62 Chapter 17: Catch up

"Now that no one is here besides us… What have you been doing the last year or so?"

"Hmm… Not much as you can see. Broke out of the court in secret. Bought an apparent at age 16. Body surgery. Hair dye. Eye leans to change eye colour. Name change. Making connects to the members in the shadow of the government and got a terrible selling book published, You know, typical teenager stuff."

*Laughs*

We sat around a small round coffee table in the larger computer area next to my bed. The coffee had a glass window surface where it held up two serving of cold dessert.

"What's your name now on the student list?"

"Alice."

"So, I better call you that in public from now on."

"Speaking of which, what have you been up to. The last time I checked you weren't in this school."

"… to tell the truth I didn't really know why, but I just felt like changing over."

"Is this what people call fate?"

"Possibly. Where are you up to in your book?"

"I don't know what I am doing really. I have been testing out a slice of life story telling but people don't seem to be to be too interested in that. The people said I lacked in detail and also that I sucked at grammar. I often forget to put a lot of my thought in and skip it."

"Can I have a look at your book?"

"Sure"

I handed her over my still open laptop that seats on the floor.

"let me have a look…"

…

"Yea… it's pretty shit if I ever saw one. Your grammar and pacing are your main issues. Your paragraph isn't well structured. Characters are lacking while your locations are very quickly brushed off."

"So?"

"Show me your second book."

"Here."

I switched the tabs over.

"Let's work on the story from where you left off. We should finish the story of the book first before fixing the past and polishing it. This story has the points to get mid popular. However, I don't believe that refining it right now to be the main objective."

"Are you suggesting me to test the waters with this series?"

"Precisely. But just because it's a test subject, it doesn't mean it must not sell. We need to make good works of this. First thing is first, you need to face the facts. A normal day to day life without a twist will not get you the larger audience. Even though your story can be well written as a straightforward tragic, your book will never sell even close as well due to the amount of audience interested in a certain form of storytelling."

"Do you want me to write a tragic story? You know my current conductions, don't you?"

"I know. That's not what I am suggesting. I am suggesting you pull a great twist. I know what you mean by tragic, and that's not what I exactly mean. Right now, you're in a bad state. You should try to put your emotions into text and not try to come up with anything else. If you put your thoughts into the page, you might write better."

"You do have a point. It should hurt me if I don't need to plan things out. After all, after all these happy stuff, it begins to get boarding. I can try it, but the problem is how I can change the mood of the show in an instant. Trying to change it now with the setting created to this far will create force feeling of bad writing."

Shima places her left fingers under her chin.

"Thought about a time skip? This can make the characters grow closer…"

We talked for a long time until ten where I was over my breaking point. We decided to go out to a bathhouse and came back at 11. The hot water gave my head a rest from the mouths of stress as my body was sunk in the water as my face faces up to the sealing with my eyes closed. Shima was there too, just speaking to me to know what happened during the times I left.

When we got home, it was already 11:30 and Shima decided to stay over at my apartment and can't be bothered to head back to her house. We drank a bit of strawberry milk which we bought on our way home from the convent store. We watched a bit of tv before getting into the same bed.