章 5: Prelude 1 - For Whom the Bell Tolls, Part 2
After leaving the school, Zachary had no options but to head home, especially with the rain not letting up. It seemed that it was a very uneventful day, just like any other day of the week. Perhaps he should skip the next day of school and enjoy some time on his own at home — which was something he did, but not quite often as he would not miss out on his academic year.
And so, he sat in front of his desk in his room, thinking about what should happen next on this monotonous night. He could simply go to sleep and close the chapter on that, but he longed for something to spark a light to this evening.
His room was surprisingly in a good state, not the type of room one would expect to see from someone usually cooped up in their room, which would still be the case if he was, in fact, a shut-in. After all, the maids of the house would make sure to check up on his room at least twice a day, which wasn't much work considering he would tidy up on his own.
It was warm in the room that day. Be it from the heated lighting of the desk lamp, or perhaps it was the lack of any electronics within the room at that moment. The desk was perfectly placed near the window and close enough to catch the warmth of the fireplace in the middle of the room. Exactly what he needed for insight at a night like this, a mellow ambience.
This room naturally issued warmth and seemed almost archaic in its sense of architecture and furniture as well — yet that antiquity left the image of royalty within. That could be due to the fact that this was once a study room before he and his mother moved in. Zachary was not in his own home, after all —at least the place he had called home for the past year.
Ever since the passing of his father, he and his mother moved back to her family's house where they could find the comfort of others. But the family, who was quite a lot in numbers, rarely stayed in the country.
Both he and his mother were just left with his cousins and her mother, the butler, and some of the maids. Despite living in the same place, he rarely interacted with any of them, especially his cousins, who seemed to outright avoid him. And the chance itself for his mother to have a meeting with her sister was considered a marking.
With this barebone life, his mother tried to make the most of it. She was, just like him, not aiming for less or more, content with what she was given.
Zachary reached for the collection of blank papers neatly placed on his right and pulled three to his front, before putting a bunch of written pages on the side. This was his preparation to start another chapter within the novel he was attempting to write. Unlike everyone in the modern-day world, he preferred to write things down with pen and paper, the traditional method, as it let out his ideas more easily and in a proper manner.
If he could not master the pen, then could he ever call himself a writer?
Done with the first step, the second step presented itself… the waiting began.
He stared at the blank page before him, waiting for the spark to ignite. The events were all planned out within his mind, yet he couldn't let out a single word. This was a common obstacle for whenever he started a new chapter, something that would easily fade away after a few minutes.
His story was quite fantastical, in a sense. It tried to captivate the magic of fantasy while also presenting forth the horror of science. A blend of genres that might have occurred often in stories, but one that he wanted to tackle and test himself. A dystopian otherworldly timeline where imperialism stands as the victor to all. It might have been a plot that was done over a thousand times, but it was how they were written that made them unique and different in their own way. Not every genre or story tackled all subjects within it, and that left room for others to create.
He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the words forming in his head. As the words formed, he let his hand move on its own to write them on the paper.
「"They stood on opposing paths. One looking down on the other, yet they held no hostility or hatred against each other, only familiarity and relief."」
One second later after those two sentences, his mind came to a halt.
「No, that's not it.」
Just as he believed he was starting to indulge himself within his own world, he felt as though he returned back to the first step. He shook his head in an attempt to feel refreshed and restore back his confidence, but it was to no avail.
At this pace, the story would never come close to being finished by the end of the year.
「If only fantasizing about it was enough to bring it to reality.」
It was then that he was hit with an epiphany.
His focus on writing resulted in a lack of reading. Perhaps if he read some more books, he could remember what it felt like to form comprehensive sentences and restore back the format of writing within his mind.
It worked before, it could work again.
Near the collection of the neatly stacked papers were novels from various authors he admired and some that were left from the old study room. There were even a good amount of Japanese mangas on the side — a rarity to come by in this town.
He, like some in the modern world, had stumbled upon the world of anime and manga, a world often ridiculed by many who were not from Japan.
That was why he kept it to himself when it came to this specifically.
Perhaps the world was a quarter into the 21st century where many things started to become generally accepted, but even he could not stand the judgmental eyes of those held back in the past who did not favor "difference"... and there were quite many.
From stories about a guy with a crocodile face for a head to another guy with a chainsaw for a head, there was one specific manga that stood out in his eyes: "Ketsudansei." It was a one-of-a-kind series around the true struggles of becoming a mangaka (a manga author). Oftentimes, Zachary would feel a connection between him and the protagonist. Writing a novel and drawing a manga were not so different after all, each had struggles of similar nature. But it was that same story that brought him pain, the pain of living in a reality that brought no time and no luck.
Two essential elements were able to move the protagonist of that manga forward: Time and Luck.
These were features he did not have and could not ever hope to acquire. One would say to work hard but even so, a man could work hard and exert all the unneeded effort he had on something that was never fit for him in the first place just because he thought it was his potential. There was no such thing as chasing dreams or building one's own future.
From the moment of birth, one's own fate had already been written, a fate that could not be altered. If you were to be a teacher, then you would become a teacher, no changing that. Straying away just a little bit from that path resulted in misfortune.
And it wasn't all from Zachary's own delusions that he came to this conclusion. It was the manga's own author that taught him that. Even after its short success, the author could not find the bright-colored days he chased after for so long and decided that it was time, time for all the effort he wasted to mean something and took his own life.
He wasn't the first, however. Many have taken their own lives because they sought out dreams that were never real.
Just like Zachary's own father.
All his idols suffered a great fate of misfortune. Everything came down without hesitation. The world he perceived was no longer of color or sound, it was all just noise, endless tiring noise. The more he rejected what he was presented with, the future that was given to him, the more the world tried to shut him out. If he did not obey its rules and heeded its commands then he would be no better than a blind idiot walking into the sun.
His idols were gone. His inspiration was hollow. His family disliked his ambition. His friends left him long ago for being different.
The world rejected his pleas.
「So why?」
He held his grip against the desk and thought.
「Why do I keep doing this?」
"Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Randall's Night Out Live!"
A voice emerged that broke his thought process and woke him from the dark state he was plunged into.
"..."
「Her...!」
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