ᴍᴏɴᴏᴛᴏɴᴇ | ɴɪsʜɪɴᴏʏᴀ ʏ.

[1]

Monotony was a beautiful thing.

Most people would disagree with her on that. Nobody seemed to like how nothing seems to happen to the point that some people would deliberately stir the quiet lull of the world and create chaos; all for the purpose of destroying the monotony they appear to loathe with their every fibre.

It was also these very people that didn't know how to handle the consequence of the chaos they've caused.

Of course, the attack didn't need to be at a large scale. Some can be categorized as small as how one would cut one's bangs just to pull themselves out of the monotony that enveloped them.

It was amazing the length some people would take just to break it.

She on the other hand loved monotony.

Of course, she didn't think of it as strange until her friends pointed it out. Most teenagers would prefer their lives to be painted in a hue of colors; bursting, crackling, and never ending. Even the most introverted person wanted their world in different colors. Maybe not in the bursting colors of a rainbow but it wasn't also in black and white.

She wanted it to be in black and white.

To her, it was comforting. There was something about the monotony of her everyday mundane life that she found endearing; wake up, wash up, get dressed, go to school, then work at her part time job.

Rinse and repeat.

It was boring but she wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. She loved the peace that came with the monotony.

Seiko—her best friend who was bursting in the colors of sunshine and daffodils—asked her one day if she ever got sick of her seemingly unending routine. She replied "no" without missing a beat.

It's not like she was expecting anyone to understand, anyway. People see the world differently and she's fine with that. She's indifferent whether people appreciate the comfort she felt whenever time passes by slowly.

She's indifferent if they would give her weirded looks when she admitted that she wanted time to stop when she's in her room, window open while the soft humming of a pop song was playing from her phone and she's sitting on her bed doing nothing.

"Before you know it, you'll be an old lady and then you'll be regretting not doing anything when you were young, you know?" The words were spoken to her one lunch time and a pair of chopsticks was pointed to her face.

They were spoken as some type of joke, but she didn't miss the underlying worry in it.

It wasn't like she didn't get where it was coming from. She didn't have any ambition, which was strange for someone her age. This type of behaviour was to be expected from a middle-aged woman who had been through a lot and was tired of her life, not from a sixteen year old girl who was at her prime. Once in her last year of middle school she even got scolded when she wrote in her future evaluation form that she wanted to sit and do nothing until she gets old.

The teacher nagged at her and told her to take it seriously.

He didn't understand that she was very, very, very serious about it.

Well it was amusing to watch him fume at least.

"Dream a little, will you? Stop wasting away your youth!" Another friend, Kaito, exclaimed as he not so subtly stole an egg roll from her lunchbox. She let him do so, but she opted to take his fried chicken, much to his distaste.

"Even if you say that," she started after thoroughly chewing her food. "What am I supposed to dream about? I really don't care about anything."

That of course earned her an overdramatic sob from the boy. "I don't know where I went wrong! I don't remember raising you like this!" He said and she watched Seiko rub his back in a comforting matter. Even Seiko was wiping her tears and agreeing to what he was saying.