MPC 61A: Incomplete

MPC: 61A: What's a... "Digimon?"

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"Leith? Leith!" Of course, the young man heard. Sound traveled well in his home, sometimes so well that he could eavesdrop on a private conversation without even opening his bedroom door. Someone intentionally shouting up the stairs for him was enough to wake him up, unfortunately, given the excellent interior acoustics. Leith sure as heck wasn't going to come out, though. His bedroom shades were closed, but he knew based on his heart and the amount of light shining in around the edges that it still had to be pretty early. Forget about responding to his mother's voice; the young man didn't even raise his head off his pillow.

He continued to ignore further calls until they became replaced by the thuds of heavy footsteps up to his floor. That was when he knew he wasn't going to get to sleep in after all. Long hair disheveled, he lazily lifted his head just enough to shake it a little and whip it out of his face, becoming almost-presentable, at least as presentable as a 20-year-old with the world's worst bedhead can look without his glasses and while still in yesterday's socks and skull print pajama pants. As the door opened, the man preempted his mother by groaning and lethargically muttering, "...What?"

"Yeah." Obviously his mother meant something by that, but if she wasn't going to spill it he wasn't going to bother wrestling it from her. He spoke when spoken to, and he told the truth. If what she had to say was important enough to say, it was her job to spill it, not his job to elicit it, he believed. If it wasn't so important after all she wouldn't say it, and if she didn't say it unelicited. then it must not have mattered that much. For that reason, he didn't ask why his planned departure time was important enough to wake him up about, especially since he could get himself there anyway. Still, he did get a sinking feeling in his gut. He knew his mother well enough not to suspect she woke him up to hear about his plans for the day.

"It's eight fifteen!" Leith suspected something like that, but he didn't reach out of his bed and scoot his shades aside until she said something. Apparently, it wasn't as early as he had estimated; it was just dark and cloudy.

"Oh, you gotta be f- kidding me." The young man had enough tact not to drop an F-bomb in front of his mother, not that he didn't have plenty, but boy was it a close call this time between being late, sleepy, and so rudely if necessarily awoken. "Alright, thanks."

"Yeah, I got that, thanks." Maybe he had the sense not to curse before his mother, but that didn't mean she'd be spared from snark for emphasizing an obvious point. As she exited, he threw the sheets mostly off his bed and wriggled until he could slip the soles of his feet onto the floor, already breathing hard both from the effort and the stress. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," He mumbled that under his breath while throwing his socks and bottoms to one side carelessly, his attempt at a timesaver, followed by replacing them with actual clothes. "OK, breakfast or shower?" On one hand, he didn't bother showering the previous day, so he sure could have used one this morning. On the other hand, he knew without breakfast he'd be extremely unproductive. Even more importantly, he'd be miserable. That, and I just got dressed, so that was dumb.

So he used what time didn't go toward desperately pulling real clothes over himself instead went to making the sloppiest, hastiest peanut butter and jelly sandwich in history. He scarfed it down with the voracity of a starved tiger, the raven of a tiger shark, and the urgency of a prey species when confronted with either of those two predators. Unfortunately, he also had to take the extra time to clean up after his napkin, jars, and bread because he knew the consequences of leaving those lying around would be much worse than being late for class or even skipping it altogether.

Fuck. I hate driving in this town, was Leith's thought a few minutes later. He wished the problem was being stuck in stop-go traffic, but that was easy. That was stop, creep, repeat. In Tokyo the drivers were just much more assertive than he was used to, and that wasn't to mention the abundance of pedestrians that his last town just plain didn't have. It was all so much louder, busier, and somehow longer even though it was a shorter drive than many he'd taken. Public transit just wasn't in the question, though; buses didn't fit his schedule, and the way Tokyo citizens packed into trains like sardines did not agree with his autism diagnosis, specifically an aversion to incidental touch.

But, he did it. He made it to class, on time even thanks to his quick reaction and lack of shower. Even though he felt gross, no one could say he wasn't well and truly awake after sleeping longer than intended. He took decent notes, and in his Japanese language class especially he had a great day with all the vocabulary. Another day in the books, the young man felt surprisingly chipper after a day that wasn't the complete disaster he had expected it to be given its start. Alright, I can live with that. If I get home without a wreck, it's been a good day.

"Huh?" As the young man opened his car door, he checked over his shoulder. There he saw a Japanese girl around his age a few spots down, but she didn't seem familiar or to be paying any attention to him. Just to be safe he shouted over at her in his improving Japanese, "Did you say something just now?" She looked up, a little surprised to be addressed, and answered negatively. So, Leith attributed it to hearing things as he started his engine and hooked up his phone music. "Alright. What do I wanna hear?" he asked himself as he scrolled through his playlist.

What he didn't know was that behind some trees, a Shoutmon had only just then managed to wrestle a Veemon's hand off of his mouth so he could talk again. "What the hell was that? He was right there! He heard me!"

"He left us!" Veemon frowned. "Let's just let him go."

As Leith finally managed to pull up a song, he was feeling good enough about himself to sing along with it in his car.

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Word count: 1,209