It Is Ridiculous

He thought long and hard about what he could write to prove whether the notebook’s power was real.

He looked up at the ceiling. This was his habit whenever he needed to think of something. He had not looked at the ceiling for the past one and a half years. He had no need to do so. 

The black pen in his hand was spinning in circles. It fell to the ground. Without removing his eyes from the ceiling, he moved his hands around to feel for the pen. It was gone. It was not where he thought he had dropped it. He expanded his area of search, but still he could not find it.

He had to tear his eyes away from the ceiling. He looked around. He could not find it yet. It was nothing but garbage around him. Pens, papers, tissues, ramen cups, water bottles, you name it, and it was there. Nothing short of a municipal dumpster.

For the first time, he was frustrated over the pile of garbage that he had scattered around himself.

“Ah!”

That was when it hit him.

He ruffled around the sea of garbage, like a rat searching for food in a dumpster. He found the pen. And now he also had an idea of what to write in the notebook.

He was about to write. But just before the pen touched the paper, he pulled back. He got up. With the notebook and pen still in his hand, he walked out of his apartment.

What if the superpower of this book was something else? What if what was written there was misleading? As is often the case in movies and fiction novels. What if some mysterious power made him do the stuff that he was about to write, and he just had no recollection of it? It wasn’t a superpower at all. It was, but not the kind Kaito was hoping for.

To avoid that, he went out of his room. He made sure to grab his phone before he went out. He got down the stairs and was thinking of walking to the park before writing anything.

However, just as he reached the crossing on the other side of the road, he stopped. What if this notebook made somebody else do what he was about to write behind his back? He did not want that to happen. He needed to keep an eye out.

So, he stood there. At the other end of the crossing. With a pen and notebook in his hand, he looked out of place. People who were walking gave him a weird look. Even those who drove past him peeked their faces out from their window to give him a meaningful look.

However, Kaito did not care. His mind did not even register those looks. His brain was fully occupied in testing the book’s power.

He looked at the time. 1:50 pm.

On the second page of his notebook, he began to write.

“Make my room squeaky clean.”

This was the solution he had come up with.

He had not cleaned his room for the past one and a half years. The piled dishes and the sea of plastic were too much for him to even think about cleaning. He had given up. The only time he would clean would be when he had to move out of this place for some reason. That was what he had decided.

Even then, he realized that his room was particularly nasty. The smell would have become too much even for him at some point. He was well aware of the possibility that he might die crushed beneath a mountain of garbage.

That was a bad way to go, even for him.

That was why this was the perfect opportunity.

He could test whether the book’s power was real or not with this. The effect will be immediate, and he will get his room cleaned. And if not, well, nothing he can do about it.

He crossed the road.

He climbed the stairs up to the front door of his room.

He stood there, motionless. His heart was beating fast. He was nervous. He was filled with anticipation.

He put his hands on the knob. He slowly turned it anti-clockwise. There was a click. The lock was removed. He slowly opened the door to his room. To his dirty, cramped room. However, when the door was fully open, what greeted him on the other side was something completely different.

The room was no longer dirty. The sea of plastic was nowhere to be seen. It had disappeared. As if it had been whisked away to some alternate dimension.

The sink, once overflowing with a grotesque tower of crusted dishes, was empty. Not only had the dishes disappeared, but they had also been washed, dried, and carefully placed in the cupboards and drawers, as if part of some immaculate showroom. The stubborn stains that had clung to the metal for months were scrubbed away without a single trace.

Every corner of the room had been touched by invisible hands. Pens and pencils that had previously been scattered across the floor were now organized neatly in the dusty cup that had sat unused on the nightstand for months. The crumpled white T-shirt and faded jeans that had been tossed lazily onto the sofa were now freshly folded and hanging in the closet on matching wooden hangers.

It was more than clean—it was purposeful. As if every item in the room had been restored to the role it was meant to serve. The chaos had been replaced by unnerving order. Pristine didn’t even begin to cover it. If he had to describe it in a word, only one came to mind: squeaky clean.

“Is this really my room?”

He couldn’t believe it was.

The room that he thought was small and cramped was only because of his poor skills in household management. Had he given due care and dedicated enough time and resources to maintaining his room, although not to this unsettling degree, he might have been able to keep his room a lot cleaner and full of structured space.

But that was not the main point.

While the sudden cleanliness of the room had demanded his immediate and undivided attention, the main issue that he had in mind was something else.

It worked.

The wish he had written in that notebook worked.

He had written that he wanted his room to be clean. And right in front of his eyes, his room lay clean.

It was unbelievable. It was inconceivable. But the proof was right in front of his eyes. He could not turn his eyes away from the truth or say otherwise.

What other solution or explanation could he come up with for this? There was no one in the room. No one had forced their way inside. But right after writing his wish, the room was tidy.

It was God’s work.

It was nothing short of a miracle.

It was a testament to the power the notebook held.

He stood in the doorway.

He slowly directed his eyes away from the room and towards the notebook in his hands.

His hands were shaking. Goosebumps prickled his whole body. Shiver ran down his spine. His eyes were wide in shock. His throat was dry in disbelief. He gulped. That did nothing to erase the thirst.

But all of that did not matter.

What mattered was that the notebook he held in his hand was the real deal.

What he had thought was ridiculous was, in fact, not ridiculous. What was ridiculous was the power that this notebook held.

Anything that you write in the notebook comes true for 24 hours, huh?

That sentence stuck in his mind for a long, long time. 

His question was answered. The mystery was solved. Even then, he could not believe it. 

"Yeah, it is still ridiculous."