Chương 112: Paper straws

June's usual slight smile was fully deadpan now. It was an odd sensation to both sit comfortably in a memory and faintly feel your body trekking through adverse conditions. His skin felt wet and uncomfortably dry at the same time, as he sat in a booth across from his voided twin who loudly sipped from a near-empty cardboard cup, making a loud gurgling noise as juice failed to enter his paper straw.

"I know this is supposed to be a memory of the past, but couldn't you have at least made the ice cream machine work?" The figure stirred the ice in his cup with a dissolving paper straw.

"Believe me, I have an urge to change a few things too, but it wouldn't be authentic then!" In the booth behind him, a younger version of him sat and quietly watched videos from his favorite creator as his mother talked to a friend over the phone while eating fries. June assumed that he would be thrust into his shoes once again for a duration, but instead, he and the voice simply followed his past self around.

He had a feeling that the Voice was trying to prod out a result, but frankly, he and the Voice seemed to share a discomfort when looking at their past selves.

They found it easy to dismiss their own pain or simply ignore it, but in this moment, they were looking at their past selves from the outside.

"It's hard to look at that kid and not feel a bit bad!" A gunshot rang from outside the rundown fast-food joint, but no one seemed to care, not even his past self, his past mother, or the staff. This was a store he frequented when he was younger, mainly because his living conditions at the time dampened his appetite, so, in an attempt to get him to eat, he remembered his mother often bringing him out to the restaurant.

"Next time we go out to eat together, be in a memory or not, we're getting Korean hot dogs!" The figure gnawed on the soft paper straw's tip, despite not having a mouth.

"Uh-huh, I was thinking sushi!" The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Sushi's good… Wasn't there a shitty sushi spot nearby?"

"I'd prefer fresh… er sushi; I don't have a stomach, but I don't want to get the runs." The franchise fast-food joint was connected to an equally run-down mall, with a small bakery within. The food was sometimes sold after the expiry date, but it was one of the few things that the young June ate during his year. Why exactly was he thrust into an incredibly low-income area that was equally filled with crime at his young age?

Well, several months prior, his alcoholic father had a psychotic outbreak and attempted to kill June's mother, and now that they were separated, his mother was unable to work, so he lost his home and was relegated with her to a women's shelter in a horrible area. June stood up and patted his rear for any dust or grime from the leather chairs. He popped the lid off Voice's cup and his own and walked to the self-serve machine to refill it with a mix of root beer and another fizzy soft drink.

'Am I broken…? I think I'm just a little weird…' Weirdly enough, June never outwardly complained about his life and luxuries being taken from him; for some reason within his mind, he simply didn't care; he accepted the hand life dealt him a long time before he was moved to the shelter. The cup slowly filled up, with the machine occasionally giving out and spitting pure syrup instead of the accompanying liquid that made the drink, considered juice.

He glanced to the side and watched the inhuman figure awkwardly tap against the cracked table while waiting patiently for June to return. June still carried some doubts about the Voice; it was hard to simply accept the Voice as part of him in a logical manner, but emotionally, or literally, it felt like they shared a connection to something, maybe the void, or maybe the body that the Voice constantly brought up.

There were perks to being the voidman's physical twin; they shared similar codes of ethics, and the only reason why June didn't just let the Voice handle all the tough parts of his life is the same reason why the Voice doesn't let June handle the tough parts of his. They shared memories, ideals, and emotions. It was like two computers of similar capacity running the exact same OS with the exact same files.

June also couldn't figure out if he should feel patronized by the Voice's coddling, consider it some odd form of self-actualization, or consider it some weird, perverse self-hatred.

'Self-hatred….. that's basically spite, at least to me!?' June could sense it from the Voice, and he had a feeling the Voice could sense it from him; they both had a case of the self-hates. They survived through horrible conditions through pure spite spurred by self-hate as a catalyst; it was both self-destructive and the fuel that propelled them to survive this long.

June fiddled with the cup lids for a little while, getting increasingly frustrated as he covered one side, and the other popped off, but after an embarrassing amount of time, June finally returned to his counterpart with the refilled drinks.

"Wanna wander the mall for a bit?"