ILLA & SUI
[ a short story ]
There was once this girl who went by the name Illa.
Illa was a young girl of many talents — her writing skills were remarkable, her creativity was exceptional, and her musical abilities were without compare. It was not surprising that she, too, was a girl of many jobs: She was a writer at day and a performer at night.
But despite how gifted she was, she could not help but hate herself for the little things she had done wrong. She made a big deal out of every little bad thing about herself.
That is why after she performed a song at the local restaurant she worked at one night, she cursed herself for a slight voice crack and a barely noticeable wrong chord she had strummed on her acoustic guitar.
She was filled with unbelievable anger towards herself that she harshly slung her guitar in its case onto her back as she quickly stormed out of the restaurant once her shift was over.
She could not believe she messed up, and she blamed herself. For all the free time that she had, all she did was practice for this very performance.
Did she focus too much on writing, that caused her practices to not be enough? Was staying up all night to practice not enough? Were her efforts not enough?
Was she not enough?
Why did she not balance writing and performing well enough? Why did she not make enough time for practice? Why did she not practice enough?
Why was she not enough?
And she continued blaming and cursing herself for those little, unnoticeable things she had done wrong as she walked down the sidewalk. She was so busy that she did not realize that she was on a collision course with a young man.
He was busy quickly typing with his eyes trained on his phone. So busy that he did not see Illa in front of him. Thus, he accidentally bumped her shoulder slightly.
This caused Illa to snap out of her thoughts, look at him in annoyance, and tell him off.
"Would you watch where you're going?"
"I'm sorry," he automatically said as he lifted his eyes from his phone.
"Next time, don't text while you're walking," she continued.
"I wasn't texting," he explained. "I was writing an article that's due in a few hou—"
"That's irrelevant. My point still stands; you still bumped into me. The sidewalk is huge. You could've gone to the other side."
Since the man did not want to waste anymore time, he tried to hide his aggravation towards Illa.
"I'm sorry," he repeated as he looked down his phone again and started typing, but not before turning his back on Illa and walking away.
Illa was a stubborn girl, and she always made the smallest mistakes into the biggest deals, so she briskly followed him.
"Next time," she said as she started catching up to him, "don't cram your work. I would know; I'm a writer, too."
He stopped walking as he looked at her boredly.
"Thanks for the advice, although I already knew that," he stated. "Now will you let it go? I've apologized two times already. I don't get why it's such a big deal."
"I'm not making a big deal out of it. I'm just saying that you should watch where you're going, and there's a specific time and place to write. Don't write while walking. You're at fault here. See, you just caused someone trouble out of your own irresponsibility—"
