1:26 pm

The golden sting of afternoon sun brought Hiko back into the lobby. Slumped in a waiting room chair, he lifted his chin and tried to remember where he was. Groggy, he thought back to the other side of the morning: to half his phone's battery spent playing Nujabes, to the hourly chime of the wall clock's music box -- to the sting in his right shoulder, visibly bloodied and stark against the white bandages. That woke him right up.

The clock must have chimed four, last he heard. Looking out the front windows, he was horrified to think how late he'd slept or what his makeup must look like, but these small terrors made his aching body feel almost normal. The last thing he wanted was to see his unkempt mug in the mirror, but the first thing he [i]didn't want[/i] was to show it to the rest of the world, and quite frankly, he needed coffee. Stat.

Straightening his rather long back and trundling past various tenants who seemed shocked to see him alive, he searched for a restroom. His artist's fingertips strategically washed away the blurred eyeliner. Gradually, the effect shifted from 'dumped on prom night' to a more respectable 'walk of shame' aesthetic not entirely out of line with his actual mood. He folded the crusted, bloody side of his jacket into itself and draped it over his damaged shoulder. Voila: at least now, he could pretend it was a sports injury. He smoothed his shirt against his taut stomach, pulled his shoulders back, and put a smile on before he walked out of the building.

He'd only seen this part of town once before -- 13 hours ago -- but his nose was all he needed to find coffee. It was a standard selection: French vanilla, hazelnut, flavors you could get at Costco, but the smell of good preparation lured him through the front door and directly in-line. He double-checked he still had his wallet after last night--

...and his gut bent inward on itself. Not twelve feet away sat Ms. Koizumi, quietly trying to get on with her life after the nightmare that was last night. He prayed she hadn't noticed his head bobbing above everybody else's on the way over here.