In the debate world, there are five unspoken rules. The first four are trivial; simple social laws that every sane person would understand.
But the last one. Now that's something.
Rule Number Five: Never, ever, under any circumstances, date your d...
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today's theme: nearing
Minho stared at the blank page.
He was gripping his pen hard, yet nothing came out of the tip—an unexpected reaction. Brand-new journals often excited him, the crispness of their interiors and the invigorating smell they carried hypnotizing his desire for literary confessions...so it was definitely weird that he wasn't writing immediately.
Despite the low temperatures of late autumn and the natural coldness of the morning, the air conditioner in the large gymnasium was on full blast, blowing down on every competitor for some god awful reason. The lucky ones who had brought petticoats were tightly bundled and huddled underneath mounds of colourful fabric, while the rest of them were left to their chattering teeth and blue hands.
Unlike them, Minho normally liked the cold. It had been scientifically proven that colder temperatures made a person more focused and attentive—and his work was living proof that it was true. It clocked his mind into high wire, brought out his best ideas, kept his head clear and cool.
Lately, though, it seemed to have been everything but that.
The emptiness of this journal almost taunted him. How many months had it been since he had used one?
He had blamed it originally on school work. Eighth grade was tough—especially with the amount of honours program classes he had been taking, along with debate, modeling, the occasional dance...and his personal relationships, it was getting arbitrarily hard to find time for himself.
Theoretically speaking, it was. Realistically speaking, it still was—but not for the reasons nature usually let it be.
He knew he had a frightening mind. A grave and cursed consciousness, that when it was left to its own attributes and he was staring at the lost wonders of the popcorn-textured unevenness known as his ceiling, it would wander to terrifying heights. And past its capabilities, the only thing that could stop it was, ironically enough, more work.
So it wasn't that Minho was inherently busy. He had purposely overloaded himself, distracted himself with every second of his waking moments pushed into schedules and research and work, to the point where he wasn't even sure when the last time he had opened a book for leisure was—Feifan was surely going to scold him for that one.
Fei.
Minho gulped, frantically pressing down on the page with his pen, trying to get her name out of his head. What did I do today? I could write about last round, or Greece last month, or F—think, write, think!
Nothing came out onto the page except a gradually widening black ink dot, right where the tip of the ink pen was.
There was another reason why he feared leather-bounded specially-engraved notebooks as of late—and much, if not all of it, had to do with the other half of his partner. Her name typically littered every inch of its lines, becoming the signature of his penmanship, and a look into all his past journals would prove exactly that.
