Mariko, meanwhile, was frantically pacing her room, trying fruitlessly to memorize her lines. It was hopeless. Insane. Impossible. Couldn't be done. She held a water bottle as some sort of hokey fake practice microphone and mouthed bad joke after bad joke into it, to no avail. It wasn't going to work. It just wasn't good enough. She kept trying to practice that walk every professional comedian under the sun had mastered, that swaggered, measured, "I'm just like you guys, except i'm funny" walk, but she kept tripping over her own feet and slamming into the walls. She wasn't even wearing shoes, just socks. Somehow that made it worse. The bruising was mucking up her makeup, leaving these awful skin coloured blemishes on the walls. and making her complexion look uneven. Why was this getting through to her so badly? She turned again and looked at the clock, jumped, and hurried out. On top of everything else, she was going to be late, too?

---

Dressed in her best sundress, clutching at a sweatstained piece of paper with a few unfunny jokes, feet aching from the cross-campus running she'd just had to do, Mariko knocked on the entrance, and shuffled in. She passed by that one puppet girl (Seemed like she went on before her, wierdly enough.) and walked into a small toilet, found an empty stall with a lock on the door and sat down. Finally, there, she breathed in properly. The room tasted like bleach, but it'd do. For now, this was her hidey-hole, her sanctuary, her Fortress of Solitude. She read the list through one more time, and this time, something stuck. She reread the thing again and again.