Addiction 39

ADDICTION

By uciboy

(2022)

PART 1

Kiko Kemuri brushed aside her long, silky black hair as she cocked her head upwards and slowly exhaled a creamy stream of smoke, adding to the hazy cloud that hung thickly above the kitchen table.

God, how she loved smoking.

"Want another?" her friend Sakura asked as she reached into the refrigerator and pulled out two bottles of Asahi beer.

Kiko looked down at her watch. 2:45 pm. The kids would be home from school by 3:15. "Just one more," she said as she stubbed out her cigarette in an overflowing ashtray and reached for her pack of Virginia Slims 120's. With 30 minutes left, she had time for at least one, maybe two more cigarettes with that last beer. Her long delicate fingers pulled out a VS 120 which she instinctively brought up to her nose to smell the menthol. She lit it freehanded, performing a cheek-hollowed puff as she did so. Removing the cigarette from her lips, she let a ball of smoke emerge briefly before snapping it back and holding it deep in her lungs. She placed the cigarette back in her lips, brought her hands up to her face to once again brush back her hair, and exhaled through her nose while taking another puff.

Sakura handed her an opened bottle and reached for her own pack of VS 120's as she sat down across from her smoking companion. "Beer and Virginia Slims," she said after lighting the long cigarette. "My favorite part of the day."

Kiko and Sakura had been life-long friends growing up in Tokyo. It was a quirk of fate that both had immigrated to America at the same time as their husbands found employment in Richmond, Virginia with Philip Morris International. Sakura's husband had worked in the research lab, while Kiko's husband was employed in marketing, specifically developing new ways to target young Asian American consumers. A devoted smoker herself, Kiko loved the goal of her husband's new job. She had the smoking fetish, and she had it bad. Some would think her wish that the whole world smoked, health consequences be damned, was perverse. But to her husband in marketing, and more importantly to the company he worked for, it was a business model to be pursued. For her, it was just an erotic obsession.

Life was good for both women in the mid-2000s. Their husbands made a good living and provided them with all the cartons of VS 120's they wanted. But then tragedy struck. Sakura's husband less than a year ago had died in a freak accident in the Philip Morris lab, leaving her alone to raise one child but at least with a large settlement check from the company.

As for Kiko, her hardship was more common but no less jarring as her husband left her for a younger woman and moved to the New York headquarters, cutting himself off entirely from her and their two children. It had been ten years since she had even seen him last. They had married young; too young. But for a twenty year old female living in patriarchal Japan, the opportunity to move to America was too good to pass up. Now she struggled (emotionally, if not financially) to get by as a single mother in a foreign country.

So it goes without saying that these once a week afternoon get-togethers helped keep these two women sane.

"How are the finances?" Sakura asked her friend, following the question with a long puff and luscious French inhale.

"The

yaro

" (since the divorce, Kiko never called her ex- by his name but instead referred to him as "the bastard") "keeps the checks coming. At least I have that to be thankful for here in the US where child support laws are much stronger than in Japan."

"Oh, come on," Sakura replied, "you have a lot to be thankful for here in America." She held up her freshly lit VS. "120's, for instance, are much easier to purchase."

"True," Kiko said with a smile and a long puff. She inhaled the smoke deeply, not caring what the consequences to her lungs were. After all, being just 39 years old, she still had that young person's sense of invincibility. She just wanted to feel the power of that smoke flowing through her body. Indeed, the fact that she was helpless to fight the addiction was a turn-on for her. "Now if only Hiro and Yuki would start smoking and stop bugging me to quit!"

"Ah, American kids," Sakura replied with a scowl.

"It was so much easier in Japan," Kiko added before taking another deep puff, snapping back the smoke, and holding it in her lungs before slowly exhaling through her nose. "Hiro is 19 now, and Yuki 18. I was already a pack a day smoker by 14!" She took another puff, spread her lips in a perverse smile and inhaled with a snap. "All this anti-smoking propaganda in the schools is really making my life difficult," she said with smoke punctuating each word.

Sakura heard the chimes of the clock on the wall strike three. Any minute now her son would be home as he only had to walk across the street from the local charter high school. "Fortunately," she said mysteriously, "I don't have to worry about that anymore."

"What do you mean?" Kiko asked slowly. And then she grew excited at the thought. "Has Nate started...?"

Just then the front door opened up and a young, handsome teenager in a white shirt and gray slacks walked in. The 18 year old (whose Japanese parents decided to bestow upon him an American name) was muscular without being bulky. His hair was dyed a light brown, and his face free of the kind of acne so many of his friends suffered from. He was, most teen girls of all races at his school believed, gorgeous.

"Hi Mom," Nate said as he reached over and kissed Sakura on the cheek. The widower closed her eyes for a few seconds, savoring the moment. She was so proud that she gave birth to a son who knew how to treat his mother well.

"Hi Auntie," Nate said with a hug. He then walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of milk.

Kiko was filled with anticipation that she might see Nate smoke. She didn't have to wait long. Once the young man set down the carton of milk, he reached into a kitchen drawer, pulled out a pack of Marlboro Lights, and proceeded to light a cigarette while putting the pack into his shirt pocket. Puffing on the 100 freehanded, he grabbed a clean glass from the sink and began to pour the milk into it, exhaling through his nostrils and puffing simultaneously on his cigarette. Kiko felt a momentary flash of guilt as her nipples began to harden.

Nate walked back towards the women, glass in one hand and the cigarette clasped between his lips, puffing and exhaling with every few steps. When he reached the table, he pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and tapped it over the ashtray.

Butterflies were swarming in Kiko's stomach. If only she could get her own kids to follow Nate's example. "So you're a smoker now," Kiko said in a tone that obviously conveyed how proud she was of him.

"Uh-huh," the teenager answered matter-of-factly. "I like it."

"We all do," Kiko said as she brought a freshly lit 120 up to the side of her mouth and puffed slowly. She couldn't help herself from flirting with the young man, something Sakura watched with amusement.

"Why don't you go start your homework now," Sakura urged with a gentle touch to his back. "I'll be in soon to help you."

"See ya, Auntie," Nate said with a smile, and he once again put the cigarette between his lips and left it there as he walked down the hall to his room, carrying his backpack and the glass of milk.

Kiko held her 120 aloft as she watched the boy leave the room. When she heard him close his bedroom door, she let out a large gasp. "How the HELL did you manage that?!"

"Isn't it wonderful?" Sakura gushed, holding the 120 just to the side of a wide smile. She turned to look down the hallway towards his room. "He's such a gorgeous smoker."

"You think?"

Kiko gawked midway through a puff. "And Marlboro Lights," she added with a grin. "How

terribly

masculine."

Sakura blushed.

"So how'd you do it?" Kiko desperately asked.

Sakura looked at her friend silently for a few seconds.

Should she tell Kiko the secret to her success?

She placed her half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray, stood up, and walked towards a cabinet on the other side of the room. "You know that my husband worked in the lab at Philip Morris, right?"

"Uh-huh," Kiko replied.

"Well," she said reaching into the cabinet and pulling out an unopened two liter bottle with a clear liquid, "the basic goal of the lab is to develop products to ensure that smokers stay committed. You know, spiking nicotine levels...that sort of thing. But Ichiro was involved in a division called

Black Ops

, a department so secret that not even most lab workers knew what it was developing. Everyone assumed, however, it was how to make

new

smokers."

Sakura took a seat, placing the bottle on the table. "This was one of the projects he was working on before he died." The bottle was unmarked except for two Japanese characters written in Sharpie black ink. "He called it Nicotine Nectar."

Kiko gave her friend a quizzical look. "What's it made of?"

"No idea," she said as she picked up her cigarette. "I'm no chemist." She took a double-pumped puff, inhaled, and then a third puff which she snapped back. "He told me that there had been a series of successful tests on non-smokers; but that the company didn't want to use it," she added with smoke pouring out of her mouth as she stubbed out the cigarette and reached for her VS120's pack. "Can you imagine the scandal that would have ensued if the company had employed it surreptitiously, say in sodas or candy bars?" She paused just long enough to light the 120. "The CEO," she continued after exhaling, "was so worried about the bad publicity should news of it ever go public that he ordered Ichiro to destroy all of his research." She tapped her cigarette over the ashtray and leaned close towards Kiko in a conspiratorial fashion. "Ichiro destroyed the paper documentation, but he brought the Nectar home." She sat back, nodding her head. "I still have cases of this stuff just sitting in the house which I didn't know what to do with after he died."

"And you used it on Nate," Kiko said reproachfully, unable to mask a tone of shock in her voice.

"Well," Sakura replied defensively, "not before first trying it on myself! Of course, I've been smoking for over twenty years, so I didn't really feel any effect, except maybe that I smoke a few more cigarettes per day."

Kiko could tell she was lying. In fact, her smoking today appeared to have increased if the full ashtrays around the house were any sign.

"Just a few drops in a glass of water will make your second hand smoke smell so sweet to the drinker that they'll be dying to try it. Then," Sakura paused to take a puff before continuing, "you just let the magic of addiction do its thing."

Kiko picked up the bottle and was lost in thought.

Could what her best friend was saying be true?

It must be. Nate was a smoker now!

"Mom," Nate hollered from his room, "I need you."

Sakura was lost in thought herself as she looked down the hallway longingly. Slowly she reached into her purse, pulled out a small lipstick cartridge, and applied it to her lips. "Oh, and be careful how much you use," she said almost in a whisper as she continued staring towards Nate's room. "Ichiro told me his tests showed that one byproduct was that it served as an aphrodisiac."

"Hmm?" Kiko asked, looking up and seeing an expression of yearning on her friend's face.

"Oh," Sakura said with some embarrassment. "Nothing. You know how sexy smoking is."

"You know it," Kiko said with a wicked smile as she brought the cigarette up to her mouth for a sensuous puff. "Just a few drops?"

"Or more," Sakura said as she opened the cap of the Nicotine Nectar and poured an ounce into her beer bottle. "It tastes pretty good." She then brought the Asahi to her lips and chugged its remaining contents. "I better go check on Nate. Let me know how things go with the kids."

Sakura got up from the table and began walking towards Nate's room at a quickstep that Kiko found a bit unusual. No time to think about that now, however. It was after 3:15. Hiro and Yuki would both have arrived home.

As Kiko was exiting the house through the front door, she heard Sakura say from Nate's bedroom, "Mommy is here now"...and then silence. Kiko walked out to her car and drove down the two blocks towards her home.

PART 2

Kiko was the consummate over-protective Asian mother. She loved being a stay-at-home Mom, even holding back each of her kids from school for a year because she wasn't ready to part with them. The result, of course, was that both Hiro and Yuki were a year older than their classmates, an embarrassment that they tried to keep hidden from friends. After all, it wasn't because of any learning disabilities that they were held back; it was because their mother just couldn't let go.

When Kiko entered the house through a door which linked the garage to the kitchen, she heard both of her children in the living room where they normally congregated for an hour after coming home from school. There they would sit before changing out of their school uniforms, scrolling through their cell phones and munching on a Japanese snack made by their Mom before they got home. Kiko opened the refrigerator and saw that the kids had already pulled out the snack. "Now they just need something to drink," Kiko whispered mischievously as she stroked the bottle of Nicotine Nectar.

She didn't quite know why, but this whole machination of seeking to turn her kids into smokers made her horny. And when she was horny, she had to smoke. She lit a cigarette and pulled deeply on it while clenching it in her teeth. She inhaled through her nose as she took a second puff, and then blew a gust of smoke out of the side of her mouth. Continuing to smoke freehanded, she grabbed from a cabinet a can of instant powdered lemonade and a pitcher. Once the powder was mixed into the water, she had to determine how much nectar to add to it. "A few drops," she remembered Sakura saying, but then she watched her friend put at least an ounce into her own beer bottle. And this was a pitcher, after all, for two people. Using a measuring cup, she added five ounces just to be safe. She took a sip with a spoon. "Mmm," she hummed to herself, "pretty good."

She stubbed out in an ashtray her VS 120 and picked up the pack on the counter to put into her pocket. She then proceeded to pour the lemonade into two glasses, putting them and the pitcher all on a platter. "Sorry I'm late guys," she said holding the platter as she walked into the living room. "I got held up at Auntie's house. Who's thirsty?"

"Oh, cool," her son, Hiro, said. "What's the occasion?" He took one of the glasses and immediately brought it to his lips, taking gulp after gulp until the glass was two thirds empty.

Kiko smiled.

This wouldn't take long at all.

"No occasion," she said as she sat down on one of the living room chairs next to her daughter and proceeded to light a cigarette. Immediately Yuki got up, made a feint cough, and moved to another chair on the other side of the room.

"That's pretty good, Mom," Hiro said as he finished up the glass. "It tastes a bit different, though."

"Does it?" Kiko asked innocently. "What do you think, Yuki? Why don't you try it?"

The 18 year old with shoulder length jet black hair, was moving her thumbs at lightning speed on her phone. "I don't like lemonade."

Kiko grimaced. "Since when?"

"Since

forever

," she said in that teenage tone that made Kiko feel like an uncaring parent who knew nothing about her children.

"Come on, Yuki, don't be like this," Hiro said. "Just try it."

Yuki stopped texting and put down her phone with one immense frustrated sigh. "Okay," she said picking up the glass. "I don't like lemonade, but apparently everyone here wants me to drink this, so I will try it." She took a sip and winced. "Too sour," she said dismissively, and put the glass back on the tray.

What a bitch of a daughter I have,

Kiko thought to herself with a disapproving wag of her head. Yuki reminded Kiko so much of herself at that age: rebellious; independent; not taking shit from anyone. With that kind of personality, why on earth, then, had she not yet started smoking?

"You don't like it Drama Queen?" her older brother asked. "Then I'll take it," and he picked up the glass and kept drinking until it was empty.

A frown broke out on Kiko's face. This wasn't going to plan at all. How was she going to get her daughter hooked if her brother kept drinking her portion? She, after all, was the one who gave her the most trouble about her smoking.

Yuki gave another cough that Kiko could tell was performative. "I'm going to start my homework now," she said in a tone of annoyance, and headed off to her room.

Hiro, however, stayed where he was sitting on the couch, feeling dizzy. "You okay?" Kiko asked him with great interest, wondering what effect so much nectar at one time would have on him.

The handsome young man, hale and muscular like Nate but with black hair and a few acne scars that gave his face a rugged character look, closed his eyes. "I think I drank too much at one time," he replied with a burp. "My stomach feels really weird."

Was Kiko witnessing a transformation? She took a puff on her cigarette and casually exhaled the smoke towards her son who normally would have been repulsed; but this time he remained still with his eyes closed. And then she noticed that he was breathing in the second-hand smoke through his nose.

Hiro opened his eyes. "That smoke smells really nice. Is it a different brand?"

SUCCESS

, Kiko exclaimed in her mind.

Thank you, Sakura!

"Nope," she said calmly as she took another puff on the cigarette and let the uninhaled smoke slowly drift out between her lips towards Hiro. "It's the same brand I've always had," she added afterwards with thin wisps of smoke emerging from her mouth. She saw a yearning in his eyes, but she had this sense that it was wasn't just for smoking. He was growing visibly uncomfortable, even shifting his legs at one point.

"Well," he said shyly, "I better get on to my homework." He picked up his backpack and walked toward the hall to his room. Before he did so, though, he turned to look at Kiko. There was that expression of yearning again. Was it just for a cigarette?

Alone in the living room now, Kiko was thrilled to the gills. Hiro was as good as a wannabe smoker. She just needed to make it easy for him to try it by leaving open packs around the house. That is, after all, how her own mother got her started in Japan. Or was her mother just careless? No matter. Kiko had her first cigarette at 14 and loved every puff since then. A few years back, she started leaving opened packs where her children would find them, but she soon realized that they were not taking the bait. Indeed, for them it was unwanted bait. She just couldn't understand why her kids had no interest in smoking.

She heard a door down the hallway open and then watched Yuki pass through the living room into the kitchen. She then heard the refrigerator door open and close. Yuki, saying nothing, again walked through the living room, staring straight ahead and holding a bottle of water.

"Got it," Kiko whispered softly as she realized how she could eventually get her daughter hooked. She poured the remainder of the lemonade from the pitcher into Yuki's glass. She took a gulp, liked the taste, and finished it off, figuring there was probably an ounce or so of Nicotine Nectar mixed in that glass. Sakura was right.

That Nectar does taste pretty good.

PART 3

Kiko loved growing up in the urban setting of Tokyo. There was always so much to do; so many places to eat; so many bars to drink at where she could flirt with the salarymen. She and Sakura met two of those men in a karaoke bar one night in Tokyo's Kabukicho's district. Both were young, hardworking employees of Japan Tobacco International who had dreams of working abroad. Sakura and Ichiro fell in love at first sight. But for Kiko, it was more of a marriage of convenience; a relationship based on

lust

rather than love. Both she and her husband certainly "loved" the fact that they were both smokers; and she had to admit that the sex was very good. Someone who has the fetish can only truly be satisfied in bed by someone who also has it. Both Kiko and her husband knew how to please each other. That was enough, at least at first.