Work Text:
Someone said writing is a lonely job.
Ike did not deny this. He already used to lock himself up in his room. The sound of people living their life outside did not manage to penetrate the transparent bubble he made by his lone self.
He is alone in the most familiar place he knew—his room.
It is funny to see how the universe manages to give him a dangerous blessing into his hands—the lone self. Now it is Ike’s responsibility to shape this blessing in the right direction and refrain it from turning into a curse. Being alone can be the strongest weapon he held, but it can also threaten his weakest side. Alone is a best friend he had in shaping writing, but it can also be the greatest enemy that hinders him from writing things he wants to. Alone can be a catalyst to grow his imagination, yet being alone also can be an easy distraction from actually writing. Being alone always gives him vast imagination to continue the plot he already built the foundation before.
And far before Ike starts to pick his pen, being alone gives him a room to be swept between the page of stories he never bored to read again and again. Alone is beside him when he was in awe of how authors make Ike feel like he is the protagonist, a pirate sailing through the ocean to find true freedom. Ike is also thrown into the depth of a fatherly feeling of an old man that willing to fight a losing duel with a monster just for a myth that the particular monster kept a medicine that could cure his child. Or how cunning mermaids keep tricking sailors for fun, yet they still help them when the time comes.
How can humans manage to create stories that can sweep me off my feet?
It started from simple curiosity, turned into awe rooted in the depth part of his heart, and grew into a dream of being a novelist capable of captivating his precious readers.
there will be a time where Ike finally realize that being alone is not always necessary for creating stories, nor the shape of stories itself is not always in written form
the price of such knowledge is paid in a most painful way, where he was stripped away from every familiar thing he had
Ike lost his past, but he gained another precious memory
he gained a new home, new family, new experiences
but,
that is a new story in another time
For now, he continues to write, like the nights before.