The blue light from the laptop screen kept Atsuji awake. This was by design.
He groaned at the drafts on his word processor. After reading over each one, he pulled at the hairs on his head.
He took a few deep breaths and focused on happy thoughts. Naturally, these included memories of Sahana. Memories that transformed into ideas.
He rubbed his eyes, stretched his arms and opened a new document. He was about to break a major rule of respectable writing.
He introduced a character named Sakana, a mermaid who didn’t let her unfortunate name, meaning ‘fish’, get in the way of her boundless optimism. He added a boy whose skin was covered in wool called Hitsuji, named after the animal he was similar to. Hitsuji was a grumpy intellectual with glasses. You can probably see where this is going.
Sakana didn’t seem to notice Hitsuji, who struggled to confess his feelings. Atsuji kept trying to find a way for the two to be together but he couldn’t find the right catalyst for Sakana to notice the sheep boy.
He eventually gave up, saved the story and went to sleep.
The bags under his eyes could be seen from the heavens. What a day to run into Sahana.
She talked to him about something but he could barely hear it under the burning of his cheeks.
He spluttered his responses, earning a snicker from some of the students passing by him.
‘He does realise he’s lost already, right?’ one student whispered to another. ‘Can’t beat The Prince.’
Atsuji bowed his goodbye to Sahana with startling speed and rushed into his classroom.
He shook his head. What did Sahana see in Toyomi? Sure, the two shared a love of theatre, but Atsuji had plenty in common with Sahana! Like… well, like… you know, like…
When he got home, he cracked his knuckles with intense desperation. ‘These characters will get together! I’ll show you!’ He may or may not have laughed maniacally after saying that. Who can tell?
Oh, who am I kidding? His mother walked into his room and asked whom he was talking to, concern etched in her voice.
After making a mental note not to say his thoughts out loud like a fictional character, he began his quest to write the romance of the century.
The first roadblock was Hitsuji refusing to confess his feelings and Sakana being too oblivious to bring the two closer. Atsuji decided to have Hitsuji confess his feelings anyway but it didn’t feel natural for the character. He ignored the problem and moved on. He could always fix it in the editing stage.
Now that the characters were a happy couple, the second obstacle reared its ugly head. How exactly would the two act as a couple? Hitsuji naturally retreated back into his shell, rendering his brave confession moot. Atsuji made Sakana reach out to him but struggled to write her words of encouragement. He wound up writing something he may have already heard from some cheesy romantic comedy he watched a couple of weeks ago. He could always fix it in the editing stage.
These problems with the characterisation piled up until Atsuji could no longer ignore the fact that his characters had changed so much over the course of the story that they were unrecognisable. While he did not ignore it, he did justify it in his head as character development that was just a little too fast. If it became a problem, he could always fix it in the editing stage.
He wrote a happy ending for his characters and stared at his creation. His monster.
A monster with no semblance of romantic chemistry. His characters had nothing in common and weren’t even different enough to play off one another in their dialogue. There was no spark between them.
He wrote a new draft, this time with them as friends going on an adventure. The chemistry was still mostly lacking, but at least that wasn’t as obvious. Letting Hitsuji remain grumpy and Sakana remain oblivious lent itself to more comedic scenes. The story felt less forced.
As it slid down his cheek, one tear was all it took to make the author feel refreshed. Of course, more tears followed, but he smiled through it all.
He thought about what drew Sahana to Toyomi and figured it out in an instant, as though he had not wasted countless hours pondering this exact topic. He remembered how Toyomi was openly in the theatre club, openly into baking, openly a fan of romance manga. Open. Free. Expressive.
Atsuji looked over his previous works and smiled. They weren’t masterpieces but they were pieces of him. He visited Friendful and posted some of his stories to the student hub page for his school. He had to go to the bathroom and wipe the copious amount of sweat off his hands with a towel but his smile remained. His heartbeat was sickeningly fast, but that meant warmth spread throughout his body quicker. His legs trembled as he walked back to his room, but he was proud of every step he took forward.
It was a few hours before anyone commented, but he received words of encouragement. One comment stood out.
You’re one funny guy.
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