Procrastination at its Finest

"I'm all full!"

Mira stretches her back on the couch as I place the clean dishes on the drying rack.

I'm still not entirely sure how to think about this situation. I've been going with the flow so far, but keeping her here will definitely be a challenge. Obviously, I don't necessarily want to throw her out. Throwing a girl this unaccustomed to human society is only asking for trouble. On the other hand, she insists herself to still be a rabbit. It may be possible to simply return her to the rabbits around the bridge. That has its own set of problems if they don't have the infrastructure to support somebody as large as her.

"I'll worry about it later…"

When all else fails, just kick the can down the road.

My body feels heavy from the meal as I drop myself into my desk chair. The barely nailed together planks of wood creak under my weight, threatening to one day drop me to the ground as always.

"What are you doing, Noa?"

Two small hands are placed on my shoulders as Mira rests her neck on my head. This girl—sorry, this rabbit really has no sense of personal space. I can barely go twenty minutes without being flustered in some way.

"I'm doing homework."

"Homework?"

Her confused face appears in the reflection of the monitor before being overwritten by the login screen.

"I go to school to learn stuff, and we get assigned work to help us practice the concepts."

"Ah! I've heard of this 'school' thing! That's where a bunch of people carry these big bags with snacks in them!"

Mira bobs up and down on my shoulders as she excitedly explains.

"People all show up in the early morning, disappear until noon, then pull out a bunch of snacks! Then they all leave in the afternoon with all of the giant things with spinny legs!"

"I mean, I guess that isn't incorrect…"

Of course the rabbit would miss all of the stuff that happens inside of the school building.

I navigate through the files to the programming project that has been a thorn in my side for several weeks now. I have no more than a few weeks left to get this finished, but I still don't have a clue on how to approach it. My body can't even spend the energy to react to this intimate contact with a girl, my brain is far too busy stressing about the implementation of this assignment.

Mira simply watches for a while as I write, erase, and rewrite several lines of code. However, she eventually gets antsy.

"Noa, your homework is boring."

"I'll admit that it isn't the most interesting thing to watch. I would rather not be doing it as well."

"I'm feeling kind of sleepy…"

Food coma seems to be hitting her as well. We did consume quite a large amount of carbs, so our blood sugar levels were inevitably going to crash.

"Bear with it. Sleeping right after a meal will make you fat."

"That would be bad…I don't want to die…"

"Die? Ah, I guess a fat animal in the wild would be susceptible to predators."

I continue typing away, Mira trying her hardest to keep herself from dozing off above me.

"Noa, talk about something."

"I'm trying to focus right now, so that would be hard. If I'm distracted with talking, I won't be able to figure out why this darn thing isn't working."

"But my eyes won't stay open…"

Even I'm having trouble keeping myself from falling asleep. If Mira weren't pinning me in place, I likely would have slouched forward and fallen asleep on the desk by now. I can still feel the heavy food camping inside of my stomach.

"Should we go out for a walk?"

"Aren't you busy?"

"I am, but I don't think I'll get much done like this."

"Alright…"

Mira sluggishly releases me as I put my laptop to sleep. I'd absolutely hate to be procrastinating right now, but Mira needs something to help the food digest. It's for Mira, I swear.

She follows me to the entryway where I reach down to grab my shoes. To my surprise, my shoes aren't the only ones down here. Directly next to my black tennis shoes are a pair of small white sandals with frilly straps. That isn't even the only inconsistency. On the hook where I hang my jacket, there is some kind of small pale purple shirt hanging from it. When did she have the chance to find this stuff and put them here? Now that I think about it, her entire outfit just kind of appeared out of thin air.

Mira puts the shirt over her sundress like it's natural.

"Where are we going?"

"Probably just to the park. It's pretty close and it has a nice covered trail."

"Ah, I know that one! I've been there plenty of times!"

The rabbit girl hops into her sandals and trots past me towards the door. We haven't even started moving yet and she's already full of energy.

The weather is much warmer now than in the morning, so much so that I feel perfectly fine with just a light jacket. Everybody else must be feeling it as well as the sidewalk leading to the park is fairly populated. We receive many strange looks as we pass, all of them looking towards Mira's unusually coloured hair.

Mira is walking right beside me after I adjusted my stride to match her shorter legs. She looks around at every building, every patch of trees, basically anything at all. Whenever another party walks past, she ducks and hides behind my back until they are far enough behind us. We're just lucky that nobody directly around us is walking their dogs. I would rather not find out how this rabbit would react to seeing one. The last thing we need is her sprinting out into a pile of mud off the trail.

"Have you already seen this place, Mira?"

"Hm? Yeah, this is all still part of our territory. This is just the first time I'm seeing it from this high up!"

She really doesn't seem all that bothered by her sudden change of body. I know for sure that I would be panicking nonstop if I suddenly woke up ten times my original size. Maybe rabbits have some kind of tendency to take things in strides. Maybe it's just Mira being naturally carefree.

It doesn't take long for the two of us following beside the road to arrive at the local park. A decently-sized parking lot sits on a hill above a large path of grass. Within this space is a small set of bathrooms and a playground, both of which are close enough to the lot such that much of the grass is open. A paved path circles around the grassy space and branches out into the nearby trees.

"Alright Mira, make sure to stay on the trail—"

As I turn around to look at the rabbit girl, I find her already gone. As I look further, I find Mira crouched in the grass by the treeline. Her ankles and white sandals are already brown with mud.

"Hey! What are you doing over there! You're getting all dirty!"

"Ah, Noa! Come over here!"

Mira isn't particularly far, barely a few metres away. There are even several elevated patches of dirt that are fairly dry, but she insisted on taking a straight line through the mud.

I keep myself fairly clean as I pull up right behind Mira.

"What is happening over here?"

"Give them a second. Come here, everybody!"

At Mira's call, the foliage within the trees springs to life. From the shadows appear at least a dozen rabbits with floppy ears, all carefully approaching the spotlight.

"Don't worry guys. Noa is on our side."

She motions me to crouch down, and the rabbits eventually come to crowd around us once I do.

"There really are a lot of you…"

"This is barely anything! Right, soldiers!"

The small creatures all stomp in unison before standing up on their hind legs. The rabbits, Mira included, make a salute to each other as if they've done so hundreds of times before.

"What am I looking at here…"

Mira talks to the rabbits, receiving squeaks and gestures in response. She asks about their day, about their patrol, and about the food they ate for lunch. It's hard to tell as the human, but each rabbit seems to be providing some kind of input into the conversation. It's like everybody knows each other in a way that I could never imagine with my neighbours at the apartment or even my peers at school.

"Ah, I forgot the most important part!"

Mira jumps to her feet, splashing everybody in the audience with a wave of mud. I hate how I'm the only one who seems bothered.

"This is Noa! Noa saved me when I was trapped in a hole yesterday. He's very nice!"

Mira places her hands on my shoulders as if she were an old lady introducing her son to the other wives. She basically applies the weight of her entire body onto mine as she leans into me.

"Wait, Mira—!'

"Woah!"

Unfortunately for the both of us, the little weight she carries is enough to upset my balance. The rabbits around us scatter before the two of us crash into the wet ground. As the two of us lie in a pile, the rabbits return and simply stare at our misfortune.