A fight with a deadline is always a serious battle—kill or be killed.
This is the reason people will desperately struggle to survive it, shorting themselves on sleep and pulling multiple all-nighters in a row, somehow and someway making it to the end and barely avoiding death by the skin of their teeth.
It gets you in various places—specifically speaking, the neck, shoulders, back, and stomach—all the parts of a human, body and mind. My cells are at work, so I don’t have to be, right…?
Going all the way till morning, I somehow managed to put together a rough draft of the proposal and website design, then lugged myself to school and arrived right before class started. I spent most of the morning classes sleeping.
If I was throwing myself into work, if I was facedown on my desk, I wouldn’t have to think about anything or see anything.
I wanted to occupy myself with this exhaustion a little more; the fatigue was a perfect opportunity to keep my head down. Once school was over, I’d be able to put a slightly better face on.
I spent the end-of-day homeroom like that, too, weaving in between sleep and wakefulness with my cheek leaning on my hand. While I was letting both body and mind slumber, school came to an end.
I thumped my bag, coat, and scarf down on my desk. Then I stretched my stiff shoulders and back until they cracked, and I scraped back my chair as I rose to my feet. Wiping the bleariness of my sleepless night from my eyes, I turned toward the spot I always did, the window side by the rear of the class.
Yuigahama noticed me. Wrapping up her chat with Miura and Ebina, she trotted over. “Going now?”
“Yeah,” I replied hoarsely.
“Whoa.” Yuigahama made a little noise. “Hikki, you look awful…”
“Actually…?”
Yuigahama pulled a hand mirror from her uniform pocket to show me my face. I could imagine a face like mine on a zombie moaning, Uuugh, too bright… I’m melting… I know I had rotten-fish eyes to begin with, but the lack of sleep had really bumped up the level of decay. There was also a red mark on my cheek from my hand.
“I’m gonna go wash my face…,” I said.
“Okay. Then I’ll be in the hallway.”
Leaving the classroom, I Zombie Land Chiba’d my way along to the washroom.
As I splashed cold water on my face, my head finally cleared. To finish up, I pretended to be an OL in her second year, smacking my cheeks and yelling, “You can do it!” for motivation.
When I came back to the classroom, Yuigahama was waiting there in front of the door, as promised.
“Sorry to make you wait,” I said, and she shook her head to say she hadn’t been waiting that long. Then she held out all my things—my bag and coat and stuff—that she’d been holding behind her.
“…Thanks,” I said as I accepted them. Yuigahama seemed glad about something, smiling before shaking her head again.
We chatted a bit on and off, on the way to the UG Club room, but my head really was still hazy with sleep. I hoped smothering my yawn would help get rid of it.
Yuigahama drooped. “Oh, so, like, sorry about yesterday… That’s why you didn’t get enough sleep, huh…?”
“No, it’s fine… Actually, your coming up with ideas helped me out.”
Yuigahama had repeatedly apologized for falling asleep in the net café, then gave me a bunch of ideas and design plans for the prom on the walk back. I doubt it had been an attempt to make up for it, though. Thanks to her help, I’d managed to whip up something resembling a proposal document and design rough over the course of the night, so it was a wash, barely making the BEP, about net zero. In short, we were square.
She didn’t have to feel bad about it. I mean, it was on me for openly yawning and making her worried. I concentrated on my eyebrows to form a nice, crisp expression. “…Besides, I’m not sleepy anymore, so it’s no problem,” I said.
Yuigahama stared at me for a second, then burst into laughter. “What the heck, you look so funny!”
“I do…?” Now that kinda hurt, but oh well. We’d gotten over the awkwardness, so I went into the UG Club room.
As I cut my way through the same old jumble of the room, I heard voices.
“First, we transition the site with PHP, then do the database management. No, that’s not gonna happen. I don’t even know.”
“And then we spruce it up with Javascript and configure the site design with CSS… When’s the submission deadline for this?”
I could see Hatano and Sagami talking about something—I assumed the website design—but their expressions were full of despair. It seemed after their efforts to do independent research, they’d emerged overwhelmed by reality.
On the other hand, Zaimokuza was patrolling social media with a truly wicked smile on his face.
Wanting to greet them with some proper thanks and appreciation, I summoned my courage and called out a quiet “’Sup.” The guys responded with a chipper “Herm, greetings,” “Hey,” and “Hnn,” respectively… Well, this is what you get with greetings between guys!
Then Yuigahama cheerfully raised a hand in greeting as well. “Yahallo!”
The air in the clubroom froze.
“What does that mean…?”
“Whoa, she really is too much…”
…Well, that’s what you get, huh?! Still, if they kept getting rattled, we wouldn’t get anywhere.
“Don’t worry about it. We’ve got something more important to talk about.” I plopped down in a chair and cleared my throat. The guys managed to pull themselves into listening mode, sitting up straighter. Once they were ready, I began gravely, “Henceforth, greetings during all committee meetings will be standardized as yahallo. No ifs, ands, or buts.”
“He’s actually an idiot…”
“Something really is wrong with him…”
Hatano was legitimately exasperated, while Sagami was legitimately pitying.
“C-cut it out… You’re embarrassing me now, Hikki, so let’s stop…” Head hanging with her cheeks bright red, Yuigahama tugged at my sleeve in an attempt to stop me.
At that adorable little gesture, Sagami pushed his glasses up, while Hatano removed his glasses and pressed a finger between his eyes. I assume that means he was impressed.
“…No, yahallo is good.”
“Yahallo’s…good…”
“Aye. Well then, once again…” Zaimokuza initiated it, and the yahallo chant began.
“Yahallo!”
“Stop,” Yuigahama snapped, glaring tearfully.
The whole table fell silent, and once everyone was calmed down, I began the discussion. I had to, or Miss Gahama would be angry forever!
“Well, down to business.” Pulling out the freshly baked website design rough from my bag, I handed it out to everyone and tapped at my copy. “For the website, we have a single image with text information over it, and then we embed social media. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy—we’re going for a minimalistic chic. I found some pages for reference, so do your best to just rip off the whole thing to structure the design. I’ll get the photos later, so for now just stick in some placeholders, and we’ll replace it after.”
Hatano was going back and forth between the written documents and the sketch of the layout, amazed. “…Then what was all our effort for? You could just do a blog for this…,” he whined.
“Uh, that made our job easier, so leave it. You’ll get us more work.” Sagami grabbed his arm, keeping him from complaining any further.
You get it, Sagami the younger. You have the makings of a great corporate slave. Actually, you guys are nuts for doing all that research in one day.