she picked up a figure of her. "H-Hey! W-why would you.." Akashi blushed deeply. She couldn't understand why Taylor would want a figure of Akashi. It was really embarrassing. But she pushed through it. When Taylor asked where hers was, Akashi grinned devilishly. She goosed Taylor. "Ohoho! You have to do more sexy poses like Natalia-chan before you get yours!" She said and gave a squeeze before she quickly pulled away and got her distance from Taylor.

Akashi then watched as Taylor sifted through the magazine. When she stopped at her centerfold, Taylor beamed but then she saw Taylor's face. "T-Taylor-chan..." She said, tilting her head. She came back to Taylor and she put an arm around Taylor's "What's with that look?"

"I just... want... I wish..." Taylor choked out and held the magazine tightly with both hands. She looked up at Akashi and forced a tight, out of place smile that quickly gave way.

All at once, she fell apart. She coughed and doubled over and then sobbed violently, just once. She covered her face with her hand so that Akashi, and the guy at the counter, and the billion people in the mall wouldn't be able to see her red, scrunched up face. Almost immediately, tears began to roll down her cheeks.

In trying to keep herself from crying she also couldn't talk, until finally she let go. She collapsed, kneeling on the floor with her face in her palms sobbing uncontrollably. It was almost weird the way it happened, it almost seemed like it wasn't really her who was doing it.

"I miss them so much." She sobbed. "I miss... I just wanted him to see this, and..." She shook the magazine and dropped it on the floor. More sobbing racked her body, but soon abated enough for her to talk again.

"Gaawd. I miss them so much, and I miss him and I love you so much and I want this so much. God, so much it hurts. But he'll never see me again. I don't even know if he knew where I went, but I'm here now, and..." She paused and shakily drew a deep breath.

She looked up at Akashi, red eyed, her face streaked with tears. She was calmer. "This is it, Kashi. I know..." She paused and looked off into space. "Being here... I know it is. Everything is different now because I'm here." She looked at the floor by Akashi's feet. "Do you know what I mean? Or... am I making any sense?"

Akashi's eyes widened as Taylor suddenly went from happy-go-lucky to sobbing and breaking down. She sucked in a breath as Taylor hit the ground. She bit out her lip and reached out her hand. She sucked in a breath through her nose and Knelt down to touch Taylor's back.

Akashi knelt next to Taylor as she sobbed and spoke. She rested her hand on Taylor's shoulder and squeezed it tightly. She listened attentively and tilted her head to catch all the words that were uttered to her.

Akashi smiled weakly at Taylor and as she looked won, Akashi reached out her hand and wiped away Taylor's tears. "I.. I think so..." She said and looked at Taylor. "Ah..." Akashi shut her mouth and ant pulled Taylor into a hug. "Maybe our situations are different...but... I am sure that I feel the same way." Akashi smiled a bit more. "I think. If I look back at everything, then maybe I think that I could never imagine myself here. But then, now, I can't imagine myself anywhere else..."

Akashi didn't understand. Probably. That was okay, she didn't need to. Taylor didn't really expect her to understand her insane rantings anyway.

"That's okay..." She said quietly to nothing in particular. She stood back up and wiped off her face with her palm, trying to regain her composure. "God, I'm such a disaster. I can't wait until I don't do this anymore. But... maybe feeling stuff too much is better than not at all. I just miss my family, even if I never really had them in the first place. But now my family's here, and I'm not here because of my parents or anything, I'm here because I know I need to be, and... I feel better. I do. Probably doesn't look like it though..."

She stopped. She picked up the AFW magazine. It was all wrinkled and half ruined from being white knuckled and tossed around. She pulled another fresh one off the rack and added it to her pile. "I'm going to send this one to my mom, not that she'll care. I just want to."

She pushed her two figures and her poster across the counter to the cashier, and grabbed a permanent marker from next to the register. On the front cover of the magazine she wrote "Mom, you probably don't care but this is what I do now."

She sniffed. Her face and her eyes were still red, but she was calm. She looked blankly at Akashi, then walked back to the racks of wrestling junk. She began grabbing everything that caught her eye, books, DVD's, posters, and little resin statues, and only a few that weren't AFW related. After several minutes she returned with a massive armload of stuff that she managed to dump mostly on the counter. "This too." She said to the cashier.

"I think I'm going to redecorate a little." She said. "Hey, when the hell are we doing that match against Heather and Cecelia? Shouldn't that have happened months ago? Maybe I need to get an agent, then this wouldn't happen. They're probably dodging us. Wouldn't surprise me."

Akashi watched as Taylor continued to break down. The sumo didn't really have anything she could say tos oothe Taylor but it looked like it was cathartic for the punky girl anyway. She watched as Taylor explained herself and tried to fight her demons. After Taylor decided to go on a mad shopping spree, Akashi grinned.

As she Taylor amassed a huge pile of junk, Akashi's eyes widened. "Oh! I can't leave empty handed!" she cried out. She rushed out and made her grabs, getting back to the counter. She set down two volumes of manga and a poster, a much smaller bounty than Taylor, but she was ok. "Yay, caught up on Giant Queen Sakura now! Mina-chan will be pleased!" Akashi then looked at Taylor and grabbed her shoulder and gave it a tigt squeeze before smiling brightly at her.

"Arigatou, Taylor-chan! Anyplace left to go?"

"This too." Taylor said and handed the cashier her credit card. "Whoa. How much is... 52,100 yen in dollars?" She stopped to think about it, but couldn't begin to do the math. She wasn't sure on the exchange rate, anyway.

After the cashier finished fitting the mountain of stuff into an array of little plastic bags, Taylor hefted most of them and turned to leave with Akashi. "Well... to tell you the truth, I kinda just want to go home and chill. It's been a... weird day. Food, too, I'm starving. Why don't you come eat lunch at my place? If Mina's not gonna be home and stuff..." She threw her weight into Akashi and playfully thumped her shoulder against Akashi's side. "I've even been learning to cook a little bit. It's hard. So much wasted food... I can make some Japanese stuff. Are you hungry?"

Taylor took a deep breath and blinked several times. She felt pretty good, considering. It seemed like she'd vented a lot of stuff that had needed venting for a while. She just wished that she hadn't done it at a freaking mall... It was a little embarrassing. Hopefully the AFW wouldn't get so big that they got recognized all the time. Taylor didn't exactly keep a low profile with her bright blue pigtails and skanky street punk clothes.

She sighed. "I wanna meet Mina, too. When am I gonna meet her? And god I miss Johnny. Akashi, I wish I was gay so we could just go home and do it and I wouldn't have to be so... so... ya know. But you do nothing for me, man, I can't help it. It's out of my hands. I just need Johnny's firm, muscly pecs rubbing up against me or I can't get going. Maybe we should go to Kyoto instead of my house so I can get laid. Do you think he'll ever want to move to Tokyo? Like, for me, I mean. Am I, like, selfish for wanting him to and not wanting to go to Kyoto?"