日常 - nichijou, Arawi Keiichi
It's 4:32 am.
Mio wants to smash her printer into pieces so badly.
She can't, though. If she does, she'll have absolutely no way of getting her assignment out of the computer and into hard copy form. They're at an impasse. The printer can screw up in as many creative ways as it possibly can, and it'll still be guaranteed safety from Mio's wrath because it knows that Mio can't risk destroying it. This just makes Mio hate it more.
Perhaps Mio should be concerned that she's treating an inanimate object as something that can actively plot against her, but that might just be the sleep deprivation.
Over the past couple of hours, the printer has managed to freeze up, falsely proclaim that it's out of ink, jam up again, lag, spend 10 minutes printing a page excruciatingly slowly before abandoning it halfway, suddenly turn off in the middle of a print job for no reason, leak several weeks' worth of ink, jam up again, jam up again, and then turn off and spend 10 minutes booting up, about three or four times each.
"I'll give you one more chance," Mio says with her eyes closed, facing the computer monitor. "If you don't print it this time, I swear I'm going to murder you."
The printer finishes booting up, and then makes the typical post-boot-up clatter as the ink trays shift into position.
Mio navigates through the menus on the computer and clicks print. She then moves the mouse over to the printer icon at the bottom right of the screen in order to open up the little window that displays the state of the printer. Or at least she tries to.
She moves the mouse. She moves it again, this time more violently.
The cursor isn't moving at all.
Mio swirls the mouse around wildly.
No movement.
Mio picks up the mouse and looks at the bottom. The red light has gone out, even though it's still plugged in.
CRACK. Mio stands up, opens her left hand, and lets the mouse fragments clatter to the ground. Her body tremors.
The printer begins beeping. Mio slowly walks over to read the error message.
Critical error. Printer restarting…
BAM!
CRASH.
Mio's knuckles are a bit bloody now. She stands over the severely damaged remains of the printer that are lying on the ground. The frayed ends of wires dangle over the edge of the table.
Something flickers in the corner of her eye. She turns and sees the green-tinted CRT computer monitor. The image shimmers, as if there's something wrong with the connection.
"And you. You've been pissing me off all evening, too." Mio stalks her way over to the computer. "Always lagging out, always crashing, always flickering. Why did you have to make things so hard, huh, you idiot!? Can't you just—"
A dialog box appears.
Microsoft Word has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
If you were in the middle of something, the information you were working on might be—
Something snaps inside Mio's mind.
She slams left fist into the side of the monitor as hard as she can. Mio's punch sends the monitor flying right off the table, ripping out the monitor's power and data cords. The image flickers once and then goes out as the monitor careens towards the ground. Something begins sparking inside the monitor.
Mio's body is still following through with the punch when the monitor slams into the ground. At this instant, her left hand is directly in front of the glass screen, and the rest of her body is off to the side.
The monitor has been in contact with the floor for barely an instant when an extremely loud bang blasts through the room.
The next thing Mio knows, her left hand is riddled with glass shards and deep cuts. Her eyes widen. Her ears are still ringing from the bang. She doesn't notice the pain yet. She turns her head and sees lots of sharp glass debris splayed in front of the monitor.
She twitches.
Then, Mio clenches her teeth. "That's it, OUT!" She marches forward and rips the computer case out from under the desk, which drags with it the keyboard and some other wires that she doesn't care about. "You're absolutely worthless, you freaking idiot! GAH! JUST GET THE HELL OUT!"
Yoshino is already in the hallway. "Mio? What was that loud bang? Are you okay?"
Mio continues dragging the computer through the hallway, walking past her older sister as if she's not even there.
"Mio?..."
The infuriated high school girl slams open the door and steps into the night, dragging the computer behind her. The moon is close to the west horizon, and sunrise is in less than an hour.
Yoshino appears at the doorway with a concerned look. "Mio, what are you doing?"
Mio doesn't respond. She continues walking down the sidewalk until she reaches the trash collection area next to the light pole. With a yell and a heave, she slams the computer there right next to the pole.
"Good riddance." Mio pants.
"Mio!" Yoshino is running up to her.
Mio slowly comes down from her anger rush. She starts feeling pain in her left hand. She holds it up and sees that it's a lot bloodier now. Glass shards of various sizes are still embedded in her hand.
Yoshino notices the blood. She stops several paces away, putting her hand over her mouth. "Wh... Mio, what happened to your hand?"
Mio wobbles as she turns around. She smiles sheepishly, wincing. "Uh… I think… maybe I should go to the hospital."
She winces again. The pain is steadily getting more and more intense.
"Cr… sh… f…" Mio screws her eyes shut, gritting her teeth. Blood flows down her hand.
"Oh my, that looks bad." Yoshino stands there, wavering. Then, she smiles nervously. "Quickly, come back into the house."
日常 - nichijou, Arawi Keiichi
