Those Who Dream

This world was never meant for people like me.

The soft whirring of a nearby fan filled in the silence that permeated throughout my small apartment. The only source of light came from my laptop which I stared at ever-so-blankly.

My eyes slowly crept towards the time written on the bottom right corner of the screen.

1:31

It was late.

It was late but I had to keep trying. There was nothing else I could do.

I looked back at the job application I had open, and moved my cursor to fill in my information.

Just one more, I told myself, just one more and I’ll call it quits for the night. Surely by tomorrow at least one of them will be accepted, right?

I hovered over each field and began filling them in one by one.

First Name: Shidou. Last Name: Hirawa. Age: 21.

I paused to look at my name again.

What kind of name was Shidou anyway? Isn’t that a last name? Maybe that’s why I keep getting rejected from these jobs. They must think I’m too incompetent to fill in my name correctly, and that I accidentally put my last name in the first name field.

I sighed and angrily scratched my head.

No, what am I talking about? I’m just making excuses again. The only reason why I haven’t been hired yet is simply because I’m incompetent.

It wasn’t the first time I thought of something like that, and I knew it wasn’t going to be the last. In the end, it was just easier to pin the blame on something else, but every so often I had to snap myself back to reality—the reality that I only had myself to blame in this job searching madness.

My parents were right. I should’ve just gone to a normal university and picked up a normal degree and gotten a normal job as a salaryman. I should’ve known that going to art school was a mistake. I wouldn’t have wasted two years there otherwise.

Why did I think I could be one of those special ones who would make it big in the world with my pathetic skills? Now I have no money, no job experience, and couldn’t even get hired at a startup looking for ‘anybody’.

I drearily looked back towards the job application and began filling out the rest of the form, but paused once I got to the dreaded question.

‘What would you describe yourself as?’

I stared at the question long and hard. How should I answer it? Truthfully? Realistically? In a way that matches the position I was looking to fill? But thinking about it now, I’m not really qualified for this role aren’t I? An answer they were looking for would be a lie, and an answer that wasn’t a lie, was one they weren’t looking for. An answer such as—

‘A dreamer,’ I typed.

It was stupid. Too simplistic. Too broad. Too generic. And one that wasn’t going to get me hired. I wondered how many other people called themselves dreamers too. I wondered if they were also struggling like me to live in this world—a world that favored mathematics and data collection. If you weren’t in the top percentile of creativity or were unable to market yourself correctly, your dreams were sent to rot in an office room.

If only there was a place for dreamers like me. A place, no, a world, where everybody could do what they enjoyed doing the most without worrying about how they were going to eat the next day.

My eyes turned towards the sketchbook placed next to my laptop, softly illuminated by the white glow emanating from the screen. I had dreamed up such worlds before. Worlds of wonder and stories of adventure. I used my sketchbook as a catalyst to express my suppressed ideals and emotions, and had always wished for other people to see and enjoy what I worked so hard to create.

It was thinking that I could be successful off that wish alone, where I went wrong, because at the end of the day, dreams weren’t something you could eat to stave off your hunger.

On that note, my stomach suddenly grumbled and I began to feel dizzy from the fasting. I pressed my palm against my head to ease the pain as I wearily looked back at my screen.

It was time to go to sleep.

Being too tired to work on something has never been a problem for me. In fact, I have a severe case of insomnia, and relied on medication to go to sleep every night. What did stop me from working however, was hunger, and I had ignored it long enough today.

Regretfully, I closed my laptop for the night, deciding to finish the rest of the application tomorrow. As I reached for my sleeping pills however, I caught a glimpse of my sketchbook once more, its sight catching my attention again. I continued staring at it, popping the medication into my mouth as my gaze lingered there.

The stories told in there will never be known to the world no matter how hard I wished for it, but even so, the act of wishing for it in itself, filled me with a sense of hope. I picked up the book and rolled over onto my futon, flipping through the pages as I waited for the pills to take their effect. It had been a while since I last saw what was inside, and I figured that reminiscing my drawings would lull me to sleep faster.

The first few pages were filled with drawings of dragons and giant mystical foxes painted in watercolor. Occasionally, there would be a few sketches of a man dressed in blue robes.

Kuzo the Summoner, I thought, recalling the first character I created commercially and the concept arts I drew for his summons before turning the page to the next section.

The next few pages were more stark in contrast, filled with pictures of swordsmen and samurai. Their swords and plated armor were shaded with thick blotches and streaks of charcoal, intended to match the more violent setting these characters were created for. At the moment, I couldn’t recall why I had created these characters and the world they lived in, but they existed in my sketchbook nonetheless.

I continued to the next section, one filled with mages and wizards and colored using pastel chalks. It was the complete opposite to the pages prior to it, and seeing the world made me feel a sense of happiness and longing to be a part of it.

As I continued flipping through the pages, I eventually reached the last section. There, detailed sketches of entire cityscapes and worlds I dreamed up decorated the pages, drawn entirely in black and white by pencil. Staring at them made me feel a sense of wonder so profound it made my brain stop a few times, but at the same time, it also made me feel an indescribable sadness as I let out a pained smile.

Tales from across different genres, characters and ideas created to be expressed in different mediums for the world to see—none of them would be realized beyond these scrappy pages. But still, seeing the characters and the worlds I created made me feel a sense of warmth. One that told me that everything was going to be okay, and one that encouraged me to not give up. After all, I was the one who created them, and even though the time spent making them would’ve better been used to give myself a better life than the crappy one I was currently living, I could never bring myself to hate them. They existed. They were there, and they ‘just’ needed the chance to be shown to the world. It was the thought of that ‘just’ that inspired me to keep trying, even if it was a lot harder than that simple word implied.

If only more people saw my stories. I’m sure would succeed then.

Closing the book and hugging it tightly to my chest, I began to drift off to sleep, slowly lulled away by the delusions instilled in me. The sounds of the world began to die out, and steadily, even the soft humming of the fan began to fade away. And when there was finally nothing left, I began to hear a different sound.

Bwummm…!

The sound of a horn...?

Taka-taka taka-taka…

The sound of a train…

Ding… ding… ding, ding, ding!

DING!

And then I felt a bump as a cushion appeared beneath me.

Wait… Beneath me? But I’m laying down aren’t I…?

Confused, I opened my eyes and let out an audible gasp upon seeing the world before me.

I was… on a train…? But before I could even get a proper grasp of my surroundings, a loud voice of a man shouts out from an intercom.

“Ladies and gentlemen, and species from different worlds—welcome to the Aurum Reve! If you’re here, that means you’ve killed yourself.”