My Muse

Chapter 1: Writer's Block

  Young K stared at the empty page in his notebook. Slumped in his chair, he waited idly for a stroke of inspiration to hit him. He drummed his pen against his desk and shook his leg absentmindedly. Following this, he would bring the pen in his right hand closer to the page as if he was finally about to get the momentum started, but he'd either draw his hand back to its former position, just hovering above the right side of the page, or immediately cross out the word he had written. After about ten minutes, he resigned and shut his notebook despondently. In a weary state, he put his head on the table and closed his eyes to rest.

  Young K thought long and hard about the past few days. He thought about the long hours he spent sitting at the same desk in his room and carrying out the same routine as he tried to come up with decent lyrics for his band's song. He thought about the hard work that his fellow band members, Jae, Sungjin, Wonpil and Dowoon had put into making a demo version of the song and his chest started to ache with guilt.

  He should be doing his part. He should have gotten the lyrics done 3 days ago as he had promised, but he hadn't. He didn't understand why. After all, he'd already written a countless number of songs beforehand. He'd searched his mind to come up with a coherent string of words that suited the melody of the song, but they never seemed to satisfy him, leading it to become just another one of his many failed attempts. Initially, he thought that maybe he was just having a bad week, but as the days went by, his thoughts became increasingly pessimistic. Maybe he was losing his drive. Maybe it was the pressure of releasing a new album after the band's six-month break. Being the band's main songwriter, he didn't want to disappoint anyone, especially himself.

  Young K contracted a light headache which he found to be a common occurrence nowadays. However, his brief mental breakdown was interrupted by a sudden knock on his bedroom door. He shot up in his seat and turned around to see Jae entering his room. Young K quickly grabbed his pen again and scribbled random lines on his empty page to look busy.

  "You don't have to pretend that you're so hard at work," Jae said with a cheeky smile. The brunette approached Young K's desk with his hands in the pocket of his oversized hoodie.

  "W-what are you talking about? I'm almost done I swear," Young K stuttered, gesturing towards his notebook with his back facing Jae.

  His heart rate quickened as he felt Jae's footsteps getting closer and closer. Despite Young K's best effort to conceal his disappointing lack of progress, Jae snatched the notebook off the desk and laughed contentedly.

  "Yeah, and maybe when you're done doodling, you can actually get started on writing lyrics for our song," Jae adds sarcastically. Young K buries his face in his hands as he feels the humiliation washing over him. He reached his hand out to retrieve the notebook back but Jae backed away.

  "Not until you tell me what's going on," Jae said in a more serious tone.

  Young K wasn't surprised that Jae was able to sense that there was something wrong with him. They had been roommates for a considerable amount of time in the past and he was used to seeing Young K at his worst. It was because of this that Young K also knew that Jae had probably already sensed an issue from the beginning but decided to give Young K the time to resolve it by himself. Young K never liked people butting into his personal issues. However, the fact that Jae was confronting him about it probably meant that the issue was visible to the other members too, and it was of no use trying to keep it to himself.

  "I have the worst case of writer's block," Young K admitted sheepishly while staring at the floor. Young K felt his pride take several stabs. He was sure that getting punched in the gut by Dowoon (whose arm muscles were well-built from his constant drumming) would have been a far less painful experience.