Chapter Text
TAP. TAPTAPTAP. TAP.
You swiveled around in your spinny chair, one leg on the ground, your head resting on your knee as you typed. Well, you were typing at a stunning one word per hour, the rest of your time spent staring at your feet. Or your desk plant, which was dying because you hadn’t watered it for the past week, and gosh you should water it, but gosh you really need to finish the manuscript so maybe later.
A frustrated groan filled the not-so-silent room. It wasn’t silent because you’d been playing the theme song from The Neverending Story for the past five hours. It’d usually get your creative juices pouring and creative cogs turning, but alas, you were only a quarter through the damn book and hadn’t gotten anything down for the past two hours. Normally, you wouldn’t be panicking - you’d written before, understood the process - but you’d been working on this thing since last year, and the deadline was tomorrow.
You’d been at your computer all day and all night for the past several weeks. You only got up to go to the restroom and to eat, which you had cut down to a granola bar and a glass of water. You hadn’t cleaned, hadn’t done laundry, hadn’t done anything but write and yet you couldn’t do it. You just couldn’t.
“As Douglas Adams once said,” You mumbled into your knee, “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
Beep. Beep. Bee-
You roughly shut off your phone alarm, though that didn’t shut off the alarms going off in your head.
The time was 5:00 AM. You had to turn in your manuscript in two hours, but had to leave in one to make sure you weren’t late, and even then you needed to take a shower and eat and brush your teeth and wash a clean set of clothes and -
“Whooooosh.” It wasn’t time for jokes, but yes, that was the sound of the deadline. The sound of it flying by, out of your grasp, through your shitty fingers that couldn’t write for what was literally your livelihood. It was also the sound you’d make jumping off a building.
“Let’s not go there.” You stood up from your desk and turned off the music. The studio apartment was lit up only by your laptop screen, which made it incredibly hard to step around the clothes and trash strewn about.
Then, first mission: turn on the light switch.
You tiptoe away from your desk and towards the front door. Eventually, though, you ended up just walking all over the shit on the ground, because whatever. You were going to either wash or throw out everything anyway. You flip on the lights.
Second mission: find something to wear.
You scoured your apartment with narrowed eyes. No clothes on your desk or chair. Clothes on your bed, but they weren’t professional enough. Clothes on the floor, but again, not what you were looking for. Clothes on the couch - ah, perfect! A recognizable blouse and pencil skirt sat over the arm of the couch. It seemed you had laid it out for yourself, hooray! Good job, past you.
Third mission: take a shower.
You put a little more effort into avoiding the writer’s block debris as you made your way to your bathroom, which contained the typical three-necessity-combo: sink, toilet, and shower.
You undressed, kicking your clothes into an already large heap behind the door. Ugh, you needed to clean this up when you got back - it was getting hard to open the door.
You started the shower and stepped inside, not caring that the water hadn’t warmed up yet. You were on the clock.
Fourth mission: brush your teeth, get dressed, do the small shit.
Stepping out, you grabbed a towel from the floor and wiped yourself down in a hurried manner. What you couldn’t gloss over was your wings - the large, useless appendages stuck to your back. They were a part of your quirk that you had a love-hate relationship with, considering they served no real purpose and got in the way constantly. They also needed meticulous care, which meant that you couldn’t leave them damp, otherwise you’d start having issues with mold. You spent the next ten minutes blow drying your wings and hair. You brushed your teeth at the same time.
Fifth mission: get dressed for real this time, then eat.
You burst out of your bathroom, entirely naked, but you lived alone so that didn’t really matter. You then threw on the skirt and blouse, struggling with your wings as usual, before heading to your kitchenette. Your minifridge held a grand bottle and a half of water. You checked your singular cabinet, but you ran out of granola bars. Okay, no biggie, you’ll just grab something on the way back. You take a swig of water.
The time was now 5:36 AM. You had another twenty four minutes before you had to leave. An awkward amount of time, certainly - you couldn’t really do anything without feeling anxious, but just waiting felt endlessly boring - so you decided to read over the unfinished manuscript.
“It is perfectly okay to write garbage - as long as you edit brilliantly!” You exclaimed, falling into your office chair. “C.J. Cherryh.” So, that’s what you did for the next twenty four minutes. Edited, tweaked things, fixed it all up - the book may be unfinished, but you’d shoot yourself before turning in something actually half-assed.
“No. Wait, actually-” You were murmuring to yourself, as every shut-in novelist does, when you saw the time out of the corner of your eye. 6:11 AM.
You shut your laptop with a slam, stuffing it into your over-the-shoulder bag. You then slung it over your shoulder because that’s how over-the-shoulder bags work, jumping up and hurrying to the front door. You knelt down, slipping on a pair of flats as you fiddled with the doorknob.
A rush of cold, damp air hit your face as you opened the door. It’d been weeks since you left your residence - the sensation was incredibly refreshing, like a cold Capri-Sun on a hot summer’s day. You savored the moment.
And then you were back to the rush of the day, shutting the door and running down the complex’s concrete stairwell. The sky was cloudy, gray with a storm that had already passed. There were puddles in the parking lot, dark and reflective, and grass wetting your ankles.
You had begun your trek to the train station. You lived in an area close to Shingu beach, on the outskirts of Fukuoka - there really wasn’t all that much traffic until it got bright ‘n sunny, so the streets were dreary and quiet.
Shishibu Station .
You barely registered the sign as you continued walking. The modern-looking building was all you needed, sticking out like an obvious misspeling amidst the rest of the scenery. You realized the building stuck out more than it’s damn sign.
The train ride was what you expected. Boring, suspenseful, anxiety-ridden - you were going to get yelled at and possibly fired, after all, so how else were you supposed to feel?
“We’ve arrived at Yakuin Station. Next stop…”
The polite, feminine voice snapped you awake. You stumbled out of the car and into the new, much busier station. Central Fukuoka was such a fucking mess in the morning. Business men and school kids were everywhere, clogging up the escalators and train doors as they wandered in and out. You pushed through the crowd of employees and highschoolers, escaping onto an escalator.
How should the rest of the book go? Even if you were fired, you could find another publishing house - your first two novels were fairly popular, at least enough to win you another job. So, this book was still going to happen… how would the main character's relationship progress? Should his bakery get shut down? Or maybe they meet when it’s cold and rainy, so she has to stay with him overnight? Oh, oh! That’s something!
“Woah, it’s Hawks!”
“Wait, where?”
“Over there! See him? He’s right up there!”
Excited murmurs broke out around you.
“I think he’s landing?”
“No, no, he is!”
“Shhh! Be normal, dude!”
You raised your eyes to the sky. Before you could turn your head completely, though, gusts of wind began blowing into your face. They were rhythmic, ramping up in intensity - as if the source was growing closer. It continued to the point that you had to screw your eyes shut, until you heard a pair of boots touch ground, until -
“Pretty wings you got there!”