Day 61: Arts and Crafts Room (Third Shift)

[oyaji]

Now that he had finally been allowed back inside, the warmth from the Sun Room hit him like a heated slap in the face. With ruddy cheeks and the sticky feeling of perspiration from his little walk/job with Niikura made him feel like a sun-burned mess. His nurse was kind enough to take his jacket from him before he went to the restroom to splash a little water on his face.

It also gave him a moment to himself, completely alone and silent so he could think. The water in the sink continued to run, but the older man was more occupied with the mirrors. He stared at his wet reflection as he took a few slow breaths to help contain himself. The longer he stayed here, the more surreal it all felt. Slowly, he began to feel less and less attached to this reality because he believed it was only a matter of minutes, seconds before he woke up.

He couldn't let the sensation overwhelm him. In fact, he picked a hand up from the sink and pinched himself to prove his point. Bizarre or not, this was his situation and he needed to figure out soon just who put him in it. The fact that none of the nurses would even humor his talk of his Hero alter ego said many things to him. Suddenly no one had even heard of him and it was an all too familiar problem that made his blood run cold. In spite of it all, he needed to be on his toes. This was no time to fall apart, he reminded himself. With one last deep breath, Kotetsu put his clueless smile back in place and stepped out of the bathroom with his nurse in toe who gave him a quick tour of the all the places he could go if he chose to.

He passed one room and took three steps back to get a better look. "Ah, excuse me, ma'am! What's this one?"

"Oh, that's arts and crafts," she said flippantly, not expecting a grown ass man would be interested in playing with clay. Well, she was clearly mistaken now that he saw the extent of the materials. They had a lot in here! And he had the perfect idea. If the staff here refused to regard him as Wild Tiger, he was just going to have to force it on them.

Snickering like a fool, Kotetsu grabbed several sheets of black construction paper, glitter, glue, and a pair of safety scissors before sitting down at a vacant table. Actually, all the tables were empty. He was the only one in here and that was probably for the best since he was making himself a makeshift domino mask of ultimate secretiveness.

He laid all the pieces of construction paper on top of each other before he began cutting out something that looked like an elongated figure eight with little barbed fins at the bottom. It wasn't going very well. Kotetsu was confident he could probably cut a tree down with a stick of butter faster than these scissors would cut through the paper.

He was going to be here for awhile.

[Kaede Kairi, come to papa!]

Comments

[stranded]

Kairi loved the arts and crafts room. With a plethora of things laid out in front of her, how could she not? That was why, after she awoke from her nap (she was beginning to grow worried about the time she spent asleep, if she were being honest with herself.) she instantly moved towards the room, thinking of what she could do. It had been a while since she had attempted origami, so she figured maybe she could try that.

The redhead is surprised when she sees the room empty - minus one person, and instantly she is all smiles. She doesn't think she has ever seen the man around before, and ... well, how could she refuse making new friends?

"Hello," Kairi greeted cheerfully, a bright smile crossing her lips as she looked down at what the man was doing in front of her. "What are you making?"

[threepwood]

Guybrush slid into a chair, opening his lunch sack to inspect the goods inside: a cookie, a sandwich- things he would have kept normally, but given that the nurses watched him and his fingers every time he entered the room, he was led to believe he wouldn't have been able to sneak either item back to his room if he tried. He looked over his shoulder casually, pretending to stretch- indeed, the nurse was watching him, standing by the door to make sure he didn't leave with any of the implements littering the tables.

He turned back with a sigh, resigning himself to being as well-behaved as humanly possible and hoping they didn't search his pockets on the way out. One idea did cross his mind: perhaps he couldn't take the plastic safety scissors or tubes of glitter, but he could ask if he'd be allowed to take something else, like something he'd made. They'd probably tell him it was just a way to fuel his delusions, but he figured it couldn't hurt to work off some stress with some old-fashioned letter-writing. It reminded him of his days out at sea, when he was separated from his beloved Elaine for months at a time. He could have written entire novels dedicated to her at that time.

Grabbing a sheet of paper and a few crayons, he got to work.

My dearest Elaine,

A pause, after which he couldn't think of what to write. What did one write in a hypothetical letter to the woman he loved when she'd been at the institute before? Did she still have her mind? Was she Elaine from the past, or would she know of the future? How much was safe revealing to her without sounding crazy? 'Honey, I saw an inspector get mauled to death by an abomination worse than any conjured by voodoo' generally wasn't a good start for such a thing.

He reached into the bag and pulled out the cookie, starting on it first.

[Michelangelo]