@anglerfishnabe
The festivities surrounded him in a dancing fervor, talk and chatter of life and death and the emotions that came with it. They tugged and pulled at his already low state of mind; he just wanted air, food, something to get out of the house. A distraction that wasn’t taking apart yet another machine in the house.
When he sees another gentleman in a military uniform--japanese, no doubt in his mind--he almost thinks it to be an illusion. In his dead-like appearance, a stranger shoved beers in his hands and told him to share it with whoever he was staring so intently at.
He mumbles as he realizes he lost him because of that. Looking through the crowd to try and spot him again. After some looking, without thinking, he finds the soldier again, at the corner of an emptier table, and slams one of the beers in front of him.
And stares. With some strange determination in his eyes to get to know the other man. With a solemn acknowledgement of their similar lives of war.