'Minhee's New Boyfriend' - Concept Writing - 1.5 Version - 2025

Benny felt as if a dozen little ants crawled all across his face. He still eyed his usual seat at the far end of the long, black table. He had a bunch of financial documents to not just intricately scan but also to carefully upload online, while at the same time he had gotten stuck without a decent enough device to do it all himself. So, he had naturally thought about simply heading to the local library.

He'd gone through a bunch of Quentin Tarantino movies offered on DVD at the local branch anyways. The location's beautiful trees filled up with bright purple flowers that time of year as well. However, the tired, irritated secretary hadn't figured that it'd grow paradoxically both hotter and hotter as well as windier and windier outside as the day went on.

His partially defeated body ambled through the branch's massive double-doors and stood before the powerful vents pouring out cold air on top of him. He finally managed to breath easy for a moment. And then, after wiping his face off with a washcloth that he'd intended to use to clean out the insides of his ancient Toyota sedan, his constitution demanded five minutes or so to simply relax before he opened up his backpack completely. He let the pleasant enough sounds of the gentle summer breeze outside of the library's windows calm him down.

Yet, meanwhile, he heard that same squeaking noise appearing once again. It'd popped up day after day over the past week. It seemed almost like clockwork.

Benny cocked his head to the side while he leaned back in his skinny white chair. He glanced across the table. He then blinked rapidly.

She was right there. Naturally. That young lady appeared to have begun staring at him as soon as he sat down properly.

The mousey individual had thick, large eyeglasses and utterly gigantic ears. It seemed as if she could both hear and see everything for half a mile. It also appeared as if she could pickpocket every single lock in the neighborhood with her scraggly paws. Her plain, grey fur looked as if, in contrast to the other furfolk that generally populated the library with their extremely fuzzy bodies, her limbs had gotten designed by evolution for ideal sneaking. Her eyes had this albinism related thing going on that he didn't quite understand as well.

Benny's mental reflexes, at least, thought that way. When he took a real moment to reflect, he realized that he didn't have any actual opinions. He hadn't, after all, met any rodent-ish residents of the peculiar city until several weeks after moving there recently. In addition, he'd spent no time with any throughout his earlier life either. He wasn't like some random internet troll prone to ranting for no reason, so he resolved to try and clear his head.

He found ladies to be pretty hot, just by default. Furfolk weren't an exception. If anything, they heightened his deep feelings. He was a guy in his twenties, after all.

And yet this particularly furry lady still gave off an aura that he didn't quite like. She seemed like the kind of individual who'd use the term "prettification" in a sentence out loud. And even shaking hands with her might feel odd as hell given the nature of her special paws. He pondered all that and more for about half a minute.

He didn't like how she rudely stared at him while he tried to use the scanner setup let out for the library's patrons. At the same time, of course, he realized in a matter of seconds that he had begun rudely staring right back in no time. He had to quit letting the annoying heat and even more annoying errands scramble his senses. Benny needed to get to work.

"Is that her tail wiggling about under the table?" Benny asked himself, with his voice being as quiet as a whisper. He realized far too late that the other library patron likely had heard every single word distinctly with those honking ears of hers. "Oh... God... yeah?"

He tried focusing on the machines in front of him. He doubted that it would work. Yet such a quasi-plan felt worth a shot. He went through a pair of financial forms. They seemed to scan easily enough.

Benny reached into his backpack again. He then drunk the last half of his water bottle. It still tasted refreshingly cold. Wanting to keep the last few sips for a few minutes in the future, he leaned down and carefully balanced the bottle besides one of the table legs.

The Microsoft programs that the library administration had apparently just installed on its computers made everything twice as slow. Of course. That was as much as a non-surprise as nervous rabbit-ish furfolk confessing to being pornography addicts. Benny let out a deep, frustrated sigh. He clicked around a bit more. He slid another document into the scanner.

Benny heard an odd noise. He knew that it had to have been that water bottle. He leaned down, tilting both his head and the rest of this body, and reached over towards the floor.

"Did this girl knock it over on purpose?" Benny asked himself, with his voice sounding like a tense murmur louder than a mere whisper. His eyes narrowed a bit. He took in the worm-like wiggling motion of the lady's long tail, with it still slipping across the floor against the table's big legs. "Oh... Christ..."

He shut his eyes for a while. Even if the mousey lady wanted to talk to him, there were no rules in the library's careful 'code of conduct' that required him to answer back. And he didn't actually mind having conversations in public per se. He simply had a lot to do.

Benny opened his eyes back up while fumbling around in his backpack yet again. One of his eyes was over the top of the table while the other was underneath. The young lady kept wiggling her tail about. However, she'd apparently gotten engrossed in waving and then making some odd paw-signals to another of the furfolk types visiting the library. He squinted for a split-second. The mousy individual's apparent friend, looking like some stoat or weasel type girl of about the same age, seemed agitated yet somehow excited while manipulating one of the library's utterly gigantic vending machines. Benny subconsciously wished the taller, tube-ish visitor to the place 'good luck', especially since those things kept jamming every other week.

"Oh, I'm sorry about that!"

Benny found himself awkwardly popping straight upwards in his chair. He looked straight ahead. His eyes had gotten as wide as saucepans.

The mousey individual had seemingly teleported to his side and picked up the knocked over water bottle. She smiled a bit as she held it in the air in front of Benny's place. He got a nice, long look at her face in depth. He had to admit that her glasses seemed almost painfully cute with her own particularly odd eyes, especially with her slender, petite figure coming across nicely in her simple white outfit.

"Here you are, then, I guess," she murmured. She looked down at the item in her paws. He did the same. "Yes."

He silently picked it out of her grasp. His fingers touched her paw a bit. It felt rather nice. He had to admit that to himself.

"It's alright," Benny murmured back. He didn't add that she probably hadn't meant to knock it over. He actually, having reflected for a few seconds, didn't know either way. "Probably need to get another drink anyways."

"Oh, yeah, my friend's getting me and her those lemon-ish iced teas," she continued on for a moment. She scratched along her neck for a moment. "Something like that's a requirement if you like... venture outside... these summer days... yeah..." She blinked rapidly. "Not that I like... had to come here."

The awkwardness almost dripped off her body like jets of water out of a fancy fountain. Rather than getting more and more irritated, though, Benny found himself surprisingly feeling more and more attracted as time went on. Her voice had a chipper quality to it that he hadn't actually expected at all. He also had a kind of halo-ish feeling around his fingers after touching her paw, somehow.

"Oh, uh," he interjected, realizing that she had no clue how to finish her part of the conversation, "let's both sit back down. Then."

"Sure."

"Having you having issues scanning all of that stuff?" she asked, her voice interestingly having a bit of worry to it.

"Yeah, and it's fair enough, maybe," Benny murmured, with him idly gazing at the ceiling far above the two of them for a bit, "since it's just a public library and all. Not like they'd have the latest software to digitally enhance things. Pick up tiny bursts of texts. That sort of thing. I'm not in a hurry, though." She genuinely cared about how he felt. He liked that. Of course, it was only basic friendliness. Still, he appreciated it all. "I'm actually not on the job this week. Weirdly enough."

"Oh, okay," she softly commented.

He sipped the last tiny bits of liquid somehow left over in his water bottle before crushing it in between his hands and slipping into an old plastic bag from a nearby grocery store that he had planned to use for trash. He glanced at the mousey individual yet again. She had apparently gotten distracted by a glossy news-magazine of some kind on the table.

"The name's Benny, like, by the way," he muttered. He felt the impulse to get a bit softer in terms of his attitudes as he realized that he'd over an hour more work to do at the computer. He then idly scratched all around his neck while clicking a bunch of tabs. "And you?" He was at least a smidgen curious.

"Oh, uh," she began, with her paws migrating across the large spacecraft featured on the news-magazine's cover, "it's Minhee."

Her quizzical facial expression made it clear that something about those main scientific stories had struck her heart, mind, and soul deep inside. Benny scanned the bolded text yet again. The ominous words asked: 'Are Our Country's Lunar Factories Dead Even They're Been Switched On?' He then looked back at the skinny and lanky lady. He had to admit, as time passed, that she looked cuter and cuter as every single moment passed, especially when he took in the way that her fuzzy arms and legs rubbed against the table itself.

"Alright," Benny murmured. He didn't have much of a clue how to begin a proper conversation.

"Were you checking this out?" she suddenly asked, tapping against the news-magazine's corner while meeting him eye-to-eye.

"Oh, maybe," he started to say. He took a deep breath in order to gather his thoughts. "Let me take that back. Yes. I'm going to." He scratched across his neck yet again. "It kind of touches upon this college related project I'm working on. It's this thing having to do with Prime Ministers and their Secretaries of the Treasury, like comparing and contrasting one country to another."

"Oh, wow, I'd actually like to hear about that sometime, really," Minhee chimed in, smiling a bit, "if, well, you don't mind."

"I'm not, like, 'busy' per se," he commented, opening up the scanner yet again and taking out a small, grey document, "but all of this other paperwork is just... well... 'tedious' is the right word to use. I think. Student loan related things. Medical receipt related things. Important. Yet brainless... like... items to check off on a weekly to-do list. If I'm honest."

"Damn."

"There's nothing that fancy or that mentally involved with, say, when we're talking about all of the college related stuff," he went on, idly deciding to finish the intellectual point, "since the long and short of it is that these two professors that I'm working as an assistant for want me to set up this online spreadsheet type thingy. Every recognized country in the world. Every 'head of government' and every 'head of the financial branch within the executive'. Some additional notes. The core question is whether or not they ideologically and politically are at odds or not."

"That's actually really interesting!" Without really thinking it through, Minhee twisted the news-magazine into a tubular shape and held it in between her two paws, with it seemingly coming across like a little kid's attempt at a toy. "And I suppose it'd be useful for future students, right? And future professors, right?"

"Yes, exactly."

Benny took a moment to reflect. As much as he didn't like getting rudely started at while in the library, even if mostly out of blank curiosity and simple circumstance, he couldn't deny that she looked and sounded fairly cute to say the least. He found himself remembering seeing her time and time again in the past as well, with more thought. He also finally took in her apparent habit of writing a lot of minute things on carefully organized notecards and other such acts, with her having her own quasi-workspace on the big table across from his own area, which made them 'kindred spirits' or such among their city's nerdy types who almost drowned in awkwardness while staying busy throughout the day.

"What did you write about, like, for this whole 'lunar factories' plan and other governmental stuff in terms of the economy and space exploration? Or have you not gotten to that part yet in your special work database thingy, maybe even not being sure what to think? I'm so curious!" Minhee's face lit up as she asked both questions.

{There will be more coming!}