To The Limits And Beyond

The Hopeless Writer And A Clueless Muse

The eyes do not notice that which is unremarkable in appearance. What determines attention gain is that exact impression, not a person's hidden talents or potential. Simply put into words, no one would look at a normal-looking guy who's secretly a genius when he walks along the halls towards his classroom.

That is Leugi's sole situation and solace.

To not be in the center, yet to always have a glimpse of it within reach; the one who soars the highest but chooses to take the staircase.

"Good morning, WriClub pres."

"Yo, Leu!"

"Mr. Mellins, come get your graded activity later, okay?"

This is the life of a normal student; the attention given to an average person that doesn't burden or glorify the name through merits and demerits. It does not require constant smiles, only glances, bows, and constant agreements. And at the end of the calm, uneventful walk, is a classroom buzzing with the noise of students going on with their daily lives. He walks in as a normal student, gets noticed and unnoticed by different people like a normal person, and sits down in his seat right next to the window in full normalcy. In front of him, a polar opposite.

"Almost ran late, didn't ya?" grinned a good-looking man in a jockey outfit topping his school uniform.

"Yeah, thanks for the call."

"Hehe, no big deal, man! Wait, that's all ya gotta say?"

"Why?"

"Meh, never mind. Not like there's a point in questioning anyway."

The guy is Holland Aleister, the classroom's most famous person, in the flesh. His smile sparks, his eyes burn with passion for sports, and his vibe makes him the opposite of normal. He is the ultimate magnet of attention and the only childhood friend of Leugi.

A refreshing breeze blows from the window towards Leugi's face. He looks outside, ending the interaction between him and his 'friend'. He doesn't necessarily consider him as one, after all. Holland is a liability to his normal protocol, and so he'd rather refer to him as a friendly classmate and nothing more.

"Must be nice being in the Printing Press with Gale," he thinks to himself. Once again, he is caught in thoughts of her.

Slowly, he drifts further. Deeper in memories, into the distant past.

...We go back not too long ago, Gale and I.

She was a student from another department, an aspiring journalist for the campus printing press at the time. I, on the other hand, was already a writer, although I used to prefer the word 'explorer'. I was young, atrocious, and impulsive; I wasted words as if I would never run out of them, chased dead end after dead end, as if I would always have the choice to turn back. I saw risks as opportunities, and perhaps that was my biggest mistake in life. As a talented young lad, I've always found myself reaching towards spaces outside my own. Learning poetry because of its aesthetics, fables because of their creativity, and even journalism. That is where I met her. It was a typical rainy day in August, when the school year had just begun and various organizations were out hunting for new members. A poster caught my attention while I walked past the main building of our school near the campus gate. The piece of paper was half-torn from where it had been put up, but the contents were still somewhat readable from a good distance.

"We're looking for new and aspiring journalists! Journalist Club: Write for Truth, Write for Right," it said.

By instinct, I walked towards it. There was no thought behind why, nor the need to look for one; my feet moved by instinct, and my mind was fixated on nothing else but the poster. I knew, somehow, that it was the next risk I was going to take and overcome.

But then she came.

Like the early rays of the sunrise that cut off the darkness, she got there before me.

Around five to six feet away; that was the distance between us. I can still clearly remember how I started counting every inch while looking at her in silence. I saw her because she got in the way, but she didn't look at me, nor even seem to notice that I was approaching the same poster. She simply.... illuminated. And when she did, I began to lose track of what things I had been looking at before. The risks I had faced lost their worth when she appeared that day. I didn't know how or why it was so, but there was something I immediately understood right there and then...

There was no turning back from that path.

..."Good morning, class."

A confident, feminine voice announces. It was the homeroom teacher, arriving for their daily homeroom session and putting an end to Leugi's wandering thoughts. He snaps back to reality with a mildly surprised expression at their teacher's entrance. The wind blew on his face once again, as if pushing him back to his reality and away from his randomly revisited past. Then everyone stiffens, stops their chitchats and dilly-dallies to greet their teacher back.

"Good morning, Ms. Phoebe," they recite in chorus.

A moment of silence fills the room after that. The teacher scans the whole class from left to right, then changes her expression, from a sharp glare to a satisfied smile.

"Very well. Let's begin with the attendance."