I wander around my dorm room, nervously. Tomorrow, I have exams. But I don't give a damn. What tortures me more is this writer's block I've been suffering from for a few weeks. I feel like my brain has stopped functioning. I can form words. I can think. But all sentences my fingers give birth to are lackluster and stillborn. Every time, I can't help killing them with a relentless press on the backspace key.
I look at my laptop on the desk. It looks miserable, too, with its black dusty screen. I let out a sigh, and keep wandering around the room as I mindlessly listen to the rain falling outside.
I sweep the trigonometry handouts on the table to the floor. I step on the pieces of paper as if they are the pulpy incarnations of the math teacher herself. I hate her boring voice, boring eyes, and the tormenting subject she teaches. Complicated formulas and geometric shapes in poor print condition crumple under my angry foot. I plunk down on my bed. The bed on the opposite side comes into my sight. It's my roommate's.
I hate my roommate, too. It's like, we've been hating each other since the first day of the semester. We have nothing in common. I bet he is playing football in this heavy rain. He will come back in the evening. He will jump into his bed to fall asleep right away, smelling of rain and sweat. He doesn't seem to read any book except for the ones required for classes. Well, I'm not the only judgmental asshole. He must think I'm a scrawny pale freak. I can see it in his eyes.
Now I feel like I'm more stressed out than bored. Maybe it's the stress from the new semester that keeps my brain from working. It must be what keeps the creative nerves in my body sedated. I pull out my chair and sit at the desk. I look at the rainwater running down the window for a while. I turn on my laptop.
The laptop comes to life with a buzzing sound of the cooling fan. The letters on keyboard shine their cold blue light. The screen displays the usual rebooting process. The desktop shows up.
I place the cursor on the Internet browser. I change my mind. Browsing the web won't make me feel better. It will make my head even more clouded.
I think of watching porn. But I'm not motivated.
I'm that depressed.
Then, an idea lights up in my head.
It even manages to make the muscles around my mouth twitch. It was supposed to be a smile. But I'm too depressed for that.
I open the folder where I keep my writings.
I still don't quite understand the idea. But my fingers already tremble in anticipation. I open the third file in the folder.
This is the story I'd been working on during the last summer break. I left it untouched ever since. The neglected words appear before my eyes. I skim through the sentences. The details start to liven up in my head. I remember the main characters and the plot. It's the story I'd written, after all.
Synopsis: Lucas and Emma are orphans. They grow up in the same orphanage. They are friends. However, Lucas leaves the orphanage at fourteen, for he joined a local gang. Emma doesn't know this. Emma stays in the orphanage until eighteen. Then she has to leave because that's what the law says. She enrolls in a local university and hopes to become a teacher. She receives a few scholarships but they are never enough. So she works in a small diner as a waitress. One morning, a man walks into the diner and orders pancakes. Of course, it's Lucas. Both recognize each other. But they are not sure.
« Emma goes to his table, holding a plate of pancakes and a bottle of maple syrup.
"Here are your pancakes." Emma puts down the plate and the bottle on the table.
