First posted to my Livejournal archive (Apples For Me) on August 1, 2007.

Title: Rude Awakening
Characters: Madarame
Wordcount/Rating: 450+ words / G
Summary: Madarame starts seeing another side to his existence.
Author's Notes: Some things I think we all grapple with, to be honest. Written for the Chain of Fics community on LJ. I had wanted to write more Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei (the line speaks so strongly of Fuura!) but then as I was washing dishes just now, Madarame from Genshiken popped into my head. And you know ... I wanted--nay, needed to write that.
All he could see was the bright vista of his future, full of possibilities and colored as brilliantly as an artist's palette. He was young! He was talented! He could rule the world!

Then Madarame woke up.

His eyes blearily tried to focus. He turned his head a little and faced his shelves of plastic figurines, DVDs of animated women, books upon books upon books of art and photos of voice actors, concept illustrations, doujinshi, anthologies, and manga. Normally, even without his glasses, it was a riotous mix of colors and shapes and rounded feminine forms one saw only in animation. (If only Japanese women did not give off such an air of perpetual under-nourishment!) Now, the gray half-light filtering in through the spaces between his blinds sapped any vibrancy he'd remembered.

The sight was depressing him, so he sat up, squinting. Where had he put those glasses? They weren't on the floor beside him, and he muttered under his breath before noticing something sticking out from under his pillow. At least they had not been bent or broken in his sleep, he thought with a shudder, offering a mental prayer to whatever god took care of otaku like himself.

The remnants of last night's dinner still sat on the table next to his computer, salmon bones and a stray grain of rice against black plastic the only reminders of what he'd eaten. Next to them, the cheap 100-yen coffee can perched on the edge of his table. Madarame made a face, picking up the plastic bag from the floor, stuffing the plastic bento container inside, not caring if he'd separated chopsticks or fish bones. Whatever. He'd be putting it all in the non-burnables trash bin anyway. He scowled, knocked the can into the bag, and then swore--it was unfinished, and coffee splashed onto his hand and into the bag, collecting at the bottom of the plastic. Savagely, he tied the bag closed, feeling a surge of dissatisfaction.

He stood there even after the bag's handles had been knotted closed three times, and suddenly felt dizzy. The walls of his apartment pressed in around him, lifeless and drab white peeking out from behind magazine spreads he'd copied and enlarged on the color copier in Lawson (only 80 yen), pictures of hand-drawn and computer-generated women with too-large breasts and disproportionate weaponry, anthropomorphic rabbits and clocks and shoes--where had he bought that one?--and again, shelves and shelves full of pink-red-green-yellow-blue-neon book spines where the words began to blur even as he tried to focus on them.

What am I doing here? he thought, almost twenty-five with nothing to show for the years.

Then he felt a wetness on his foot, and looked. He stared at the brown puddle forming on the tatami. The smell of coffee, too-sweet and too-milky, reached his nose.