His Day, Her Day

Prologue

There had to be a mistake. It all didn’t add up. All his actions up till now, all the time he dealt with those numbers. Those god-damned numbers. The friends he could have made, the social life he could have had, all the time he could have spent sleeping 3 more hours per day had accumulated to a mere 77% scribbled in red ink.

Thus the boy started to think. Just how had he spent his time up till now? Why was the 77% so upsetting?

He began to relive the blur known as his daily routine. Everyday, rush back home. Finish homework as fast as possible. Read textbooks. Do revision exercises. Nothing else mattered, nobody else mattered. Just work, work, work and more work.

Then pause. He began to reason things out. 77% is a decent mark all things considered. He probably ranked in the upper half of his class, possibly the upper quarter. Plus he highest he had ever scored in middle school was 68%. Most students with that mark would go home and probably be told something like “It’s okay but you can do better.” No allowances will be increased or decreased, nobody will be particularly be that upset over anything and life will go on as usual.

Pause again.

That won’t happen for him. He began to think of that middle aged guy who comes home late at night, eats a cold dinner by himself while reading the newspapers. That noisy person. Noisy, noisy noisy, noisy, noisy. Ear blisteringly noisy. Every time he opened his mouth, an endless ear blistering spiel that sounded like a mix of fingernails and chalkboard in a blender. Ah that’s right. Dad.

It was always something about that excellent somebody. That person that just happened to have been born from the same womb earlier than he. That person and his pesky marks in the 90s. That person who happens to be in some other country pursuing some academically superior lifestyle. Now what was that term again? Oh right, a brother.

The endless comparisons. Day after day, at best an hour. At worst the whole evening. The only solace was when he comes home after he had fallen asleep.

That was why he slaved away when high school started. He had enough. He had to make him shut up somehow. And he had succeeded, showing that old man just how hard working he could be. A semester of relative silence. But at what cost?

Drowning in text and numbers every night. Getting his mind washed over with torrents of information, all with questionable long term importance. Alienating most people in his class. Missing out all those pleasures in life. Setting aside a love life, his social life is now shambles.

On top of all that, the silence will no longer be there. That old fart will open his mouth again. His eardrums will begin to undergo various stress tests again. First something about results being all that matter. Then there will be something about his older sibling, or somebody’s kid that he never knew. Then it will progress to not being a fitting son to a hospital director. His worth as a human being will come into question. Then it will repeat all over again.

So this was the result. All that time he spent, all those suppressed desires and all that mental stress and sleep deprivation he put himself through. And it will still be noisy. That old man will open his mouth again. All that comes out will be noise, noise, noise and more noise. In fact, he found it pretty noisy right about now.

Reality came knocking again. The papers on his desk, glaringly white with sunlight from the window. That 77% scrawled in red ink at the top right corner. Now all that classroom chatter was beginning to sound like a certain old man. Something about marks being compared. Comparisons, comparisons, comparisons, comparisons, comparisons. His head began to throb. His ears began to ring. Then it all went away with a single thought.

“Nothing matters any more.”

And with that, he got up while gripping the two legs of his desk and flung it straight through the window.

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My attempt at starting some teen drama romance story thing I had in my head for a while.

Female protagonist design. The story is about the male.

Thinking of pulling this off without ever mentioning anybody’s name. It will all be about ‘Him’ and ‘Her’. Might end up clusterfuck confusing though. I’ll see what happens.

~ by depleted on May 5, 2011.