Knight Syndrome

Ren

"Ameena"
"Huh?"
"That is her name and, this is her number."
Ren handed Gorya the phone, the name lingering on his tongue like a question he hadn't yet formed. Ameena. He'd said it aloud only once, in that café, but it had been repeating in his mind since...
"That's quick Ren. Thank you." Gorya grabbed the phone in one hand while handing him a glass of wine.
His eyes drifted to the photo that Gorya had hung on the wall right in the middle of her room, a group of people all smiles and a girl in the middle with a birthday hat. F4. Together. A moment frozen in time, preserved like a specimen under glass. He was there, smiling, but even in the photograph he could see the distance—the way he existed within the frame but not quite in it.
"I still remember how you vomited after having Thyme's cake."
"Uhh. Don't remind me. He still wants to make up for that mishap."
They spent half the evening complaining about Thyme and the rest filling out the college applications. Ren moved through the motions, filling in blanks, checking boxes, but his mind kept returning to that moment in the café. The way Ameena had assessed him, her body tensing as if she was more comfortable observing than being observed. He'd recognized something in her; a stillness, a guardedness that mirrored his own.
Ren watched Gorya being goofy, but his mind was somewhere else. Somewhere quieter. The blank pages of his sketchbook called to him, but he resisted. What if he drew the wrong thing? What if he put pencil to paper and created something that revealed too much, or worse, nothing at all?
He missed sketching. These days he had been looking for his muse in the strangest places: the train station; the university labs; even the laundromat. Searching for something, anything, that would break the paralysis. But inspiration was a ghost that was present in the periphery, vanishing when he tried to capture it.
As soon as I have found my inspiration, I will create more than all the world can hold.
Ren surveyed the latest campus newsletter, his eyes flitting over the front page. Her face was there, her expression resolute, misty-black eyes behind oversized glasses. Ameena. He pulled out his pencil, the weight familiar in his hand, and began to sketch. Gorya's voice became distant, and there was only the paper and the image forming beneath his hand.
He traced the line of her jaw, the way her hair fell, the intensity in her eyes that suggested she was always calculating, always watching. But there was something else there too—a vulnerability she tried to hide, a loneliness that resonated with his own. He didn't know her, not really. But in that moment, drawing her, he felt something shift. The blank page was no longer empty. It held possibility.
Gorya's stamina had finally dwindled to zero, narrating her movielike schooling in the statement of purpose.
"It's late. I'm going back to campus. Want to take a walk?"
Gorya smiled and nodded, but her eyes were already drifting toward the sketchbook he'd left open on the table.
"Your sketchbook..." Her voice trailed as she saw the picture of an unfamiliar girl.
Ren closed the book with a slap. Too late. He'd been caught. The drawing existed now, outside of his control, exposed.
"No use." She waved her phone with a mischievous look spread across her face. "I already took a picture."
A laugh was heard, the other three musketeers had appeared on a video call.
Ren had to smile. Gorya had managed to retain her innocence despite all the trouble she went through. But the smile felt hollow, a mask he wore out of habit. Inside, something tightened. The drawing was private, a moment between him and the blank page. Now it was public, a subject for gossip, a thing to be discussed and dissected.
"Kaning, Kavin! Ren has met a girl!" She yelled on top of her voice.
She leaped to her feet and sprinted to the door.
Ren took off after her, feeling like an idiot. But beneath the embarrassment, beneath the frustration, there was something else, a flicker of something he hadn't felt in months. Not quite hope, not quite inspiration, but something that made the blank pages feel less like a prison and more like... possibility.