MPL - Tora's POV (Part 1)

Hi lovely Patrons. Today I'd like to share something that I wrote for the first few episodes of Midnight Poppy Land before starting on the comic. Because of my technical and artistic limitations, some of the subtleties of the story are lost, and you'll find bits and pieces of information in here that I wasn't able to include in the comic. There might be some minor spoilers , and parts of it have been changed to adapt to the comic. Nevertheless, I hope you'll enjoy MPL in story form. 

Here's part 1 of the scene sketch. Part 2 will be posted next week. 

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Tora's POV (Part 1)

He rowsed from his sleep, the soft glow from the springtime sun the first thing that he noticed when his eyes pried open. He stayed there for a long moment, not moving, slowly blinking. Lazily, he took in the curtains that were swaying above his head. It was some time in the day. Morning or afternoon, he wasn’t sure, and he didn’t really care. His Oyabun had harped on this for years - even bought him a $20,000USD watch he had pawned for cash, and then promptly lost at Pachinko. 

A shrill alarm rang and he shot up, his hands instinctively reaching for the knife he kept under his pillow. It was his phone ringing. More than that, it was the ringtone that he had assigned for … certain people. He grabbed the phone, scrolling through a number of texts and calls that he had missed throughout the night, ignored them, and opened the text that had just came through. 

“Goliath” it read. It was a strange jumble of incoherent texts, and then, “no god…Tora come to Rootburn train station now…fuck -”.

“What the fuck was that about,” he muttered. He scratched his chin, tossed the phone aside, and tumbled back into bed again. 

It didn’t take several minutes before he changed his mind, dragged himself out of bed, pulled on a shirt and headed out. As he opened the door, a chilly blast of wind blew at him. He glanced at the closet where he’d hung his baseball jacket. There were all sorts of junk hanging there…except for the jacket. 

Probably in the car then, he shrugged, stuffing his hands into his jeans pocket as he trotted down the stairs to the parking lot. 

To Be Continued