But One Day: Prologue

Alright, let’s begin the National Novel Writing Month!

But One Day is the name of my novel. My friend asked me ‘so hey what you writing your book on’, and I said ‘earthquakes’. So I guess it’s about earthquakes. I don’t actually have an idea of how I’m going to structure it, so I’ll probably think of something in the next day at school or something.

I’m not going to edit any of this, so if there are grammar and spelling mistakes galore… well, I don’t actually expect anybody to read this in the first place. Besides, editing would be against the virtues of NaNoWriMo.

So, I’ll probably make all of my anime posts like one three-line haiku or something. Maybe I’ll even try writing an anime post without having watched the episode. That’ll certainly be interesting.

tl;dr: Why are you reading this post anyway if you don’t like reading?!

P.S. I suck at writing, I have never written good fiction before, ever. I guess my writing skills improved a /bit/ from smashing posts out every day since last last year, but I still haven’t ever written any good fiction. I did write one book in Grade 4, though, but it was about these people who got lost on an island inhabited by giant MapleStory mushrooms with the power of levitation who ultimately used a gun as a slingshot to fire a SOS message at a nearby ship or something. Yes, I played MapleStory in Grade 4. I quit in Grade 5 because Cash Shop came out. I PLAYED MAPLESTORY BEFORE BROA CAME OUT!

P.P.S. Seriously, don’t read this if you hate bad writing. It’s like fanfiction.net fanfiction, except 1) I’m not a fan 2) I don’t write fanfiction 3) This is not fanfiction 4) Well, I guess it’s fiction.

Anyways, here’s the prologue. I swear, I won’t add so much tl;dr next time!

Prologue

He never liked funerals. They were depressing and sad, and everybody always cried. His dad would always look disappointed at him when he wasn’t looking sad like everybody else, like he expected him to be sad or something. But he didn’t care about who was dead, he didn’t even know who was dead! So what should he do, pretend to cry? The easiest way out was to wear a gloomy expression on his face until the funeral ended. Then his dad would leave him alone.

That was for funerals. But this wasn’t even a funeral! What was it? It was in a cemetery, but nobody was being buried. He did not know what it was.

A man in a smooth suit and tie was standing on one of those things the Prime Minister stands on and speaking into a small microphone. His face was worn and creased, his hair was greying, and he seemed very old and wise, like one of those war veterans who’ve seen a lot of things. But he could tell that the man was not very old at all, as his voice was loud and booming, infused with youthful vigour and power. Then their eyes met, and he saw, for an instant, the eyes of a broken man. Eyes that should’ve been dark brown with energy, but seemed grey and dead. Eyes that could not belong to a younger man.

What was he saying? He could not remember. Everyone around was also in black suits and dresses. An old lady wiped her eyes with a white cloth. Three little children clung to their mother with scared faces. A tall guy hung his head down, and a girl next to him held his hand a little tighter. He could see a man in a wheelchair with a fake leg, tears in his eyes, and a mother and father in dusty clothes hugging their child. Everywhere, everyone was sad. The mood was sad, even sadder than a funeral, but it wasn’t one. It was such a bright summer day anyways. People should only be sad when it’s raining.

And then the man speaking stopped, and the audience clapped and clapped and clapped. Was this man that important? Not important enough to take away his precious Saturday morning, though. But now he looked around again and there were hundreds and thousands of people around. He imagined himself as a crow, flying freely in the air, above them all, and he could see in his mind a huge black blob of people in this little cemetery. What were they all doing? All these people, did they really have nothing better to do than listen to some sad man with a microphone? No, he understood what was happening – they must have been forced out by their dads too! Just like his dad, all of these dads didn’t care at all about their children, but only about themselves.

He looked across the street and he could see people getting out of their cars, people walking in from their homes, people swarming out of buses. And eventually the place was crowded and he couldn’t get out anymore. He wanted to go home and watch his cartoons and his dad didn’t let him because his dad was mean and boring and wanted to go to this stupid funeral-thing. It wasn’t even a funeral! Nobody died. But then he remembered that everybody else’s dad made them do the same thing, so he felt a little better inside.

It’s alright, he thought to himself. If I please daddy enough today, he’ll let me watch more cartoons next Saturday. It’s like doing homework – although you could finish all of them one day before you need to hand it in, it’s better to finish it now so that you can play later.

“Come on, let’s go now.”

Huh? His dad was telling him to go. Haha! This was great, he could go home and his dad wouldn’t be disappointed either! He wondered why his dad would leave so suddenly. Maybe he also realized that there were too many people there, and eventually, it would be impossible to leave, just like how it took forever to get home that time when they waited until the fireworks ended during that fireworks festival downtown.

“Alright, we better leave before more people come!”

They started walking towards the exit. It was hard because more people were coming in, but they still moved on. He looked back, and saw those same grey eyes staring, staring right at him. Straight through him. He had a weird feeling in his stomach and felt guilty at the same time, like he did some horrible, horrible thing that he could not say ‘sorry’ to. He looked at his dad, and his dad just waved his hand absent-mindedly without looking back. Then he looked at the man with the microphone again, but he was looking somewhere else. What was he saying? He strained his ears to hear, like it would be important or something. It probably wasn’t. He gave up and walked just a bit quicker towards the car. He had cartoons to watch.

“And let us remember,” the man with the dead eyes said, “this, all of this, it all happened, not in a year, nor in a month, or even in a week. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but Vancouver certainly toppled in one. One day. But one day.”