Greetings from Japan!
***
You decide that at this point getting home half an hour later isn't going to make much of a difference, so you might as well just get Signe to her own home.
There's something beautiful about Copenhagen in the dark. Not literally beautiful perhaps - there are no lights to turn the nighttime cityscape into a glittering jewel or anything - but it is an almost comforting sort of darkness, lit by lonely streetlamps spilling their warm yellow light into the cool nighttime air.
The world is quiet. There's a particular lack of noise around 3 AM. A blanket of soundlessness that has been laid over the city. These days, it's become a familiar feeling. A comforting stillness that cools you down, lets you settle back into yourself after all the energy you've put into partying.
In the distance, you can hear a faint whooping, probably from drunk or mostly drunk young people. On your back, Signe goes sort of 'munya munya' into your shirt in her sleep.
Nothing disturbs your walk to Signe's house. She sleeps surprisingly peacefully for someone being carried, but you suppose you
are a polar bear, and she did drink a fair amount.
There's a definite switch in the quality of your surroundings as you move on from the city in general and into the fairly rich neighbourhood that Signe lives in. Apartment blocks in Denmark aren't that big, but now few places are more than two storeys, and the gardens are steadily growing in size. And people have garages, instead of just parking by the curb. It's all very impressive, and costs a small fortune to get.
Your parents earn fairly decent moneys, as these things go, but there's definitely a difference. Honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that daily life in Greenland is
really cheap when you can catch and eat your own seals and sleep in the snow, you probably wouldn't be able to go every year. Not that there's necessarily all that much snow there in the summer, but, you know, same difference.
It's the first time you go there in the middle of the night, but even distorted by the deeper darkness as it is, you recognize Signe's house and confidently walk straight up to the doorway. Where you stop. You stand for a bit and contemplate the fact you can't get in, unless you pilfer Signe's pockets for her keys, and to be honest, that feels wrong somehow. Instead, you lightly pat her cheek as you softly try talking to her to wake her up.
"Hey. Hey, Signe. You're home. Time to go inside and go to bed," you say. Signe groans and mumbles something you vaguely suspect to be 'five more minutes', but shortly regains some situational awareness. She proceeds to nuzzle your neck for a bit since her head is right there anyway, and then she yawns and seems to wake up some more.
"...you walked all this way with me?" she asks. You would shrug, but she's still lazing around on you, so instead you nod.
"Sure did," you say. Signe hugs you and pulls herself up enough to kiss you on the top of your head.
"You big lump, you should have woken me up," she says as she gets off the Polar Bear Express and staggers a bit on the ground. You instantly grab her to steady her, upon which she promptly leans into you.
"Eh, I needed to cool down anyway. I don't shed heat that fast," you say. She just sighs.
You stand there for a few minutes. You almost think Signe has fallen asleep again, but then she suddenly moves, catapulting herself forward towards the door, forcing herself away from your comfy embrace.
"You should probably get home, before your mother wakes up," she says, and you wince. Honestly you're probably
stronger than your mom, but she has never let trivial facts like that stop her. You suspect it is something about mothers, in particular mother bears.
"Alright, sure. Get to bed you. I'll be seeing you," you retort and smile a little. Signe returns it, before turning to fumble with her keys.
You leave once she gets the door open, waving a little, and then sauntering off at a steady pace.
It's terribly late once you finally get home, but not so late that you won't benefit from sleeping a little. Not to mention, you don't have anywhere you need to go. Well, except probably play with your siblings once they get home from school.
You open the front door and start creeping up the steps. It's late, and you don't want to bother anyone. You do have a bit of a tendency to be noisy, tragically. Your family lives on the third floor of the apartment building, so if you stumble and rattle, you might disturb the people living beneath you, and then they might end up complaining to your mom.
Luckily you manage to avoid making too much noise. Gently unlocking the door to your apartment - with an unfortunately loud
click - you sneak in.
To your mild surprise, the light
isn't on in the kitchen, and your mother
isn't staring at you with judging eyes. She does have work tomorrow, but that hasn't stopped her before, so you can never be sure. You're almost sad, considering how much of today you could reasonably brag about… well, assuming 'I didn't revert to my high school habits' is something to brag about. You don't really know, but you think things went great so you'd have liked to brag.
Oh, well. For tomorrow. You tiptoe into your room and shed the last few items and garments you have with you, and plop down naked on your bed. The window is open, and for now at least, there's a nice cool breeze.
Slowly, you fade away…
***
...The morning is bright, and not actually the morning. You've slept in to just a little shy of 12:00. Everyone else in the house will have left for jobs and school. You yawn and stand up, wondering vaguely what you're going to do today. Your siblings will get out of school in a couple of hours for one, so you could screw around for a bit and then play with them. Or you could set up something to do with one or more of your friends real quick. There's probably at least one of them that's got time to play. Or you could invite rabbit girl out on a date, because you need to not be single pretty soon, and the day after the party is still remarkably restrained for you.
You wander into the kitchen as you contemplate these many options. Opening the fridge you contemplate many more options for an admittedly different problem, while snacking on small chunks of raw meat. Oops, got some blood on you. Good thing you're still naked.
You should probably take a shower before you go anywhere.
Anyway, today you're going to…
Pick one
[ ] … go pick up your siblings and play with them.
[ ] … go find one of your friends and play with them [which friend?]
[ ] … get in touch with rabbit girl and try to make friends.
[ ] … get in touch with rabbit girl and get a date.
[ ] … laze around until your mom comes home to scold you.
***
So a bit more than a month huh. Honestly I think that's pretty good considering I've been in Japan since the 21st of
October and I'm still there. And I got sick for a week while there. So, you know, I think this is reasonably the slowest I'm going to be for normal updates going forwards. Roughly a month.
...granted that
is pretty slow.
Oh well. So it goes.
