Caspian, The Forgotten Prince

“THIS is not the scene I was expecting…” a low voice murmured from a distance. “It should be me and not Alejandro.”

I knotted my forehead. Alejandro? It sounds familiar. I looked in the direction from where I heard the disappointed tone of voice, and I found the silhouette of a man standing beside the maple tree.

“Where the fuck am I?” I whispered. A maple tree? Am I in Canada? I scoffed. Impossible, I was eating French fries in my bedroom last night. How could I be in Canada? I stiffened when the man’s silhouette moved. “Who’s there?” I called out in a soft voice.

The man didn’t look back. I looked around and found I was in the middle of a forest that looked familiar. I took a step forward. Dried leaves made a shuffling noise under my feet as I moved forward toward the man.

“Hello?” I called again. “Excuse me, who are you? Where am I?”

I heard the man scoff then shake his head. “Who am I?” he asked. His voice sends a chill along my spine. “You don’t know who I am?”

I paused and looked at him carefully, but it was a bit dark in the forest, and I can’t see his face clearly. “I don’t know you,” I said. “I wouldn’t ask if I did,” I added sarcastically.

“You forgot about me…” he whispered, sounding hurt. “Why did you have to create me if you’d just forget about me in the end?” He turned around slowly and faced me. “Why, Sansa?”

***

“WHY, Sansa? Why did you forget me? What was the purpose of creating me if you wouldn’t give me justice in the end?” the mysterious man kept asking Sansa. “You should have killed me, so I wouldn’t be able to see how useless I was in the story.”

“What?” Sansa was baffled. “Who are you—”

The loud ringing of her phone woke up Sansa. With half-lidded eyes, she looked for her phone that she remembered placing on top of her desk. When she couldn’t find it, she sat up and forced her eyes to open widely.

“Ah! I should adjust the alarm on my phone,” she complained as she found it. “Where did I put it? And why do I always have to wake up like this?!” She banged her hand on her pillow. “Waking up from a ringing phone was so cliché. It has been used by many writers,” she said with a shake of her head. “And it’s always happening to me because I have a friend that loves to read cliché stories.”

She pressed the answer button when she found her phone under her pillow. Tiffany spoke loudly from the other line as if her audio and speaker were broken. Sansa had to distance her phone from her ear just to be able to hear her clearly.

“Lower your voice!” Sansa shouted on her mic’s phone. “Your voice is unpleasant to hear, for Christ’s sake, Tiffany!”

She heard Tiffany laugh. “Calm down, ahjumma.”

“Don’t call me ahjumma. I’m just a year older than you,” she said and drew her brows together. “Why did you call me in the early morning? I told you to avoid disturbing my sleep—”

“Is ten a.m. still early for you, Sansa?” Tiffany drawled as if trying to penetrate her consciousness that was still in dreamland. “Aren’t we scheduled to be the ones arranging the books using the Dewey Decimal System today?”

Sansa caught her forehead. “Ugh!” She then pressed the end call button and went straight to the bathroom. “I will never stay up late ever again!”

“I don’t believe you,” Tiffany narrowed her eyes at Sansa when they met on the street to go to the public library. “You’re a nocturnal species.”

Sansa heaved a sigh. She took a shower for ten minutes and didn’t even fix her bed before going to work. “I’m thinking of giving up my career.”

Tiffany snorted. “Career?” she laughed. “Do you consider staying up late a career?”

She shot her a glare. “What do you think I’m doing? Wasting my time?”

“Isn’t it?” she asked, suppressing a laugh. “You’re a good writer, Sansa. And I am your fan. But—”

“Don’t call yourself a fan if you haven’t read any of my stories,” she cut her off with a wave of her hand. “Such a poser.”

“I didn’t say I’m your reader,” she said matter-of-factly. “That’s why I refer to myself as your fan because I’m impressed with the idea that you’re a writer by night and a bookkeeper by day.”

Sansa narrowed her eyes at her friend. “I can’t believe you. I thought you were my friend.”

“I am. That’s why I’m brutally honest with you,” she said, nudging her in the waist. “And how will I read your stories if you’re deleting them when they’re about to end?”

Sansa remembered the story that she deleted a few days ago. “I don’t want a story that has stressful characters,” she said frowning. “And I am the writer. I can do whatever I want with my stories.”

Tiffany stopped to look at her with furrowed brows. “That’s the problem with you, Sansa. Every time you struggle with a difficult chapter, you give up easily and delete everything. How will you reach your dream to be a published author if you keep up this bad habit in writing?”

Published author? The label lingered in Sansa’s mind. “Did I say that my dream is to be a published author? As far as I can remember, I just write because I want to… to annoy the demanding readers.” She laughed. “I just wanted them to get mad because the story that they’ve been following for months was suddenly deleted on the website.”

“How could you be so cruel to your readers?” Tiffany crossed arms over her chest. “I’m not surprised if you’re generating more haters than readers.”

She blew out her breath. “I’m just kidding…” she said. “It was never my intention to annoy them, but I can’t help it. Whenever I get to the last chapters, I always get stuck and don’t know what to write anymore.”

“There must be a lot of characters lurking inside your head,” Tiffany said with a shake of her head. “By the way, what happened to your previous manuscript? The one with continuous weather changes in the plot? What its title again? S-Specta—”

“Spectacular Weather,” she finished. “I deleted it too. But I’m planning to write a new one.”

“What?!” Tiffany blurted out. “You deleted all the published chapters in the online reading apps?”

Sansa scowled at her friend. “I have writer’s block—”

“That’s bullshit!” she said and shook her shoulders. “My aunt is following your story. How could you just delete it without any notice? And didn’t you see the reads per chapter? It reached thousands of views! It means that a lot of people are hooked on your story!”

“I have deleted it,” she repeated with finality in her voice. “Readers don’t know that I am the writer, so there’s no problem. And, besides, one of the characters started to act strangely. It was as if he’s speaking on his own. It’s kinda creepy.”

“You’re the one who’s creepy,” Tiffany countered. “You’re leaving your readers on a cliffhanger.”

Sansa ignored her and continued walking but suddenly stopped when she saw Josh step outside the gym in front of their library. “Wait a second…”

Tiffany rolled her eyes heavenwards. “If you just stare at him, we’ll be late.”

“How can he manage to be so gorgeous every day?” Sansa asked while following Josh with her gaze. “I should write a romance story for him.”

“You should. Maybe Josh is the only solution in your ‘cliffhanger’ problem,” Tiffany said and pushed her to cross the street. “Go on. Talk to him.”

“Isn’t he snobbish?” Sansa asked hesitantly. “With his furrowed brows and perfect posture, it was as if he’s aware that he’s good-looking.”

“He’s not blind, and they have a lot of large mirrors in their gym.”

“Right. Unlike in our library,” she said and continued staring at him. “He looks hot and yummy too.”

When the man faced their direction, Sansa caught her breath. But she didn’t waste any time of her once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She raised her hand and waved at Josh.

“Fearless bitch,” Tiffany commented on her move.

But to Sansa’s dismay, Josh ignored her and went back inside the gym as if she didn’t exist.

“Look at how he ignored me,” she blurted out. “Gosh, is he reading romance novels to act like an arrogant hero?”

“Stop comparing him to fictional characters. He’s just not interested in you,” Tiffany said and dragged her inside the library.

***