Creak, creak.
Creak, creak.
The baggage claim conveyor rumbled along, its gritty friction cutting through the bustling noise of the crowd, stubbornly carving out its own space.
Maxim glanced at Ronan, then at Ollie, not bothering to hide his confusion. Finally, he turned back to Ronan, pointing at Ollie. "What's up with him?"
Ever since the plane landed, Ollie had been waddling around like a frantic penguin. Neither Maxim nor Cliff could figure it out, their heads full of question marks with no answers in sight.
Ronan's eyes sparkled with amusement, but his words dodged the question. "How long's it take to get to the hotel from here? Can we call ahead to the restaurant for lunch? I could eat a whole cow right now."
Maxim rolled his eyes without mercy. "You just ate on the plane—already hungry again?"
"Because someone's inspiration explosion meant I didn't even finish my meal, okay?" Ronan shot back, instantly fired up, his tone dripping with mock outrage.
Sure, U.S. domestic flight meals were… hard to describe, a mess you didn't even know where to start complaining about. But Ronan's experience with plane food was so limited he had no basis for comparison, so he didn't mind. Right now, though, taste wasn't the issue—it was not eating enough!
Maxim zeroed in on the key word. "Inspiration?" His gaze darted back to Ollie, brimming with curiosity.
Ollie ignored Maxim, instead throwing Ronan a glare, letting his eyes do the talking.
Maxim swiveled back to Ronan, only to catch him muttering under his breath. "How could I leave food behind? I actually left food uneaten, and I'm still starving. I'm in a low-blood-sugar crisis here—if I don't get some fuel soon, I'll pass out. And we've got rehearsals this afternoon—who knows how long that'll drag on…"
"Ronan?" Maxim had to cut off the ramble.
Ronan shot him a deadpan look, staying silent.
Maxim caught on quick. "Relax, we'll make it to the hotel restaurant for lunch. There's time."
Ronan grumbled a bit more, then replied grumpily, "Ollie got some inspiration during the flight, so we hashed it out and jotted stuff down. We can go over it later." Starving as he was, Ronan was genuinely a little cranky—
He wasn't kidding about needing food.
But Maxim couldn't wait, brushing past Ronan's hunger woes. "Ollie's writing again? That's awesome—why wait? I want to see it now!"
He sidled up to Ollie, eyes gleaming with anticipation. "Ollie, all your work?"
"No…" Ollie was a bit sulky but more cooperative than Ronan. "I wrote lyrics, Ronan did the melody. But that last set of lyrics? All Ronan!"
His voice dropped into a mumble of gibberish, venting his annoyance, which only made Ronan burst out laughing again.
Honestly, it wasn't a big deal—or even that funny. It was more about the moment, the vibe they'd been in. Outside that context, it lost its spark. Only Ronan and Ollie got it.
Earlier, Ronan had picked up some fragmented ideas from Ollie's words and dashed off a set of lyrics on a whim. The song? "Kill Me Slower"—literally "kill me more slowly," riffing off Ollie's "kill me slowly."
Ollie took it as a jab, grumbling protests like, "Why 'more slowly' instead of just 'slowly'?"
Ronan swore he didn't mean it like that—he'd just swapped "slowly" for "slower" without thinking. But in the plane's pressurized cabin, talking through what felt like a fishbowl helmet, he couldn't even recall what he'd said. Somehow, it ticked Ollie off.
And… that was that.
Not exactly hilarious, but in the span of half an hour, they'd churned out three songs in a daze. Their sleep-deprived giggles were probably a little off-kilter, not quite normal.
The lyrics alone gave no hints. Ronan had painted a bitter slice of reality—
"Gotta get a job, but I hate those office guys—it makes me wanna slit my wrists, then drift in the ocean, quietly burning, doing slow push-ups." (Note 1)
"Man, I hate my dreams—what's the life plan anyway? I'm tired of living, back seat's full of bills."
Bleak, self-loathing, and aimless, the words screamed frustration. They all knew dreams didn't pay the bills—you needed a job. But the rigid, suffocating grind trapped them in a chaotic gray zone between dreams and reality, slowly killing them.
A foggy future, stacks of bills; a gray life, a black horizon.
That's how brutal and helpless it felt. Like the line, "I hate my dreams"—he wished he could ditch them and accept being ordinary.
Definitely dark stuff.
Of course, the melody Ronan had in mind wasn't hardcore rock or mournful soul—it was light rock with a funky twist. A playful, cheeky beat mocked their pointless persistence, echoing "Get Out of My Head" in style. A continuation, laughing through tears, but lazier, more laid-back—like basking in sunlight while hugging the dark.
You couldn't tell from the words alone, though. All that emotion lived in the melody.
Like "Get Out of My Head," "Kill Me Slower" came together fast—about half an hour, start to finish. Ronan and Ollie teamed up, leaving some loose ends with chord work and arrangement tweaks, but Ronan already had a clear vision.
To him, it was self-deprecating indie light rock. But to anyone outside their bubble, it looked totally different.
Maxim saw none of the light rock flair or humor. He just stared at them, baffled. "…Are you guys nuts?"
That one line yanked them both back to last night's dark heart-to-heart and the cabin brainstorming that kicked it all off—
Ollie had written some seriously grim lyrics. Yet, through Ronan's spark, they'd spun out three tracks, each lighter than the last. So… yeah, they were probably nuts. The clash between mood and melody only amplified their knack for finding joy in the struggle.
But what else could they do? Life kept rolling on. Better to laugh at the mess than cry over it.
"Haha!"
Ronan and Ollie locked eyes, couldn't hold it in, and doubled over laughing.