Stories Of Another World

The Continuation

Tokyo, Ginza Street, August 14, 2020
Thursday, 8 Minutes Before The Gate Materializes

Itami yawned as the sun's rays hit his face, blocking it with his arm as he impatiently tapped his foot against the cab's carpeted flooring, face in a grimace as he recounted the events before. He had woken up late after watching too much anime, and when he woke up Comiket had already commenced. In his haste, however, he had tangled up his jeans and promptly fell onto his hamper and dresser. The entire thing had been broken and the dirty clothes in the hamper had been strewn across his formerly-clean body. After dressing up and applying a liberal amount of deodorant, Itami had bolted to his local subway as it was the fastest way to get into the doujinshi convention.

Only to see that his particular ride had been delayed because of railroad maintenance. Then, Youji had called any nearby cabs to pick him up, but for 30 minutes every taxi was filled to the brim with people, up until just a few minutes ago.

All of these factors contributed to him being dreadfully late to Comiket, and Itami was beyond worried that when he got there, he would find that it would be closed for some reason or other. Quietly, Itami fumed in the backseat, the bespectacled, middle-aged man that was his driver merely existed in the background, face in a snarl as an unholy of traffic blocked his passenger from his destination. And now another factor had come to ruin his day; a harmless motor accident had happened right in front of them, and the two of them were waiting impatiently as the site cleared itself.

Itami dared to look at his phone, and his face paled as he looked at the time. Cupping his head in both of his hands, Itami adopted a stressed posture as he inwardly prayed to any gods out there to let him see what he had been waiting almost the entire year for. He wasn't normally this passionate about something-his lack of work ethic attested to that-but anime and manga had been his prime passion since he was but a middle schooler. He'd be damned by the Gods if he ever misses even a single one of their heavenly masses.

After another 3 minutes of relative inaction, with Itami's poor heart beating like a taiko drum in his chest, the otaku serviceman had enough. He knocked on the car divide between him and the driver, said driver looking back and winding up a crank on it's left side, opening the plastic gate that separated them. Itami had slapped down the pay for his ride and the extra change immediately, the man looking bewilderedly at him as he deposited his pay. "Keep the change." he said in a flash, before he hurriedly opened the door and ran out into the sunshine, smartphone in his right hand showing Google Maps as he bolted towards his destination.

His athletic training at the military had served him well; it had only taken a few minutes of hurried, yet careful sprinting when he had passed by the Ginza Wako building, keeping to the sidewalks in the large expressway as he giddily raced towards his destination. Itami could practically taste it! The Tokyo Big Sight would be in his grasp, and he would walk home satisfied and content that he had well and truly not wasted his monthly salary. He didn't know if it was the blistering heat messing with his brain or merely his hyper-focus, but Itami felt like he had developed tunnel vision, becoming one and all in his zone as he tried to be as polite yet as fast as he possibly could. He would increase his speed at lower-populated zones, and decrease it when he was at high-populated ones. This strategy had effectively carried him to a large intersection, and Itami was about to cross the road when-

The traffic light in his front blinked green, and Itami ground his feet in a halt as he stopped abruptly, almost falling over face-first into the concrete from the inertia. He had straightened himself up, and was practically bouncing in place as a small crowd gathered around him. Most of the people there gave him weird looks, but Itami was too engrossed in his zone to care as he skipped in place, heaving his lungs out as he obsessively checked his phone's time.