Muse

Chapter 9

Sitting around in the waiting room of a MRI facility in Shinjuku, I had found boredom to be a fatal disease. I had already raided the candy dish for more than my fair share of chocolates and had folded the wrappers into paper cranes, a habit of mine I had developed about three or four years ago. Now anytime I saw a perfect or near-perfect square piece of paper, I had the compulsive need to fold them into origami cranes. Only paper cranes though, as I had no knowledge of how to do anything else. The TV was playing some sort of daytime J-Drama involving a girl who was caught in a love triangle with a pro-hero who refused to give her the time of day and her childhood friend whom she barely noticed, but I could barely hear it above the whirring vibrations of the MRI scanner that would periodically go off from the other room, something that could be felt through the walls and drowned out all possibility of my listening to the show or my music. The melodramatic trope was unrealistic anyways.

Another cure for my disease was my indulgence for reading. Normally, I would peruse Fanfiction or Archive of Our Own if I had no ebooks to read, but my data coverage in the building barely had one internet bar on my phone to manage a page turn, and in Japan, free wi-fi was a myth, so I was extremely limited in browsing. As far as real books went, I was currently working my way through the first of the Outlander series, something I picked up anytime I was traveling or had large blocks of time that would be eaten up by little else as a last resort for when my phone battery was low. Learning how to kill a person by stabbing them in the kidneys or understanding how difficult it was to stab someone on the risk of hitting a rib, I found, was much more entertaining and informative for future storylines than making awkward small talk during long car rides. I wasn't sure exactly how I would incorporate it, but I was positive I could find something relevant to use and mentally filed it away with the rest of my interesting bits of trivia. The chunky paperback would have been perfect for today had I not forgotten to stick it in my purse, lacking the common sense to remind myself to bring a book despite having gone to a bookstore only days ago. My purse, my own personal universe that acted like Mary Poppins' carpet bag, provided few alternative solutions other than a sketchbook, a nail clipper, a cough drop, and a mini deck of playing cards. I wasn't sick, my hand hurt, and my nails were short. I played through and won my third game of Solitaire before eventually putting them away, listless and unsatisfied.

Even though there were tons of trashy tabloid magazines on the table in the waiting room, I hadn't quite reached that level of desperate to pick one up. Counting ceiling tiles or staring off into space while I planned the next part of my comic seemed like more viable options, especially since I couldn't draw the day after playing catch up to buffer pages, my hand only managing to do a few lazy umbreon sketches or costume upgrades for Warren White before my knuckles grew sore and cramped. However the latter kept snapping me back to the present, reminding me I didn't have internet to look up images for reference shots for my mystery hero.

It had been a mistake buying his figure because now I was obsessed with trying to find out everything about this guy. There was something visually appealing to me about his design that me hyper-focused on it, like a tick or an itch I couldn't scratch. Perhaps it was the lapin design of his costume or the color, but it had driven me into a frenzy. It had been about three days since I had last text bombed Izuku with details and pictures of the hero- who I had dubbed as the flying Mint Bunny, since he was green, rabbit-like, and seemed to be imaginary as I couldn't seem to find any trace of him anywhere on the internet -yet there had been no answer. Meanwhile the hero's merchandise did appear to be everywhere now that I knew what to look for, though it was in short supplies, either sold out or just acting as promotional pictures. I could only manage to find a key-chain of him in a Gatchapon machine after spending about ¥1200 to feed my key-chain collecting habit; his had popped out as a welcome surprise along with a 'free' second capsule that unexpectedly rolled out right behind him, containing a miniature frog-girl figure. Maybe he wasn't a very popular hero or too new to really be making any headway.