For most people, writing is an act of creation. For me, it was once an act of destruction.
I used to believe words could save me. As a kid, I filled notebooks with fictional worlds, makeshift heroes, and quiet narrators who never had to explain why they preferred the background. I thought if I wrote the perfect story, maybe someone would finally see me.
Then came the contest.
Our sixth-grade teacher held a school-wide writing competition. I stayed up for nights, obsessing over every sentence, polishing metaphors like jewels. My story was a deeply personal piece—thinly veiled fiction based on my awkward crush and my dysfunctional homelife. I thought no one would notice.
But they did.
Because I won. And the teacher, in her infinite wisdom, chose to read it aloud at the assembly.
Names were changed, but the clues were obvious. Everyone knew it was about me. The weird, quiet kid. The class laughed. The girl cried. My story was no longer mine. It became a joke, a scandal, a mark I couldn't erase.
After that, I stopped writing.
I stopped being.
"Senpai-sensei," Noa said brightly the next morning, shoving a yellowed, worn notebook into my hands.
I stared at it.
My old notebook. My old notebook.
The edges were chewed from anxiety and time. Pages still held traces of a soda stain and nervous pencil corrections.
"Where did you get this?"
"It was in the storage room behind the old drama props! You must've forgotten it! It's brilliant! Raw, painful, honest. I cried on page seven."
I felt my soul collapse into a quiet puddle of existential dread.
"You read it?"
She blinked innocently. "It was addressed to no one and everyone. A true writer's invitation."
"It was an unintentional suicide note disguised as fiction."
"Even better."
I wanted to evaporate.
That afternoon, I stayed behind in the Literature Club room longer than usual. I didn't want to go home. Home was filled with silence, unspoken rules, and the echo of past failures.
Tsubaki-sensei entered like she always did: quietly, like a page turning itself.
She placed a small paperback on the desk.
I picked it up. The title was in faint gold print: The Chrysanthemum Theory.
"It was published ten years ago," she said. "Became a national bestseller. They invited me to speak at symposiums, adapt it for film, write sequels. I said no to all of it."
I stared. "You wrote this?"
She nodded.
"Why stop?"
"Because success demanded repetition. Readers wanted me to bleed the same vein forever. I burned out. My words felt borrowed. My voice became public property."
Her eyes softened, gazing somewhere past the window.
"So I disappeared. And when I resurfaced, I chose the quietest place I could find—a dusty clubroom in a school no one talks about."
She turned to me, really turned, with that same deep-seeing look she always wore.
"And then you showed up. Not with talent, but with weight. Your silence was louder than anyone else's ambition. And somehow, I saw myself."
For once, I didn't have a sarcastic response. No clever line. No retreat.
Just the slow, unfamiliar ache of being understood.
That night, I sat in my room. No music. No distractions.
I took the notebook Noa found and opened to the first blank page.
My pen hovered.
I thought of the boy who wanted to be read.
I thought of the people who read him wrong.
And I thought of the people now—who were reading me right.
Koharu. Noa. Yuki. Tsubaki-sensei. Even Makki and his absurd dating flowcharts.
So I wrote.
Not much. Just a paragraph.
But for the first time in years, it didn't feel like bleeding.
It felt like breathing.
The next morning, I passed Tsubaki-sensei in the hall.
She didn't say anything. She didn't have to.
She just smiled.
And for once, I let myself smile back.
Even protagonists are allowed small victories, I suppose.