Downstairs the room is huge, split into three roughly equal sections. Each one is themed, with staff and dancers wearing appropriate uniforms depending on what the theme is, and the divide between them is demarcated by glow-in-the-dark lines upon the floor, that stretch from the bar to the toilets and let customers know what to expect. The lights are not too bright but also not too dim, because after all here the appeal is in the details. Melanie, at the bottom of the stairs, is stood in the fascist section, vaguely leering at this baby-faced young man in a tight leather SS uniform or a parody of one, pressing his taut buttocks against the metal pole he's sharing his stage with. Bordering it are the communist section (Soviet and Chinese and Vietnamese uniforms etc.) and the jihadi section (they're doing this awesome erotic fake beheading routine that she can only sorta see from here which is a shame because it look so cool). This is literally a nightclub dedicated to violence and oppression and terror and wanting to have the enemy rubbing their genitals on your face. Melanie wonders why she couldn't have heard of it before all this. Right now though she's on a mission from God. Although she does spend a few minutes as a patron of the boy in the SS uniform. Switching between studying in great detail his ass grinding against the pole and looking for Miyuki amidst the dancers customers staff etc. She's wearing a different wig and an obscure dress and she thinks this might give her time enough to corner her prey.  The knife is in her purse, since she's placed her heavier bag and her coat in the cloakroom.
She patrols the fascist faction, past all these people, male and female, Japanese and gaijin, united in their love for National Socialism. This couple holding hands while a dancer in Nazi hotpants rubs her legs upon the man, the woman watching with interest. A lone Japanese guy sat surrounded in a booth surrounded by swastika flags being given a private dance by this chick dressed in what Mel swears is a replica of Hitler's famous brown uniform get-up. She spies this bespectacled young woman dressed as a Japanese Imperial Army soldier putting on the act for a party of expat boys, drawing her sword and threatening to decapitate them if they try to escape again. Her pumps splash in beer and spirits and other spilt substances. Commieland has this huge hammer and sickle hanging over it and Melanie crosses the border surveyed by two handsome older men in East German gear, a neat touch.
Here the sadomasochistic elements are even more obvious, which at first throws her because you'd assume the Nazis were the ones everyone wanted to secretly be dominated by, but she stumbles across this beautiful woman in a Soviet uniform, bright red lipstick, pale skin, tall and elegant, asking her in a husky voice if she wants a dance, and she has to admit the effect is even more striking than the mock Aryans and the glorious Nihonjin of the previous quarter. Must be warm in that winter coat. Melanie with some effort moves on, past a suit-clad young man being subjected to what she overhears are apparently sexual brainwashing techniques, this lovely combination involving a load of electrodes along the inside of his open shirt and this cute as a button pseudo-Russian with her boot resting arrogantly on his groin, twisting this way and that and making him groan with each movement. A pair of women in sexy cosmonaut outfits poledance on platforms shaped like red stars above her (I'm better than that of course, she thinks).
She glances back at the guy getting sexually brainwashed, who now has the woman's breasts right up in his face as he flails about, hands tied to his chair, tongue lapping vaguely at her nipples. It makes her feel kind of nostalgic. Gosh but it's warm in here. Very hot. Actually smaller than it looks. A little hard to breathe. The man's eyes are glassy, like he's been shot full of something. Suddenly Melanie is gasping for air, feeling arms wrap themselves around her chest. She stumbles to one side, steadying herself with one hand on someone else's table. That someone swears at her in Japanese and she tries to mumble sorry but her tongue is swollen and stuck in her throat and there's these bright lights flickering on and off in her eyes. She pushes herself away, staggering across the floor. One hand finds her purse and she's fumbling about for her medication.
“Are you okay?” Well fuck me it's Miyuki. Her hair is black and she's dressed as a Chinese Red Guard rather than a Harajuku girl, but the piercings are still there. She hasn't recognised Melanie yet. Melanie wolfs down a pill, swallows. Goes through Dr. Iori's five steps. Tries to get the sensation of someone suckling at her front to go away. She manages a smile, just about. “I'm fine. Thank you.” Her Japanese French-accented as always, very distinct. How, she wonders, has Miyuki not figured it out. Or maybe she has, whatever. Melanie still struggling with thinking a little. “Can we go somewhere quieter?”
Miyuki smiles. She's not that good at fake sex worker smiles, has to be said. Seems too eager. Nobody wants an enthusiastic stripper. “Sure. Fifteen thousand yen.” Melanie hands this over. She will at some point soon run out of money, she's sure. Although she hopes to get this back at least. It's an investment. Miyuki leads her over to the booths, which here are cordoned off with big hammer and sickle flags, of course, weird to be on this side of the strip club business for once, how does it feel, Mel, this kind of very consumerist power over someone else, this very capitalist titillation, you paid for this flesh so therefore you've got it, this body that you have very dishonestly, unnaturally earned...it's again the thrill of transgression. Melanie sits herself down while Miyuki pulls the curtains shut, leaving the two of them alone under the red glow of the lamp on the wall at Melanie's back. Almost makes this whole thing feel sleazy.
Melanie places her purse at her side, one hand resting on it. Miyuki slinks over to her loosely in time to the music. Can see her nipples through the cheap fabric of her military tunic, they poke out that aggressively. Melanie swallows. She eases one hand into her purse. Miyuki starts to straddle her, legs wide, leaning forward to let her tongue brush Melanie's ear (oh I know that one, clever, clever) and then Melanie's free hand is on Miyuki's arm and the knife is on her throat. Miyuki yelps and then cuts herself short, metal digging into the skin of her neck. Their eyes meet. “Bonjour, Miyuki.”
Miyuki's eyes widen. “Senpai!” Melanie nods. Miyuki pulls and pulls and can't get free and anyway, that just makes Melanie push the knife against her harder, until the skin is beginning to buckle. “Sit down.” Melanie says. Miyuki, looking supremely unhappy, does so, Melanie's knife now not pressed against her but still pointed in her general direction just in case. Melanie removes her wig. “So is this what you do now?”
“It's to earn my keep.” Miyuki says, not looking at her. “The owner lets me stay here for free. I felt bad about it and suggested this.”
“The owner.”
“A friend. Look, senpai-”
“No.” Her hand gripping the knife very tight. “You don't get to justify a fucking thing, Miyuki. What you do is you go tell your boss or whatever that, that you're going to go to a love hotel with me.”
Miyuki looks at her now. “What?”
“Tell him that you're leaving work and coming with me. I know this place has a policy about love hotels. I know they'll let you. So go tell him that. If you don't I'll kill you.”
She's gone pale, or paler. She sighs, fingering her snakebites. “I don't know that you're not going to kill me anyway.”
“If I were you'd be dead. Go.”
“I can't yet. It'll look weird. We've just gone into a booth.”
“Then give me a dance.”
“...What?”
“I've paid for it. Give me a dance.”
“Senpai, please.”
Melanie sits up, pointing the end of her knife's blade at Miyuki's chest. “You've pointed out that it'd look weird if we left already. And I'd like a dance.”  Slowly, deliberately, she falls back down, legs apart, just like one of her customers at Boss's place. Miyuki looks pained. She sighs. “You want to, really.” Melanie says.
“I don't.”
“You do. You just don't know that you do.” Miyuki gets to work. It's as awkward and stiff and unpleasant as Melanie wants it to be. All this cold flesh against hers, all those robotic motions, the kind calculated to induce arousal, robbed of any of context, a series of gestures and signifiers detached of significance, rendered clinical, mechanical. Miyuki avoids meeting her eyes the whole time, even when rubbing herself against Melanie just like back then there's no interest there at all, a nervous contempt that Melanie can feel on Miyuki's skin, as if the two of them are opposite poles of a magnet, as if Miyuki's very body is rebelling against the idea of physical contact. Melanie gropes her and it's like handling an oven-ready chicken. Ten minutes, the usual time. Melanie has paid for nudity and nudity is what she gets, Miyuki stripping off, first her tunic then her trousers then her underpants, keeping the hat on. Objectively her body, bathed in red, is beautiful –   it induces nothing in Melanie but a kind of frustration, a feeling of wordless disappointment. And  contrasting that this bitter sensation a little like triumph. Miyuki unhappily rubs her ass against Melanie's groin and Melanie sits there and takes it like a man.