Part one of Trains is up today! Please enjoy! My comments and process follow below, if you're interested.
I stow my two duffels, one with Bree Harper and the other with Tsubaki Harper sewn into the sides in the overhead compartment and, too short to reach the hangers above, cling onto a pole.
My phone chimes before the subway train doors close. I turn it to silent and check the message. It’s from Jane: Text me when you get here. :)
I reply with as much casualness as I can put into a text: Kay, see you later!
I know she’s worried I won’t make it to the new house in one piece. I’ve been rushing around all week, and I’ve been distracted. At least trains are fast. I couldn’t stand going slow. Everyone else in our group is already at the new place. Well, everyone but me. As Ion would put it, I’m flowing to a slower beat right now.
Ion. I don’t need to close my eyes and immediately I could imagine him: his smiling face and his amused eyes. I could hear his soft voice, casual and calm. I could feel the touch of his skin, the relaxed atmosphere he radiates. I could imagine him, sitting in the seat across from me, one leg propped over his knee, one hand resting on the propped up foot, and the other wrapped around the latest book he was perusing.
“Last call,” the subway voice calls. As the train pulled out of the station, I close my eyes and hang my head. Get ahold of yourself, Harper. Stop thinking about him.It’s all for another girl. It’s for Jane, I tell myself, forcing myself to forget my feelings and focus on reason. I imagine my friend Jane Exina, small and dark and the pinnacle of perfection as I know it. Despite her frail constitution, Jane manages more than anyone in the group, and she does so without breaking her calm and poised demeanor. And of course, Ion loves her.
I can’t even get upset with him. I love Jane too. She’s small but full of wit. She’s not quite light itself, but the greatest thing in the light. Being with her is like being in a shadow, but it’s a warm shadow, and I don’t mind being in her shadow. I don’t feel it when I get back to my room and I don’t feel it when I’m coding or drawing. But I feel it when I’m with her and everyone’s eyes are on her and I’m just a bystander. I’m hardly even there.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me; why they won’t look at me the way they look at her. Maybe it’s just where I’m from: a city within a wall, secluded from the rest of the “real” world. It makes me that much more naive, and that much less connected with them.
Maybe it’s something I’m missing, some skill I lack. That isn’t hard to imagine. I’m socially awkward, and a little too proud for my own good. Maybe it’s my craziness from spending too much time in games. I’m absorbed in my own world.
The train bursts out of the tunnel and I look up to stare outside and watch the country blur past us. I like the speed. I have all this coldness in my skin and heart. All I can think is that I want to let it out in speed. Because I know I’m behind. I’m always a thought behind everyone else, and when I do say anything new, it comes out awkwardly, the right words stillborn and lost, flushed away from my conscious thought.
I don’t know exactly what’s wrong with me. All I know is I’m going too slow.
Comments:
A friend told me she saw a cute guy on the train and I, being the shamelessly gregarious person I am, insisted on writing and expanding it so that the girl observing actually tells the guy her thoughts by the end. I intended for this to be a simple 750-ish word oneshot, but it got expanded as I wrote it, and I went ahead and plugged my own characters into it. I ended up adding more context from my own feelings and relationships, and it got extended into what it is now. Part one is actually the prequel to the main "oneshot".
What's new about this post: I actually got a lot of the description from my own observations and from little tidbits of writing I've done on the fly. That is, if you feel any emotion from this, it's all real emotion, not something elicited by writing skill XD.
This is obviously not the first time I've written primarily from my own feelings and observations, but it was the first time I took careful conscious effort to see what I observed about people and went from observation over imagination. There was a lot of "What do I notice about the guy I like?" put into Ion's description >.< This is kinda inspired by Yukina's effort in Watashi ni xx shinasai.
Unfortunately the only experiences of trains I have are a few subway rides in Taiwan XD. So all that is made up from imagination and stuff I've read.
Bree was originally supposed to star in another work (SAO fanfiction) but I enjoyed getting into her head in a little bit of romancy fluff. I also got a bit on insight on Jane and Ion's characters. When I reread the initial draft (actually awhile now because schoolwork piles up :x) I was like "This doesn't even sound like Jane--energetic? friendly? lol." I went back and edited details, hemming the description to Jane's character, instead of the friend I was basing Bree's description of Jane off of.
Bree will be meeting another male organism next week! I haven't finalized the ending, but hopefully it will be (somewhat) realistic!
Good luck on finals next week, UC people! :)
~Minerva Wu
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