Chapter 131. Rosa’s Birthday (4/10)

“Happy birthday, Rosa! I made you a cake.”

While I was distracted Alicia suddenly said that. She’d taken out the cake she’d prepared and put it on top of the dresser below the TV. She opened up the box it was in, cut a slice, and presented it to Rosa on a small paper saucer.

She didn’t bother with the lighting candles and blowing them out nonsense. We were inside a hotel after all, there were smoke alarms and it wouldn’t be funny if the sprinklers went off.

“Oh! A cake you made? The sweets you make are always so good~” Rosa happily stuck a fork in and stuffed her cheeks with a dreamy smile on her face.

“Ran, have a slice too.” Alicia handed me a saucer with a saucer of her own in hand and we all enjoyed some cake together. It always baffled me how she could make sweets this good yet be so awful at cooking food.

Sure, they were different skill sets, but it was still weird. Why did everything she touch become sweet? It was one of the seven great mysteries of the Sorayuki household. At least, I’d labeled it as such. I tried getting her to not use any sugar at all one time when she was cooking, but I was shocked when it still turned out sweet.

How? What sort of witchcraft was she using that I wasn’t aware of? I was left with more questions than answers after that single experiment.

While I chewed and mulled over this great mystery, I turned on the TV with the remote. We were only able to finish half of the cake in the end. The two agreed to eat the rest out tonight.

It was good, but I really wasn’t that good with sweets. A single slice was enough for me. But these two girls had gone for seconds and thirds. I hadn’t been lied to by my mother as a child, women truly had a second stomach for dessert. That was what my instincts told me. Even if science couldn’t prove the existence of a second stomach in women, there had to be unexplained mystical forces at work here.

I immediately searched up the phantom second stomach online and discovered science did in fact have an explanation for it. I fell to the ground and despaired having the mystical forces at work shattered before my very eyes.

Screw you science! You don’t have to ruin the magic trick for naive innocent children like me every single time! Is there anything you won’t touch? You monsters.

The single line, ‘the sugar in sweet foods stimulates a reflex that expands your stomach,’ completely destroyed my perception of reality. I felt extreme grief and indignation that it was such a stupid reason.

Why didn't it work for me though? Was I born with a defective stomach? Are you kidding me? This is a scam.

“Ran, what’s wrong? Are you not feeling well?” When Alicia noticed I’d collapsed onto my hands and knees, she suddenly asked me that.

“Nothing’s wrong. I’m just a little depressed because science ruined a little magic trick.”

“Oh. I see. Sorry to hear about that.” 

“There are some things I wish I could forget.”

“Yeah, science is awful when it ruins magic tricks. It should just let us dream.” Alicia agreed.

She’s such a good girl. I’ll make sure to never break her heart and reveal the devastating truth behind the phantom second stomach. It’ll be like I’m hiding the truth about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny from her.

“Don’t worry Alicia, Santa Claus is definitely real.” I couldn’t help but say that.

“What? Santa Claus?”

“Yeah, the Easter Bunny too, okay?”

“Pfft hahahaha! What the heck? Don’t look at me so serious when saying that.” She held her stomach while laughing with a wide smile and eyes shut. Through her laughter, she slipped in her own additions to the list, “Hahahaha! You forgot the tooth fairy and Cupid.”

“Certainly, how could I possibly forget about those two.”

When she calmed down she let out a satisfied sigh and said, “Haaaaaaah. Yes, you can’t forget them.”

Rosa didn’t find it as funny as Alicia since she hadn’t been the target, but she still looked a bit amused just watching Alicia laughing. Her sense of humor was also quite different after all. Innocent jokes worked best with Alicia while dirty jokes worked better on Rosa. A joke couldn’t land with everyone. This was the perfect example of that.

“Hey, Alicia, it looks like the hotel has a free spa for guests, want to go and check it out before we head to the pool later?”

“A free... spa? Really? Let’s go, let’s go!” Alicia’s eyes lit up bright when she heard free.

She immediately grabbed Rosa by the hand and ran out of the room excitedly. I’d suddenly been left behind in the room all to my lonesome; though, I didn’t particularly mind, in fact, I preferred it that way. I’d hate to get dragged to a spa.

Since it looked like I’d have some free time until they returned, I jumped onto the bed face down and relaxed.

There was something magical about hotel beds. It was stupid how comfortable they were. The air conditioner and heater always worked perfectly in hotels too. It was easy to doze off.

When I was young, after my mother and I returned to the country I was born in, she occasionally drove us across the country and border with the little bit of money she’d save up. When a long weekend approached she’d convince her hard-ass employers to approve her paid vacation time for the statutory holiday. I’d often want to spend all of my time in the hotel rooms rather than shopping though. The places we went often had things much cheaper than this city did. On those trips, I’d bring my gaming consoles along and hole up in the room, unlike my mother.

Little things like that were enough for me. I didn’t care about sightseeing very much. The foreign hotel room was already considered an adventure in my little eyes. But at some point, I grew to dislike traveling because it became associated with long hours on the road driving and shopping sprees that I hated with a passion.

I silently laid on the bed and went on a journey down memory lane as I blankly stared at the ceiling for some time. After half an hour in that state, I started watching TV. I flipped through the channels one station at a time and reconfirmed the truth in my heart.

Mainstream television was dog shit. How did people enjoy this crap? After I turned twelve, I went twenty-five years straight without watching any of this garbage. It was either video games or anime I could find online.

Though by the time I was twenty, I’d watched just about everything that was good in terms of anime. By that point, I’d also read quite a bit of manga and I eventually moved onto webcomics around that time. Eventually, I ran out of webcomics I found interesting and I was at a dead end. I did something I never imagined I’d do and forced myself to try out a light novel of an anime I really enjoyed. Somehow, I got into it and read some more.

When I couldn’t find any more translated light novels I discovered web novels. More specifically, trashy, several thousand chapter-long Wuxia and Xianxia stories. I binged the crap out of them until they were dead. The mass killing, bloodshed, revenge, and face slapping were all refreshing and cool for a while until it became repetitive and a bore to read. Eventually, I completely ran out of stuff I found interesting and broke the final barrier. I thought, ‘Why not write stories myself?’

It was a pretty common path to take from what I understood. It wasn’t anything grand, it started off as a simple desire to make myself laugh mindlessly in my head all alone inside my dark room with only the light from my laptop on my lap or phone in my hand. If a third party saw it, it probably appeared pretty creepy or unsettling with the way my shoulders shook uncontrollably without any prior warning.

But sadly, over time, mindless comedy lost its appeal to me and I slipped into writing other genres that fit my random swings in mood as a result of the events that transpired around me. It became the only way I knew how to experience any sort of emotion. I couldn’t feel for the world I lived in, not a single thing. Writing was my only outlet for everything I’d bottled up deep down inside. It would just explode out on its own into an endless stream of words.

That is... until it stopped.

Yes, even I was no exception and experienced that thing known as writer’s block on many occasions. When that happened, it was typically because there were no more bottled-up emotions or desires to be found within me. They were all gone. They might have been there one night, but the next day they’d disappear. I’d become a hollow shell and the world would abruptly freeze like a broken clock with its second hand ticking away in place. The characters wouldn’t move or interact with anything. They wouldn’t talk to me or each other.

The light in their eyes would just mysteriously disappear as they turned to empty stone statues. They became listless hollow shells like me, the person who created them. 

I might not want to admit it, but a single scathing negative review could create such a situation for an author. You yourself knew best, the things wrong with your story, but then you’d have people who didn’t understand that you knew who felt urged to ruin your fun and everybody else who somehow enjoyed your story. They would go off blabbing on their own, pointing out and picking apart all the little shit you already knew. Every little tiny flaw that irked them that they could find, they would nitpick it out of existence.

You simply wrote because you enjoyed it, but no matter how much positivity others held toward your story, you’d always think they’re just trying to be nice. When someone finally pointed out all the negative things you already knew, you might, on a subconscious level, lose all motivation or will to continue that story. That was just how the human psyche worked.

It was something so common among authors. Many authors were fickle creatures with glass hearts. Only with enough experience did you grow thick enough skin over that glass to no longer give two fucks what anyone thought. Be it what you or they thought, you’d no longer give a shit. You’d eventually pick up your metaphorical pen and write again.

That was the most painful and agonizing part of the writing process. Picking up the pieces, learning how to move on, and beginning anew. Every story was a new chapter in your life. The path to writing wasn’t an easy one like everyone might think. It was filled with all sorts of hidden unseen hardships you’d only learn of once you picked up a pen and turned it into your weapon.

Feedback and reception were only small parts of that long lengthy overall process.

There were so many other unseen moving parts in the background inside that machine that it wasn’t even funny.

Writing was as complicated as the inner workings of a mechanical clock.