From early childhood, Saimen Dovv used to be shy, and this shyness evolved. And in adulthood he became an introvert. To express his inner voice, he used sarcasm and eventually became a satire writer. He wrote about every topic he finds ridiculous for a satire.
He had tried writing about everything from banana republics run by literal bananas to conspiracy theories involving toothbrushes and the GDP. His brain didn't rest. It churned out absurdities at a speed that sometimes scared even him. He could make satire out of an empty fridge or a malfunctioning vending machine. He was sharp, ironic, and merciless in his words.
Due to his introvert nature, he didn't have any real friends other than two people. One of them was Mira and the other was Jay, his fellow from the college days. They were close friends, but for Saimen they weren't. As he always saw them coming to him when they had no one to go to or had nothing to do, he assumed they were just using him as a pastime.
But he still appreciated them in his own twisted way, as without them he had no one he could try to open up to or just say something without getting awkward. They knew he writes satire, so they never questioned his weird behavior, which he found impossible for others. Even after college ended, all of them got separated, but they're still in contact.
Saimen is 26 now, single, jobless, and still writing those weird satires, which are actually giving him some returns now. Although he earns now, that's just barely enough to cover his coffee's costs. So, now a days he is searching to write something that could earn him some real profit.
He had always thought he'd either die obscure or become the kind of famous that made people argue whether he was a genius or just had Wi-Fi and no filter. It's not that his stories weren't getting noticed by editors and publishers, as editors liked his edge but couldn't place him. Publishers said he was "too niche." He didn't have a brand, just a voice, which was loud, skeptical and allergic to hashtags.
He was indeed good in these aspects, but he wasn't marketable. For the editors and publishers, good or truth doesn't really hold any value, what matters to them is public sentiment.
But he didn't believe in soft takes or safe conclusions. If a topic didn't sting, it wasn't worth writing about. Emotion, in his view, was something to be observed, not indulged. Feelings made people sloppy, while truth, though it was clean and cold, was funny when viewed from the right angle.
He was the kind of person who narrated real life in his head like it was a failed documentary. People watching wasn't a hobby for him, it was a form of research. To Saimen, humanity was one long-running joke with new punchlines every hour. But why is he like this? Obviously when your works aren't doing good or recognized you need some justification to continue.
But this needs to change, and he wished to try something new when he found out that a random platform trend report showed that heartfelt romance fictions were blowing up, getting views, comments, and contracts. At first, he thought it was a joke. But then he found rows of stories about broken hearts, quiet healing, rain-soaked kisses and love that unfolded in soft, vulnerable paragraphs. Readers weren't looking for something clever but connection. But does this make any sense?
"Of course it does," Saimen shouted into his half-eaten cup noodles, "People don't want bitter truth, they want affection with grammatical errors."
He understood one thing, it made too much sense, as people wanted stories about hope, they wanted imperfect characters who found each other anyway and lived happily ever after.
But he just... wasn't built for that.
But desperate times call for desperate measures and these were also the times that made cynical minds even more dangerous.
He decided he would write a romance. How hard can it be? Just take the romantic movies as example and add two people, maybe some coffee shop clichés, and a line about the universe screaming in their ears, "He/She is the one."
But there was one tiny problem.
Saimen had never fallen in love. Forget about any romantic encounters he never even had small talks with a girl. So, how should he proceed to describe that process? For him, if emotional depth was a swimming pool, he should be the one who was stuck floating in the shallow end with an extreme fear of sinking.
He had exactly two people he could sort of call friends, Mira and Jay from his college days.
Mira was the kind of person who could spark a conversation in an elevator and have five people laughing by the third floor. Endlessly charming, extroverted to a fault, and somehow always filled with energy. And then there was Jay, everyone called him the undisputed party king of the campus.
And that sums up his total social experience so far in life.
But since he had decided that he would write a romance, he definitely would.
What he didn't know was that the romance he was about to write would rewrite his own story in ways he could never have imagined.