Flashing Lights

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Budapest was one of the most amazing and historically rich cities you have ever visited on your vacation, but the tourist spots had run out, and with that the possible activities were reduced to a very few, among them, the well-known nightlife of Budapest. the Hungarian capital.

You went from disco to disco, from pub to pub, and despite the fact that a couple of these places had resulted in a very gratifying experience for you, you were looking for something more, something that marked a before and after on that vacation trip. You were completely alone in the city, so you didn’t really have a guide or someone to show you in detail all the possible places you could go, much less the ones that were most hidden from the public eye.

You had been your own tour guide for the entire week you were there, and you were determined to continue to be so even if it cost you to get into some dangerous place controlled by some random organized crime gang. That was how you embarked on a tedious search to find that place you wanted to find so much.

In order to do this, you had to get quite far from the city center. You had rented a car from the first day you arrived, so it was not difficult for you to move freely through those unknown yet charming streets. You drove for hours on a clear and silent Sunday night, turning corners and stopping at various alleyways to no avail.

Feeling defeated and with no desire to continue searching, you were already preparing to return to your hotel. Grim-faced and slumped-shouldered, you U-turned a corner, that’s when you saw it at the end of a blind street, a glitzy, elegant establishment that immediately caught your eye. It wasn’t too big, and it didn’t seem to be too crowded either, judging by the number of cars that were parked on the curb.

From a distance you couldn’t make out what was on the few but striking signs that adorned the front of the place, it was when you parked behind one of the nearby cars that you realized (with your poor eyesight) that the signs were neither written nor in Hungarian or English, but in Japanese. Now, that was a peculiar place. Your brain told you that the most logical thing was to turn around and go back where you came from, but your heart screamed that you risked discovering what was behind all of that, besides, in the worst case it was as easy as getting out of there and going back to your hotel… right?

You were completely unaware of what the hell it said in the signs, and you were lazy to take out your phone just to use Google Lens, you could perfectly well be getting into a human slaughterhouse and you weren’t going to have a fucking idea until you had an electric saw on your neck. Even thinking about all that, you got out of your car confident and determined, heading to the mysterious establishment.

The windows were tinted jet black, and the door didn’t give much information about what you were going to find inside, either, the only thing you knew was that the owners of the place had to be quite wealthy, since the facade was made of obviously expensive materials, dark varnished wood, you didn’t know the type, and black marble with small golden veins that reminded of gold nuggets.

You didn’t know if it was open or closed, in fact, you knocked a couple of times without getting a response from inside, but the signs were perfectly lit and you were listening to music inside, so you decided to stop by. Bad mistake, at first.

As soon as you entered, you entered a wide corridor with shiny marble walls, adorned on each side by traditional Japanese lamps that illuminated the space in purple, under your feet a black carpet stretched that led to the end of the corridor, which you noticed that there were stairs that led to a floor below.

As you walked down the hall to take the stairs the sound of the music got louder and louder, and the reverberation of the place made you realize how big it was and how deceptive it was from the outside. You went down one step at a time, somewhat fearful of what you would find when you got to the floor below, but when you did you couldn’t be anything but speechless.

The place reminded you of a nightclub, but it certainly wasn’t, it also reminded you of a kind of private club, with a large bar, pool tables, and darts, but nothing further from what it really was. There were Asian women in provocative outfits of all kinds, from super-tight latex bodies to more revealing outfits like sexy lingerie or straight underwear that left little to the imagination. Some were waitresses, others were in charge of the bar serving drinks, and others were in charge of giving dances and acting as escorts for visibly wealthy individuals.

Astonished as well as confused, you took a few steps forward without anyone noticing your presence yet. Not knowing quite what to do, you put your hands in your pockets to walk towards the bar and ask for something to drink, but a hand on your shoulder stopped you, which pulled you and made you turn around. You came face to face with a stocky Japanese gorilla with a very unfriendly face, dressed in a classy suit and with a prominent beard.

“What the hell are you doing here kid?! Huh?!” he asked in heavily accented English, grabbing your sweater with both hands. The music was pretty loud, but the man’s screams still stunned you.

“Uhm… the door was open,” you said innocently, knowing you could get your ass kicked for your insolence.

“Out there it says: ‘ENTRY WITH PRIOR RESERVATION ONLY’!!” he shook you hard, and you began to realize that you had entered the wrong place, full of the wrong people, “and you look so fucking broke to pay for being here.”

“Oh, so that’s what the signs said, dammit,” you sighed, “so why the hell don’t you have a bouncer at the entrance?” you asked, not wanting to offend or cause a conflict, but the Japanese man didn’t take it well, his eyes filled with fury, and he raised his fist to punch you, but was interrupted by a female voice.

“Takashi-kun! Tomeru!!” the woman behind you exclaimed, speaking in Japanese. The man immediately released you, bowing to the person you couldn’t see.

“Momo-sama! Hontouni sumimasen!” you were smart enough to at least know that he was apologizing. You stepped aside, so you could finally see the woman. You were completely stunned by such beauty.

The woman was dressed in a sleeveless black jumpsuit, high heels and long gloves of the same color. Her wolf cut and her slightly damp hair fit perfectly with her beautiful face, sharp features and deadly gaze. Her bare shoulders were unbelievably sexy, and you didn’t need to see much to realize how big her chest was.

“Ima sugu koko kara deteike!” she exclaimed again, standing next to you without even seeing you yet.

“Hai, okusama!” the man replied with his head still down, turning to walk away. You just saw everything, without understanding a damn what they were saying.

“Please excuse him, he takes her job too seriously,” she said now in perfect English, turning to look at you.

“No problem,” you said, smoothing your hoodie, “but my question was genuine, why don’t you have anyone at the door?”

“Because no one ever got here by chance, and the people who do never get in,” she crossed her arms, staring at you. You started to get nervous, “now tell me, what are you doing here?”

“I’m a tourist here in Budapest,” you started, glancing at her in short intervals, “I’ve visited every possible tourist and night spot, and since I still have a few days left here, I went looking for something new,” Momo laughed.

“Yeah, you did have to search quite a bit to get here then,” she said with a smirk, looking you up and down, “I don’t know if you’re very brave or very stupid, if I hadn’t been here Takashi would have given you the beating of your life.”

“I was just curious, and I don’t know fucking Japanese to figure out what it said outside.”

“You do know that Google Lens exists, right?” She asked that just to reconfirm your stupidity, she didn’t give you time to reply, “You know what? Normally I’d kick you out of here nicely, but you caught me in a good mood today, and you’re pretty cute…” She took a discreet step towards ahead, closing the distance between you but not too much, “where are you from?”

“I’m from the UK, beautiful,” you said, trying somehow to flirt with her. She nodded slowly, still looking into your eyes.

“Do you know how many men I’ve slapped for trying to flirt with me while I was out of their reach?” she asked, raising an eyebrow and pressing her tongue against the inside of her lips.

“I don’t know, will I be one of those men?” You looked at her in greater detail, her sexy bare neck and shoulders mesmerizing you.

“Not for now…” she noticed how you looked at her since you weren’t being discreet at all, “just don’t be smart with me.”

“I’m a good boy, don’t worry,” you smiled.

“Very well, good boy, why don’t we go to my office?” your inner self screamed with joy at that moment, you went looking for copper and found gold.

“To your office?”

“I’m the founder of this place, Hirai Momo, my pleasure,” she held out her hand, and you shook it in complete bewilderment, now that was a twist, “follow me.”

You followed the Japanese woman from behind, taking the opportunity to take a better look at your surroundings. You could perfectly tell how successful and famous that place was among the people of power, wherever you looked you would find some luxurious object or some detail that made you realize the amount of money that flowed between pockets. The men passed for every possible race, not just Asian, but every one of them seemed to have enough money to buy a fancy house on a quiet weekend, you could tell by the quality of their suits, how shiny their watches were, or the type of drinks that were on the tables in front of them.

Momo took some stairs that led to an upper floor, where you entered a long corridor where the red lights were dim but bright enough for you to see the sway of her sexy hips as you walked behind her.

“This is all built underground?” you asked, as she stopped in front of a door.

“Yeah, it saves us a lot of potential inconvenience to the neighbors,” Momo replied with her hand on the knob, “but it was fucking expensive.”

She opened the door, and you entered a spacious room that was mostly lit by the dim ceiling lights and the light emanating from the massive aquarium Momo had embedded in the wall to the right. The first thing to enter were two long light gray sofas with a marble table in the middle, and in the background on the left, two individual sofas in front of the woman’s long desk, with nothing more than a Mac and few decorations on. Floating above the desk, a rectangular ceiling lamp. And in the corners of the room, 4 plants of the same type. Finally, a big detail that caught your attention was the pole that was installed to the right of the desk, but you decided not to comment on it.

“Wow, you’re doing well, aren’t you?” you asked, looking at the aquarium to your right.

“Contacts are everything, you start with a small grain of sand and end up with the sahara desert right in front of your nose,” Momo went down two steps and passed between the coffee table and the sofa, “would you like something to drink?”

“What do you offer, Miss Hirai?” you asked, watching her walk towards a pantry to the right of her desk. You walked down the same steps, standing there with your hands behind your back.

“Whatever you want, sweetness,” she turned to look at you with a peek over her shoulder and then to the pantry, “Gin, Whiskey, Vodka, Red Wine, Rum, Cognac…”

“A red wine is perfect and it’s the fastest to serve for you,” you looked around, looking again at the pole and then at Momo, wondering what possible use she had for it, but the answer seemed more than obvious.

“How thoughtful,” she said amused, “Le Lucere or Pinot Noir?”

“I’d love to know about wine, so I’ll leave it up to you,” you laughed.