parallel lives: an unfinished story
in 2018, the summer before 12th grade, i spent my break in a tutoring centre preparing for college entrance exams. every weekday for a month or so, i went to a tutoring centre and sat there for nearly the whole day just studying.
i got bored at one point and started writing a story. i never finished the story and never thought it’d see the light of day, but earlier today enna and i got to talking about 2nd person povs and i remembered this old piece of mine.
i haven’t touched the file since 2018, so i don’t know if the writing still reflects my current style or mood, but i found it interesting enough to want to share. maybe one day i’ll clean this up and try my hand at having a real published story. but until then, this draft will remain an unedited and unfinished work that i put up on my blog for fun.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
12:40 PM
Today, we play an invisible god; one who takes pleasure in watching over two people—a boy who doesn’t stand out and a girl who stands out, or so the boy thinks.
The time is 12:40 in the afternoon, exactly five minutes before our story actually begins. As of the moment, there is nothing particularly interesting happening.
The girl is seated at the bright yellow table like always, reading the same Murakami book she’s been reading since Monday. Like always, she is wearing earphones, listening to some instrumental track and like always, she is shaking her leg.
The girl flips a page. A minute has passed by.
The boy, on the other hand, has just placed his bag down and is now seated at the green table, as always. He pulls out his notebook and flips through it, trying to remember yesterday’s math lecture. As always, the boy has a drink from Starbucks. It is his usual order—a personalised frappuccino.
The boy takes a sip and checks his phone. Two minutes have passed.
The room is slowly filling up, people sitting at their respective places. A different boy sits in front of the girl, momentarily distracting her.
She looks up, looking at the boy for half a second and looks at the clock. It reads twelve forty-four. She pulls out her earphones and returns her bookmark.
She sighs, taking a moment to collect herself before putting her earphones back in and standing up.
The time is 12:45. Our story now begins.
12:45 PM
She says excuse me in a hushed tone, trying to get past the two people blocking the way out. This earns the boy’s attention.
He checks the time on his phone. It reads 12:45 PM. He checks the wall clock hanging above him. It also reads 12:45 PM.
His eyes follow the girl until she is out of his sight.
It’s the third time. It is the third day of the week, meaning it is the third day of review classes. It is also the third time that she leaves the classroom at exactly 12:45 PM.
The boy noticed the trend yesterday. Since Monday, she has not failed to disappear at exactly 12:45 and reappear at exactly 12:50.
He wonders where she goes during the five minutes she is gone. The obvious answer is to the restroom, of course; probably so she wouldn’t have to go during the lecture. But he can’t help but wonder.
What goes through her mind when she’s riding down the escalators? What song is she listening to? Which cubicle is her favoured one? Which sink does she fancy using?
All these very pointless, but also very crucial, questions swarm his mind. He wonders if he is going insane.
He checks his phone once more. The time is 12:46.
12:46 PM
There is a small bounce in the girl’s steps, one that is barely noticeable. The small bounce is present because she has been listening to Negresco’s Waltz on repeat.
She imagines herself dancing in the middle of an empty studio with shiny floors and handles. There is also a wall of floor length mirrors. Her reflection follows her every step. Un, deux, trois. Un, deux, trois.
She is suddenly reminded by the ballet classes she took when she was younger and how she quit after a month because it made her feet hurt.
The girl smiles to herself and opens the door to the restroom.
Upon opening the door, she bumps into an older lady and apologises before stepping out of her way.
She is a polite girl.
She enters the restroom and looks left and right. Which cubicle shall she use today? After perhaps three seconds of thinking, she chooses the third cubicle to her right.
Negresco’s Waltz loops once more as she flushes the toilet.
She steps out to wash her hands. The time is 12:48.
12:50 PM
She comes back at exactly 12:50 PM. At exactly 12:50 in the afternoon, the girl steps back into the room and makes her way to the bright yellow table where the light green plastic waits for her.
She doesn’t pick her book up. Instead, she slides it into the little compartment under her desk. The boy takes note of how she sways her head to the beat of the song she is probably listening to. He wonders what song is playing.
The girl picks up her phone and taps away. He wonders who she is talking to, or if she is talking to anyone at all.
From this point on, nothing interesting happens. The boy observes, the girl types and occasionally looks up at the clock, their classmates talk to each other.
It is a monotonous scene that goes on until 12:59.
It is the girl who breaks the loop, looking over her shoulder and taking off her earphones. She stuffs her phone under the table before fishing out her book and pencil case.
The boy checks his phone one more time before putting it away. The time is 1:00.
1:30 PM
The girl is distracted. She takes note of the scribbling sounds that surround her; how everyone rushes to jot down notes as their teacher droned on about the earth’s surface.
Her mind floats in between reality and fantasy. She does take notes, something about earthquakes, but she starts to think of Tetsuya Takahashi.
Tetsuya Takahashi isn’t anyone special in the girl’s life. He isn’t her boyfriend, or her brother, or her friend. Tetsuya Takahashi is just Tetsuya Takahashi, the character from Murakami’s After Dark.
She imagines he looks like your run-of-the-mill college guy; nothing too extraordinary, but it’s the kind of run-of-the-mill that catches your eye. Maybe it’s the scar that runs down his cheek, or the trombone he carries around. Either which way, she imagines Takahashi was the kind of ordinary guy you never forget.
As she absentmindedly continues to take down notes, an image of Takahashi materialises in her mind. She smiles a little. Tetsuya Takahashi was probably a little cute too.
She imagines he has these long almost Buddha-like ears, a few freckles along his face, a crooked smile.
Her mind floats back to reality when her teacher asks them to try answering the practice test.
This time, neither the girl nor the boy who looks at the clock. It is the teacher who looks at the clock. The time is 1:45.
1:45 PM
Nothing interesting happens from now on. The cycle of answering practice tests, having discussions, and taking down notes goes on for what seems like forever.
It gets tiring for us to watch this monotonous scene, so we step outside the classroom to observe what goes on outside its four corners.
The outside feels more surreal than the inside. Here, we hear all sorts of noises; children laughing, other teachers discussing, the landline ringing. It is all very surreal to us.
We take a peek at the room next door. There is also a class ongoing; math, as it seems. There are graphs on the glass board, along with parabolas and number lines. It does not interest us so we look away.
Our gaze turns to the outside. It looks like there is a storm brewing; one that will bring lots of rain, judging from the darkness and weight of the clouds.
The grey clouds hang outside for a long time, never moving forward or backward, not even sideward. They just hang there, like decorative lights that were never turned on.
We watch the clouds with neither interest nor uninterest. Remember; we are only here to pass the time as the girl and the boy answer their practice test.
The clouds, heavy with their weight, grow darker. And, as if to protest against the darkness, the sky rumbles and lightning strikes. The clouds, in return, release their weight. It is a downpour heavier than any they’ve experienced this dry summer.
We look back into the classroom—a brightly lit room with chairs and tables of many colours, each one filled with students hunched over their books, pencils fluidly shading their desired answers on the practice test.
It is the thunder that breaks this somewhat sad scene. The teacher, the girl, and the boy all crane their heads to peek at the dark sky, all worrying about different matters.
The teacher worries about whether the sudden downpour would affect her commute home later at seven in the evening.
The boy worries about his lack of an umbrella. He had shrugged off his mother’s whispers of taking an umbrella with him. Half of him regrets it.
The girl worries about the bottom of her jeans. She was short, standing at five foot two, so the bottom of her jeans always scraped the floor one way or another. The rain and wet concrete outside would surely only dirty her jeans today. A shame, really. For she loved this pair more than any other.
She clicks her tongue and looks at the clock. The time is 1:55.
1:55 PM
At 1:55 PM, the teacher tells them to stop answering and says something about how they should learn how to work under time pressure; “some universities are strict on time!”
The girl sighs and puts down her pencil. She’d spent more time guessing the answers than seriously answering. It was always like this. Sometimes, during the checking of answers, she’d fix her own answers to make her feel less dumb. She honestly didn’t know what she was doing here—it wasn’t as if she’d be any different when entrance exams rolled around. At the end of the day, she’ll just end up guessing half the questions on her entrance exams.
Everyone was like that anyways, right?
She squints at the various physics equations scribbled across the whiteboard and sighs deeply. Velocity this, speed that, motion this. Everything was making her head spin.
She doesn’t do well with numbers and equations. She’d rather read a five hundred page book than memorise the exact speed of a ball moving at 200 miles per second.
As she further spirals down the rabbit hole of her own thoughts, we avert our attention to the boy who’s been quietly sitting in his place, his attention no longer on the whiteboard of equations, but on his phone stashed away under the desk.
He’s checking the weather, typing nonsensical questions into Google’s search bar. Questions like “how long will the rain last?” and “will the rain stop at 5pm?” as if the search engine could accurately predict how long today’s rainfall would last.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
that’s it. i remember that the story was supposedly takes over one afternoon and that the two characters (who are nameless) were never meant to interact. they were just supposed to remain as strangers whose lives ran at ten same pace for a few hours a day.
i think i wanted it to end with the guy trying to interact, but he misses his chance.
i don’t remember much aside from that, or how the rest of the story supposedly plays out.
for something i wrote at 17-almost-18, i think it was pretty decent. especially considering i wrote it when i was bored out of my mind at cet tutorials.
ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚ੈ✩‧₊˚༺☆༻ੈ✩‧₊˚
a song as always. frances ha was my favourite movie back then and it’s still one of my favourites now. though i’m in desperate need of a rewatch.
sharing this old thing on here makes me feel a little vulnerable. i haven’t shared much of my writing (outside of blog entries) publicly in a long time. the last original story i shared was probably in my early/mid teens. it’s probably still up on my wattpad account (whose username and password i have long forgotten).
enna and i also got to talking about stuff like welcome to nightvale. have you listened to it? it was my daily morning bus-ride-to-school listen before i learned of spotify and a world beyond dodie clark and my dad’s playlist full of songs from the 80s and 90s.
i haven’t listened to it in forever, but enna said that the nostalgic feel isn’t quite there anymore when they last listened to it. i said that maybe a part of wtnv’s charm was being a teenager on their way to school who has the whole world waiting before of them, but they just don’t know it yet, so they seek another world to cope with the woes of being 15.
(enna also dropped the crazy line of my history is inlaid with yaoi which is like, so true and real for me. i was 12 and reading hetalia doujins. now i am 24 and reading about two middle aged detectives kissing.)
anyways—i haven’t blogged or written much lately. i kind of miss it. anyways. have a good weekend, y’all!