Writer’s block hit Atsuji like a tower of books dropped by a tired student. He took off his glasses and polished them as if doing so would clear his mind. Once he put them back on, he looked at himself in the mirror.
‘You look smarter with them on.’
He gulped as the memory faded from his mind’s vision. It had been so long since he had heard those words.
You see, Atsuji did not always wear glasses. As a child, he could see perfectly fine. Well, for a while.
So, what happened? A freak accident? A violent assault? A tragic illness?
Bzzzz! You’re wrong. It was nothing too exciting and dramatic, his vision slowly deteriorated so he had to wear glasses. That’s it.
Well, that would have been the end of the story, but one person just had to make that one life-altering statement.
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‘You look smarter with them on.’
This line was uttered by his aunt, who did not realise the effect of her words.
Atsuji was not exactly a studious child before he got the glasses. He played in the sand and made jokes and tried to push anyone who annoyed him, just like your average kid.
When he received both his first pair of glasses and that comment from his aunt, he started paying more attention in school. After all, he was smarter now, wasn’t he?
Of course, feeling smarter and being smarter are two different things, so he inevitably butted heads with teachers who gave him less than stellar marks. Eventually, however, those marks did become stellar as he improved in classes. You can probably imagine how inflated the boy’s ego had become by then.
He was smart, he was eloquent, he was a free thinker and he was perfectly obedient. He was… gifted.
Did that word send a shiver down your spine? I’ve watched enough lives get ruined by that word to feel the shiver myself.
Now, he got the long end of the stick compared to other ‘gifted’ kids. He didn’t quite have the same mental breakdown one would expect. Still, life didn’t turn out great.
He never had a friendship last longer than a month or two. Either they drifted apart and he was too busy with schoolwork to hold onto them or people found his increasing uptightness a bother.
As middle school thrust him into a testosterone-spiked nightmare, he began writing romantic comedy stories. At first they were thinly veiled fanfiction about his real-life crushes, but he eventually gained a handle on character writing and created his own unique characters.
In high school, he didn’t make friends with people but everyone quickly recognised him as ‘the smart guy’. He was dependable and a capable planner who got into everybody’s business but nothing more. Of course he was bound to be Student Council President. He was the smart guy.
Whenever he tried to be anything more, it backfired. He tried to make jokes and be ‘the funny guy’ but everyone was too bewildered by him trying to be funny to actually laugh. That was when the jokes didn’t fly over people’s heads and people could actually tell he was joking. Years with barely any friends certainly didn’t help his delivery and ability to read the room. He had to stick to writing romantic comedies on his laptop at home. He swore he could be funny, just not in front of an audience.
Of course, all of the romantic writing in the world could not equip Atsuji with the social skills to get a date. He wasn’t ‘the romantic guy’. He was still just the smart guy.
He first met Sahana when he had considered shutting down the theatre club due to low membership. She delivered an impassioned speech in defence of the club and the fire in her eyes lit a flame in his heart.
In hindsight, he probably should have still shut the club down. Powerful speech or not, the club was still too small to be worth the funding it drained. Did this matter to Atsuji, whose heart was both uplifted and twisted beyond recognition? His decision to keep the club going should give you the answer you seek.
To be fair to him, even a ‘gifted’ boy such as him could not foresee a handsome and friendly boy with hair the colour of a robin’s egg joining the theatre club and bringing with him a slew of new members.
All Atsuji could really do was fantasise about romantic adventures through his writing, occasionally cleaning his glasses and reminiscing over how clever he was supposed to be.
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